“Plastics addiction” is killing us, experts say, but hope remains
“We have, I think, a plastics addiction,” said Shanna Swan,
a professor and epidemiologist at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai,
said in a livestreamed conference hosted by Moms Clean Air
Force.
“The regulatory system is broken, in the way it fails to
protect us,” Swan said.
Plastic contamination harms everybody, the panelists said:
Microplastics have been found in human organs, plastics additives are linked to
heart disease and death, and air pollution from manufacturing causes
respiratory illness and contributes to climate change. These issues are all
particularly urgent now as the Trump Administration slashes rules and agencies
meant to protect people from plastic-associated air and water pollution.
US Rep. Summer Lee, a Democrat from western Pennsylvania who spoke at the event, announced the launch of an environmental justice caucus in Congress that will aim to address harms caused by plastics manufacturing and pursue solutions.
During the conference, leaders from various fields said key
challenges include accurately communicating the science showing harm to the
public, getting money and political influence from fossil fuel companies out of
politics, and electing leaders who act in the interest of public health.
The effort to resist plastic pollution is urgent and
existential, said Lynn Anderson, a campaigner with Moms Clean Air Force:
“You’re fighting for your lives.” (Plastic manufacturing and waste
processing is a major cause of air pollution.)
Wide-ranging harm
Swan spoke first about her ground-breaking research showing
the men’s sperm counts are declining by around 2% annually in the United
States, due in part to exposure to phthalates, chemicals added to plastics in
part to make them softer. Other researchers have made similar findings.
These chemicals can get into your body through absorption,
inhalation, and ingestion.
“Every way things can get into your body, these things get
into your body, every day, 24-7, without your knowledge,” she said, including
in such innocuous ways as smelling nail polish or hairspray.
These chemicals cause other harms, as noted by Leo Trasande, a researcher and director of New York
University’s Center for the Investigation of Environmental Hazards.
For example, 5% of premature births in the US can be linked
directly to phthalates, Trasande said. Exposure to these chemicals are also
shrinking children’s brains, but impacting the function of the body’s thyroid
hormones.
Trasande also pointed to a study he and colleagues authored in 2022, which found
that 50,000 Americans die annually due to heart diseases
attributable to phthalates
“These chemicals are literally killing people,” Trasande
said.
Another harm these substances present is the threat posed by
tiny shards of plastics in food and water and the air. Trasande referenced
a 2024 Italian study published in The New
England Journal of Medicine which looked for the presence of
microplastics in plaques removed from the carotid artery of 257 patients in
Italy. Those with microplastics fared much worse in the next 34 months, with a
2.1-fold increased risk of having a heart attack, stroke, or dying.
The scientists said there is more than enough evidence of
the need to push for concrete policies limiting the use of single-use plastics
and reducing plastics exposure.
“We have enough information to act,” said Tracey
Woodruff, director of the Program on Reproductive Health and the
Environment at the University of California-San Francisco.
A cycle of suffering
Manufacturing plastics, and burning them, creates
particulate matter that increases the risk of cancer and other diseases,
particularly in disadvantaged front-line communities like Cancer Alley, a
region of Louisiana where scores of petrochemical factories are located.
Shannon Jones, a researcher at the University of Richmond
who studies such particulate matter, said her research cannot be disconnected
from the sociological: Environmental racism has allowed industrial facilities
spewing pollutants to spring up in poor Black communities. “Pollution is a form
of oppression,” she said.
Robin Morris Collin, a former senior advisor to Michael
Regan, the head of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) under Biden, noted
how unequal harms of plastic can be, but that the issue affects everyone.
“Some of us will be canaries in the coal mine and suffer
worse, but it’s coming for you,” whoever you are, she said. Before Trump took
office and Collin left her post, she finished an interim policy suggesting the
EPA begin looking at cumulative impacts of plastic pollution that add up over
time, a change from the historical practice of mainly looking at acute
exposures to single substances.
Some bright spots
The participants noted that there have been some successes
in working to reduce exposure to plastic pollutants.
In 2023, for example, Banner worked with legal teams
to successfully overturn a 33-year industrial zoning
decision enacted to facilitate plant construction for
industrial giant Formosa Plastics Corporation. (Formosa later abandoned
its plans, and a grain export facility had been slated for the location.)
Lynn Anderson, with Moms Clean Air Force, also noted that a
campaign she helped lead succeeded in getting a moratorium passed in her home of Youngstown, Ohio, on new
plants gasifying or burning plastic via pyrolysis, both of which
are associated with toxic air pollution.
