Thicker Than Water

The Quest for Solutions to the Plastic Crisis
By Erica Cirino
Island Press, October, 2021

Thicker than Water is a seafaring adventure story; a meticulous and scholarly examination of the scientific research on plastic; and a call to action to end plastic production.

Cirino details how plastic threatens marine wildlife and the entire food chain. She explores the deadly impact on human health, including the burden on low-income communities of color and poor nations where manufacturing plants have been deliberately located, creating “cancer alleys” from toxic pollution. And she describes how plastic pollution is related to and a cause of climate change.

In a personal and vivid account, Cirino tells how she joined a voyage of scientists that set sail from California to Hawaii through the North Pacific Gyre (the “Great Pacific Garbage Patch”), one of five places where the world’s ocean currents form a spinning vortex (called a gyre). The North Pacific Gyre is an area of concentration of massive amounts of plastic trash dumped by humans The plastic waste has been dumped directly into the oceans and also comes from runoff from rivers and shorelines all over the world.

The goal of the voyage was to find the so-called missing plastic. Scientists knew how much plastic is produced; what they didn’t know is where it all goes. What these researchers learned is that plastic in various forms can be found at levels all the way down to the ocean floor. While plastic objects stay on the surface, they found that microplastics, pellets worn down by the ocean’s movement, can be found at great depths.

Photo by Erica CirinoThey captured, measured and eventually analyzed these samples at a lab in Denmark. There they found that microplastics, and their smaller cousins nanoplastics, are not only produced using toxic chemicals, but absorb pollutants from the surrounding environment, making these particles vectors for toxins. And as the ocean wears plastic down it exudes greenhouse gases, another way that plastic causes climate change.

Also, many ocean creatures, including blue whales, feed by filtering food from the water. This is how corals, clams, oysters and other marine life consume food. As a result, they ingest large quantities of microplastics, which are then passed up the food chain. (The current die-off of much of the world’s coral is caused by climate change and ingestion of plastic.)

Another reason that microplastics get into the food chain is because tiny animals called zooplankton mistake microplastic particles for algae, a staple of their diet. Small fish then eat the tainted zooplankton; larger fish eat smaller fish and in this way microplastic is found at all levels of the food chain up to human consumption.

Cirino tells an unsettling story of how her companions on the boat caught a fish to feed the group. They first split it open and then split its stomach open, where, sure enough, they found plastic. Turtles, birds, fish and other sea life are also killed when they become entangled in plastic. For example, Cirino’s group came across a large sea turtle entangled in a discarded plastic fishing net which they were able to set free.

Photo by Erica CirinoPlastic has polluted fresh water as well. The Great Lakes contain large amounts of microplastic and the Great Lakes, rivers and other fresh water sources face all the same threats as do the oceans. 

The middle section of the book is an extremely detailed, comprehensive examination of the science of plastics, which is very well documented. Cirino amasses an immense amount of information from studies, interviews with scientists, professors and activists. Her scholarship is impressive, but the science could prove challenging to some readers.

PCredit: naturalpl.com/Jordi Chias/WWFerhaps the most deplorable revelation in the book is that the petrochemical industry expects society to make a big change to renewable energy and so it is gearing up to transition from making gasoline to manufacturing more plastic. They aim to quadruple plastic production by mid-century, continuing the release of greenhouse gases that cause climate change.

In discussing solutions, Cirino says that cleanups, biodegradable plastic substitutes and recycling are fine, but are not the ultimate solution. Her bottom line is that we need to end the production of plastics. Certainly this is an overwhelming challenge, but according to Cirino and experts, it is absolutely necessary. It will take massive worldwide organizing and the political will to stop it. Cirino gives hope for this challenge, however, in her final chapter, “Giants Do Fall,” with examples of communities that are fighting petrochemical companies, opposing environmental racism and at least in one case in Louisiana, stopping the building of a new plastic factory.

Erica Cirino is a skilled journalist who has gathered together an invaluable resource for all those concerned with the environment. Thicker than Water gives us the information and motivation we need to end plastic pollution. This book should become a standard reference on the subject.

Reviewed by Kathy Parrent, Green Thumb founder and a former press officer for NRDC, and Frank Jenkins, a retired research statistician.