I have thought for a long time that evolution has no answer to plastics.

My daughter is now thirty two years old. We avoided plastics of all kinds while she was growing, both in and out of the womb. Glass bottles, cloth diapers. At the time you could still get milk and juices in glass, and not plastic, bottles. We did. Our families thought we were crazy.

Two facts made me distrust plastic. First, plastics don't degrade. Second, we have evolved due primarily to environmental forces.

I believed then that evolution could not prepare us- our biology- for the amount of plastic our environment was about to absorb. We have introduced, I thought, an indestructible environmental force into our systems. I didn't know how, but I knew this can't be good.

And now it seems to me that evolution has responded to plastic by ignoring it, allowing it to take up space everywhere water can get to: in fish, in most protein sources and, I assume, among the cells of our bodies.

This can't be good.