What scares you: “Nylon flocking” or “microplastics"?

Way, way back, when even this balding, graybeard was a child, women were warned to be careful in the kitchen if they were wearing the "fashionable" nylon sari.  The traditional sari was a cotton sari, and silk saris were worn by those with money during special occasions and celebrations.  Nylon was modern, and who didn't want to be modern!  And it was such an easy wash-and-wear fabric.  On top of everything, unlike a silk sari, a nylon sari was inexpensive, which put it well within reach of the lower middle class too.

In those years, open fires were the norm in India's kitchens.  Firewood, charcoal, or kerosene-fueled cooking near which women sat or stood meant that a tiny spark could easily make the nylon sari a death trap.  Should a sari catch fire, unwrapping oneself--especially in a culture that emphasized modesty--was not an easily accomplished task.

Such a combination also made possible for husbands and mothers-in-law to claim that they had no role in the deaths of young brides, even when they were suspects in "dowry deaths."  Even now, among many, the bride's family is expected to give hard cash or expensive gifts as dowry, and the failure to deliver then causes conflicts between the husband and mother-in-law who gang up against the new bride.  Bride burning, in which nylon saris played a big role, was often in the news.

That was the only downside to nylon that I knew about when I was young.  Otherwise, nylon, polyester, polycot--a mix of cotton and polyester--and more were all the rage.  They were visible, external, markers of modernity.  Would my behavior and our collective behavior have been different if we had known about the huge downsides of those polymers, which are more commonly known as plastics?

Until today, I did not know that one of the earliest documented effects of microplastics--less than five millimeters long--on humans was a link to cancer.

One of the earliest bodies of research on the impact of plastic particles on humans examined the so-called “flock worker’s lung,” a condition developed by employees of a Rhode Island plant that processed nylon flock, short fibers cut from cables of synthetic monofilaments to produce velvet-like materials used in upholstery, blankets, and clothing. The factory had almost no ventilation, and epidemiologists found that workers there had levels of lung cancer that were three times higher than among the people in the area who didn’t work in the factory. At first, they suspected the workers were inhaling chemicals, but when they studied the lungs of some of the workers who had died, they found nylon fibers lodged in the lung tissue.

The "flock worker's lung" was documented in the late 1990s.  But, the word "microplastics" had not been invented yet.  It was only in 2004 that the world had this new word.  It was only recently that microplastics has become a part of everyday vocabulary.  But, now, we know better:

In March, 2022, a lab in the Netherlands published research that examined lung tissue from eight volunteers and found plastic fibers in 80 percent of them. Jeanette Rotchell, an aquatic toxicologist at the University of Hull who was an author of the study, says she was less surprised than her land-oriented colleagues to find plastic in those hard-to-reach places. That’s because, with a background in marine ecology, she had seen the inflammation in fish gills and guts from microplastics. The biggest particles were about the length of a sesame seed, but long and thin, and they were wedged deep in the deepest part of the lungs. Still, Rotchell cautions about making a leap from animal to human studies. “You can see inflammation effects in mussels and fish,” she says. “But I think for humans, we don’t have enough data yet with environmentally relevant levels and types of plastics.”

The more we understand microplastics, the more we will want to find ways to regulate the problem, similar to policies that deal with emissions from factories and cars or the permissible levels of chemicals in drinking water.  However, by the time we act, the microplastics problem will become even worse than it already is: "367 million metric tons of plastics were manufactured in 2020. That amount is predicted to triple by 2050."

It is easy to be outraged by bride burning, and we should be outraged.  It is a visible horror that no human should be subject to, and the perpetrators deserve the maximum punishment under the law.  But, microplastics are practically invisible, and anything that is out of sight is out of mind, which is why I don't imagine large-scale and worldwide regulations against microplastics coming into effect anytime soon.

As I noted a month ago, plastics like polyester and nylon make possible clothes, shoes, backpacks, pens, raincoats, umbrellas, and more, especially for those in the lower economic strata.  These "modern" problems require us to think beyond sound bites and bumper stickers.  Are we ready for this task?