Plastics are made of more than 16,000 chemicals, mostly derived from oil and gas. Over 4,200 are known to be hazardous, while the toxicity of the majority of the remaining is unknown.
– “Negotiating the plastics treaty to protect health and the environment”
Main takeaways:
- The United Nations (UN) is in the process of negotiating a new plastics treaty to reduce plastic pollution.
- Progress is being stifled by fossil fuel-producing countries and plastics manufacturers that are pushing the flawed narrative that the plastics crisis can be solved by recycling, despite no safe way to recycle plastics.
- Scientists say reducing plastic production is essential to protecting health.
The World Health Organization estimates that one quarter of global deaths result from pollution in the environment, including plastics and chemicals. Additionally, with thousands of hazardous chemicals, plastics cannot be recycled safely into other plastics products.
As the UN negotiates a new plastics treaty to reduce plastic pollution, a team of scientists is urging negotiators to do a better job of protecting health in an editorial in the World Health Organization Bulletin released today.
“Plastics recycling has exacerbated, not mitigated, the harms of plastics, and the new treaty needs to address that,” said opinion lead author Dr. Nicholas Chartres from the University of Sydney and collaborator in the Center to End Corporate Harm at UC San Francisco.
“… despite the importance of health in driving efforts to manage plastic pollution, the current proposed treaty text has major gaps that put human health at risk from hazardous chemicals and plastics. For a meaningful treaty, health considerations must figure more prominently,” write the scientists, who include Dr. Chartres, Dr. Tracey Woodruff of UC San Francisco, and scientists from IPEN (International Pollutants Elimination Network).
The scientists’ recommendations to negotiators include for the new plastics treaty to:
- Cap and reduce plastic production and incentivize alternatives
- End production and use of all toxic chemicals in plastics
- Eliminate toxic releases and emissions at all stages of plastics’ lifecycle, including banning recycling of plastics that contain toxic chemicals
- Require reporting, transparency and accountability on plastic production, waste, imports and exports (including their associated chemicals)
- Utilize polluter pays principle for treaty implementation
Read the full commentary and recommendations: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC12231067/
