World in $1.5tn ‘plastics crisis' hitting health from infancy to old age, report warns
The driver of the crisis is a huge acceleration of plastic production, which has increased by more than 200 times since 1950 and is set to almost triple again to more than a billion tonnes a year by 2060. While plastic has many important uses, the most rapid increase has been in the production of single-use plastics, such as drinks bottles and fast-food containers.
As a result, plastic pollution has also soared, with 8bn tonnes now polluting the entire planet, the review said, from the top of Mount Everest to the deepest ocean trench. Less than 10% of plastic is recycled.
Plastics endangered people and the planet at every stage, the review said, from the extraction of the fossil fuels they were made from, to production, use and disposal. This results in air pollution, exposure to toxic chemicals and infiltration of the body with microplastics. Plastic pollution can even boost disease-carrying mosquitoes, as water captured in littered plastic provides good breeding sites.
The review, published in the leading medical journal the Lancet, was released before the sixth and probably final round of negotiations between countries to agree a legally binding global plastics treaty to tackle the crisis. The talks have been dogged by a deep disagreement between more than 100 countries that back a cap on plastic production and petrostates such as Saudi Arabia that oppose the proposal. The Guardian recently revealed how petrostates and plastic industry lobbyists are derailing the negotiations.
'We know a great deal about the range and severity of the health and environmental impacts of plastic pollution,' said Prof Philip Landrigan, a paediatrician and epidemiologist at Boston College in the US, and lead author of the new report. He said it was imperative the plastics treaty included measures to protect human and planetary health.
'The impacts fall most heavily on vulnerable populations, especially infants and children,' he said. 'They result in huge economic costs to society. It is incumbent on us to act in response.'
Petrostates and the plastics industry have argued the focus should be on recycling plastic, not cutting production. But, unlike paper, glass, steel and aluminium, chemically complex plastics cannot be readily recycled. The report said: 'It is now clear that the world cannot recycle its way out of the plastic pollution crisis.'
More than 98% of plastics are made from fossil oil, gas and coal. The energy-intensive production process drives the climate crisis by releasing the equivalent of 2bn tonnes of CO2 a year – more than the emissions of Russia, the world's fourth biggest polluter. Plastic production also produces air pollution, while more than half of unmanaged plastic waste was burned in the open air, further increasing dirty air, the report noted.
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More than 16,000 chemicals are used in plastics, including fillers, dyes, flame retardants and stabilisers. Many plastic chemicals were linked to health effects at all stages of human life, the report said, but there was a lack of transparency about which chemicals were present in plastics.
The analysis found that foetuses, infants and young children were highly susceptible to the harms associated with plastics, with exposure associated with increased risks of miscarriage, premature and stillbirth, birth defects, impaired lung growth, childhood cancer and fertility problems later in life.
Plastic waste often breaks down into micro- and nano-plastics which enter the human body via water, food and breathing. The particles have been found in blood, brains, breast milk, placentas, semen and bone marrow. Their impact on human health is largely unknown as yet, but they have been linked to strokes and heart attacks and the researchers said a precautionary approach was needed.
Plastic is often seen as a cheap material but the scientists argue it is expensive when the cost of health damages are included. One estimate of the health damage from just three plastic chemicals – PBDE, BPA and DEHP – in 38 countries was $1.5tn a year.
The new analysis is the start of a series of reports that will regularly track the impact of plastics. Margaret Spring, a senior lawyer and one of the report's co-authors, said: 'The reports will offer decision-makers around the world a robust and independent data source to inform the development of effective policies addressing plastic pollution at all levels.'
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The Independent
2 hours ago
- The Independent
Harvard scientists say research could be set back years after funding freeze
Harvard University professor Alberto Ascherio's research is literally frozen. Collected from millions of U.S. soldiers over two decades using millions of dollars from taxpayers, the epidemiology and nutrition scientist has blood samples stored in liquid nitrogen freezers within the university's T.H. Chan School of Public Health. The samples are key to his award-winning research, which seeks a cure to multiple sclerosis and other neurodegenerative diseases. But for months, Ascherio has been unable to work with the samples because he lost $7 million in federal research funding, a casualty of Harvard's fight with the Trump administration. 'It's like we have been creating a state-of-the-art telescope to explore the universe, and now we don't have money to launch it,' said Ascherio. 'We built everything and now we are ready to use it to make a new discovery that could impact millions of people in the world and then, 'Poof. You're being cut off.'' Researchers laid off and science shelved The loss of an estimated $2.6 billion in federal funding at Harvard has meant that some of the world's most prominent researchers are laying off young researchers. They are shelving years or even decades of research, into everything from opioid addiction to cancer. And despite Harvard's lawsuits against the administration, and settlement talks between the warring parties, researchers are confronting the fact that some of their work may never resume. The funding cuts are part of a monthslong battle that the Trump administration has waged against some the country's top universities including Columbia, Brown and Northwestern. The administration has taken a particularly aggressive stance against Harvard, freezing funding after the country's oldest university rejected a series of government demands issued by a federal antisemitism task force. The government had demanded sweeping changes at Harvard related to campus protests, academics and admissions — meant to address government accusations that the university had become a hotbed of liberalism and tolerated anti-Jewish harassment. Research jeopardized, even if court case prevails Harvard responded by filing a federal lawsuit, accusing the Trump administration of waging a retaliation campaign against the university. In the lawsuit, it laid out reforms it had taken to address antisemitism but also vowed not to 'surrender its independence or relinquish its constitutional rights.' 'Make no mistake: Harvard rejects antisemitism and discrimination in all of its forms and is actively making structural reforms to eradicate antisemitism on campus," the university said in its legal complaint. 'But rather than engage with Harvard regarding those ongoing efforts, the Government announced a sweeping freeze of funding for medical, scientific, technological, and other research that has nothing at all to do with antisemitism.' The Trump administration denies the cuts were made in retaliation, saying the grants were under review even before the demands were sent in April. It argues the government has wide discretion to cancel federal contracts for policy reasons. The funding cuts have left Harvard's research community in a state of shock, feeling as if they are being unfairly targeted in a fight has nothing to do with them. Some have been forced to shutter labs or scramble to find non-government funding to replace lost money. In May, Harvard announced that it would put up at least $250 million of its own money to continue research efforts, but university President Alan Garber warned of 'difficult decisions and sacrifices' ahead. Ascherio said the university was able to pull together funding to pay his researchers' salaries until next June. But he's still been left without resources needed to fund critical research tasks, like lab work. Even a year's delay can put his research back five years, he said. Knowledge lost in funding freeze 'It's really devastating,' agreed Rita Hamad, the director of the Social Policies for Health Equity Research Center at Harvard, who had three multiyear grants totaling $10 million canceled by the Trump administration. The grants funded research into the impact of school segregation on heart health, how pandemic-era policies in over 250 counties affected mental health, and the role of neighborhood factors in dementia. At the School of Public Health, where Hamad is based, 190 grants have been terminated, affecting roughly 130 scientists. 'Just thinking about all the knowledge that's not going to be gained or that is going to be actively lost," Hamad said. She expects significant layoffs on her team if the funding freeze continues for a few more months. "It's all just a mixture of frustration and anger and sadness all the time, every day." John Quackenbush, a professor of computational biology and bioinformatics at the School of Public Health, has spent the past few months enduring cuts on multiple fronts. In April, a multimillion dollar grant was not renewed, jeopardizing a study into the role sex plays in disease. In May, he lost about $1.2 million in federal funding for in the coming year due to the Harvard freeze. Four departmental grants worth $24 million that funded training of doctoral students also were cancelled as part of the fight with the Trump administration, Quackenbush said. 'I'm in a position where I have to really think about, 'Can I revive this research?'' he said. 'Can I restart these programs even if Harvard and the Trump administration reached some kind of settlement? If they do reach a settlement, how quickly can the funding be turned back on? Can it be turned back on?' The researchers all agreed that the funding cuts have little or nothing to do with the university's fight against antisemitism. Some, however, argue changes at Harvard were long overdue and pressure from the Trump administration was necessary. Bertha Madras, a Harvard psychobiologist who lost funding to create a free, parent-focused training to prevent teen opioid overdose and drug use, said she's happy to see the culling of what she called 'politically motivated social science studies.' White House pressure a good thing? Madras said pressure from the White House has catalyzed much-needed reform at the university, where several programs of study have 'really gone off the wall in terms of being shaped by orthodoxy that is not representative of the country as a whole.' 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The Independent
2 hours ago
- The Independent
Americans get more than half their calories from ultraprocessed foods, CDC report says
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The Independent
2 hours ago
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Hold the fries! How your favorite salty side can increase your risk of type 2 diabetes
A new study has found eating a certain amount of French fries a week can increase the risk of developing type 2 diabetes. Nothing beats salt-coated fries straight out of the fryer, but next time you order a burger, you may want to tell the restaurant, 'Hold the fries!' A study published in The BMJ journal Wednesday found eating three servings of fries a week could increase your risk of developing type 2 diabetes by 20 percent. Those who eat fries five times a week have a 27 percent increased risk of the chronic disease, according to the study. But potato lovers should not fear, as researchers found those who eat similar amounts of boiled, baked, or mashed potatoes do not face an elevated risk of the disease. An international team, including an expert from the University of Cambridge, analyzed health data from more than 205,000 U.S. health workers, with repeated surveys about their diets, tracking their well-being over nearly four decades. During this extensive follow-up period, some 22,000 cases of type 2 diabetes were documented. 'The risks associated with potato intake varied by cooking method,' the researchers wrote. 'The association between higher potato intake and increased T2D risk is primarily driven by intake of French fries.' The research team also found that replacing three servings of potatoes each week with whole grains was found to lower the risk of type 2 diabetes by 8 percent. 'Replacing any form of potatoes, particularly French fries, with whole grains is estimated to lower the risk of T2D, reinforcing the importance of promoting whole grains as an essential part of a healthy diet,' researchers wrote. But replacing potatoes with white rice was associated with an increased risk of type 2 diabetes, they found. In a linked editorial, also published in The BMJ, experts from the U.S. and Denmark wrote: 'This finding also corresponds to the observed associations between high intake of ultra-processed foods and high risk of type 2 diabetes – French fries are often ultra-processed, whereas baked, boiled, or mashed potatoes are often minimally processed.' They added: 'With their relatively low environmental impact and their health impact, potatoes can be part of a healthy and sustainable diet, though whole grains should remain a priority.'
