The “underrecognized” and “grave and growing danger” of pervasive global plastic pollution is a threat to human health throughout the course of our lives, a group of international researchers warned in a report released Monday.
With production on track to nearly triple by 2060, plastic pollution is responsible for disease and death and is estimated to cost the U.S. some $1.5 trillion a year in health-related economic losses, they explained, with 8,000 metric tons of plastic waste invading our lands, our water sources, and even our own hearts and brains.
In the environment, such waste can provide a habitat for mosquitoes to lay eggs in, spreading deadly infections such as malaria and dengue fever. In our oceans, it can carry bacteria that sickens marine life, choking and killing animals looking for food.
Furthermore, airborne emissions from the fossil fuel industry’s plastic production are drivers of climate change and expose people to hazardous chemicals.
Some three-quarters of plastic chemicals have never been tested for safety, the authors said, even as an estimated 57 percent of plastic waste is burned in the open, leaving low-income and at-risk populations disproportionately in harm’s way.
“There is no understating the magnitude of both the climate crisis and the plastic crisis,” Dr. Philip Landrigan, a pediatrician and epidemiologist at Boston College, said in a statement. “They are both causing disease, death and disability today in tens of thousands of people, and these harms will become more severe in the years ahead as the planet continues to warm and plastic production continues to increase.”
Landrigan and the report’s other authors called for greater public awareness of the issue – as well as policy to prevent continued worsening of the plastic pollution crisis.
Their findings were released in the British medical journal The Lancet ahead of United Nations talks in Switzerland this week, which aim to finalize the world’s first plastic pollution treaty following previous failed attempts.
“Plastics are made from fossil fuels, contaminate food and water, are tied to many human illnesses, and impose steep costs for medical care and environmental damage,” Landrigan, the report’s lead author, said.
To track these and reduce exposures, the researchers announced they had launched an independent and global monitoring system.
They said that worsening is not inevitable with action.
“We know a great deal about the range and severity of the health and environmental impacts of plastic pollution across the full life cycle of plastic,” said Landrigan. “These impacts fall most heavily on vulnerable populations, especially infants and children. They result in huge economic costs to society. It is incumbent on us to act in response.”
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