It’s Raining Microplastics and Forever Chemicals

Other than having an extremely metal name, acid rain was once a major concern for folks in what we can now consider the distant past of American history—the 1970s until about the mid-90s. It was a genuine problem where polluted rain fueled by emissions from coal plants and car exhaust would kill off plant and animal life.

Politically, there was more cooperation back then. There was once a point in American history when Republicans would do something to benefit the environment because they understood that we lived in the environment and what happened to it affected us.

To some, it feels like I’m describing something out of a fantasy novel, but it actually happened. The scientific community told American politicians that there was an ecological problem that was affecting our way of life, and they did something about it.

We implemented stricter regulations on emissions to help reduce acid rain. Meanwhile, just yesterday the Trump administration peeled back dozens of environmental regulations, including regulations on powerplant and tailpipe emissions.

Times have changed—for the significantly worse.

Rain Isn’t Just Water—It’s Also Microplastics and Forever Chemicals

Acid rain was once a problem that mostly went away…and now it’s coming back in a new form. Yay. According to a report from Vox, based on separate scientific studies, the new problem is rain polluted with PFAS and microplastics.

You’ve probably heard a lot about microplastics in the past few years. They’re saturating every square inch of our bodies and they can even be found in caves that have been cut off to humans for years.

Microplastics in our oceans and roads break down and evaporate into the air only to be rained down somewhere else. It’s estimated that in the United States alone over 1,000 metric tons of plastic is falling on our national parks. Something like that can be hard to visualize, so imagine if it rained millions of plastic water bottles.  

To add even more doom to the gloom, for now, it doesn’t seem like there’s any way to stop it. The acidified raid would eventually go away. The plastics stay wherever they fall, and they stay there forever.

Speaking of forever, PFAS chemicals, the so-called Forever Chemicals, are found in everything—nonstick cookware, cleaning products, water-resistant fabrics, dental floss, and nail polish. To list all of the products that contain forever chemicals would take, well, forever.

We’ve been surprisingly proactive about creating laws that eliminate forever chemicals. But it’s an uphill battle since, as the colloquial nickname implies, once these chemicals are in the environment they can stay there for decades.

Case in point: a study published last year found that rainwater in South Florida is riddled with forever chemicals. Even though two types of forever chemicals found in the rainwater hadn’t been in use in the United States for years after having been phased out due to health concerns.   

We cut back on emissions and eventually started to see a reduction in acid rain, to the point where it was almost completely phased out. Microplastics and forever chemicals are much more difficult to weed out. And every day we keep adding more to the environment. There was a genuine panic centered around acid rain, and now it seems quaint in comparison.

All we need is a snappy name that will stick in people’s heads so we can more clearly identify this growing problem. Acid rain was a great nickname. But what do we call rain that’s filled with plastic and chemicals?

Plastic rain? Chemical rain? Toxic rain? Corporate rain? Killer rain? Poison rain? I don’t know. I’m just spitballing here. Maybe you’ve got something better. Because remember that properly marketing the problem is always the first step to solving the problem.