THE PLASTIC INSIDE US

It is everywhere: the most enduring, insidious, and intimate product in the world.

From the soles of your shoes to the contact lenses in your eyes, the phone in your pocket to the food in your refrigerator, the evidence is unmistakable: We are living in The Plastic Age.

Plastic frees us, improving daily life in almost uncountable ways.

And plastic imprisons us in waste and microscopic pollution.

Recent studies have shown the shocking extent of plastics in the world’s oceans and lakes. Orb Media followed with a new question: If microscopic plastic is in oceans, lakes, and rivers, is it in drinking water as well?

In the first public scientific study of its kind, we found previously unknown plastic contamination in the tap water of cities around the world.

Microscopic plastic fibers are flowing out of taps from New York to New Delhi, according to exclusive research by Orb and a researcher at the University of Minnesota School of Public Health. From the halls of the U.S. Capitol to the shores of Lake Victoria in Uganda, women, children, men, and babies are consuming plastic with every glass of water.

More than 80 percent of the samples we collected on five continents tested positive for the presence of plastic fibers.