Plastics: the blind spot in planetary health

We have normalised plastic. We wrap food in it, we drink from it, it sits in every supply chain. Yet the numbers are astonishing. Production has jumped from two million tonnes in 1950 to four hundred and seventy five million tonnes today. Without intervention the world is on track to pass one point two billion tonnes by 2060.

Almost all plastic begins as fossil carbon. This links plastic to climate at the root. And less than ten per cent is recycled. The rest accumulates in soil, rivers, oceans and in human tissues.

The health burden does not only come from litter on beaches. It starts at the point where feedstocks are extracted. Fracking fields and drilling pads carry known risks. Then come monomers and additive chemistry including substances such as vinyl chloride. Consumer products can expose us to endocrine active chemicals. And end of life disposal such as burning, informal dumping or poorly controlled incineration adds another toxic tier.

Signals in epidemiology are no longer subtle. Higher rates of stillbirth and preterm birth. Childhood asthma and leukaemia. Elevated cancers in highly exposed worker groups. Microplastics and nanoplastics now show up in remote ecosystems, in food webs on land and at sea, and in human samples.

When economists count the health losses and productivity losses and environmental damages the annual global bill exceeds one point five trillion US dollars. Communities living next to production plants and waste sites carry the largest burden. This makes plastic a matter of environmental justice as much as pollution control.

This evidence arrives as the United Nations negotiates a global plastics treaty. Alongside this is the new Lancet Countdown on Health and Plastics. It is an independent monitoring system which will track production, consumption, waste, exposures, disease burdens, financial costs, inequalities and policy change. Indicators must be scientifically valid, interpretable, updatable, geographically representative and sensitive to equity.

The central idea is simple. Policy for plastics must be judged on health and not only on waste management. 

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For more information contact: info@scarabtrust.org.uk

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