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Take a second and look at what you’re wearing right now. It might feel soft. Comfortable. Normal. But there’s a good chance you’re wearing plastic. Not in an obvious way—no one is walking around in water bottles—but many of today’s clothes are made from synthetic fibers that are, at their core, forms of plastic. And once you start noticing it, it’s hard to unsee. Wait… There’s Plastic in My Clothes? Yes—more than you might think. Modern clothing is filled with synthetic materials derived from...

Today, plastics are everywhere—from the packaging that wraps our food to the devices in our hands and even the fibers in our clothing. But just over a century ago, plastics did not exist in the way we know them today. Their arrival in the United States marked the beginning of one of the most transformative material revolutions in human history. Before Plastics: A World of Natural Materials Before synthetic plastics, people relied entirely on natural materials such as wood, metal, glass, horn,...

The Invisible Chemical Crisis When we think of plastic pollution, we often picture massive fragments or microplastic particles floating in the ocean or embedded in our food. However, a less visible but equally pervasive danger lies in the complex cocktail of thousands of chemical additives mixed into plastic to give it specific properties—flexibility, color, fire resistance, and durability. These chemicals are not chemically bonded to the plastic polymer. Instead, they are simply mixed in,...