Curb ‘stupid plastics’ and stop industry BS: urgent actions to prevent a plastic crisis. The worst of microplastics is yet to come. Here’s what we need to do now to begin mitigating the wide-ranging harms GuardianAdrienne Mattei 9 July 2025 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. 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”. 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. 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. 

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.....and yet countries do NOTHING to curb plastics.....read on    https://www.theguardian.com/wellness/article/2024/jul/09/microplastics-health-crisis