Big Oil's plastic conspiracy

Last year, researchers at the University of New Mexico studying brain samples from two dozen people who died in 2024 estimated that each person’s brain contained around seven grams of plastic — an entire disposable spoon’s worth.

- ZOE SCHLANGER

Those who suffered from dementia had more plastic in their brains than those who did not. That's correlation, not causation, and it will be years before scientists understand the health consequences of these synthetic particles in our tissue, but it is worrying all the same. When the researchers compared the 2024 brains with those of people who had died eight years earlier, the more recently deceased contained nearly 50 percent more plastic.

The study encapsulates the whole story of our planet awash in the stuff: Plastic has seeped into the most intimate recesses of our bodies, is implicated in a range of horrifying health outcomes and is rapidly accumulating in our environment in ever larger amounts. How did we get here — to the spoon in our brains?

Beth Gardiner’s rigorous new book, Plastic Inc., answers by way of a compelling true-crime story: Plastic took over the globe through decades of intensive marketing, political manoeuvring and flat-out deceit. Originally, plastic was a way for oil and gas companies to wring value out of petroleum. Today, Gardiner argues, oil and gas makers see plastic as a safeguard against falling revenue in a world reckoning with the climate consequences of burning its products, and aim to increase production significantly.