Anatomy of the (known) health damage caused by plastics: ‘Grave, growing and under-recognized’

If there’s one material that defines our times, it’s plastic: it’s in everything and it’s everywhere. It’s been the driving force behind major medical and technological advances, but it’s also leaving a perpetual—and dangerous—mark on human health. An international scientific review, published this Sunday in The Lancet, has compiled all the known harms caused by exposure to plastics and issued an important warning: there is now sufficient evidence that living surrounded by these polymers poses “grave, growing, and under-recognized” risks to humans at all stages of life.

Scientists are sounding this alarm while warning that the plastic pollution crisis the world is immersed in is not inevitable. Their analysis comes with the announcement of the launch of a Countdown to monitor progress toward reducing exposure to plastic and mitigating its damage to human health and the planet. However, the task will not be easy, they say. Above all, because there are three factors already working against it: global plastic production is accelerating, recycling is inadequate—only 10% is processed; 90% is burned, disposed of in landfills, or accumulates in the environment—and, unlike other materials, plastic does not biodegrade easily (it fragments into smaller particles and persists for decades).

Not everything is known about the health impact of plastics. But what is known isn’t good news. “We now know that they cause disease, disability, and premature death at all stages of their life cycle: from the extraction of gas and oil, the main raw materials for plastics, to their production, use, and subsequent disposal in the environment as plastic waste,” summarizes Philip J. Landrigan, director of the Global Observatory on Planetary Health and author of the article. The future outlook isn’t very promising either, he adds: “These harms are compounded as global plastic production continues to increase: it has increased 250-fold since 1950 and is projected to double again by 2040 and triple by 2060 if current trends are not checked.”

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