My impression is people are generally alarmed but without any science of what the harms are it’s hard to understand what we need to do about the situation. The

My impression is people are generally alarmed but without any science of what the harms are it’s hard to understand what we need to do about the situation. The science is still very immature, and there are lot of other bad things (PFAs for example) that are likewise ubiquitous and permeate everything and everywhere that we have a pretty clear notion of their dangers. Even then it’s hard to assess how severe the harms are for microplastics yet. Part of the reason is they’re clearly not overtly dangerous. The way in which they are dangerous is very poorly understood, so what policy or regulatory actions could we take today? Ban plastics globally? “Plastic” is a very broad term for a specific mechanical characteristic of a material and includes lots of monomers and polymers, some of which we know are inert enough in life we use them for implants in human bodies already. Are those micro plastics dangerous? Who knows. Should be bans everything that has the characteristic of being “plastic?” That’s absurd. So while I might agree we need to “do something,” that something will need to be super subtle and targeted out of bare necessity.