Plastics continue to degrade into smaller sizes becoming more dangerous

From the Cover Story of Consumer Reports Magazine, Volume 85, Number 6, June 2020, pp. 26 – 35.

Part 3 — A Trail of Chemical Harm

No matter what new information scientists discover about the potential danger from microplastics, we already have sufficient evidence that the chemicals found in various plastics can have serious adverse effects on our health, says Leonardo Trasande, M.D., director of the Center for the Investigation of Environmental Hazards at New York University and the author of “Sicker, Fatter, Poorer” (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2019), a book about endocrine-disrupting chemicals.

“What we know raises serious red flags about chemicals used in plastic containers,” he says. They affect brain and organ development in children, and are linked to infertility and cardiovascular problems. Around 10,000 adult men die from cardiovascular disease linked to phthalates every year, he says.

There’s essentially no limit to the types of plastic that can be produced from thousands of types of chemicals, leading to products that range from flimsy high-density polyethylene grocery bags to bullet-stopping Kevlar. These chemicals are added to different plastics to give them various properties. Most people are familiar with better-known villains, such as BPA, which has been used since the 1950s to make hard, clear plastic like that used for some beverage bottles. But many other chemicals in plastics have been linked to serious health effects, including other bisphenols (in the same family as BPA), phthalates, and styrene. These chemicals can seep from packaging into food and then into the human body, Trasande says.

The shape and structure of chemicals such as BPA and phthalates cause them to interfere with the endocrine, or hormonal, system, which is why they’re known as endocrine disrupters. Tiny amounts of hormones, measured in parts per billion or even per trillion, affect the function of a wide range of systems throughout our bodies. And that’s what makes even a low dose of BPA or these other endocrine disrupters a focus of medical concern.

Bisphenols are thought to affect reproduction; some experts have suggested a link to the significant decline in sperm count in high-income countries over the past few decades. But there is also concern that they may affect brain development and the immune system, and can increase obesity and cancer risk — especially cancers influenced by the endocrine system, such as mammary and prostate cancer, says Laura Vandenberg, Ph.D., an associate professor at the University of Massachusetts Amherst School of Public Health and Health Sciences.

Phthalates are also known to disrupt hormones, and prenatal exposure to phthalates is associated with lower testosterone in male offspring. Styrene, another chemical found in plastic and food packaging, has been linked to nervous system dysfunction, hearing loss, cancer, and more.

“BPA is the poster child for these types of chemicals,” says Patricia Hunt, Ph.D., a professor at Washington State University’s School of Molecular Biosciences in Pullman. The outcry around BPA created enough consumer pressure that by 2008, some manufacturers started to remove it from certain products. However, when companies removed it, they often replaced it with other chemicals that are structurally similar to BPA, such as bisphenol S and bisphenol F.

“We’re starting to realize that the BPA replacements have very similar biological effects as the original chemical,” Vandenberg says. That means a product touting its BPA-free status might be just as harmful. Worse, these replacements face less scrutiny—“a byproduct of the lax regulatory framework in which we live,” says Trasande, who describes the efforts to keep up with these replacements as “chemical whack-a-mole.”

Recent research has also revealed that we may have underestimated our exposure to these chemicals all along, Hunt says. Scientists have typically measured the presence of BPA in our bodies by analyzing the products of metabolized BPA in urine and converting them back to the original substance; these efforts found BPA in more than 90 percent of people studied.

Hunt and colleagues have developed a new way to directly measure not just the BPA in urine but also its metabolic products processed by the body. In doing so, they found BPA levels in the human body that may be 44 times higher than a national survey found using the older method.

Our exposure to other chemicals has usually been measured in the same indirect way, Hunt says. That may mean we’ve also underestimated our exposure to phthalates and other chemicals of concern. “Our data is suggesting some people—[and] some pregnancies, some fetuses—are in fact exposed to quite high levels [of BPA],” she says.

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See also: Endocrine-disrupting chemicals weaken Americans’ life-or-death battles with COVID-19 — Jerrold J. Heindel and Linda S. Birnbaum, Environmental Health News, April 23, 2020

Endocrine-disrupting chemicals masquerade as hormones. These insidious contaminants increase the diseases that cause the underlying conditions that result in susceptibility to COVID-19.

Most Americans have endocrine disrupting chemicals in their bodies. We are exposed to them via our food, the air we breathe, our drinking water, and the products we allow into our homes and lives. Plastics, personal care products, drugs, pesticides, flame retardants, air pollution, household products, food additives, nonstick cookware, and many other products contain endocrine disrupting chemicals.

Human epidemiological studies and experiments in laboratory animals establish without question that such exposures can increase susceptibility to these diseases and many more. Exposures can also cause immunosuppression, which increases vulnerability to infections.

Plastic debris and microplastic particles have already polluted the oceans

From an Article by CAROL ROIG, River Reporter, February 12, 2020

By now, most New Yorkers are aware that a ban on single-use plastic bags will go into effect on Sunday, March 1, 2020. While there has been some criticism of the bill’s numerous exemptions, it’s a good start to reducing the 23 billion single-use bags state residents use each year; that amounts to more than 1,000 per person according to the NYS Department of Environmental Conservation.

Building on the regulatory trend, NY Gov. Andrew Cuomo recently proposed limits on another significant source of plastic pollution: single-use food containers and packing peanuts made from expanded polystyrene, commonly known as Styrofoam.

The full picture of plastic pollution is pretty horrifying, not only because of the sheer volume of plastic we discard every year but also the health impacts of the material’s life cycle. Much of this litter makes its way to the oceans, spoiling beaches and clogging waterways around the world. Whales, fish, birds, turtles and other wildlife die each year after ingesting or becoming entangled in plastic waste.

Plastic never biodegrades—it just keeps breaking down into increasingly smaller pieces called microplastics that absorb a range of chemical pollutants, travel up the food chain to our plates and our drinking water, and accumulate in our bodies.

A new study published in Environmental Science & Technology, the journal of the American Chemical Society, synthesized data from 26 separate studies to calculate that the average American’s annual microplastics consumption ranges from 74,000 to 121,000 particles each year. Americans who drink bottled water for most of their daily intake may be ingesting an additional 90,000 microplastic particles annually. The study’s authors believe these values are likely underestimated.

Plastic & Health, a study published under the auspices of a consortium led by the Center for International Environmental Law (CIEL), provides a comprehensive analysis of the health impacts of the full life cycle of plastics: from the 170-plus chemicals used in fracking to produce fossil fuel feedstocks; through the refining process, exposures to consumers and toxins released as plastic waste is processed and managed; and the long term effects on air, soil, water and human health.

The study documents impacts such as cancer, neurotoxicity, reproductive and developmental problems, immune system impairment, damage to the skin and eyes, and respiratory and gastrointestinal problems, all especially intense for workers in the industry and people who live near plastics facilities.

The climate impact of plastics has received less attention, but CIEL’s companion study, Plastic & Climate, tracks greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from every stage of plastic production, use and disposal, including waste to energy. The report points out that “chemical manufacturing is profoundly energy-intensive, and the production of plastic feedstocks and resins is the most energy-intensive sub-sector of the chemical industry.” The authors estimate that the production and incineration of plastic over the past year alone will add more than 850 million metric tons of GHG to the atmosphere, equal to the emissions from 189 500-megawatt coal power plants.

Given the industry’s plans for expansion, the report estimates that by 2050, GHG emissions from the plastic lifecycle could reach over 56 gigatons. This is equivalent to 10 to 13 percent of the entire remaining carbon budget available if we are to maintain global warming below the below 1.5°C degrees threshold.

The International Energy Agency’s 2018 report, The Future of Petrochemicals, calls this expansion “one of the key ‘blind spots’ in the global energy debate… Petrochemicals are rapidly becoming the largest driver of global oil consumption. They are set to account for more than a third of the growth in oil demand to 2030, and nearly half to 2050. Petrochemicals are also poised to consume an additional 56 billion cubic meters of natural gas by 2030, equivalent to about half of Canada’s total gas consumption today.”

Facing a decline in the use of oil and natural gas for energy generation and transportation because of progress with renewables and electric vehicles, the industry is looking to petrochemicals to perpetuate their profits, and they’ve invested more than $200 billion in the sector over the past decade, according to the American Chemistry Council.

Ethane, a by-product of natural gas, is a plastics feedstock that the industry is particularly keen to exploit, given its plenitude because of the fracking boom. Long centered in Texas and Louisiana, the industry is moving aggressively into the Ohio River corridor to create a plastics hub that will exploit the Marcellus Shale; it’s being hailed as “the new coal.” Royal Dutch Shell’s new polymers plant, under construction near Pittsburgh, is the first of several ethane crackers planned for Pennsylvania, Ohio and West Virginia.

These multi-billion dollar facilities will turn ethane into ethylene and polyethylene pellets, the raw material for most plastics and, according to climate experts, they could also wipe out much of the GHG reduction gains we have achieved in recent years. The US Department of Energy is spearheading $1.9 billion in loan guarantees to develop underground storage of ethane, and Pennsylvania provided roughly $1.65 billion in tax incentives for the Shell facility.

That is the bigger picture. Despite admirable local and state efforts, we are going down the wrong road with plastic production:

1. We need to eliminate single-use plastics and all non-essential plastics throughout the economy.

2. We need to make producers fully responsible for the full life cycle of the material.

3. We should stop making virgin plastic altogether, and invest in innovative recycling technologies to make essential items like medical devices.

4. We should ban incineration of all plastic waste, including waste to energy, because the GHG impact and toxic exposures for host neighborhoods are just too damaging.

5. We should include workers’ health risks in our cost/benefit analyses before awarding giant subsidies to the plastic industry.

We grew up with plastic, but we need to face the environmental damage that comes with throwaway convenience.

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See also: How Is Plastic Totally Ruining The Oceans In The Worst Way Possible? From Marine Insight, January 3, 2020

As is commonly known, plastic isn’t biodegradable, which accentuates the threat of lingering waste plastic for years and for generations to come. According to estimates, people around the world throw away almost four million tons of trash every day, of which 12.8% is plastic, polluting land, air and water. While plastic thrown into landfills contaminates the soil and groundwater with harmful chemicals and microorganisms, the effects of marine pollution caused by plastic are immeasurable.

Just like on land, even in the oceanic areas, the effects of plastic on marine life has started to be felt. The studies reveal that around 12.7 million tonnes of plastic waste are washed into the ocean every year. The United Nations Environment Programme estimates there could be as many as 51 trillion microplastic particles in the oceans already.

Single Use Plastics are dominating our lives

From an Article by Olivia Rosane, EcoWatch.com, February 22, 2019

With eight million metric tons of plastic entering the world’s oceans every year, there is growing concern about the proliferation of plastics in the environment. Despite this, surprisingly little is known about the full impact of plastic pollution on human health.

But a first-of-its-kind study released February 19, 2019 sets out to change that. The study, Plastic & Health: The Hidden Costs of a Plastic Planet, is especially groundbreaking because it looks at the health impacts of every stage in the life cycle of plastics, from the extraction of the fossil fuels that make them to their permanence in the environment. While previous studies have focused on particular products, manufacturing processes or moments in the creation and use of plastics, this study shows that plastics pose serious health risks at every stage in their production, use and disposal.

“The heavy toxic burdens associated with plastic—at every stage of its life cycle—offers another convincing argument why reducing and not increasing production of plastics is the only way forward,” report co-author and Break Free From Plastic Movement (BFFP) Global Coordinator Von Hernandez said in a press release. “It is shocking how the existing regulatory regime continues to give the whole plastic industrial complex the license to play Russian roulette with our lives and our health. Plastic is lethal, and this report shows us why.”

The report was a joint effort by the Center for International Environmental Law (CIEL), Earthworks, Global Alliance for Incinerator Alternatives (GAIA), Healthy Babies Bright Futures (HBBF), IPEN, Texas Environmental Justice Advocacy Services (t.e.j.a.s.), University of Exeter, UPSTREAM and BFFP. It explains in depth how each stage in the plastics life cycle puts human health at risk.

1. “Extraction and Transport of Fossil Feedstocks for Plastic“: The extraction of the oil and gas needed to make plastic releases toxic chemicals into the air and water. The chemicals used to produce plastic feedstock via fracking are particularly dangerous: More than 170 of them can cause documented health problems including cancer and damage to the nervous and immune systems.

2. “Refining and Production of Plastic Resins and Additives“: The process of refining fossil fuels into plastic resin releases toxic chemicals into the air that can cause cancer and damage the nervous system, among other issues. Industrial workers and communities near refineries are especially at risk.

3. “Consumer Products and Packaging“: Plastic products themselves can harm their users both in the form of microplastics that break off from the larger product and chemicals contained in the product that can cause cancer and developmental problems, as well as disrupt the hormone system.

4. “Toxic Releases from Plastic Waste Management“: Every method for eliminating plastic waste, such as incineration and gasification, releases acid gases, organic substances like dioxins and furans and toxic metals like lead and mercury into the air, soil and water. This is also particularly dangerous for plant workers and surrounding communities.

5. “Fragmenting and Microplastics“: As plastics break down, they release tiny fragments into the environment that humans can swallow or inhale. Doing so can cause problems like inflammation, genotoxicity, oxidative stress, apoptosis and necrosis, which can lead to cancer, heart disease, diabetes, stroke and other potentially deadly or chronic ailments.

6. “Cascading Exposure as Plastic Degrades“: The chemicals added to plastics easily spread into the surrounding environment as the plastic breaks down, posing an ever-increasing risk to water, soil or body tissue where plastic is present.

7. “Ongoing Environmental Exposure“: Plastic degrading in the ocean or on land builds up in the food chain as it is ingested by larger and larger animals. The plastic both leaches the chemicals it already contained into the environment and accumulates other toxic chemicals present in the environment as it works its way up the food chain.

In order to combat the problem, the report recommends treating plastic exposure as a human rights issue, making sure every stage in the plastic life cycle is addressed, drafting laws that require accurate information about what goes into plastics during all stages of production, ensuring transparency in the development of solutions and making sure that solutions take into account the global reach of plastic production and proliferation.

Other organizations who work on plastic pollution have praised the report for its in-depth investigation of the crisis.

“This new report provides further evidence of plastic’s detrimental effects on a global scale — and it’s more personal than ever,” Oceana chief policy officer Jacqueline Savitz said in a statement. “Plastic is impacting human health through every single stage of its life cycle, from extraction and production to consumer use, and it is entering our food chain. The risks to human health begin long before plastic even makes it onto store shelves, providing yet another reason why waste-management efforts alone can’t reverse this crisis. We need companies to take responsibility for plastic’s effects on our health and the environment, stop wasting time with false solutions and turn to sustainable alternatives to plastic before it’s too late.”

Plastics have become worse than bad and ugly