Plastic is everywhere, including our bodies. This year, various researchers found microplastics in every sample of placental tissue they tested; in human arteries, where plastics correlate with increased risk of heart attacks and strokes; in all 27 of the human testes they studied; and the semen of 40 otherwise healthy patients, adding to concerns that plastics – many of which contain hormone-disrupting chemicals – may be contributing to a global decline in sperm health.
These recent discoveries add to the rapidly mounting evidence of plastic’s ubiquity and our growing understanding of the health risks it poses.
It is increasingly apparent that we are in a plastic health crisis. Industry profits from products that are not safe, passing these health and economic burdens on to the public and governments. The 2023 Minderoo-Monaco Commission on Plastics and Human Health estimated that the costs of disease, disability and premature death caused by exposure to the chemicals BPA, DEHP and PBDE exceeded $675bn in 2015 in the US alone. A report from the University of Birmingham this month further links microplastics, inflammation and noncommunicable diseases.
Yet some researchers say we are actually in “the lull” before this crisis begins in earnest. In a 2024 research review about the implications of increasing microplastic pollution, the authors write “the widespread outbreak of [microplastic] pollution has not yet occurred”.
The currently detectable levels of microplastic pollution are “likely just the beginning”, the authors write, in part because plastic production has dramatically accelerated since the 1970s. We’re approaching a tipping point because much of the plastic waste from 20 to 40 years ago is crumbling to micro-scale.
While plastics may take over a thousand years to break down completely, they can become micro-particles much sooner. For example, opening a bottle cap can release microplastics immediately, and many forms of plastic begin degrading into micro-particles within decades or even years under certain conditions.
Despite a potential surge in environmental and health issues related to microplastics, we haven’t yet started reining the problem in. Global plastic production doubled from around 230m tons annually in 2000 to 460m tons in 2019, and is expected to double again by 2040.
The prognosis may be dire, but experts believe there are ambitious, urgent and effective ways to begin mitigating the wide-ranging harms caused by plastics. Here’s what they say.
A global cap on plastic production – with a focus on single-use plastics
According to Dr Philip Landrigan, an anti-plastic advocate, physician and the director of the Program for Global Public Health and the Common Good at Boston College, the most “fundamental and far-reaching step that must be taken to contain the global plastics crisis is to impose a global cap on plastic production”. This would be analogous to the limits on chlorofluorocarbon manufacture imposed under the Montreal Protocol or restrictions on greenhouse gas emissions set under the Paris Climate Agreement, he says.
Some plastics are essential to industries like engineering and medicine, and have an important role in daily life – but Landrigan thinks it’s important to curb what he calls “stupid plastics, which are basically single-use disposable plastic”, he says.
This April, Landrigan participated in the lead-up to the fourth session of the Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee on Plastic Pollution in Ottawa, a group of global political representatives formed in 2022.
“The industry is out in force,” he said at these negotiations. Companies involved in fossil fuels and plastics “want desperately to avoid a production cap”, particularly on single-use plastics, which currently comprise about 40% of the plastics market and could become more important to their bottom line as gas demand declines.
Landrigan co-authored the recent Minderoo-Monaco Commission on Plastics and Human Health summary, and wants people to understand that microplastic pollution is not an abstract issue confined to the stomachs of whales and seabirds. Instead, it is a tangible threat contributing directly to our disease and death. “My fear is that that level of concern does not yet exist today,” says Landrigan, “and because of that, the plastics treaty might end up being a lot weaker than it could be.”
Landrigan recommends those concerned about the health impacts of plastic make the connection between health and plastic explicit when urging their elected officials to ban single-use plastics and enact stringent plastic regulations akin to those in place in California, and those which New York state nearly passed in a recent legislative session and will reintroduce next year.
Greater transparency about “plastic chemicals of concern”
According to Martin Wagner, a researcher at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology and an author of the 2024 PlastChem report, over 3,600 of the 16,000-plus known chemicals in plastics are unregulated “plastic chemicals of concern”, defined as chemicals that are carcinogenic, disruptive to hormones or otherwise toxic and bioaccumulative. Almost 400 are used in plastics that come into contact with food, and 97 have been found to leach out of plastics and into food or human bodies.
“The public has the right to know what chemicals they’re exposed to. It’s not like consuming alcohol or smoking tobacco. It’s totally involuntary,” says Wagner.
Wagner argues that a good first step for policymakers would be to regulate 15 groups of plastic chemicals of concern, including bisphenols, phthalates and PFAS. Further, policymakers should force manufacturers to be transparent about what chemicals are in their products, with a “no data, no market” ultimatum. “They will complain that it’s costly to create the data, but I call bullshit on that – they’re producing the data anyway,” says Wagner.
Wagner says clear product labeling would help people ascertain whether food packaging or children’s toys contain chemicals of concern.
“I don’t just want packaging that says ‘free of BPA’ – I want packaging that says if it contains BPA,” he says.
Increased use of reusable packaging by manufacturers and retailers
It’s hard to imagine a plastic-free grocery store. For Tiza Mafira, director of Climate Policy Initiative Indonesia and executive director of advocacy group DietPlastik Indonesia, the goal isn’t to rid stores of plastic, but rather for manufacturers to replace single-use plastic packaging with reusable packaging in plastic, glass or aluminum. This packaging can be returned, sanitized, refilled, resealed and resold – like milk bottles used to be in the US and the UK, for instance.
“Our main inspiration is how it used to be done before the tsunami of single-use everything,” says Mafira.
“We’re not naive about how much work is needed for that to happen,” she says. Change “needs to be industry-led”, with producers agreeing to simplify packaging so that it is safe, reusable and, at the end of its life cycle, recyclable (currently only about 5% of plastics get recycled).
This past January, Mafira’s team launched the Asia Reuse Consortium to help more companies mainstream reuse and refill systems for online and in-store sales. The consortium co-develops reuse and refill guidelines and standards, and shapes policy recommendations.
“We’re starting to see systems like this crop up all over the world,” says Mafira, who is also working with organizations to create global reuse standards compatible with international trade regulations. However, “it would be easier if single-use plastics are banned”, she says. “Reuse manufacturers are competing with producers flooding the market with cheap, single-use plastics.” Mafira also wants to see policies mandating that companies provide reuse options – whether they are small businesses or Amazon.
In the meantime, shoppers can support zero-waste stores and brands that are already working with reuse systems such as Muuse, Algramo and r.Cup.
