This is an as-told-to-essay based on a conversation with Laura Hardman, 33, the mother of a 5-month-old and the director of the Ocean Wise Plastic Initiative at the Ocean Wise Plastic Lab in Vancouver, Canada.

Microplastics are 10 times more abundant in baby poop than adult poop. That's partly why plastics expert Laura Hardman avoids plastics.

Hardman does research on microplastics — tiny pieces of plastic debris that are broken down from larger plastic items. Microplastics are often too small to pick up or even notice, but they are everywhere: in the air, dust, and rain. While most microplastic research focuses on marine ecosystems — where plastics are known to harm growth and reproductive health in creatures including fish, shellfish, and plankton — these tiny plastic particles are also ingested by humans and have recently been found in human blood and major organs.

In new mothers, microplastics have been found in placentas and breast milk, and they appear especially abundant in baby poop — 10 times more than in adult feces.

The effects of microplastics on human health are not yet fully known, but emerging research has linked polyethylene, the most commonly used plastic, to cell damage, and environmental microplastics are known to attract and carry dangerous contaminants like cancer-causing toxins, heavy metals like mercury, and disease-causing pathogens.

Plastic household items often contain chemicals that are hazardous to humans and can leach, or seep, into water, the air, or food, especially when heated. Because of this, Hardman tries to minimize the amount of plastic her family is exposed to.

As the director of the Ocean Wise Plastic Initiative, I am responsible for our plastic-reduction program where we partner with businesses and individuals to help them minimize how much plastic they use. When we're starting to work with a group, I'll say: "Stand up if you care about plastic pollution," and everyone will stand up.

And then I'll say: "Sit down if you've used an unnecessary piece of plastic today." Very rarely is anyone left standing. When I start running through plastic items like toothbrushes and toothpaste tubes, it quickly becomes clear that even if everybody cares, it's difficult to stop using plastics because we're almost blind to our plastic use (through no fault of our own). It's insidious — it's in everything and every part of our day.

And what keeps me awake at night is that plastic consumption is still increasing. The amount of plastic waste we produce is projected to triple by 2060.

Plastic is a relatively new pollutant, so there's still a lot we don't know about it. In the lab, my team of researchers and I focus on the sources, effects, and fate of plastics in the ocean. We research how plastic is affecting certain species, and there are a number of serious negative effects. We're seeing things like endocrine disruption, which affects reproduction, and bioaccumulation, which is when plastic in the food-supply chain accumulates in the digestive tract and can cause blockages or cause marine creatures to feel full when they're not. And it's not just about the microplastics themselves being dangerous — plastic has this unique ability to attract other pollutants, and that increases its toxicity.

For instance, if you're a whale and you're consuming vast amounts of food carrying microplastics, the chemical concentration in the plastic and the cocktail of whatever may be attached to the plastic compounds increases and becomes more toxic to you. What I take away from that is, if we're starting to see this in marine species, what's the impact for humans?

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