I thought plastic was the perfect enemy: toxic from the extraction of its fossil fuel feedstock until its eventual decomposition is complete. Picture ominous plastic bags and bottles lingering in the environment for centuries, slowly and inexorably seeping carcinogenic, endocrine-disrupting, neurotoxic chemicals. This ubiquitous enemy has claimed as its territory everywhere from the bottom of the Mariana Trench to the top of Mount Everest. Nanoplastics lurk in the fresh mountain air over the Pyrenees. Even the child forming in the womb is not safe. After finding microplastics that had crossed from the maternal to the fetal side of the human placenta, researchers coined a new term: the plasticenta. I suspect that next we will find that breast milk is spiked with microplastics. From conception until death, we all live in the shadow of plastics.

Plastics also function symbolically as a mirror reflecting our darkest impulses. Instant gratification and convenience for (certain) individuals take precedence over the long-term survival of the planet and its ecosystems. As materials, they condition us to think of the world as instrumentally valuable. Whatever no longer serves can be discarded. We have no lasting obligations. Elsewhere, I argue that this habit of the heart extends to our regard for each other. Plastics are fungible, mass-produced, and devoid of any individuality. While some view this as democratization, it can also be seen as a descent into faceless conformity. We are dehumanized by our relationship to plastics.

That US society treats its workers, particularly BIPOC workers, as disposable is self-evident. As one employer put it, when defending himself in court against the claims of workers permanently debilitated by a toxic glue that he chose to continue to use rather than the safer, but somewhat more expensive alternative: “There are people lined up out there for jobs… . If they start dropping like flies, or something in that order, we can replace them today.” The employer views workers as disposable and not worthy of protection, even as he literally enjoys the profits of their labor. Is our reliance on plastics a cause or a symptom of this mentality? Or is it a self-reinforcing cycle?

Into such a world came COVID-19.