The global plastic waste crisis is one of the most dangerous anthropogenic environmental issues of our era. Plastic pollution has been found everywhere, from the deepest depths of the ocean, the Mariana Trench, to the highest peak of Mount Everest. And increasingly, plastic has been found in all of us. We are on the brink of a burgeoning microplastic-induced health crisis.
Unless you live, metaphorically, like an ostrich, you will most likely have stumbled across images of mountains of plastic waste, or the Great Pacific Garbage Patch making its steady way across our oceans. Every shop you walk into offers a wide display of fruits, vegetables, pasta, microwave meals, shampoo, toothbrushes, all wrapped neatly in layers of plastic. You might have become more aware of our plastic consumption and waste during the COVID-19 pandemic, where the world collectively wore millions of plastic masks every day, such that it became virtually impossible to walk down a street or along a river without seeing a littered plastic mask. Plastic waste has become omnipresent. And plastic does not go away. It persists in our ecosystems for millennia.
Here are some key plastic stats:
- It is estimated that over 400 million tons of plastic were produced globally in 2024, 40% of which was used in single-use items like straws and bags.
- The average plastic waste produced per person per year amounts to around 28 kilograms.
- Since 1950, only about 9% of plastic waste has been recycled; crucially, most plastics can only be recycled once or twice.
- About 80% of marine debris is plastic, of which 81% is emitted from Asia.
- Different types of plastic take different lengths of time to break down. Plastics, such as that in a disposal diaper or plastic bottle, take approximately 450 years.
- Plastic is made from fossil fuels and approximately 6% of global oil consumption goes towards producing plastic.
- The plastic industry is currently valued at $712 billion.
- Globally, plastic pollution costs $13 billion annually in clean-up efforts, reduced tourism, and marine damages.
You are most likely, at some level, aware of the environmental impact of plastic pollution. Correctly disposed plastic either ends up in landfills, treated by incineration, or recycled or reprocessed in small quantities. When incorrectly disposed, plastic waste can find its way directly to the environment. Incinerating plastics releases harmful and carcinogenic gases like dioxins and furans and contributes to air pollution. Large pieces of plastic waste that end up in landfills, or in the wider environment, can entangle or be ingested by animals, leading to choking, starvation, and internal injuries—you might have seen turtles and plastic straws. As plastic disintegrates, these large pieces of plastic become micro-plastics, fragments of plastic smaller than 5 millimetres, and nano-plastics, particles smaller than 1000 nanometres. These particles contaminate water, leak toxic chemicals into soil and air, impede plant photosynthesis, and affect ecosystem health, travelling up food chains.
Amidst these overwhelming environmental impacts of plastic waste, a new threat is emerging—the human health effects of microplastics.
It is estimated that we each consume a credit card worth of plastic every week, and a plastic packet worth every year. Picture that—instead of sprinkling some sugar on your cereal or adding a pinch of salt to your pasta, you are dousing it in scatterings of plastic instead. Yummy. Microplastics enter the body through inhalation, ingestion, contact with skin, maternal transfer. To date, there is no way to get rid of this plastic. Just as there is no way to safely get rid of plastic that has been thrown away—hence the mountains of plastic and the Great Pacific Garbage Patch.
Multiple studies have recently demonstrated that every single—every single—organ in our bodies is littered with microplastics. Our brains, our lungs, blood, breast milk, testes, placenta. Babies are being born with microplastics. The true health impact of microplastics have yet to be fully analysed. Microplastics have been found in plaques that caused heart attacks and strokes. It has been linked to fertility issues, colon cancer, respiratory issues. People with dementia have been found to have up to five times higher levels of microplastics in their brain than those without. Some evidence suggests that microplastics induce inflammation, cellular stress, cause alterations to genes, disrupt hormones, affect reproduction, metabolism, and our immune systems. Concerningly, the limited knowledge on how microplastics affect our health and how it might be treated, means that our health professionals are not being trained to deal with this threat.
The human health impacts of microplastics are likely to be felt unequally. Much of the world’s plastic waste is produced in the Global North—the US, UK, and Europe. Much of this waste is sent to the Global South—out of sight, out of mind—outsourcing the environmental and health impacts of plastic pollution. Populations living near plastic waste landfills have been shown to have higher levels of microplastics. Microplastic levels in humans, mapped across 109 countries, showed that Southeast Asian countries like Indonesia, Malaysia, and the Philippines, that have served as the worlds garbage bin for decades, have the highest dietary intake of microplastics. This is partly attributable to the high intake of seafood in these countries, but also a result of degradation of large volumes of plastic debris affecting local sites of Agri-and Aquaculture. China has some of the highest rates of inhalation of microplastics, driven by industrialisation and release of microplastic particles during manufacturing processes. There is intergenerational inequality at play here too. Given the relatively recent emergence of plastics into our societal order, it is likely that those in the millennial generation and beyond will bear the health brunt of microplastics, with more and more novel health effects being discovered as the plastic in us increases.
Efforts to reduce global production, consumption, and disposal of plastic waste are sporadic but increasing. Given the challenges in end-of-life management of plastic, the focus is often on reducing production and consumption from the outset—switching off the plastic tap. The Global Plastic Treaty, signed by 175 countries in 2022 commenced negotiations under the UN to establish a legally binding treaty to address the plastic crisis. Other variably successful measures to combat plastic pollution at the national level include packaging taxes and bans on single-use plastic cutlery or bags; while at the organisational level, many companies are committing to reduce plastic waste, or directly tackling plastic waste, such as The Ocean Cleanup, a Dutch nonprofit focused on removing plastic from the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. At the individual level, some consumer behaviour is shifting to adopting reusable items, but this is challenged by the persistence of plastic in most items available for purchase.
Not all efforts are in the direction of positive change. Several states in the US, for example, have active laws that prohibit local governments from enacting plastic bag restrictions. You might have seen the recent Trumpian order unbanning plastic straws. If you have not seen it, you should; he laments how paper straws ‘explode’ when you use them, and one must wonder what he drinks to cause such an explosion. Actions such as these, by political leaders, take the fight against single-use plastic back decades. This is compounded by plastic manufacturer lobbying to weaken efforts such as the Global Plastic Treaty. Recently, for example, plastic lobbyers enacted a disinformation campaign to discredit a historic EU proposal to ban ‘forever chemicals’, or PFAS (per-and polyfluoroalkyl), found in plastic products.
When faced with such political and industry behemoths, plastic pollution might seem a hopeless situation for any individual to take on. But in the spirit of maintaining hope, here are some suggestions for how we can minimise our plastic footprint. You can make purchasing decisions that reduce waste generation, and your exposure to microplastics, such as avoiding single-use items, choosing products in alternative packaging (e.g., natural materials such as wood or bamboo), using reusable packaging, or selecting refillable products. Where possible, you might reuse or recycle your packaging. There are some wonderful initiatives out there that upcycle plastic waste into other products (e.g., shoe soles). If you want to have a wider impact, you might take part in advocacy campaigns, lobby against the lobbyers.
Ultimately, we need individuals to care about, and act on, this issue, industry to accept the harm they are doing and invest in innovative new approaches and alternatives to plastic, researchers to investigate the harm microplastics are doing to the environment and human health and to explore ways to mitigate this, politicians to leverage regulatory and financial tools to reduce plastic pollution, and global efforts to equitably remove and manage the waste that has already been produced. In the health setting, health care providers should remain cognisant of the burgeoning health effects of microplastics. Early positive research findings on the use of worms or strains of bacteria to break down plastic offer hope, but these need to be massively, rapidly, and proactively scaled with urgency to challenge the monumental plastic crisis.
Despite the imminently urgent threat of microplastics, humanity continues to produce, consume, and dispose of millions of tons of single-use plastic every year. One must wonder whether realising that we are now directly harming ourselves from our addiction to plastic use will spur action where seeing its effects on other species did not. Someone more pessimistic, however, might look at humanities persistent attempts to wipe itself out through wars, nuclear bombs, social unrest, climate change, and accept that we are on a path of self-destruction fuelled by a consumptive pattern that lines the pockets of a few. In the absence of collective and urgent efforts to reduce single-use plastic, or the invention of a way to rid our bodies of it, we might have to resign ourselves to a life plagued by micro-plastic induced health conditions. Perhaps the next evolutionary phase of humans might be referred to as Homo plasticus, as we become increasingly ‘plasticised’. At the very least, we might take some satisfaction in the knowledge that Donald Trump and all the industry lobbyers are not immune to the health impacts of microplastics.
