I could not tell you when I first encountered it.

I was born in the 80s, I was mostly raised in the 90s, and it was everywhere.

It was like electricity or the internet that it went from nothing to everything quite quickly.

The invention of this stuff was in 1907, so that's not too much earlier than my grandmother was born.

I certainly remember as a kid it wasn't a substance that anybody in my family avoided.

And it's amazing stuff.

It has made the food supply much safer.

It is massively, massively important for like medical purposes.

Because it's much lighter and it's much cheaper than, you know, a glass bottle or a cloth toy.

But yeah, I couldn't tell you, like, my history with it

because it was just always there.

And I kind of paid no attention to it, like I think probably most people do.

It's kind of a funny thing.

We are the generation, I guess, that, like, doesn't remember a time before it.

And now, I don't know, I guess we're beginning to reckon with it.

Absolutely.

Atlantic writer Annie Lowry recently re-examined her relationship with a material that's so ubiquitous.

It's kind of like the air we all breathe or the water we're all swimming in.

We use it to transport food, medicine, and all kinds of consumer goods.

I seeUs use it to keep very sick people alive.

And it's literally in our air and in our water.

So yeah, you're not usually a science writer.

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