Today, Explained - Plastic rain

Episode Date: July 11, 2025

We're revisiting an episode from earlier this year about how we were mostly able to get the acid rain problem under control...only to find ourselves with a plastic rain problem. This episode was produced by Avishay Artsy, edited by Jolie Myers, fact-checked by Victoria Chamberlin, engineered by Patrick Boyd and Andrea Kristinsdottir, and hosted by Sean Rameswaram. Listen to Today, Explained ad-free by becoming a Vox Member: vox.com/members. Transcript at vox.com/today-explained-podcast. A handful of small plastic pellets, which are used as the raw material for nearly all plastic products, and wash up all over the world. Photo by Thilina Kaluthotage/NurPhoto via Getty Images. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

It's summertime. Happy summertime. And maybe you're not totally happy because of that one war or that other war or your concerns over our trade war or maybe you're worried about some new war. But at least we've got summer and the sun or where I live in DC we've got rain and sun. Summer in DC means lots and lots of rain, just like earth-shattering thunderstorms that break when the humidity builds and builds and builds and the skies just can't take it anymore. And it turns out there's plastic in that rain? Not like big chunks of plastic.

Our old arch nemesis microplastics are in the rain. And earlier this year we explained and today we're going to revisit that explanation. Support for this program comes from FM. Established nearly two centuries ago, FM is a leading mutual insurance company whose capital, scientific research capability, and engineering expertise are solely dedicated to property risk management and the resilience of its policyholder owners. These owners, who share the belief that the majority of property loss is preventable,

work with FM to better understand the hazards that can impact their business continuity to make cost-effective risk management decisions combining property loss prevention with insurance protection. At FM we see what others don't so we can help protect your business in ways others can't. Learn more at FM.com and browse Site Unseen, our new microsite with opinion, research and podcasts about hidden risks facing your business. Avoiding your unfinished home projects because you're not sure where to start? Thumbtack knows homes, so you don't have to. Don't know the difference between matte paint finish and satin, or what that clunking sound from your dryer is?

With Thumbtack, you don't have to be a home pro. You just have to hire one. You can hire top rated pros, see price estimates, and read reviews all on the app. Download today. I just want to say one word to you. Just one word. Yes sir. Are you listening? Yes sir, yeah. Today explains Sean Romm's firm here with Benji Jones, environmental correspondent at Vox. And Benji's here to talk about a piece he wrote for Vox on plastic rain.

But before we get there, Benji, you know, regular listeners of the show will be familiar with microplastics, but for all the irregulars out there, could you just remind them what they are? Sean is in the name, micro. It's just right, it's that easy. No, yeah, Basically it is really tiny bits of plastic. Technically speaking, we're talking about

plastic pieces that are less than five millimeters long on like their longest side. So it's like half a centimeter, not necessarily invisible, but you can get much, much, much smaller and into like another category called nanoplastics, which are less than one micrometer, which is a millionth of a meter or a thousandth of a millimeter. So like they can get very, very, very small.

Basically everywhere scientists look on this planet in our bodies, in animal bodies, we find microplastics. So they are truly, absolutely everywhere. And these are like plastic fibers. So like the fibers that make up your nylon or polyester jackets or t-shirts. They could be broken down pieces of water bottles that have been crushed on highways. They could be nurdles, which are like these little pellets that are used to make other things out of plastic.

They're like the virgin material used to make plastic. So they're like, they're just all over the place. And that includes in our rain. Yeah. Which I didn't know until I read your piece. Yeah. So they're like, they're just all over the place. And that includes in our rain. Yeah. Which I didn't know until I read your piece. Yeah. So like on the one hand, microplastics are absolutely everywhere.

So like the fact that it's in the rain is maybe not as surprising, but to me, when I was learning about plastic rain, that there is plastic in our rain, it was really shocking to me because it suggests that like plastic is part of our ecosystems. It is like as fundamental at this point as like microbes and bacteria. It's just like part of the world that we live in, part of the fiber of the planet, and that to me is quite scary and like another level. And when you say that it's in our rain, can you just help us understand what exactly that looks like? I mean, can you literally see it? More often than not, you can't see it. So these are really, really small particles of

plastic. And that's because in order for microplastics to get into the rain, they have to be transported by the air. They have to be in the air. And so all these sort of invisible pieces of plastic are in the rain falling down. And there are a handful of studies that have found plastic in rainfall all over the world and in some like kind of scary quantities too. Hmm. Like how much? Yeah. So the study that I was like, okay, I need to write about this was a study of rain and dust falling on national parks and wilderness areas in the West. These are like Grand Canyon, Bryce Canyon, Joshua Tree. And these researchers

found that the amount of plastic that was falling on these national parks and wilderness areas every year is equivalent to like 120 to 300 million plastic water bottles every year. So like you see trash when you're hiking through the wilderness, but like there's actually trash like falling from the sky and it is probably more than the physical pieces that you can actually see. It's just like everywhere. Everywhere, like does that mean there's microplastics in the rain in Detroit, Timbuktu, Fiji? Like, is there no place on Earth where you won't encounter microplastics in the rain? Or is it, you know, closer to polluted spaces, closer to cities, whatever it might be?

Yeah, it's really everywhere. I mean, Sean, it's in the French Pyrenees. Like, it's in snowfall in the, like, Alps. Like, it is just because there is microplastic in the air, it's able to get all over the world. And so I saw studies in China, India, Europe, there are microplastics in the ocean, like tens, if not hundreds of trillions of plastic particles, beach sand all around the world, seafood, which is like, again, it's in the ocean. So it's in our fish, it's in our homes, it's in the carpets, plastic fibers,

etc. It's in snow in Antarctica, it's in sea ice, it's at the bottom of the Mariana Trench. One of my favorite studies, but also kind of sad, scientists looked at dolphin breaths, like the size of dolphins and found microplastics in the breath of these dolphins. So like, dolphins are breathing out microplastics. This is a microplastic fiber found in dolphin breath, and it's 14 times smaller than a human hair. We found it by holding a petri dish over dolphins' blowholes so we can analyze what they breathe out.

Dolphins are top predators in marine ecosystems, so scientists used them as a way of monitoring the effects of plastic pollution on marine ecosystems and coastal communities. Ocean waves are basically plastic confetti machines and they can launch a hundred thousand metric tons of plastic into the air every year. And then it's also everywhere that we've looked in the human body. So it's in our blood, it's in our kidneys, it's in our semen, the placenta, and in the human body we're finding microplastics that are so small, these nanoplastics that they're actually able to cross the blood-brain barrier. I mean, one of the big news stories of this year was that scientists found a plastic spoon's

worth of microplastics in the human brain, like in an average brain by weight, which is like terrifying to think about. New research at the University of New Mexico finds alarmingly high levels of that plastic in human brains at much higher concentrations compared to the liver and kidney. They looked at some individuals with dementia, they had higher levels of microplastics in the brain.

According to researchers, the amount of microplastics in analyzed brains rose by about 50% from 2016 to 2024. This study found that like 99.5% of our brain is brain and the rest is plastic. So like 0.5% of our brain is plastic, which is another way to think about the spoon and scary. And it's also like more plastic currently than it was in the past. So like that indicates that with the rise of plastic and the environment, we're seeing a rise of plastic

in our heads, so that's great. Sorry, I didn't hear anything you said. I think I had a seizure from all the plastic in my brain. And where exactly is it coming from? So there's a lot of trash on the side of roads that gets run over by car after car, and then it gets ground up into little pieces they become airborne and then they get transported everywhere and rained out. You can also have plastic in the ocean

getting all the way inland and being rained out on land. We know there is a lot of plastic in the ocean including a lot of microplastics and even when like bubbles on the surface are popping they're like flinging microplastics into the air and also when waves are crashing on the shore they're like flinging microplastics into the air. And also when waves are crashing on the shore, they're causing the microplastics to like become airborne. So the oceans are a big source, the highways are a big source. Also tires are a big producer of microplastics

as they wear down. So like just the tires degrading over time can put microplastics into the air. And it's not just plastic that's in our rain, it's actually other chemicals like PFAS. So a bunch of studies have also found these forever chemicals in the rain too.'s actually other chemicals like PFAS. So a bunch of studies have also found these forever chemicals in the rain too. So our rain is like quite dirty.

And just for the people out there who are maybe like, yeah, there's plastic in the rain, whatever. There's plastic in my bed. There's plastic in my brain. Why do we not want plastic in the rain, Benji? Yeah, this is like the most important question in my mind is like, is there an actual risk to being exposed to all this plastic that it has many benefits, right? Like we benefit from plastic.

We're talking on devices made of plastic right now. It's light, it makes cars less polluting, et cetera. Scientists are learning that microplastics in our bodies, which could get there because of what we're drinking and what we're eating are linked to a number of health concerns like cardiovascular disease, mental issues like dementia. So like there is actually quite a long list of health problems that are linked to exposure to microplastics. Could it be increasing the risk of stroke or heart attack? Could it be increasing the risk of cancer, inflammatory bowel disease, infertility? So there are any number of things, preterm birth.

It is thought that it can disrupt your hormones. So it can cause some fertility issues. It can mess with your metabolism and it can cause neurological issues. Part of that is just the physical bit of plastic being in your body. It's like this foreign substance that your body is trying to get rid of.

And so it's gonna have an inflammatory response Which can be bad over time, but also there are a lot of chemicals They're like hundreds if not thousands of chemicals used in plastics and those chemicals like phthalates which make plastic bendy are also associated with other issues like hormone disruption and fertility issues So yeah, I would say it is pretty fair to say that there are health problems linked to all this exposure. That personally makes me worried. Matthew F. Hayes Personally, but you're also worried for like your fellow human. Matthew F. Hayes Oh, I don't care about anybody else. Yeah, I am worried and like we do have

chronic illness problems in the US in countries all over the world. Like we know that chronic disease is getting worse over time in terms of like how many people have it. And I think that we should be looking at things like the spread of microplastics. Well Benji, is there anything we can do about it? Yeah. So I mean, it's really easy to just feel kind of hopeless and I do at times personally, but I like to look back at history and other environmental problems that we actually solved. So there are examples of problems so like the ozone layer that big giant hole in the ozone that was letting all this harmful solar radiation in. We like are on track to close that through regulations. And then more relevant to this conversation is acid rain.

So like in the 60s, 70s and 80s, acid rain was a huge environmental problem talked about by like congressmen, the public, et cetera. And we pretty much fixed that. I mean, it's not fixed everywhere, but like you don't really hear about acid rain anymore. And that's because it doesn't really exist, especially in the developed world.

Let's drop some acid when we return on Today Explained. Fun. Support for Today Explained comes from Open Phone. Modern businesses need a modern phone system. That might mean being able to collaborate seamlessly on those customer calls, or being able to text your customers if they want you to, or needing an after-hours system

that actually operates after hours. Open phone is a business phone system that says it can streamline and scale your customer communications. It works through an app on your phone or computer and lets your team collaborate on those customer calls and those customer communications. It works through an app on your phone or computer and lets your team collaborate on those customer calls and those customer texts. That way, any teammate can pick up

right where the last person left off. And they say their AI agent can be set up in minutes to handle calls after hours, answer questions, capture leads. Whether you're a one-man operation drowning in calls and texts or you have a large team, OpenPhone says it might be the solution you desperately need. OpenPhone is offering TodayXplain listeners 20% off their first six months at openphone.com

slash explained. That's O-P-E-N-P-H-O-N-E dot com slash explained. If you have existing numbers with another service, OpenPhone will port them over at no extra charge. OpenPhone, no missed calls, no missed customers. Support for today's show comes from Jerry. There are lots of things, says Jerry, that one has to do as an adult that are kind of a headache.

And here I'm supposed to tell you something that Shawn thinks is a headache. I think Shawn thinks that reading ads is a headache. Another thing that can be headache inducing is shopping for car insurance. Sean would not know he doesn't have a car. I also don't have a car. Who is this ad for? Well, it's not for me and Sean. Maybe it's for you. Jerry says they do car insurance shopping differently. To get started, you just answer a few simple questions. They say you can find rates as low as $87 a month with Jerry, and they say that drivers who switch save an average of $110 a month.

Do the math. That's over $1,300 a year. So before you renew your policy, download the Jerry app or head to jerry.ai slash explain where you can compare quotes and coverages side by side from up to 50 top insurers. Jerry, car insurance made simple and finally on your side. That's a tagline. This data is based on drivers who switched and saved with Jerry over the past 12 months. Over 20% of drivers who switched with Jerry found a monthly premium of $87 or less. Not all drivers find savings.

Whether you're a startup founder, navigating your first audit, or a seasoned security professional scaling your GRC program, proving your commitment to security has never been more critical or more complex. That's where Vanta comes in. Businesses use Vanta to build trust

by automating compliance for in-demand frameworks like SOC 2, ISO 27001, HIPAA, GDPR and more. And with automation and AI throughout the platform, you can proactively manage vendor risk and complete security questionnaires up to five times faster, getting valuable time back. Vanta not only saves you time, it can also save you money. A new IDC whitepaper found that Vanta customers achieve $535,000 per year in benefits, and the platform pays for itself in just three months. For any business, establishing trust is essential. Vanta can help your business with exactly that. Go to vanta.com slash Vox to meet with a Vanta expert

about your business needs. That's vanta.com slash Vox. Here comes the plastic rain Have you seen the plastic rain? Plastic rain, plastic rain Today explained back with Benji Jones, who's gonna tell us how we fixed acid rain? Is that what we did, Benji? Yeah, I'm gonna go ahead and say we have mostly fixed acid rain. Huh, and remind us what the problem was. Okay. So acid rain, rain that is slightly acidic,

like several times more acidic than regular rain, probably not like pure lemon juice, but maybe like lemonade or something slightly diluted. And the rain was largely acidic because of a handful of gases. So sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxide, which is nitrogen oxide and nitrogen dioxide. And these were gases largely emitted by coal power plants

and the tailpipes of cars. In our time, acid rain has become a subject of international concern and scientific research. Acid rain looks, feels, and smells like any other rain, but the water in acid rain carries poisons like sulfuric acid. That acid and its effects have been blamed for killing fish and plant life in hundreds of lakes in the northeastern United States and Canada. Our Canadian neighbors to the north are becoming impatient to a point

where U.S. Canada relations are more strained than ever. At the center of this irritant is the acid rain problem, one that has no respect for international boundaries. And as all this acidic rain was falling, we started to see impacts from that. So like, I don't know, maybe you've seen the photos of statues that look like they're kind of melted, but we also saw like forests starting to collapse, fish die in lakes in the Adirondacks. So it was like a human problem and an environmental problem. And then we did something about it? Yes, we did. The U.S. in 1990 passed amendments to the Clean Air Act, which is like the seminal regulation in the U.S. to clean up the air that started to limit the amount of sulfur dioxide

that coal power plants were able to produce. This bill will cut emissions that cause acid rain in half and permanently cap them at these new levels. And also around the same time, catalytic converters were becoming a big thing. Those reduce emissions in tailpipes. And so you started to see these regulations limiting the amount of pollution coming from these important sources like coal and cars. And as a result, we saw acid rain start to decline.

Huh, did anyone celebrate it? Was there a day where we said we did it, guys? We beat acid rain? I didn't come across anyone being like, congratulations, we fixed this. I think when regulations work, they don't maybe get the attention they deserve. Let's take a moment now on the show to just celebrate

that we, at least for now, managed to beat Acid Rain. -♪ WHOOPING AND APPLAUSE CONTINUES, CHEERS CONTINUE... But I should also just say, so like, some places like China... Oh, no, are you gonna copy on it? Oh, always. Come on. Okay, great. There are some places around the world that still have a lot of coal energy, like China

and India, and you will still see acid rain. I actually saw a headline about the Taj Mahal being affected by acid rain, eroding the surface of the Taj Mahal. So some parts of the world still deal with slightly acidic rain because they have emissions from these fossil fuels, but in general, especially in wealthier parts of the world, we are not getting rained on by acid. Which is great. I mean, no biggie. There was like another Taj Mahal in New Jersey at some point, right? I'll just make another one. Amidst great hoopla this week, Donald Trump is opening his $1 billion

Taj Mahal casino in Atlantic City. Some economists call it a reckless gamble. Can we apply any of the learnings from how we, at least in some places in the world, defeated acid rain to this plastic rain, plastic rain situation we've got currently all over the world? Yeah, okay. Great question. So I think in some ways the plastic problem is worse because plastic stays around forever, like decades, centuries, really hard to get rid of once it's in the environment. PFAS, same story. But... But...

But, and this is my rare bout of hope, which is that we learn from acid rain, from the ozone hole, that when we as a species, humans, governments, want to solve a problem, want to solve an environmental problem, we do it. There was public outcry around acid rain. We fixed it, largely. And so I think that is a lesson in like, this is a question about will. Do we have the will to get rid of plastics? And do we have the regulations in place to do so?

And that is the other kind of important takeaway, which is that when you have major industries that are benefiting from this incredible amount of plastic flowing into the environment, we need to often create regulations that are tamping down on that supply of plastic. Mm. Do we have any of those?

Yeah. Well, I don't think folks who follow the plastic conversation closely are very hopeful about the current administration. Hmm. As you may have seen, Trump is trying to bring back plastic straws. Oh yeah. We're going back to plastic straws. These things don't work. He seems to be passionately against paper straws, which like, okay, there's some merit to that. I've had them many times and on occasion they break, they explode. If something's hot,

they don't last very long, like a matter of minutes. Sometimes a matter of seconds. It's a ridiculous situation. Though that one seems to have unified left and right. He is right on this one. Those straws are f***ing terrible. It is, it is true. I mean, no one, no one wants that dissolving paper straw. I think it's overblown.

Personally, I've had like compostable straws that work just fine. I want to say. But you're also famously anti-plastic. Famously. Everyone knows about that. Wah wah wah. I hate plastic. Wah. Anyway, so like, right, are we going to see regulations in this administration to start

limiting plastic when the president is so pro-oil and gas, which is the same industry as the plastic industry? We will drill, baby, drill. I think probably not. I will say though, and this is something fairly hopeful, there is a global effort right now to create a plastic treaty involving over a hundred countries. So countries around the world are trying to create a global agreement to reduce plastic waste. That could include things like a cap on the production of plastic, bans on certain types of single use plastics, and also best practices

for companies that are producing plastic for end of life, so like better recycling and so forth. So there are efforts at the global scale to fix the plastic problem. They're ongoing. There's like some roadblocks, but it's happening. And so I think that is something that is worth celebrating should it come to pass. Okay. So you're saying fixing the plastic rain problem is really just fixing the

plastic problem, but then you were also saying that like it's in our tires and the tires are on the road and it's just constantly getting in the air that just feels like unwieldy. Yeah. I mean, I think this is a situation where like we need to focus on getting rid of the plastics that are not as essential. We can acknowledge the fact that tires are useful. I mean, we can probably make tires that are not wearing away and filling the air with

microplastics, but in general, tire is good. I think getting plastic cutlery would take out every time, probably pretty easy to get rid of. We don't really need plastic straws. You seaweed or whatever the f*** to make straws not disintegrate. It's fine. We are innovative.

We don't need to be. This is not a problem. So I think being clear about what the priority plastics are that we should get rid of is a way to make this problem not seem so overwhelming. You know, Benji, a former colleague of ours, Jerusalem Dempsis, I saw recently on our cursed shared social

media platform, she wrote something like, I need everyone to stop talking to me about microplastics. I don't care. Do you think at all it's hard to care about the microplastics that are evaporating into the air? Do you think this is too low on the priority list that it's raining plastic? Yeah, I mean, I feel like it's totally fair to not care about this. Like, I am writing about the climate crisis, extinction crisis, like, every week,

and so I get it. Like, I don't want another problem in my life. But there are also fairly simple things we can do as individuals on like a day-to-day level that help us reduce our own exposure. Like, I don't want to get sick. I don't want to have chronic illness. So like, I'm going to filter my water, for example.

That is what I like about this topic, which is that there are things you can do. And so like the headline is limit plastic that you're exposed to, obviously, plastic Tupperware. Don't use it. Use glass, especially if you microwave in it. Dust is full of microplastics. So clean up after yourself. Use vacuums, etc. Avoid polyester and nylon clothing if you can afford like cotton. It's more comfortable, I think. Some people avoid sea salt because it comes from the sea and there's like plastic in the sea. Avoid sea salt? That one breaks my heart. I didn't know about that one.

Dang it. But then it's like, don't eat fish either because they're also from the sea. Yeah, like that is like performative if you're not eating sea salt. Like, I mean, this is like the whole question about using plastic cutting boards too. Like you're not ingesting like a credit card's worth

of plastic by using a plastic cutting board. News you can use. Benji Jones Jones Vox, thank you so much. Thank you, Sean. Benji Jones Vox.com. You can read his piece there. It's called We Got Rid of Acid Rain. Now Something Scarier is is falling from the sky. Abhishek Artsy produced today's show, Jolie Meyers edited, Andrea Pritzsten's daughter, Patrick Boyd, and Brandon McFarland mixed.

Miles Bryan checked the facts. This is The Rain Explained. ["Plastic Rain"] Plastic rain, plastic rain Plastic rain, plastic rain Plastic rain, plastic rain Plastic rain, plastic rain I only wanna see you dancing in the plastic rain Take a breath Support comes from ServiceNow. We're for people doing the fulfilling work they actually want to do. That's why this ad was written and read by a real person, and not AI. You know what people don't want to do? Boring, busy work. Now with AI agents built into the ServiceNow platform, you can automate millions of repetitive tasks in every corner of your business,

IT, HR, and more, so your people can focus on the work that they want to do. That's putting AI agents to work for people. It's your turn. Visit ServiceNow.com. Support for the show comes from Groons. If you're looking for a new tasty nutrition solution, then look no further than Groons. It's a convenient, comprehensive formula packed into eight daily gummies.

Groons is not a multivitamin, a greens gummy, or a prebiotic. It's all of those things, and then some. And it tastes great. In each daily pack, you get 20 vitamins and minerals and more than 60 whole food ingredients. Get up to 45% off when you go to groons.co and use code VOX.

That's g-r-u-n-s dot co, using code VOX for 45% off.