The news about plastics in our environment and our bodies can feel overwhelmingly bleak. Every week brings headlines that are harder to ignore: microplastics in placentas, nanoplastics in brains, plastics and chemical additives in blood. The problem is vast, global, and deeply personal. And for now, the solutions can seem frustratingly few.
But our journey here as physicians and scientists has taught us that crisis can also clarify what is truly important — and with clarity comes the opportunity for invention. We are forced to find a new way when confronted with what seems an impossible task.
For us, this work began with a simple but powerful belief: that the human microbiome is more than a collection of microbes that live on people — it is a symbiont. It can be a shield, an evolutionarily entrained inherent system of protection for the human body. Quorum’s earliest research focused on microbial biofilms as a special phenotype, one that nature evolved to defend our surfaces from invasion. The idea that microbes could protect the vulnerable barriers of the skin, eyes, gastrointestinal and reproductive tracts became the seed for what would grow into Quorum Innovations.
That work was furthered through our collaborations with the Department of Defense and Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), where we, Quorum Innovations, were challenged to imagine barrier technologies from the microbiome that could protect warfighters from chemical and biological weapons. Out of those demanding projects came a simple but profound realization: the same principles and barrier protection that defend soldiers on the battlefield from chemical toxins could also protect families from plastics entering our bodies.
As physicians, Eva and I have dedicated our lives to making the invisible visible. We have watched the evidence accumulate, reading articles about plastics not only in oceans and soils but in the very tissues of the human body. It is emerging science, and it is our calling to help push it forward.
This book is part of that mission. It tells the story of plastics as both miracle and menace, and it points to the strategies and innovations that can turn the tide. While the news may be sobering, the directive is clear and so is the next necessary wave of invention – how to keep plastics from invading our bodies.
The age of plastics is a new one, starting in the 1950’s, with the global commercialization of plastics. This Plasticene Era is one of the most pressing environmental challenges of our generation. So far, our power to transform our environment has far exceeded our capacity to understand the consequences of our actions on the earth. But we also believe — just as strongly — that the capacity to change this course exists in each of us.
— Eva Berkes, MD & Nicholas T. Monsul, MD
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