By Julieta Cardenas for Sentient.
Broadcast version by Freda Ross for Texas News Service reporting for the Sentient-Public News Service Collaboration

Microplastics are tiny pieces of plastic less than 5mm in size. Small and ubiquitous - they are only about as thick as a paperclip - microplastics have been detected in our water supply, agricultural soils and the farm animals we raise for food. One study suggests the presence of microplastics might be anywhere from 4 to 23 times higher in farm soils than in waterways. Whether in soils or water, plastic pollution flows throughout our food system, Brett Nadrich, communications officer for Break Free From Plastic, tells Sentient, and "we have to turn off the tap."

Break Free From Plastic is an international advocacy group working to combat plastic pollution. "More than 99 percent of plastics are made of fossil fuels that used to be mostly oil," Nadrich says. Now it is also made from fracked gas, he says. In the communities of West Pennsylvania, Appalachia, the Gulf, Louisiana and Texas, "you're already seeing toxic chemicals entering the water table." Pollution from fracking extraction sites settles on soil as particulate matter, Nadrich says, which is then absorbed by plants and animals, including crops and farm animals.

Plastic Pollution Begins at the Source, But Is Found Everywhere

In 2022, Break Free From Plastic released a brand audit to identify the top plastic polluting corporations for the past five years, naming Coca-Cola as the top contributor to the plastic problem, followed by Pepsi-Co and Nestlé, among others. These corporations produce a wide range of products, including packaged meats, dairy and also plant-based brands.

Foods packaged in plastic can end up in the food itself. In one example, researchers tested cuts of meat and found plastics that matched the surrounding wrapping and polystyrene trays.

How Microplastics End Up in the Food System

One of the more surprising ways plastics end up in the food system happens on livestock farms in a practice called garbage feeding. Legal in 27 states, the practice is shown in a 2022 video taken by a maintenance technician at a grain elevator owned by Smithfield, where bread in plastic wrappers was being processed into feed. The video went viral, and an executive from Smithfield responded to say most plastic is vacuumed out onsite. The technician disagreed, but there is no agency that inspects or oversees the process to tell for sure.

Garbage feeding sometimes results in wrapped food from schools, bakeries and markets thrown directly into a shredding machine, churned up, plastic and all, to be fed later to pigs. From there, the plastic ends up in the pigs, in turn slaughtered for pork for human consumption.

There are a host of other ways that plastics end up traveling through the food system. On farms, plastics break down into microplastics thanks to a variety of factors - exposure to sunlight, farm animals brushing up against on-farm plastic and from agricultural practices like adding compost that contains plastic, and fertilizer and using mulch film.

Mulch film, often used to prevent weeds and conserve water, ends up deteriorating, and need to be prelaced every one to two years, when the process starts all over again.

Researchers have also found that plants, including crops fed to farm animals, are capable of accumulating microplastics, absorbing them from the soil. Some farm animals like poultry are also fed feed derived from marine sources like fishmeal and seaweed, and these too can contain microplastics.

Microplastics have also been detected in the feces of various domestic animals, including sheep, dairy cows, poultry and pigs. The microplastics in animal waste re-enter the food system when applied to fields, and in turn can also leach into nearby water sources. Irrigation can also bring microplastics into agricultural soils, especially when it contains waste water, either from humans or from factory farms.

According to a 2022 report from the Center for International Environmental Law, another source are synthetic fertilizers and pesticides that are encapsulated in a plastic coating and marketed as "controlled-release." Much like slow release pills, they break down in the soil, releasing not only the pesticide or fertilizer, but the plastic into the ground.

What Can We Do About Microplastics?

Though the exact human health risks of microplastics are not known, some studies have found microplastics present in patients with adverse health outcomes, like cancer and cardiovascular disease. Another study found more microplastics in recent tissue samples as compared to those taken ten years earlier. As toxicology researcher Phoebe Stapleton told People magazine, "while it might not affect my health today, it may affect my health in 50 years."

While researchers and advocates have a variety of recommendations for reducing individual plastic use - like shifting to reusable bottles and filtered tap water rather than bottled - it will likely take a policy intervention to curb plastic pollution. The Biden administration issued a briefing on plastic pollution over the summer, but there are few signs the incoming Trump administration will carry on those policies.


Julieta Cardenas wrote this article for Sentient.


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Environmental groups say Oregon's new groundwater law, meant to curb pollution, has been diluted to the point they can no longer support it.

Industrial agriculture has contaminated parts of Eastern Oregon's groundwater with nitrates from fertilizers and manure, putting residents, many of whom rely on wells for drinking water, at risk.

Kaleb Lay, director of policy and research for the group Oregon Rural Action, said earlier bill versions would have protected residents and held polluters accountable.

"Unfortunately, as the legislative session went on, we saw industry groups and big ag groups get more and more heavily involved," Lay pointed out. "We really saw the governor concede many of the really important points in this bill."

Nitrates are increasingly linked to cancer, miscarriages and birth defects. Gov. Tina Kotek said the new bill gives state agencies more authority to intervene in Oregon's contaminated groundwater areas.

Jim Klipfel moved to Boardman six years ago and discovered his well was contaminated with nitrates after a neighbor warned him not to drink from the hose. Now, he relies on delivered water as officials work on connecting residents to city water. He said there are more stories of illness in the community than average.

"Scientifically, yes, I know this can't be 100% tied to the nitrates, but it's a pretty huge freaking coincidence," Klipfel contended. "People getting cancer, people having miscarriages, people losing farm animals, horses, cows."

A 39-page amendment to the bill removed key pollution control measures, Lay explained, including a mandate for agencies to review and tighten groundwater pollution permits. He argued the industry has too much influence over the law.

"We need to shift that power back where it belongs," Lay stressed. "That is, to the people who are on the front lines of their pollution. It's to the rural working class, low-income residents."

A report from January showed nitrate levels continued to rise across the Lower Umatilla Basin Groundwater Management Area in Morrow and Umatilla counties. About 40% of tested wells exceeded safe drinking water limits.


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Sometimes called the original "ecosystem engineers," beavers and the techniques they use are guiding conservationists in New Mexico to protect scarce water resources.

Defenders of Wildlife is working with a team to install human-made "beaver dam analogs" along two tributaries of the Upper Rio Grande.

Peggy Darr, New Mexico representative for the advocacy group, said like beaver dams, analogs cause water to pond, allowing surrounding soils to soak up moisture during high flows, which restores habitat and encourages beavers to move in.

"The reason that we want to have as many beavers as the systems can hold is because they help keep rivers running year-round, they help to mitigate fire hazards, they help make water cleaner, they also help to reduce damage from flash flooding," Darr outlined.

A recent survey by the group showed a much higher concentration of beaver dams in the northern part of New Mexico, highlighting a need for targeted conservation in less populated regions.

In the Southwest, many perennial rivers now run dry during parts of the year, discouraging the growth of trees, providing a food source for beavers and the wood they use to build their dams. Darr noted the restoration work includes community and tribal outreach about the importance of a nonlethal beaver/human coexistence.

"If you rip out a beaver dam, beavers can rebuild it overnight sometimes, so you'll spend the rest of your life ripping out beaver dams," Darr pointed out. "And if you kill the beavers, it's like putting up a vacancy sign for another beaver pair, and eventually other beavers will move in."

Massive eradication of beavers began in the 1800s, leading to river and stream degradation in New Mexico and across the nation, often made worse by climate change. Darr emphasized conservation tools and public awareness can be beneficial.

"Beavers do millions of dollars of work for free," Darr stressed. "Beaver coexistence and beaver restoration, and just beavers in general, have become high priority for conservation, especially across the West."

Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations, or CAFOs, are banned from the Buffalo National River watershed.

That's after the Arkansas Legislative Council issued a moratorium, outlawing large-scale swine operations on land surrounding the river.

Gordon Watkins, president of the Buffalo River Watershed Alliance, said it's good news for them - but he said he's concerned about other bodies of water around the state that don't have the same protection.

"We've got lots of high-quality recreational streams in the state that deserve to be protected, but our by-laws restrict us to working within the Buffalo River Watershed," said Watkins. "While we would support changes to the regulation, we can't legally take up the leadership role."

Members of the alliance had been fighting for the moratorium since 2013 when C&H Hog Farm opened in the watershed.

Legislators recently passed Act 921, which allows farms to operate anywhere in the state. The Buffalo River is exempt from the legislation.

C&H Hog Farm shut down in 2020, after pressure from environmentalists who said waste from the operation was contaminating surrounding land and water.

Watkins said changes to state rules, such as not contacting local leaders when a company submits an application for a liquid animal waste permit, could impact other rivers and streams.

"Other places in the state are not going to have public notice," said Watkins, "and they're not going to have access to critical information to be able to see if a facility is being built next to them or to see if it's operating properly over time. So, those are our big concerns."

He urged Arkansans to monitor the actions of the Department of Agriculture and the Department of Environmental Quality.

"Be vigilant, pay attention and push for better transparency," said Watkins. "To push the ag department to at least put up a listserv. If they had a listserv where people could sign up for it and they could be guaranteed that they would receive a notice every time an application came up. "

The Arkansas Farm Bureau and the Arkansas Cattlemen's Association argue the moratoriums are government overreach.





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