Plastic fights floods and fires

OPINION:

What do the California fires and North Carolina floods have in common? Water.

One has too little, the other too much. But it goes deeper: Both have found much of their drinking water supply shut down or contaminated. In both cases, the solution has been enormous amounts of purified bottled water.

Humans can go for a month or more without food, depending on age and other factors. Without clean water, three days is the maximum for most people. When 60% to 70% of our bodies are made up of water, we can’t lose too much of it before life is threatened.

Given the elevated risk of tap water contamination in Los Angeles County, first responders and nonprofit organizations are begging for plastic water bottles to help wildfire victims. Even the Los Angeles Times is encouraging plastic water bottle donations despite earlier Times reports warning against microplastics in bottled drinking water. One editorial described plastic particles as “dangerous,” and Los Angeles International Airport banned plastic water bottles in 2023.

Once the need for clean water subsides, the Times or some environmental loonies will demonize plastic yet again. To quote former White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel, “You never want a serious crisis to go to waste.” Accordingly, once California’s water infrastructure is back online, expect to hear about the public health crisis or environmental catastrophe caused by consuming millions of gallons of bottled water.

According to the upcoming book (a sequel to “The Plastics Paradox”) from renowned plastic scientist Chris DeArmitt, Ph.D., the anti-plastic crusade is misguided and misleading. Remember the 2022 mainstream media narrative that we eat the equivalent of one credit card in microplastic every week? If true, the logical result over several years would be devastating. With so much polyethylene coursing through our bloodstream, how would cardiologists manage plasticized arteries and veins?

But, as Mr. DeArmitt reported after studying hundreds of peer-reviewed scientific studies, the credit card narrative — based on a study from the activist World Wildlife Fund — is pure science fiction. As Greenpeace co-founder Patrick Moore realized, such activists live in a “fairy-tale world.” Mr. DeArmitt calculated it would take tens of thousands of years to ingest a single credit card’s worth of plastic. Studies more properly estimate that one person will ingest 0.000000184 grams of plastic daily. For perspective, a single grain of salt weighs 60,000 nanograms. We ingest many times more alien dust particles of other materials than plastic dust every hour.

Microplastics are essentially dust particles, just like other materials that break down. Think about concrete, metal and wood, which account for 99% of the materials we use by weight (plastic accounts for under 1%). Something like wood will break down into ever-smaller particles, but a two-by-four wood beam does not generate headlines about America “drowning in wood.” A basic internet search of “micrometal,” “microwood” or “microquartz” makes them look like misspelled words to Google, yet they are similar to microplastic in size and generally more toxic.

Mainstream discourse tends to focus on particles being ingested, yet there is little written of them leaving the system. But the body rejects and kicks out unwanted particles, just like we eliminate bacteria through white blood cells. Some dust particles also pass in and out of the brain and other organs — permeability is a two-way street. As the National Institutes of Health notes, “Waste drains out of the brain.”

Nuance and context matter. Remember that when the green army starts fighting plastic again. In the meantime, you can be sure that California and North California residents remain thankful for the purified bottled water keeping them alive.

• Rick Berman is president of RBB Strategies.