Introduction

by Heather Davis

Plastic is a broad and rather deceptive name for a group of synthetic polymers that have become one of the most ubiquitous materials of the contemporary moment. Composed of long chains of molecules, and derived from oil and natural gas, plastics are incredibly durable. They do not decompose and are predicted to last well beyond human biological time and into geologic time. Contrary to the etymology of the word, which refers to malleability, pliability, and the potential for molding, plastic is actually quite a recalcitrant material, resistant to reshaping, decomposition, and recycling. In its first form, as Bakelite (patented in 1909), plastic was a hard and brittle material. Today, plasticizers are added to plastic to make them bendable, heat resistant, or a certain color. Some of these plasticizers are phthalates and organochlorides, known for causing a range of problems to human and animal health, including endocrine disruption. Endocrine disruption has been correlated to diabetes, cancer, obesity, early-onset senility, and developmental delay in children, as well as feminization of male foetuses and infertility.

Filtering

by Sandra van der Hel

The endocrine-disruptive qualities of plastic connect this man-made substance to various components of life on Earth. Gender-bending chemicals in plastics affect individual species and ecosystems, particularly in aquatic milieus. Effects may not remain restricted to the nonhuman world; evidence is mounting that the large quantities of plastics in our environment might have austere effects on human life. It is not unthinkable that heightened and continuing exposure to endocrine disruptors may result in alterations of human hormonal systems and eventually give rise to fertility loss. In this essay, we explore the endocrine-disruptive qualities of plastics from multiple perspectives. The inseparable entanglement of human and nonhuman coexistence in the Anthropocene becomes evident by filtering the interrelated causes and effects of plastics and (in)fertility. One response to fertility problems is surrogacy, which increasingly is taking place on a global scale and can be seen to reinforce existing inequalities. However, we may also consider the endocrine-disruptive qualities of plastics from a feminist perspective, exposing an entirely different view of reproduction and the female body. This essay is an exercise in exploring various filters through which to understand plastics, their endocrine-disruptive qualities, and their effects on human and nonhuman life in the Anthropocene. We start our discussion with the first filter encountered when entering human life: the placenta.

Placenta

Filtered by Alexandra Toland

At thirty-two weeks pregnant, the burden of the Anthropocene is upon me. Despite the fact that my unborn son will most likely witness the downfall of fossil fuel economies and the end of free access to natural resources that my generation takes for granted, his experience in our changed world has already begun. How many chemicals have I unwittingly filtered through my body? With what methods and what words can I possibly evaluate the fragile filtering capacity of my own placenta? I imagine our shared ephemeral organ as a magical, life-giving cushion, with its own social and spiritual life, and its own chemical records of my life in the city.

The placenta (from the Latin word for cake), or afterbirth, is a temporary organ unique to gestating mammals. It is the first filter of the Anthropos and all its mammalian relatives. It provides the foetus with nutrients and oxygen while filtering out bacteria and other microbes and at the same time allowing for the excretion of carbon dioxide and waste products such as uric acid back to the mother’s body. In addition to its role as transporter of nutrients and waste, the human placenta serves as a hormonal hub throughout pregnancy, secreting increased levels of progesterone and estrogen as well as the pregnancy hormones human chorionic gonadotropin (hCG) and human placental lactogen (hPL). Formerly believed to protect the unborn baby from all sorts of harmful pathogens, the placenta has become a metaphorical stage upon which all acts of endocrine disruption may take place. It is widely recognized that the placenta no longer acts as a reliable barrier to ecotoxicological threats. In a benchmark investigation of umbilical cord blood, the Environmental Working Group examined toxicity in ten unborn babies, revealing in total 287 chemicals linked to pesticides, common consumer products, industrial chemicals, and the burning of fossil fuels and garbage: “Of the 287 chemicals we detected in umbilical cord blood, we know that 180 cause cancer in humans or animals, 217 are toxic to the brain and nervous system, and 208 cause birth defects or abnormal development in animal tests.”11Environmental Working Group, 2005, cited May 10, 2015, online (accessed 10/15/2015).

In many places, the placenta is regarded as a friend or “soul sibling” of the foetus, to be treated with respect and care upon the child’s birth and the organ’s death. Gwynne Jenkins and Jeremy Sugarman emphasize the need for more research into the cultural meanings and practices surrounding the placenta, citing identification with place, development of personhood, health interests of the mother and child, and medicinal and magical protection as just a few reasons for placenta disposal rituals.22Gwynne L. Jenkins and Jeremy Sugarman, “The importance of cultural considerations in the promotion of ethical research with human biologic material,” Journal of Laboratory and Clinical Medicine, vol. 145, no. 3 (2005): pp. 118‒24. Sharon Young and Daniel Benyshek have described the relationship between placenta and child in some cultures as a “blanket” or “house” remaining symbolically connected throughout a person’s lifetime.33Sharon M. Young and Daniel C. Benyshek, “In Search of Human Placentophagy: A Cross-Cultural Survey of Human Placenta Consumption, Disposal Practices and Cultural Beliefs,” Journal of Ecology of Food and Nutrition, vol. 49 (2010): pp. 467‒84. And J. R. Davidson describes placenta rituals as a way of dealing with the anxiety, uncertainty, and risk surrounding childbirth.44J. R. Davidson, “The shadow of life: Psychosocial explanations for placenta rituals,” Journal of Culture, Medicine & Psychiatry, vol. 9, no. 1 (1985): pp. 75–92. In my own Euro-American culture, the placenta, along with other human biological material, is generally regarded as clinical waste. No ritual is required because modern medicine has replaced uncertainty with standardization. In a culture whose industrial history has yielded a rainbow of carcinogenic compounds in the interests of the free-market system, the placenta is of little value. And so, society must take on the role of the filtering organ. As environmental activist Sandra Steingraber writes, “the message coming from pregnant women should be: Any chemical that is known to be toxic and is found in umbilical cord blood has no place in our economy.”55Sandra Steingraber, Having Faith: An Ecologist’s Journey to Motherhood. New York: The Berkley Publishing Group, 2003. Now more than ever, I am desperately in need of a placenta ritual. If my own filter fails, I can at least face the anxiety over my son’s future with respectful acknowledgement and personalized, ritualized disposal of his “soul sibling.”

Plastics and the Good Life

Filtered by Masahiro Terada

When you see historical photographs taken in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, especially those taken in the street, you cannot but be surprised by how clean and empty the surface of the streets looked, and you will realize that this is because of the lack of plastic waste on the pavements. Although naturally occurring, polymers such as shellac, rosin, and gutta-percha have been used for centuries as plastic, in a narrow sense, modern plastic has only a short 147-year history, since American inventor John W. Hyatt developed the method for making commercially successful plastic products in 1868. A phenol-formaldehyde polymer, the first totally synthetic plastic, Bakelite, then came onto the market in 1909; and after development of the macromolecular theory in Germany during the 1920s and 1930s, commercial production of low-density polyethylene began in 1939. These developments were followed by: the discovery of Teflon at Du Pont in 1938; patents for unsaturated polyesters in the United States in 1936; and polyurethanes in Germany in 1937. After the Second World War, the industrialization of plastic came into full bloom, and in the last quarter of the twentieth century, plastics were the fastest-growing segment of the chemical industry in developed countries. Nowadays, plastics are found all over the home: as kitchenware, telephones, toys, appliance cabinets, resilient flooring, piping, cladding or siding, and furniture, and in plastic bottles and packaging film, which are common in the supermarket; we cannot imagine life without plastics. Compared with ordinary life in the premodern age, which the Annales School in France and social historians in the United Kingdom and the United States have made clear, one of the characteristics of modern daily life is the vast choice of goods. The standard of living has risen with the growing number of household goods, and a significant portion of the rise was realized by the development of plastic production. Historically speaking, therefore, our “good life” is connected to the industrialization of plastic and is stamped by it.

Plastics as an Anthropocene Marker

Filtered by Sandra van der Hel

There is little doubt that the proliferation of plastics in the “good life” of the modern age has left its traces on the environment: over the last century, about six billion tons of plastics have been produced, used, and discarded after use.66Andrew C. Revkin, “Researchers Propose Earth’s ‘Anthropocene’ Age of Humans Began With Fallout and Plastics.” Dot Earth Blog, The New York Times, online (accessed 10/15/2015). Large quantities of plastic are now polluting our cities, littering the world’s oceans, or endure as minuscule particles within our ecosystems. With a new rock designation called “plastiglomerate,” which is composed of plastic and other debris found on the Hawaiian beach, the presence of plastics in the modern environment has become ever more pervasive. Plastics have become a recognizable geological component. Accordingly, scientists have identified plastics as a potential marker for the Anthropocene, separating this human epoch from earlier geological timescales.77Patricia L. Corcoran et al., “An anthropogenic marker horizon in the future rock record,” GSA Today, vol. 24, no. 6 (2014): pp. 4‒8. doi: 10.1130/GSAT-G198A.1 Within the Planetary Boundaries framework, micro-plastics are identified as “novel entities,” with potentially harmful effects on human life. It has been argued that the proliferation of such novel entities should be subject to limits to assure a “safe operating space” for humanity on Earth.88Will Steffen et al., “Planetary Boundaries: Guiding human development on a changing planet,” Science, vol. 347, no. 6223 (2015). doi: 10.1126/science.1259855

Feminism, Fertility and Art
(Assisted Reproductive Technology)

Filtered by Judith Marlen Dobler

Sperm is highly sensitive to ecological imbalances caused by plasticizers, resulting in higher infertility rates among men. Simultaneously, women in industrialized countries tend to postpone reproduction beyond their biological fertility age, or question the heterosexual nature of parenthood in general.

The technological promise to separate sex from fertilization became real with the industrial production of oral contraceptives for women.99Oral contraceptives known as “the pill” were first developed by Laboratorios Syntex SA, Mexico. Head of research Carl Djerassi and scientist Luis Ernesto Miramonte patented the oral steroid Progestin in 1952. In her book Dialectic of Sex, the radical feminist Shulamith Firestone hails biological technology as an opportunity to get rid of patriarchal social structures based on the control of women’s bodies. She demands “not only the full restoration to women of ownership of their own bodies, but also their (temporary) seizure of control of human fertility—the new population biology as well as all the social institutions of child-bearing and child-rearing.”1010Shulamith Firestone, The Dialectic of Sex. New York: Bantam, 1970, p. 11. Firestone’s fierce arguments from the 1970s can be read anew today as the vision of the uncoupling of reproduction from the female body: assisted reproductive technology (ART) combining the methods of in-vitro fertilization (IVF) or intracytoplasmic sperm injection (ICSI).1111IVF was developed by Robert Edwards and Patrick Steptoe in 1977; ICSI was developed at the Centre for Reproductive Medicine at Universitair Ziekenhuis Brussel (UZ Brussels) in 1992. Thereby, the origins of both egg and sperm are of reduced importance. The creation of an artificial placenta is still at the experimentation stages. Will it be made of pla(stic)centa? These procedures are already common practice or at least seriously discussed due to the decrease of fertile sperm and the increasing superfluity of the male sex partner / father / provider through gender issues and scientific development. A utopian (or dystopian?) future drawn by biologist Pierre Jouannet envisions a female society that reproduces herself. In his article published in 2013, he explains how sperm could be reproduced through female adult stem cells.1212Pierre Jouannet, “Wie pflanzen wir uns in Zukunft fort?,” Spektrum der Wissenschaft, vol. 12 (2013): pp. 28–35. This sperm would carry only the female X chromosome. When injected into an egg cell it would trigger the fertilization process, resulting in exclusively female offspring.

The former promise has altered into an uncoupling of reproduction from the necessity of a male body. Finally, a dream has come true for radical feminists such as Firestone, who might find themselves allied with plastics and its agencies.

What implications do these technoscientific developments and the gender relations with which they are entangled have for social issues that do not exclusively involve humans, but are actively co-constituted by nonhuman materialities? And what kind of gender politics and biopolitics are we developing in relation to pollution and fertility issues? These questions address the uncertainties of dealing with soft entities in the Anthropocene.

Economic Implications of International Surrogacy

Filtered by Fabio Vladimir Sánchez-Calderón

Surrogacy is another potential response to fertility problems associated with the endocrine-disruptive qualities of plastics. Surrogacy is increasingly taking place on a global scale and can be seen to reinforce existing inequalities. International surrogacy challenges the traditional division between production and reproduction because it entails the intertwining and even blurring of both sides. The contract that links the client and the surrogate makes the surrogate woman an instrument in this relationship. The payment a surrogate receives for her work can reach U$6,000 per baby when “normal” job options might only guarantee $60 per month. For clients, international surrogacy can represent half the cost they would be likely to pay in their home country. Surrogate women usually have to prove that they are capable of gestating a baby—most of them have their own children—and they must accomplish a series of biological and psychological tests. In some cases, the surrogates are taken into special hostels where they are controlled and disciplined, and where they are taught certain kinds of skills to become a more qualified “birthforce.” At the same time, it is common for the client-parents to want to maintain an emotional link with the surrogate. In general, international surrogacy is related to reification of inequalities of class, race, and nationality. However, much of this tends to be downplayed by both the client and the surrogate, who have built up narratives of “gift” and “sisterhood.”1313Amrita Pande, “Transnational Commercial Surrogacy in India: Gifts for Global Sisters?,” Reproductive BioMedicine Online, vol. 23, no. 5 (2011): pp. 618‒25. doi:10.1016/J.rbmo.2011.07.007;
[Titel anhand dieser DOI in Citavi-Projekt übernehmen]
Centre for Social Research, “Surrogate Motherhood: Ethical or Commercial,” (n.d.), online  accessed 10/15/2015); Fertility Source Companies,
online (accessed 10/15/2015); James S. Donaldson, “Infertile Americans Go to India for Gestational Surrogates,” ABC News (11/7/2013),
online (accessed 10/15/2015).

Human and Nonhuman Relationships

Filtered by Seth Denizen

In the mid 1990s, researchers in the United Kingdom started noticing a large number of male fish that were producing egg yolk in large quantities, normally only produced by females. Through the work of the zoologist John Sumpter, it was determined that these male fish had been “feminized” by chemical effluent from sewage treatment plants that contained molecules which mimicked the functioning of estrogen, ultimately responsible for regulating the production of egg yolk. These chemicals were traced largely to estrogen excreted in the urine of users of the birth control pill, and industrial plasticizers used in the manufacture of plastics. Today, the chemicals that are capable of mimicking the biological function of estrogen in wildlife have grown to a long list and examples of fish feminization are common worldwide.

What is most surprising about this discovery, however, is not that humans have once again undermined the biological requirements of life for nonhuman species, but rather that the imagined metaphysical distinction between humans and nonhumans has been undermined by the facts of life. At the level of molecular machinery, human beings, it turns out, are nearly indistinguishable from fish. Our aspirin, Prozac, and birth control pills do not enter the bodies of birds, fish, and amphibians as if for the first time, arriving in some unknown world where things are done differently. Rather, they arrive at a place that is older than our categories. As surprising as it is that both the invention of plastic and planned pregnancy rely on similar kinds of molecules, it is at least equally surprising that these molecules are endocrine disruptors in organisms that never even followed our ancestors onto land 375 million years ago.

Conclusion: The Global Anthropos

Filtered by Johannes Lundershausen

Both in origin and consequences, plastic is an extremely malleable material. Equally, it may be seen as a constituting factor in our “good life” of consumer goods, as a trigger of unprecedented environmental processes and interactions, or as a tool to overcome as well as re-enforce existing inequalities. As such, plastic is able to form various material alliances and blur our conceptual distinctions. Which one of these is conceivable depends on the filter applied to perceive and then represent the world. Accordingly, plastic gives us yet another reason not to build on unidimensional models of the Anthropocene. While a surrogacy baby may be conceived as the epitome of the Anthropos, it is allied to a vast network of relations with other humans and nonhumans, all of which may define themselves differently in relation to this network. Thus, the endeavor to agree on a standard subject for the Anthropocene is a flawed one. The views on plastics outlined here are attempts, instead, to focus on particular social relations and to highlight that the Anthropocene involves divided interests, which preclude an ontologically unitary understanding of the human species. Even just adding some plasticizer to the material and cognitive relationships we form with the world can make all the difference.