Life Inhale
Just when I thought I was out, they pull me back in? Not really. I leave you alone for a couple weeks only to find you’re reading endless news about about Sydney Sweeney’s jeans and genes? Or maybe you thought you’d be able to entice me back into the game with the news that Tik Tokkers believe they’ve found a cure for migraines in the McDonald’s drive-thru: The McMigraine. While I was away, these and other stories quickly made it apparent that the internet wasn’t going to edit itself. But even that predictable fact isn’t what pulled me back in. I’m back because I needed a way to distract myself from the fact that I’m constantly absorbing plastics and other chemicals into my body. In what could have been the beginning of the end of American democracy, Bill Clinton once famously explained that while he tried marijuana, he didn’t inhale. But you can’t hold your breath forever. “Humans are permeable creatures, and we navigate the world like cleaner fish, filtering the waste of civilization partly by absorbing it.” You’re constantly absorbing bad stuff into your system, in a process that begins even before you’re born. And it’s not just humans. Plastic and other contaminants are everywhere. Humans have made their mark on the planet and now the planet is making its mark on us. David Wallace-Wells in the NYT (Gift Article): You Are Contaminated. “Plastic is now threaded through the flesh of fish, where it is interfering with reproduction, and the stalks of plants, where it is interfering with photosynthesis, and in much else we place upon our dinner plates and set about eating. There might be plastic in your saliva, and almost certainly in your blood. Plastic has been found in human hearts and kidneys and other organs, in the breast milk expressed by new mothers and on both sides of their placentas. And because plastic has been found in ovarian follicular fluid and testicular tissue and in the majority of sampled human sperm, it is already embedded in not just the yet-to-be-born but the yet-to-be-conceived. The penetration appears so complete that some researchers have begun to worry that their methods, too, are compromised by ambient contamination and plastic materials in the lab. Some have called for whole new protocols to systematically stress-test the findings of their colleagues, which seem on first blush simply impossible. But to trust their findings is to believe, for instance, that the buildup inside brain tissue has grown 50 percent in just eight years, and that, as of last year, there might be inside your skull the equivalent of a full plastic spoon — by weight perhaps one-fifth as much polymer as there is brainstem in there.” (Speaking of spoons, I heard that Clinton also tried cocaine, but he didn’t snort.)
