February 25, 2025

By Carolyn Kormann

Photo-Illustration: New York Magazine; Source photographs: Getty Images, Shutterstock

In 2019, a toxicologist named Matthew Campen drove into the wilderness of the San Juan Mountains in northern New Mexico with his 12-year-old son. They were working on a school science project about plastic waste, comparing samples from different points along the Rio Grande. In the shadows of the rugged, snow-capped peaks, they knelt at the edge of the river and collected water in glass jars.

Campen had not been surprised when the water samples they collected from around Albuquerque, where they lived, were full of microplastics — pieces of plastic under five millimeters, the size of a grain of rice. But when they analyzed the samples from the seemingly pristine forest in the San Juans, he was amazed to find microplastics there, too. “Even near the head-waters of the Rio Grande, it was super-easy to find these things,” he told me.

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