The harms of plastics are getting personal

The battle against plastics began decades ago. Early on, the focus was on the proliferation of plastic pollution and its impact on land use. In the 1980s, the battle shifted, with local skirmishes against single-use plastics that, in turn, created movements to ban plastics at the state and country level.

Then the movement expanded, driven by the horrifying photos of strangled sea turtles and the discovery of marine garbage patches, the largest of which is the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, estimated to be the size of France. Since China and other countries began to reject the developed world’s wastes, largely made up of various kinds of plastic, that waste has been mostly deposited in lesser-developed countries, which are thoroughly unprepared and unable to process it. With the myth of plastic recycling discredited, the public is beginning to understand that this is not simply a “waste management” problem.

Now plastics have become personal.

Although it was known for decades that plastics caused endocrine disruption, the discovery that plastics broke down into micro- and nano-particles and were entering our bodies through air, food, water and our clothing has jumpstarted millions of dollars in research. Scientists are rushing to determine the role that plastics play in diseases from Alzheimer’s to depression to autism to cancer.

Photos from one recent study show microplastics stuck in arterial plaque, creating further blockages for some of the 77 percent of Americans over 60 who have plaque in their arteries. In another recent study, 100 percent of placentas tested had microplastics. Plastics attach to our major organs, such as our brain, including two areas of the brain responsible for reasoning and anger management.

Is there proof that plastic is hurting us? While scientists hate committing to total certainty, the answer is likely yes. Plastic is made from oil, and all plastics contain multiple different chemicals and heavy metals. It’s what makes plastic useable. Many of those chemicals — bisphenol A, phthalates, brominated flame retardants — are among the Environmental Protection Agency’s “priority pollutants,” but almost none of them are banned outright. Some chemicals used in plastics are unknown, as their manufacturers claim they are “confidential business information.”

As plastics break down over time, they act as magnets for heavy metals, many of which are known carcinogens, making microplastics doubly harmful, in essence “forever chemicals” harboring other “forever chemicals” — and all likely to last in micro size for 1,000 years.

With rates of cancer growing in young people, could our constant chemical exposure from plastics in our bloodstream be one of the causes?

This troubling pattern is nothing new. Environmental and health history is replete with stunning examples of industries that have been engaged in long-term purposeful deception, tricking the public into believing that their products are safe.

The tobacco industry knew in the 1950s that their products were addictive and caused cancer, but in order to deceive the public and government, they created complex and confusing disinformation campaigns. With the help of whistleblowers and others, the industry was finally nabbed in a civil racketeering case for marketing and selling “their lethal products with zeal, with deception.”

Exxon was aware that burning fossil fuels would create climate change at least as early as the 1970s and, taking a page from the tobacco playbook, spent decades and millions of dollars “manufacturing doubt,” led by scientists, mathematicians and others on their payroll. The oil industries’ tactics delayed worldwide action that could cost hundreds of millions of people their lives over the next 30 years. And they are still doing it.

Likewise, the petrochemical and plastics industries have plotted deceitfully to “normalize” the idea that their products could be recycled when they knew absolutely they could not be. Given industry’s history of lying to us about recycling, it is fair to demand what else they are hiding.

Currently, the world produces close to a half-trillion tons of plastic waste each year, and that doesn’t include the trillion cigarette butts made of plastics and other toxic materials that litter our streets and pollute our water. If these trends continue, by 2050 we will have produced 26 billion metric tons of plastic waste, the vast majority of which has had and will continue to have nowhere to go but into our environment, our wildlife, and our bodies.

If history is any indication, it is also likely that these industries already know some of the human health impacts, and have for decades. It is why my organization and a growing worldwide coalition are calling on the plastics industry to tell us what they know. It is at our peril — and theirs — if they continue to hide and ignore the health and environmental harms caused by plastics.

The history of corporate deceit when it comes to environmental and health harms is well known. While it is standard practice for industry to wait until the evidence mounts while dragging its feet to continue to reap profits, the health impacts from plastics are already affecting all of us, and could for thousands of years.

This isn’t a future threat. It exists right now, and we need to know what they know.

Kathleen Rogers is president of Earthday.org.