(End of the American Dream)—All of the plastic that we have surrounded ourselves with is slowly killing us. The UN estimates that we produce 430 million tons of plastic each year, and approximately two-thirds of that plastic is only used for a short period of time. Just think of all the plastic wrappers and containers that you throw away on a regular basis. All of that plastic ends up somewhere, and it steadily breaks down into smaller and smaller pieces. Once the pieces get small enough, they become known as “microplastics”, and they have literally saturated our water, our soil, and our air all over the planet. In fact, scientists have found microplastics wherever they have looked, and that includes some of the remotest locations on the entire globe. That is because even the rain that falls from the sky contains microplastics, and so there is no possible way to escape them.
As you will see below, it is well known that plastic pollution causes very serious health problems in humans.
The big corporations that produce all of this plastic know this, but they just keep doing it anyway. Our politicians also know what all of this plastic pollution is doing to us, but they won’t lift a finger to stop it.
Could it be possible that the billions of cancer-causing plastic particles that are getting into our food are a form of global population control? Consider that question as you read the rest of this article.
One team of researchers recently tested 16 types of protein that were purchased from two supermarkets in Portland, Oregon, and they discovered that 90 percent of the products they purchased were polluted by plastic…
The majority of meat and plant-based alternatives contain tiny plastic pieces linked to cancer, according to a study that comes a day after bottled water was found to be loaded with the toxins.
Scientists tested 16 types of protein – including chicken nuggets, beef steaks, fish fillets and plant-based burgers – which showed that humans consume plastics no matter the source of protein they choose.
Ninety percent of the products contained nanoplastics – which scientists fear can accumulate in your vital organs with unknown health implications.
No matter what you decide to eat tonight, it will probably contain plastic particles.
Of course the same thing is true for what we drink.
Another recent study found that bottled water in particular is absolutely loaded with plastic…
The shocking results appear to echo that of a study released on Monday, which found an average of 240,000 nanoparticles in a one-liter bottle of water, compared to 5.5 per one liter of tap water.
University of Columbia researchers tested three popular brands of bottled water sold in the United States – and, using lasers, analyzed the plastic particles they contained down to just 100 nanometers in size.
There was a time much earlier in my life when I drank a lot of bottled water.
I will not make that mistake again.
But of course none of us can get away from the plastic pollution completely.
It has been estimated that 40 percent of the dust in our homes is now made up of plastic.
And it is being reported that the amount of microplastic pollution on our ocean floors has actually tripled over the past two decades…
The amount of microplastics found at the bottom of oceans has tripled in 20 years. Once microplastics land on the seafloor, they no longer degrade, either due to a lack of erosion, oxygen or light.
Even if we stopped using all plastic tomorrow, the plastic that we have already discarded would continue to break down into smaller and smaller pieces for decades to come.
So the damage has already been done.
Sadly, all of this plastic is having an absolutely enormous impact on our health…
But some estimates say that plastics-related diseases kill more than a million people each year globally and experts believe the chemicals may be contributing to a mysterious rise in cancers in young people.
The new study, by New York University researchers, estimated that in 2018 alone, exposure to the microplastics cost the US healthcare system $289 billion.
Just look at that figure.
That is a ton of money.
Numerous studies have linked microplastic exposure to cancer. Here is just one example…
In an article published on September 24, 2023, in the American Journal of Industrial Medicine, Gregory M. Zarus and co-authors from the Office of Innovation and Analytics, Atlanta, USA, reviewed 34 studies on the occupational health effects of microplastic exposure and found a relationship between polyvinyl chloride (PVC) particles and liver toxicity.
The authors screened the literature for publications focusing on worker exposure to microplastics that also reported health outcomes. Of the 34 included studies, 17 concerned PVC and 17 more included five other plastic types. Separating the reported effects by plastic type, Zarus et al. found “an increased risk of lung cancer associated with exposure to high concentrations of PVC microplastic ‘dust’ particles.” Besides effects on the respiratory system, exposure to PVC was further associated with liver damage including lung cancers. These human outcomes were confirmed by the animal exposure studies the authors also had a look at.
Numerous studies have also linked microplastic exposure to infertility.
The following study was actually posted on the official NIH website…
Due to the problematic degradation properties of plastics, the decomposition of plastic results in the formation of numerous microplastics (MPs), less than 5 mm in diameter. These MPs enter the soil and the ocean, eventually passing through the air, water, or food chain back to the human body and harming human health. In the last 80 years, male semen analysis parameters have shown a significant decline for unknown reasons, speculated to be caused by pollutants. No studies examined the relationship between human MP exposure and male infertility. In this article, we reviewed the relevant animal experimental research literature in recent years and calculated that the minimum human equivalent dose of MPs leading to abnormal male semen quality is 0.016 mg/kg/d. The literature comparison found that MP exposure in Japan and South Korea was close to this value. These results suggest that MPs can affect male semen quality and that MPs may significantly impact male fertility.
For a deeper dive into the impact that microplastics are having on our health, I would recommend reading a book that I published a couple of years ago. This is literally one of the greatest environmental problems that humanity has ever faced, but it gets so little attention from the media.
Before I end this article, I wanted to mention another study that was recently conducted by Consumer Reports which found plasticizers in almost all of the food products that they tested…
CR tested 85 food items from 11 categories—beverages, canned beans, condiments, dairy, fast food, grains, infant food, meat and poultry, packaged fruits and vegetables, prepared meals, and seafood, according to the Jan. 4 report. Researchers examined the presence of plasticizers—a chemical used to boost the durability of plastics. The group analyzed two to three samples from each food item, looking for two types of common plasticizers—bisphenols and phthalates—as well as some of their substitutes.
They found that these chemicals remained “widespread” in our food products despite “growing evidence” of health risks. CR discovered that 79 percent of tested samples had bisphenols while 84 out of 85 items had phthalates.
Exposure to such plasticizers can cause severe health issues, like for example in children, bisphenol A (BPA) exposure can negatively affect the brain and prostate glands as well as their behavior. BPA has also been linked with type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular diseases, and high blood pressure.
I am so glad that Zero Hedge published the article that I quoted above, because plasticizers really do “cause severe health issues” in humans, but most people in the general population that use these products have no idea.
History will look back on us as “the crazy plastic people”, and the way that we run our society really is killing us.
I realize that there is so much going on in the world right now, and an article about plastic may not be as exciting as some of my other articles. But this issue is of paramount importance.
If we continue to go down this road, we will slowly kill ourselves and everything around us.
Our politicians and the big corporations that produce all of this plastic know exactly what is happening, but they refuse to put an end to the madness. So for now, we will continue to commit societal suicide…
Michael’s new book entitled “Chaos” is now available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.com, and you can check out his new Substack newsletter right here.
Two Storms, One Harvest
Every food crisis in living memory has been a one-shock event. The 2008 price spike was a commodity bubble. The 2020 shortages were a logistics failure. The 2022 grain scare was a war on one exporter’s ports. Each time, the system bent, adjusted, and recovered, and each time the experts assured us afterward that global markets are simply too big and too diversified to fail.
What nobody in Washington seems eager to discuss is that 2026 is shaping up to be something the modern food system has never actually faced. Two independent shocks, one climatic and one geopolitical, are converging on the same harvest cycle at the same time. Not sequentially. Simultaneously.
Start with the weather. The Pacific Ocean is currently building toward what forecasters now openly call a record event. NOAA’s Climate Prediction Center puts the odds of at least a strong El Niño near 88 percent, with roughly two in three odds it reaches “very strong” status, the tier reserved for perhaps three or four events in the entire satellite era. Every major global model now projects a median peak in Super El Niño territory, and most of them project it exceeding the 2015-16 event, which until now held the modern record. Sea surface anomalies were already brushing the super threshold in mid-July, months before these events normally peak. The atmosphere has already shifted into El Niño mode, and the event is forecast to crest in late fall and early winter.
This is not about “climate change.” It’s about the standard cycles of weather, and the cycle we’re currently in is one that has likely devastated societies in the past. We’re better prepared as a society today, but not all Americans are equally prepared.
Serious households have started doing the quiet math on their own. Grocery bills tell part of the story, and the forecast maps tell the rest, which is why long-term food storage has moved from fringe hobby to mainstream line item in the family budget, with established suppliers like Heaven’s Harvest seeing demand from people who five years ago would have rolled their eyes at the idea. That instinct is not paranoia. It is pattern recognition, and the pattern is worth walking through carefully.
Editor’s Note: Heaven’s Harvest IS a sponsor, but the warnings of this article are real and would be written even if we didn’t have a survival food sponsor. With that said, those who take advantage of what they offer can use promo code “Patriot” for 15% off.
The Fertilizer Clock Is Already Running
While the Pacific warms, the second shock has been unfolding in the Strait of Hormuz. The conflict with Iran turned the world’s most important energy chokepoint into a contested waterway, and the consequences reach far beyond the gas pump. Roughly a third of global fertilizer trade moves through Hormuz, and the disruption sent urea prices up 86 percent year over year by March, with a 53 percent jump in a single month.
The World Bank projects energy prices rising about 24 percent in 2026 and fertilizer about 31 percent. By its own accounting, fertilizer prices ran 35 percent higher in the first five months of this year than the same period last year.
Here is the mechanism the nightly news will not explain. Fertilizer is not a grocery item. It is a time-delayed input. The nitrogen a farmer in Iowa or Punjab could not afford to apply this spring does not show up as a problem this spring. It shows up as a thinner harvest six to twelve months later.
The World Bank’s own food security brief concedes that the effects of reduced applications earlier this season “are likely to become visible only later in harvest outcomes.” Translate that from institutional language into plain English and it means this. The damage is already done, it is already in the ground, and we are simply waiting for it to arrive on the shelf.
Now check the calendar. Six to twelve months from the spring planting season lands us squarely in late 2026 and early 2027. Which is precisely when the strongest El Niño in the instrumental record is forecast to peak, bringing its signature droughts to Southeast Asia, Australia, southern Africa, northern Brazil, and South Asia, the very regions that grow the world’s rice, sugar, and oilseeds.
The World Bank warns openly that a strong El Niño “could disrupt multiple crop belts simultaneously” on top of the conflict-driven input costs. Their baseline projection assumes the Middle East disruptions ease by autumn. What in the last two years of Middle East history suggests that assumption is safe?
The System Has No Slack Left
The comfortable answer is that global markets always adjust. But adjustment requires slack, and the slack is gone. Global cereal production is expected to decline from last year’s records even before El Niño does its work. The UN World Food Programme, hardly a den of right-wing preppers, is calling this the most significant disruption to its supply chains since Covid and the invasion of Ukraine, and its supply chain director put the stakes bluntly.
Today’s supply chain challenges are tomorrow’s hunger crisis.
There is also a political dimension that markets cannot price. When food gets scarce, governments do not behave like economists. They behave like politicians. Export bans, hoarding mandates, and panic buying at the national level turned the modest rice shortfall of 2008 into a global crisis, and analysts are already warning that import-dependent nations are the first dominoes.
The 2015-16 Super El Niño, a far weaker event than what is now forecast, threw tens of millions into food stress across Africa and Asia. This one is projected to be stronger, and it arrives with fertilizer already rationed by price and shipping lanes already contested by missiles.
What Joseph Knew
Scripture does not treat preparation for lean years as faithlessness. It treats it as wisdom delivered in advance to those willing to act on it.
Behold, there come seven years of great plenty throughout all the land of Egypt: And there shall arise after them seven years of famine; and all the plenty shall be forgotten in the land of Egypt.
Joseph did not respond to that warning with a hashtag or a committee. He stored grain during the years of abundance, and when the famine came, Egypt stood while its neighbors begged. The lesson is not that famine is certain. It is that the time to prepare is precisely when preparation still looks optional.
Nobody who filled a pantry in a year of plenty has ever regretted it, and nobody standing in an empty aisle has ever been glad he waited for certainty.
None of this calls for panic, and panic is the enemy of sound judgment anyway. It calls for the same unglamorous prudence our grandparents considered ordinary. Keep some cash margin, know your local growers, and put real food in deep storage while it is cheap and available, because the entire arc of this story is that cheap and available is a closing window.
Families looking for a straightforward place to start can visit Heaven’s Harvest and use promo code Patriot for 15 percent off long-term storable food. The forecasts may yet soften, the strait may yet reopen, and we should pray they do. But hope is a fine thing to hold and a foolish thing to eat.
