"Plastics."

Let the horrifying prospect of these microscopic toxic particles, which may already be shredding your lungs or atrophying your brain, set you free.

You, a living person who knows how to use the internet, have almost certainly encountered unpleasant news about how tiny particles of plastic have taken up permanent residence in our organs. A spoonful's worth in the brain alone.

The air we breathe in our homes and cars contains thousands of microplastics, study finds | CNN

Thousands of microscopic plastics in the air of homes, offices and cars may be endangering our health, according to a new study.

CNNSandee LaMotte

You’re inhaling 68,000 bits of microplastic at home every single day

Research out of the University of Toulouse, France, has revealed that we’re probably harming our lungs a lot more than we knew. Every day, we’re inhaling teeny tiny bits of plastic that are smaller than a speck of dust without even leaving the house – and the findings show the amount is 100 times…

New AtlasFlyD on Unsplash

Researchers find indoor air teeming with invisible microplastics

A groundbreaking study reveals that invisible microplastics in homes and cars may be entering our lungs by the tens of thousands each day, underscoring a hidden risk of modern indoor life.

News-MedicalPriyanjana Pramanik, MSc.

They got there from breathing air—an ostensibly unhealthy habit that can only be broken one way. Also from eating and drinking, equally pesky behaviors.

A great way to ruin your day is to check in on some of the still-nascent research on the phenomenon that is a bit scant on long-term specifics but all seems to net out at some variation of "this is very bad in ways we both know about and don't yet know about and there doesn't seem much that can be done about it, good night and good luck." But first, we shop:

These Kitchen Items Are Hiding Millions of Microplastics. Here’s What to Swap Them Out For

Replace these items in your kitchen to reduce your exposure to microplastics.

CNETSee full bio

There was a point in my life when I would have fixated on this topic to the point of distraction, probably not that different from having nuclear-war nightmares as an '80s kid. But the prospect is so bleak that it almost circles all the way back around to being fine.

Sure, if you're in London and have $13,000 to spare, you can go get your plasma cleaned. Maybe that will help, maybe it won't, maybe you'll just feel better that you have some sense of control. Past that, we're pretty much all in the same toxic, decompensating boat—and that's kind of nice! Right? No? Anyone? We take our opportunities for apolitical unity and solidarity where we can get them.

There is, if you want it and can squint enough to see it, a liberation that can come from this level of awful, vague news. The sense of helplessness is baked in rather than some perceived inadequacy on your part; there is nothing you can do, nothing you could have done. So what would it be like, then, to just...let it go? The threat is no less real or less unknowable, but feels like the platonic ideal of something genuinely scary that one could simply choose not to be scared of without sacrificing much. The danger stems from its imperceptibility—but that also makes it escapable.

Maybe this can sound like willful ignorance, or like the exact kind of head-in-the-sand denial of science and common sense that is being increasingly weaponized against us all. Feel free to be angry, again, at capitalism, at a society that prioritizes profit over safety; that anger would not be misplaced. Protest the chemical companies that may well have known about the risks these omnipresent products bear. But you can't unbreathe the air.

Choosing not to ruminate over something objectively terrifying isn't denying the terror's existence or its import or its potential effect on the lives of the people you love and can be a political stand in its own right. Rather, this choice can be a gut check and a reality check—a vanishingly rare chance to feel agency rather than abject doom. Embrace your inner weary late-innings beer-league shortstop and treat yourself to the tiny relief of just letting a grounder roll by you.