Microplastics: The Next Global Scare Campaign

Rubbish is rubbish

Vincent J. Curtis

25 Apr 24

RE: New report predicts clouds with 100% chance of plastic. CP story by Mia Robson. The Hamilton Spectator 25 Apr 24

Just because rubbish is contained in a “report” doesn’t make it any less rubbish.  An activist group, the “Minderoo” Foundation, concocted a report claiming that “plastic is found in our weather”; they claim to have made “scientific measurements” and found 5,400 nanoparticles of plastic in 2.5 L of Ottawa’s drinking water; and that “thousands of tons of plastics are falling on Ottawa every day…it’s falling on your food it’s falling into the air you breathe” etc.

Utter rubbish. The first tell is that they deliberately confuse micro with nano, with nano being one-thousandth the size of micro.  The second tell is nobody but them seems to be able to see this stuff, which ought to be visible, both on the ground, as a mist in the air, and as a murky cast to the drinking water. Plastic is inert, and doesn’t evaporate or boil, so how would it get into the air, and into drinking water?  It can’t; certainly not in the volumes they speak of; and where would plastic microparticle and nanoparticles even come from in Canada? They aren’t being found in air quality testing, where airborne microparticles would certainly be detected.

We are witnessing the birth of a new global scare, similar to the scares over “acid rain” and CFCs, which at least had some plausibility to them. But “plastic rain” ought to test the gullibility of even the most ardent environmentalist.

Nevertheless, a global campaign is building and you can expect to see more scaremongering over plastic microparticles in future.

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