Commentary: Plastic particles are in human lung tissue, intestinal tissue, blood, breast milk, your heart and, worse yet, in both sides of the placenta.
The League of Women Voters Bellingham/Whatcom County Climate Team has been studying the plastic problem and its toxic effect on humans for several years. The problem is as bad as what was reported in the
Salish Current article “
The paradox of plastic” March 19, 2025. The health news is even worse.
Scientists have detected plastic particles in human lung tissue, intestinal tissue, blood, breast milk, your heart and, worse yet, in both sides of the placenta — inside the fetus and in newborn babies.
A new study shows accumulation in the brain is much higher in people with dementia. Further studies are needed to determine if the plastic is implicated in the cause, but those tiny particles never stop leaching their chemical contents. They are like tiny Trojan horses, spilling out chemical additives as long as they are present.
Two of those forever chemicals — bisphenols and phthalates — are known endocrine disrupters. Bisphenols can be found in ordinary kitchen utensils and phthalates are found in many personal care products.
Emerging evidence shows that phthalates may impair neurodevelopment, resulting in impaired cognitive function, learning, attention and impulsivity.
Plastic is everywhere. We blithely added it to recycle bins but when plastic started piling up in Third World countries, we took notice.
Global plastic production had grown from 50 million tons in the 1970s to 460 million tons today. The “miracle material” of the ’40s has turned into a nightmare.
Explosive recent growth in plastic production reflects
a deliberate pivot by fossil-carbon corporations that produce coal, oil and gas and that also manufacture plastics. These corporations are reducing their production of fossil fuels and increasing plastics manufacture. The two principal factors responsible for this pivot are decreasing global demand for carbon-based fuels due to increases in “green” energy, and the massive expansion of oil and gas production due to fracking.
We think that if we recycle correctly, the bits and pieces of plastic can be made into something new — a circular magic trick. No … you must have a bit of old plastic to make new plastic and then none of that plastic old or new really goes away. All those thousands of unregulated chemicals that it takes to make plastic never leave the finished product and last forever. Over 10,000 chemicals in plastics have been identified, and data on more than 2,400 of these chemicals has identified them as substances of concern.
Furthermore,, “[I]ndustry’s plastic recycling proposals are fairy tales. No recycling scheme currently in use or proposed has the ability to absorb the millions of tonnes of plastic scrap expected to be produced in the next 20 years.”
There is also a monetary cost to plastic pollution. The
Annals of Global Health in 2023 conservatively estimated that Americans spent over $1.5 trillion on health costs due to plastic in 2015, but plastic’s economic and social costs are externalized by the petrochemical and plastic manufacturing industry and are borne by citizens, taxpayers, and governments in countries around the world without compensation.
Plastic’s origin is fracked oil and gas, a process that emits methane, a fossil fuel which is actually worse than carbon for global warming. If we are able to convert to clean electric energy, Chevron, Exxon and all the others that extract fossil fuels can turn toward plastic, even though their manufacturing process also emits methane. This creates a lose-lose situation for the climate.
So, what do we do? Check out the
Climate Team page on the League’s website for information on how to reduce your use of plastic.
But maybe California has a
better solution.
In 2024, California and several environmental groups sued Exxon Mobil and other oil and gas companies, accusing them of engaging in a decades-long campaign that helped fuel global plastic waste pollution.
California Attorney General Rob Bonta said, after a two-year investigation, that Exxon was deliberately misleading the public about the limitations of recycling. A recent Congressional investigation concluded that Big Oil companies have shifted from denying the existence of climate change to “deception, disinformation, and doublespeak” about the industry’s role in addressing the climate crisis.
Stay tuned.
By Jayne Freudenberger Co-Chair, Climate Team
League of Women Voter of Bellingham, Whatcom County
For the Salish Current, April 1, 2025