No, this is not another article about the deforestation of the Amazon. That's a serious problem that we should all be concerned about, but I'd like to discuss something else.

Last month there was no Scientist's Perspective because my wife and I took a several week vacation to the Amazon basin of Peru and then Chile. I'm going to write about the Peru part, the Amazon part.

The trip was quite an experience staying in primitive conditions with, for example, no hot water. The lodge was a two-hour boat ride down the river from a city serviced by a small airport. The lodge was on a small inlet where there were also some native houses. Electricity was by solar panels, storage batteries, and LED lights. We did some hiking through the jungle, and small boat trips up small tributaries to the main river. We saw monkey families playing in the trees and all sorts of other native wildlife. In the water, we saw freshwater dolphins cruising near our boat. While hiking, and boating along the main river, it was pointed out to us that the river has seasonal flooding that is commonly 10ft or more. It was quite an experience.

The upper Amazon basin was mountainous. It contained the rivers that supplied the water for the river. This region was much more "civilized" than the basin. There were towns and more sophisticated hotels and resorts.

My science issue comes back to something I wrote about a few months ago, plastic. It was everywhere. I don't think we went anywhere that you couldn't see plastic trash. Floating down the river there were empty plastic bottles, bags, and whatever plastic you can imagine. Even hiking through the jungle, there was plastic everywhere. It was carried in by the flooding. Besides being an eyesore, we know that this plastic ultimately ends up in the ocean and becomes microplastics, which is what I previously wrote about. They are deadly.

An interesting aspect of this is that we Americans have become sensitive to the problem and are doing something about it. In places like Peru, people seem to be unaware of the consequences of plastic dumping. However, even some Americans don't understand the problem. A friend of mine was recently mocking California because plastic straws are illegal while marijuana is legal. He doesn't understand that marijuana may be harmful to some people, while plastic is deadly to all living things.