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History of Plastics: Plastics in World War II: Plastics (1944) - CharlieDeanArchives

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Update

Plastic waste at a French recycling plant. Credit... Gerard Julien/Agence France-Presse - Getty Images

Plastic is practically an invasive species.

It's clogging the oceans, littering cities and tainting wilderness areas that are supposed to be pristine.

Single-use plastic items - everything from disposable water bottles to shopping bags handed out like grocery-store door prizes - are among the most invasive forms of plastic. Single-use plastics are inarguably convenient, but those forks from on-the-go meals have to wind up somewhere, and very often, they become litter.

There is no comprehensive global plan to stop their spread.

But places around the world are moving to ban some forms of single-use plastics. Rwanda banned plastic bags in 2008. Washington, D.C., has for years charged 5 cents for plastic bags, and earlier this year banned plastic straws and drink stirrers. Other countries and cities are working on or have enacted their own policies. In some areas, tourism-related businesses are leading the charge.

Here are a few different plans of action that tourist-friendly destinations have for tackling their plastic pollution:

Earlier this month, Barbados enacted a nationwide ban on single-use plastics. It includes food service items from cutlery to Styrofoam containers, and, beginning in January, will be expanded to prohibit plastic shopping bags.

"There will be an immediate sense that Barbados is much tidier and a cleaner location," said Connie Smith, a trustee of the Waste 0 Resources Trust in Barbados, a group that advocates for reducing plastic use.

The goal, according to officials from the country, is to make Barbados more sustainable and protect the island's biggest tourist draw - its natural landscape. Tourism, after all, is a major component of the economy in Barbados.

"Irrespective of whether you're a local or a visitor, everyone is looking to make more responsible choices," said Petra Roach, the U.S. director of Barbados Tourism Marketing. "We need to be extremely protective of the space that we have."

The officials from Barbados said most businesses and residents supported the new policy, and that educating visitors was fairly easy because many tourists who come to the island live in places that already have some form of their own plastic bans.

Many businesses there offer or will offer biodegradable or compostable alternatives to plastic food service items, but visitors are also encouraged to bring their own containers, like reusable coffee mugs.

"The reality is that we are on a movement toward greater sustainability," Ms. Smith said.

The West Coast is often seen as an incubator for progressive environmental policies, and Seattle is among the locales leading the charge on reducing plastic waste.

In 2012, the city enacted a ban on plastic bags, and earlier this year started enforcing a long-planned ban on plastic food service items. So far, according to city tourism officials and business leaders, the policies have gotten little pushback.

"It's been accepted broadly and widely as the right thing to do," said Tom Norwalk, president and chief executive of Visit Seattle. "It's something people have come to expect when they visit Seattle and the Northwest, that we have an extreme sensitivity to sustainability."

Overall, he said, locals largely support the policies, and many visitors to the city are environmentally conscious. Even those that aren't generally respect the plastic regulations. Business owners, too, said the bans don't cause too much friction, and in some cases present teaching opportunities about environmental issues.

"When people see it, they're curious about what we're doing," said Bob Donegan, president of Ivar's Restaurants, a chain of more than 20 restaurants around Washington state, with five restaurants in Seattle. The cutlery and plates used in the restaurants are now compostable, and the drinking straws biodegradable. He explained that at the chain's counter-service locations, guests have to sort their own garbage into appropriate bins - trash, recycling and compost. During the height of the summer tourist season, his busiest restaurants assign staffers to help unfamiliar diners throw things away properly.

In 2014, Scotland instituted a 5 pence charge for plastic shopping bags. Although they're not banned outright, the country saw an 80 percent reduction in plastic bag use in the fee's first year.

As a result, there's less plastic litter spread around Scotland's famed wilderness.

"It's very important that we protect it and maintain it for its own sake but also for the tourism," said Janie Neumann, Visit Scotland's industry development manager for sustainability. She added that educating people about ways to reduce their waste and protect the environment makes them more motivated to do so. "Consumer awareness in a way is driving change."

Scotland, along with the larger British and European Union governments, is considering legislation to introduce more stringent plastic policies, including laws that would ban straws or plastic food packaging.

In Cambodia, a country that uses about 4.6 million plastic water bottles per month, the manager of a boutique hotel wanted to effect change on his own.

Christian De Boer, the managing director of Jaya House River Park in Siem Reap, started a mission to reduce plastic water bottle waste in 2017. The Refill Not Landfill campaign is a voluntary program for hotels and restaurants to offer their guests reusable water bottles and make free filling stations accessible to participants. The bottles feature a square-shaped QR code that thirsty users can scan to find the nearest refill site.

The campaign is expanding across Southeast Asia and Oceania, and Mr. De Boer said he hopes it can be a model for plastic reduction worldwide, especially in places where clean drinking water is already available at the tap.

"We all know that we need to reduce, we all know that we need to make bigger efforts." Mr. De Boer said. Guests in his hotel are usually excited by the program and he hasn't had anyone ask for a plastic water bottle since it started. "I honestly think the world is ready for this."
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Tackling the Plastic Problem, One City (or Country) at a Time

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Update Plastic is practically an invasive species. It's clogging the oceans, littering cities and tainting wilderness areas that are supposed to be pristine. Single-use plastic items - everything from disposable water bottles to shopping bags handed out like grocery-store door prizes - are among the most invasive forms of plastic.

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Explore National Geographic. A world leader in geography, cartography and exploration.

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From cell phones and computers to bicycle helmets and hospital IV bags, plastic has molded society in many ways that make life both easier and safer. But the synthetic material also has left harmful imprints on the environment and perhaps human health, according to a new compilation of articles authored by scientists from around the world.

More than 60 scientists contributed to the new report, which aims to present the first comprehensive review of the impact of plastics on the environment and human health, and offer possible solutions.

"One of the most ubiquitous and long-lasting recent changes to the surface of our planet is the accumulation and fragmentation of plastics," wrote David Barnes, a lead author and researcher for the British Antarctic Survey. The report was published this month in a theme issue of Philosophical Transactions of The Royal Society B, a scientific journal.

As the scrutiny of the environmental toll of plastic increases, so has its usage, the scientists reported.

Since its mass production began in the 1940s, plastic's wide range of unique properties has propelled it to an essential status in society. Next year, more than 300 million tons will be produced worldwide. The amount of plastic manufactured in the first ten years of this century will approach the total produced in the entire last century, according to the report.

"Plastics are very long-lived products that could potentially have service over decades, and yet our main use of these lightweight, inexpensive materials are as single-use items that will go to the garbage dump within a year, where they'll persist for centuries," Richard Thompson, lead editor of the report, said in an interview.

Evidence is mounting that the chemical building blocks that make plastics so versatile are the same components that might harm people and the environment. And its production and disposal contribute to an array of environmental problems, too. For example:

* Chemicals added to plastics are absorbed by human bodies. Some of these compounds have been found to alter hormones or have other potential human health effects.

* Plastic debris, laced with chemicals and often ingested by marine animals, can injure or poison wildlife.

* Floating plastic waste, which can survive for thousands of years in water, serves as mini transportation devices for invasive species, disrupting habitats.

* Plastic buried deep in landfills can leach harmful chemicals that spread into groundwater.

* Around 4 percent of world oil production is used as a feedstock to make plastics, and a similar amount is consumed as energy in the process.

People are exposed to chemicals from plastic multiple times per day through the air, dust, water, food and use of consumer products.

For example, phthalates are used as plasticizers in the manufacture of vinyl flooring and wall coverings, food packaging and medical devices. Eight out of every ten babies, and nearly all adults, have measurable levels of phthalates in their bodies.

In addition, bisphenol A (BPA), found in polycarbonate bottles and the linings of food and beverage cans, can leach into food and drinks. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported that 93 percent of people had detectable levels of BPA in their urine.
The report noted that the high exposure of premature infants in neonatal intensive care units to both BPA and phthalates is of "great concern."

Polybrominated diphenyl ethers or PBDEs, which are flame-retardants added to polyurethane foam furniture cushions, mattresses, carpet pads and automobile seats, also are widespread.
The plastics industry maintains that its products are safe after decades of testing.
"Every additive that we use is very carefully evaluated, not just by the industry, but also independently by government agencies to look at all the materials we use in plastics," said Mike Neal, a consumer and environmental affairs specialist at PlasticsEurope, an industry trade association, and a co-author of the report.

But some of these chemicals have been shown to affect reproduction and development in animal studies, according to the report. Some studies also have linked these chemicals with adverse effects in people, including reproductive abnormalities.

"We have animal literature, which shows direct links between exposure and adverse health outcomes, the limited human studies, and the fact that 90 to 100 percent of the population has measurable levels of these compounds in their bodies," said John Meeker, an assistant professor of environmental health sciences at the University of Michigan School of Public Health and a lead author. "You take the whole picture and it does raise concerns, but more research is needed."

Shanna Swan, director of the University of Rochester's Center for Reproductive Epidemiology, conducted studies that found an association between pregnant women's exposure to phthalates and altered genital development in their baby boys.

Also, people with the highest exposure to BPA have an increased rate of heart disease and diabetes, according to one recent study. Animal tests studies of PBDEs have revealed the potential for damaging the developing brain and the reproductive system.
Yet the effects on human health remain largely unknown. To help shed more light on the issue, the report recommends more sophisticated human studies.

"It's tough to have a smoking gun with a single animal study or observational human study," Meeker said. "We need to have different types of studies indicating a consistent pattern to more definitively determine health effects resulting from these chemicals."

But testing humans for endocrine disruptors can be tricky because phthalates and BPA pass through the body so quickly. In addition, tests for each chemical cost about $100 a pop.
Deciding which chemicals to test and at what dose is also an issue. To date, most studies have addressed single chemicals, and there are limited data on the interactions between chemicals. Compounding the problem is the discovery that endocrine disrupting chemicals may have effects at doses lower than those used in the Environmental Protection Agency's standard toxicity tests.

Swan said the old model of testing should be thrown out and that the new goal should be tests that mimic real human exposure.

"It's a very complicated picture and the laboratory model of just taking one isolated chemical and giving it to a genetically pure strain of rats in clean cages, clean air and clean water and seeing what it does just doesn't come close to mimicking the human situation," she said.

Many researchers recommend studies that test pregnant women as well as their children. The National Children's Study will do just that by examining environmental influences on more than 100,000 children across the United States, following them from before birth until age 21.

"There are so many questions now with these chemicals in relation to cardiovascular disease, age and puberty, obesity, developmental disorders," said Swan. "We don't know what's causing it, only hints, so the beauty of the National Children's Study is that we can look at all of these endpoints and it should reveal a lot of answers."

Plastic's problems extend beyond the human body, according to the report. More than one-third of all plastic is disposable packaging like bottles and bags, many of which end up littering the environment.

Although the image of a bird tangled in a plastic necklace is by now burned into the public's eye, ingestion of plastic fragments is much more common. Once inside, plastic can pack a one-two punch by both clogging an animal's stomach and poisoning it with chemicals that have concentrated in the plastic. Some chemicals are then transferred to the food web when animals eat them.

More than 180 species of animals have been documented to ingest plastic debris, including birds, fish, turtles and marine mammals, according to the report.

Unfortunately, collecting data on plasticizers' impacts on wildlife suffers the same pitfalls as studying human health. Still, there is already evidence that chemicals associated plastics might harm wildlife.

For example, laboratory studies have shown that phthalates and BPA affect reproduction in all studied animal groups and impair development in crustaceans and amphibians.

"While there is clear evidence that these chemicals have adverse effects at environmentally relevant concentrations in laboratory studies, there is a need for further research to establish population-level effects in the natural environment," according to the report.

Charles Tyler, a professor at the University of Exeter School of Biosciences in the United Kingdom and a senior author of the report, said that scientists have shown that "some of these chemical compounds are getting into the environment and are in some environments at concentrations where they can produce biological effects in a range of wildlife species."
Traveling from coast to coast, plastic can endure for thousands of years due to the reduced UV exposure and lower temperatures of aquatic habitats.

Barnes demonstrates plastic's mobility with his account of a plastic sighting during an expedition to the Amundsen Sea where he took biological samples, the first there ever. The Amundsen, located in the Pacific Sector of Antarctica, is the only sea in Antarctica with no research station on its coast and the nearest urban center thousands of miles away.

"Even for us, getting in was a challenge because there's so much ice and it's so difficult to get there," said Barnes. "But even in that remotest of environments, there was plastic floating on the sea surface.

Plastic also serves as a floating transportation device that allows alien species to hitchhike to unfamiliar parts of the world, threatening biodiversity. Global warming further aids the process by making previously inhospitable areas like the Arctic livable for invasive species, which can be detrimental to local species.

For example, plastic items are commonly colonized by barnacles, tubeworms and algae. Along the shore of Adelaide Island, west of the Antarctic Peninsula, ten species of invertebrates were found attached to plastic strapping that was littering the ice.

"Raising the temperature just one degree can make the difference between getting to someplace and actually surviving once you get there," said Barnes.

Plastic is so resilient that even burying it deep within the earth doesn't keep it from impacting the environment. Currently it accounts for approximately 10 percent of generated waste, most of which is landfilled. But, as the report notes, placing plastics in a landfill may simply be storing a problem for the future, as plastic's chemicals often sink into nearby land, contaminating groundwater.

In addition, production of plastics is a major user of fossil fuels. Eight percent of world oil production goes to manufacturing plastics.

As plastics grow in volume at a rate of about nine percent each year, the authors emphasize that tackling its problems means addressing its sustainability.

One solution is to treat plastic as a reusable material rather than as a disposable commodity that's quickly discarded. That means making plastic more easily recyclable from the get-go by using fewer materials in the manufacturing process and increasing recycling facility availability.
"The recycling message is simple; both industry and society need to regard end-of-life items, including plastics, as raw materials rather than waste," stated the report.

Increasing the availability of biodegradable plastic, which can be made from renewable materials from plants such as corn and soy, is another option.

"Biodegradable plastics have the potential to solve a number of waste-management issues, especially for disposable packaging that cannot be easily separated from organic waste in catering or from agricultural applications," according to the report.

However, currently production capacity for biodegradable plastics worldwide is around only 350,000 tons, representing less than 0.2 percent of petrochemical-based plastic. In addition, "most of these materials are unlikely to degrade quickly in natural habitats, and there is concern that degradable, oil-based polymers could merely disintegrate into small pieces that are not in themselves any more degradable than conventional plastic," stated the report.

To help mitigate the potentially harmful chemicals in plastics, the authors recommend that more studies be conducted on the biological mechanisms that may be affected by plastic additives and in particular, low-dose chronic exposures.

In the meantime, the report recommends reducing the use of these chemicals and developing safer alternatives, a strategy known as green chemistry.

"Had this approach been in place 50 years ago it would probably have prevented the development of chemicals that are recognized as likely endocrine disruptors," the report said.

The report also suggests that plastic waste can be reduced by using labels that allow consumers to choose packaging based on a lifecycle analysis that includes all components of the manufacturing process. For example, if the product were made of mostly recycled materials, used minimal packaging and could be easily recycled, it would get a green dot. If the product were made of excessive packaging that used a lot of virgin materials, it would get a red dot.

"Personally, I feel that's the way to do it, rather than a knee jerk reaction where legislation says we can't use certain types of plastic," said Thompson. "Having that information will help drive the system because I think consumers are keen to make the right choice when provided with all the information."

Neal of PlasticsEurope said consumers, not the industry, are responsible for making sure plastics don't wind up littering the environment.

"In my view the responsibility is fairly and squarely on the consumer," he said. "People tend to pick on plastics because perhaps it's the most visible form of litter and because it's lightweight so it can move around a bit, but actually it's only a small part of the litter problem."

The authors said that if plastics are made and used responsibly, they can help solve some environmental problems.

For example, one study found that packaging beverages in PET (a type of plastic) versus glass or metal reduces energy use by 52 percent and greenhouse gas emissions by 55 percent. And, solar water heaters containing plastics can provide up to two-thirds of a household's annual hot water demand, reducing energy consumption.

Plastics, if used wisely, "have the potential to reduce mankind's footprint on the Earth," Thompson said.
This article originally ran at Environmental Health News, a news source published by Environmental Health Sciences, a nonprofit media company.

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Jessica A. Knoblauch, Environmental Health News

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Plastic Not-So-Fantastic: How the Versatile Material Harms the Environment and Human Health

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From cell phones and computers to bicycle helmets and hospital IV bags, plastic has molded society in many ways that make life both easier and safer. But the synthetic material also has left harmful imprints on the environment and perhaps human health, according to a new compilation of articles authored by scientists from around the world.

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Millions of tons of tiny debris from plastic bags, bottles and clothes in the world's oceans present a serious threat to human health and marine ecosystems.

This is the stark warning issued by the United Nations in a report on the most dangerous environmental problems facing the world today.

Global plastic production has increased dramatically in recent years. Between 2004 and 2014, the amount of plastic produced rose by 38 per cent, the report said.

And poor waste disposal means when we have finished with our takeaway containers, cigarette butts and party balloons, they are worn down into trillions of ever-smaller particles by the waves.

There is a growing presence of these microplastics, particles of under 5mm in length, in the world's oceans.

In 2010, between 4.8 million and 12.7 million tons of plastic was washed into the seas and has since shown up in the stomachs of whales, plankton and other marine life.

"There is some evidence that microplastics can cause harm [to organisms]," Richard Thompson, professor of marine biology at Plymouth University, told The Independent.

Dr Thompson said that in laboratory experiments, replacing one per cent of the sediment in a worm tank with plastic had a negative effect on the worms' ability to store energy.

"If we carry on with business as usual - it's not uncomparable - then we are going to reach those thresholds," he said, adding that there may be places in the world's oceans that have not yet been discovered where microplastics are particularly concentrated.

More than a quarter of all fish now contain plastic, according to a recent study which analysed the guts of fish sold at markets in Indonesia and California.

The United Nations Environment Project report will be presented at the UN Environment Assembly in Nairobi, which starts on Monday.

Scientists fear that chemicals in plastics and also chemicals which attach themselves to plastic in the natural environment could cause poisoning, infertility and genetic disruption in marine life, and potentially in humans if ingested in high quantities.

"The presence of microplastic in foodstuffs could potentially increase direct exposure of plastic-associated chemicals to humans and may present an attributable risk to human health," the UN report, called Frontiers, said.

People could even be breathing in plastic microparticles suspended in the air, with the risk of a noxious effect on the lungs similar to car fumes.

What are #microplastics? Find out more about our inquiry on the environmental impacts: https://t.co/kMBD4vpExr https://t.co/5dcT5Gmsfe
- Env Audit Committee (@CommonsEAC) May 19, 2016

Some areas of the world have higher concentrations of microplastics than others. East Asia is one of the worst affected places, with 27 times more plastic found in the seas around Japan than elsewhere in the world.

A vast "plastic soup" of waste floating in the Pacific Ocean, known as the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, could stretch to twice the size of Texas. Similar patches are found in the other oceans.

The impact is global, with microplastics found in places as far-flung as a Mongolian mountain lake and in deep sea sediments, said scientist Jacquie McGlade at a recent UN conference.

Last year, volunteers on 30 boats travelled to the area where the waste is said to be, and reported that most of the waste there was large rather than microscopic.

"It was a good illustration of why it is such an urgent thing to clean up, because if we don't clean it up soon, then we'll give the big plastic time to break into smaller and smaller pieces," Boyan Slat told the Associated Press.

Mr Slat, 21, is a Dutch student who has developed a technology he says could sift dangerous plastic particles out of the ocean, and sell them on for profit.

Microplastics have been detected in environments as remote as a Mongolian mountain lake & deep sea sediments -@JacquieMcGlade at #SCIPO16
- UN Environment (@UNEP) May 20, 2016

Other environmental concerns highlighted by the UN report included the surge in epidemics of diseases passed from animals to humans, such as Zika, Ebola and bird flu,

The report also warned that drought and rising temperatures related to climate change can result in toxic contamination of essential crops such as maize, wheat and barley.

It predicted a 2C rise in global temperatures would cause an increase in fungal toxins on these crops - which can cause cancer and stunt the growth of foetuses - warning this could become a food safety issue in Europe.

Worries over the use of 'microbeads', small plastic pieces used as an exfoliating agent in soap and make-up, has caused a number of cosmetics companies, including Clarins, Estée Lauder and Proctor & Gamble, to pledge to remove them from products.

Synthetic fibres released into the world's waters through tiny fibres from artificial fabrics like fleeces and polyester in washing machines are also one of the biggest causes of plastic pollution in the ocean, the report said.

And while plastic bags and other items labelled as 'biodegradable' may seem a good solution, in most cases they will only break down in temperatures over 50C - much lower than the conditions found in the sea, where many end up.

The UK parliament has called for a Q&A session on the environmental impact of microplastics on 24 May, with speakers from the British Plastics Federation, the Marine Conservation Society, and the Environmental Investigation Agency.

Dr Thompson recommended that people avoid using products with microbeads, and to make sure they disposed of all plastic products in an appropriate way, by recycling if possible.

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The growing threat from plastic pollution to human health

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Millions of tons of tiny debris from plastic bags, bottles and clothes in the world's oceans present a serious threat to human health and marine ecosystems. This is the stark warning issued by the United Nations in a report on the most dangerous environmental problems facing the world today.

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http://www.ecowatch.com/22-facts-about-plastic-pollution-and-10-things-we-can-do-about-it-1881885971.html

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Students play outside new school classrooms made out of plastic bricks in Abidjan, Ivory Coast. Credit... Yagazie Emezi for The New York Times

ABIDJAN, Ivory Coast - She left home before dawn. Her four children were still asleep in her cement block house in Abobo, a maze of shops and houses occupied by dockworkers, taxi drivers, factory laborers and street sellers.

She and a friend crossed into the upscale neighborhood of Angré, home to doctors and businessmen. They tossed the plastic castoffs of the consumer class into bags slung over their shoulders as the cocks crowed and the sun peeked over villa walls draped with bougainvillea.

Mariam Coulibaly is part of a legion of women in Abidjan who make their living picking up plastic waste on the city streets and selling it for recycling. Now they are lead players in a project that turns trash into plastic bricks to build schools across the country.

They are working with a Colombian company to convert plastic waste - a scourge of modern life - into an asset that will help women earn a decent living while cleaning up the environment and improving education.

She sees it as a chance to better her life, maybe even to rise into the middle class.

"We don't get good prices" from the current buyers, Ms. Coulibaly said. "This will help us."

In the past year, the venture has built nine demonstration classrooms out of recycled plastic bricks in Gonzagueville, a scrappy neighborhood on the outskirts of Abidjan, and in two small farming villages, Sakassou and Divo. The first schools were built with bricks imported from Colombia. But in the fall, a factory now rising in an Abidjan industrial park will begin making the bricks locally.

The new plastic-brick classrooms are badly needed. Some classrooms now pack in 90 students, according to the country's education minister. The company building the factory, Conceptos Plásticos, has a contract with UNICEF to deliver 528 classrooms for about 26,400 students, at 50 students per classroom.

In the tiny village of Sakassou, people draw water from the well with a foot pump, raise pigs and chickens, and cook over open fires. Until this year, the children went to school in a traditional mud-brick and wood building. The mud brick eroded in the sun and rain and had to be constantly repaired.

But the three new plastic classrooms could last practically forever. The interlocking bricks look like black and gray Legos. They are fire retardant and stay cool in hot weather. The other day, villagers used one of the brightly decorated classrooms to hold a village meeting.

"This is ten times better," said Joachim Koffi Konan, the school director in Sakassou.

An older classroom made out of mud in a state of disrepair. Mud bricks are harder to maintain. Credit... Yagazie Emezi for The New York Times

The interior of the first classroom built out of plastic bricks in the school in Gonzagueville. Credit... Yagazie Emezi for The New York Times

The project would be impossible without the organizing skills of Ms. Coulibaly, president of a 200-strong women's community association called "The Fighting Women."

She has been collecting trash for about twenty years, since she was 15. Her husband drives a woro-woro, a shared taxi.

After collecting trash the other morning, she went home to do the housework, then returned to work at night, this time in the vast open-air market of Adjamé at closing time.

She and other women waltzed through dimly lit alleyways, past the fishmonger and the tailor still bent over his sewing machine. They even picked up the small bags of plastic used to sell a quick gulp of water on the street.

While the women wait for the factory to open, they sell their plastic to middlemen - most are men - at a recycling market in Abobo-Baoulé.

On a recent Saturday, one of the buyers, a former yam pushcart vendor named Sidibé Moussa, weighed each woman's plastic harvest by hanging it from a hand-held bronze scale. He resells the plastic to a factory that recycles it into chairs, sandals and basins. Bottles are often washed, filled with juice and resold on the street.

At the recycling market, the women multitasked, drying attiéké, a manioc couscous, on plastic tarps spread on the ground among the palm trees and the mesh bags of plastic waste. Women and children crushed aluminum cans by hand, pounding them with the same type of large wooden pestles used to make foufou, a staple made of plantains and cassava.

The country's official minimum wage is roughly $25 per week, though many people earn far less. The women say they earn $8.50 to $17 a week.

Ms. Coulibaly puts her money into private school tuition for her three school-age children, who tell her they want to become a pilot, a doctor and a police officer.

The women in the association each contribute some money to a fund which is then redistributed, ensuring that even a woman who is sick will receive some income.

When they start selling to the factory, they may be able to double or triple their income, the company says. That's because the factory will buy types of plastic, like snack packaging and cellphone parts, that the women cannot sell now.

Some of Ms. Coulibaly's neighbors have suggested that she and the other women will be exploited. But she said she is confident that the project will deliver the higher pay, equipment and sacks that have been promised.

The project has the blessing of Kandia Camara, Ivory Coast's outspoken education minister, who says it can only lift women up.

"For us, it's not a humiliating profession," Ms. Camara said in an interview at her office, decorated with photographs of her with other prominent women, like Ivanka Trump and Christine Lagarde, the former chairman of the International Monetary Fund. "It is a job organized for them, their financial autonomy, their dignity, family, society, and their contribution to the development of the country."

The project was the brainchild of Aboubacar Kampo, a medical doctor, who just ended a term as Ivory Coast representative for UNICEF. He recruited Conceptos Plásticos, a for-profit plastic recycling company with a social mission of building housing and creating jobs for poor people. The founders of the company, Oscar Andrés Méndez and his wife, Isabel Cristina Gámez, agreed to work with Dr. Kampo after visiting Ivory Coast last year.

They were moved by the sight of women, carrying babies, picking up trash in Akouedo, a landfill notorious as a dumping site for hazardous waste, and thought they could help. "It had a big impact for us," Mr. Méndez said.

The couple moved to Abidjan in June to get the project up and running, and they are planning to expand into other parts of West Africa.

They expect to employ 30 people at the factory and to buy plastic from about 1,000 women in its first year of operation.

The first few classrooms cost about $14,500 each, compared to $16,500 for a cement classroom, said Mr. Méndez. He expects the price to drop about 20 percent when the bricks are made locally.

There is no shortage of plastic waste. Abidjan produces about 300 tons of it a day, but only 5 percent of it is recycled, the project organizers say. Each classroom takes about five tons of plastic trash to build.

Dr. Kampo envisions expanding to plastic housing for teachers and latrines for schools. The teachers in Sakassou share houses while their families are housed in other villages. In Gonzagueville, there are 14 latrines for 2,700 children and their teachers.

Before all this happened, the leader of the Fighting Women had been considering a new line of work: selling cold drinks.

But now, Ms. Coulibaly says, "We think there is a future in plastic."

Loucoumane Coulibaly contributed reporting from Abidjan, Ivory Coast.

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Less Trash, More Schools - One Plastic Brick at a Time

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ABIDJAN, Ivory Coast - She left home before dawn. Her four children were still asleep in her cement block house in Abobo, a maze of shops and houses occupied by dockworkers, taxi drivers, factory laborers and street sellers. She and a friend crossed into the upscale neighborhood of Angré, home to doctors and businessmen.

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The numbers are staggering: There are 5.25 trillion pieces of plastic debris in the ocean. Of that mass, 269,000 tons float on the surface, while some four billion plastic microfibers per square kilometer litter the deep sea.

Scientists call these statistics the "wow factor" of ocean trash. The tallies, published last year in three separate scientific papers, are useful in red-flagging the scope of the problem for the public. But beyond the shock value, just how does adding up those rice-size fragments of plastic help solve the problem?

Although scientists have known for decades about the accumulating mass of ocean debris and its deadly consequences for seabirds, fish, and marine animals, the science of sea trash is young and full of as-yet unsolved mysteries. Almost nothing was known about the amount of plastic in remote regions of the Southern Hemisphere, for example, until last year because few had ever traveled there to collect samples. (Related: " With Millions of Tons of Plastic in Oceans, More Scientists Studying Impact.")

"The first piece is to understand where it is," says Kara Lavender Law, an oceanographer at the Sea Education Association in Woods Hole, Massachusetts.

Indeed, until scientists learn more about where ocean trash is, how densely plastic accumulates in different ocean ecosystems, and how it degrades, they can't really calculate the damage it's causing. There are still big, basic questions: As it degrades, do plastic toxins seep into the marine environment? If so, how and in what amounts?

And though scientists know a great deal about the damage to marine life caused by large pieces of plastic, the potential harm caused by microplastics is less clear. What effect do they have on fish that consume them?

"The greater the concentration, the greater the potential risk for exposure," says Richard Thompson, a biologist at Plymouth University in England, whose study released last month identified microfibers widely disseminated throughout the deep ocean. "If we are missing a major sink where there are major concentrations of plastic, we might not be learning how harmful plastics are." (Related: " First of Its Kind Map Reveals Extent of Ocean Plastic.")

The most recent counts add significantly to the knowledge base, yet even those big numbers are a fraction of the plastic that flows into the oceans every year. Where's the rest of it? It's another mystery. (Related: " Where Has All the (Sea Trash) Plastic Gone?")

We are dealing with pieces from hundreds of meters down to microns in size," Thompson says. "It is incredibly challenging to monitor."

Ocean trash is counted in three ways: through beach surveys, computer models based on samples collected at sea, and estimates of the amount of trash entering the oceans.

The most recent counts involved computer modeling based on samples taken at sea. The models may not account for all of the trash, scientists say; nonetheless, the new numbers are helping address some of the questions.

The process of collecting and counting is meticulous, time-consuming work. It took Marcus Eriksen, co-founder of the 5 Gyres Institute, a nonprofit ocean advocacy group, more than four years, using samples gathered from 24 survey trips, to come up with his estimate that 5.25 trillion pieces of debris float on the surface.

In the course of his expeditions, Eriksen collected everything from plastic candy wrappers to giant balls of fish netting. One massive ball of netting, found midway across the Pacific, contained 89 different kinds of net and line, all wrapped around a tiny, two-inch-high teddy bear wearing a sorcerer's cap at the center.

He says his research has helped fill in the outlines of the life cycle of ocean plastic. It tends to collect in the world's five large gyres, which are large systems of spiraling currents. Then, as the plastic degrades into fragments, it falls into deeper water, where currents carry it to remote parts of the globe.

"These fragments are anywhere on the planet at this point," he says. "We're finding them everywhere."

Eriksen's findings agree with those of a Spanish scientist, Andres Cozar Cabañas, a researcher at the University of Cadiz, in Spain, who published the first global map of floating ocean debris last July. Their estimates are strikingly similar.

"We now have two estimates of what is floating, and they are almost identical," says Lavender Law. "They used different data sets and different methodology and came up with the same number. That gives us confidence we're in the right ballpark."

Another way of coming up with the numbers is to make crude guesses based on manufacturing statistics. Says Jenna Jambeck, a University of Georgia environmental engineer who is completing a worldwide calculation of garbage collected in coastal countries: "If you have 200 million tons produced every year, researchers will arbitrarily estimate that 10 percent goes into the oceans."

It's not too difficult to surmise why so much plastic ends up in the ocean. The Plastic Disclosure Project, a project run by Hong Kong-based advocacy group Ocean Recovery Alliance, estimates that 33 percent of plastic manufactured worldwide is used once, then discarded. To compound matters, 85 percent of the world's plastic is not recycled.

Despite the magnitude of the numbers, Peter Ryan, a zoologist at the University of Cape Town, South Africa, who is writing a book tracing the evolution of marine debris research, says the problem can be solved.

"Marine debris, unlike global warming, should be an easy thing to deal with," he says. "We have to sort out what to do with our rubbish."

Ryan began tracking debris 30 years ago, after a colleague suggested he should study seabirds that were eating floating plastic pellets, then commonly used in manufacturing and found in harbors and other waterways. Improvements to shipping reduced pellet spillage.

"If you go to the beach today, you struggle to find one," he says. "We can show that in every study that looks at the North Atlantic that the amount of pellets [ingested by] seabirds has decreased over the last two decades."

But gains on that front have given way to losses in others, as microplastics have become more prevalent.

Emily Penn skippers the 72-foot, steel-hulled Sea Dragon, which carries scientists, including Eriksen and Jambeck, on sea trash sampling surveys. She expertly handles the nets trawled behind the vessel and knows what to expect. Nevertheless, she is still surprised and dismayed by the volume of trash.

"The thing that shocks me every time is the fact that the ocean looks like it is clear blue water," she says. "And then ... we pull out that sock at the end of the net and find it's full of thousands of fragments of plastic."

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Ocean Trash: 5.25 Trillion Pieces and Counting, but Big Questions Remain

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The numbers are staggering: There are 5.25 trillion pieces of plastic debris in the ocean. Of that mass, 269,000 tons float on the surface, while some four billion plastic microfibers per square kilometer litter the deep sea. Scientists call these statistics the "wow factor" of ocean trash.

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Exposure to hormone-disrupting chemicals is likely leading to an increased risk of serious health problems costing at least $175 billion (U.S.) per year in Europe alone, according to a study published Thursday.

Chemicals that can mimic or block estrogen or other hormones are commonly found in thousands of products around the world, including plastics, pesticides, furniture, and cosmetics.

The new research estimated health care costs in Europe, where policymakers are debating whether to enact the world's first regulations targeting endocrine disruptors. The European Union's controversial strategy, if approved, would have a profound effect on industries and consumer products worldwide.

Linda Birnbaum, the leading environmental health official in the U.S. government, called the new findings, which include four published papers, "a wake-up call" for policymakers and health experts.

"If you applied these [health care] numbers to the U.S., they would be applicable, and in some cases higher," says Birnbaum, director of the U.S. National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences.

The researchers detailed the costs related to three types of conditions: neurological effects, such as attention deficit disorders; obesity and diabetes; and male reproductive disorders, including infertility.

The biggest estimated costs, by far, were associated with chemicals' reported effects on children's developing brains. Numerous studies have linked widely used pesticides and flame retardants to neurological disorders and altered thyroid hormones, which are essential for proper prenatal brain development.

The researchers concluded that there is a greater than 99 percent chance that endocrine-disrupting chemicals are contributing to the diseases, according to the studies published in the Journal of Clinical Endocrinology and Metabolism.
Tip of the Chemical Iceberg
The estimate was limited to a handful of chemicals commonly found in human bodies: bisphenol-A (BPA), used in hard plastics, food-can linings, and paper receipts; two phthalates used as plasticizers in vinyl products; DDE, the breakdown product of the banned insecticide DDT; organophosphate pesticides, including one called chlorpyrifos used on grain, fruit, and other crops; and brominated flame retardants known as PBDEs that were extensively used in furniture foams until they were banned in Europe and the United States.

BPA, DDE, and the phthalates were examined for their links to obesity and diabetes, phthalates for male reproductive effects, and flame retardants and organophosphate pesticides for neurological effects.

Together, these represent about 5 percent of endocrine disruptors-or "the tip of the proverbial iceberg," says Leonardo Trasande, an associate professor of pediatrics and environmental medicine at New York University School of Medicine. He was the main study's lead author.

"The chemicals were chosen based on the quality and amount of available evidence," says Bruce Blumberg, a University of California, Irvine, professor of developmental and cell biology and co-author of the obesity and diabetes paper.

Evidence linking the pesticides and flame retardants to neurological effects was the strongest, showing "near certainty of causation," Trasande wrote in a summary.

The researchers also reported that chemicals contribute "substantially" to obesity, diabetes, and male reproductive disorders. Those findings were based on previous research, largely in the United States and Europe, that tracked the exposures and health of people over extended periods of time.

The estimated health care cost associated with chemicals in plastics is at least $28 billion per year, according to the researchers.

Nevertheless, at the heart of the debate about endocrine disruptors is whether the science has adequately established that they actually are contributing to increases in human disorders.

Daniel Dietrich, a toxicologist at University of Konstanz in Germany, questions whether the traces of chemicals that people encounter through products, food, and environment are large enough to cause harm. He also questions whether hormone disruption itself should be considered a health effect, an issue which is central to the European Union's policy debate.

"You can only judge on the available science. Maybe in 30 years we will judge this differently," says Dietrich, who has served on European Union science panels and is a former adviser to a chemical industry-funded group called the European Centre for Ecotoxicology and Toxicology of Chemicals, or ECETOC.

Representatives of pesticide-manufacturing companies criticized the report, saying that "to ascribe these disorders to endocrine disrupting chemicals in the environment is misleading and potentially harmful." Pesticides undergo thorough testing for effects, and "based on the results for estrogenic activity, pesticides are not of concern," according to a statement by the trade group CropLife America. Some pesticides, however, have been linked in some studies to estrogenic and other hormonal effects.

Chemical manufacturers expressed similar concerns, saying without proven health effects, the study could "create potentially unnecessary public health concerns" and misallocation of scarce funds.
Neurological Effects Most Costly
To arrive at their cost estimates, the researchers used data that their expert panels agreed provided "the strongest causal evidence," Trasande says. To calculate the likelihood of a particular chemical causing a specific health effect, they used methods previously developed by the U.S. Institute of Medicine, the World Health Organization, and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. This enabled them to calculate each chemical's contribution to the prevalence of a disorder, then assign a value to the health care costs.

"A major surprise was that the neurological effects were the most costly," totaling at least $146 billion per year, says study co-author Philippe Grandjean, a professor of environmental medicine at the University of Southern Denmark and an adjunct professor at Harvard's T. H. Chan School of Public Health. Those estimated costs included treatment as well as providing special education and other services for children and others with lower IQs or learning or behavioral disorders.

On its own, hormone disruption is not a health effect, Grandjean says, but it leads to "very important adverse effects and is something we can test for and therefore prevent."

Birnbaum, who did not participate in the new research, said evidence is mounting that people's health is being jeopardized by an array of commonly used chemicals.

"The point is that there is a wide variety of effects being seen in the general population related to endocrine-disrupting chemicals. We have increasing amount of data raising concerns about their use," Birnbaum says. "We are seeing effects from [chemical] levels that are present in the general population."

To put $175 billion in perspective, it is more than the combined proposed 2016 budgets for the U.S. Department of Education, Department of Health and Human Services, National Park Service, and Environmental Protection Agency combined.

"The overall estimates in my opinion are very conservative," says study co-author R. Thomas Zoeller, a University of Massachusetts, Amherst biology professor who specializes in chemicals that disrupt thyroid hormones.

Following years of analysis, the European Commission is now reviewing more than 27,000 public comments on its controversial proposal defining endocrine-disrupting chemicals. A lawsuit has been filed against the commission by Denmark, Sweden, and the EU Council of Ministers over failing to meet a December 2013 legal deadline for introducing this definition.

The European Commission expects to complete an "impact assessment" of potential regulation of the chemicals in 2016, an effort begun in 2013.

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Chemical Exposure Linked to Billions in Health Care Costs

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Exposure to hormone-disrupting chemicals is likely leading to an increased risk of serious health problems costing at least $175 billion (U.S.) per year in Europe alone, according to a study published Thursday. Chemicals that can mimic or block estrogen or other hormones are commonly found in thousands of products around the world, including plastics, pesticides, furniture, and cosmetics.

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Plastics Pro's and Cons: Should We Be Concerned?

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Plastics Pro's and Cons: Should We Be Concerned?

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What's sterile, strong, and everywhere around us? Plastic. Used in everything from food containers to shoe soles, this popular polymer is quickly revealing itself to have adverse health effects. Find out how you can protect yourself from endocrine-disrupting chemicals, and learn proper recycling protocol to minimize impact on the environment.

Plastic surrounds us. Our telephones, our carpets, and even the fleece we're wearing all may contain plastic. We store our food in it, drink water from it, and even brush our teeth with it. It's cheap, convenient, and versatile-but how much do we really know about this wonder material?

Plastic is made from hydrocarbons found in oil and natural gas. It's created when small molecules, called monomers, are bonded together into chains called polymers. Different monomers, when bonded together, create different kinds of plastic; some are soft and pliable, some hard and durable,and others somewhere in between.

Plastic Fantastic

The benefits of plastics are unmatched by any other material, says the Society of the Plastics Industry (SPI). It is light, easily shaped, strong, and inexpensive. Its ability to guard against contamination makes it useful in sterile medical environments such as hospitals.

Plastic kitchenware offers a practical alternative to glass and ceramic dishes. Plastic preserves flavour and freshness when used to store food and beverages. Leak-proof and child-resistant plastic containers are useful for holding dangerous household products such as bleach, ammonia,and other caustic cleaners.

Plastic packaging withstands the rigors of shipping, and plastic containers provide good storage solutions at home and in the office. It seems that the benefits of using plastic are boundless-but are they really?

Problems With Plastic

"Our obsession with plastic is loading up the planet with toxic chemicals, and we're only beginning to understand the serious consequences these substances have on health," says Lisa Gue, environmental health policy analyst with the David Suzuki Foundation.

Gue says that chemicals contained in plastic migrate into the environment when the plastic products containing them are discarded. These chemicals are building up in our bodies and in our environment.

But according to the SPI, only 9 percent of waste in landfills is plastic. They say plastic can be an environmentally friendly, low-cost alternative to other products. Think for a moment of plastic grocery bags. They take up one-seventh of the space paper bags do in landfills and don't produce toxic fumes when incinerated, says the SPI, who also note that incinerated plastic helps the waste mix burn more efficiently.

Is It Safe?

When it comes to the impact on public health, the widespread use of plastics is a contentious issue.

"There are some places that plastics just don't belong," says Jill Thompson, Citizens for Change coordinator with the BC Chapter of the Sierra Club of Canada. "Our food and water shouldn't touch plastic, at least not in the way it is currently manufactured."

The concern is that plastic food-storage containers are leaching chemicals such as bisphenol A into our food. Bisphenol A (BPA) is a chemical used during the manufacturing of certain hard, clear plastics (the kind reusable water bottles, baby bottles, and sippy cups are made from). It mimics the hormone estrogen and disrupts reproductive functions, Gue explains.

Studies have linked bisphenol A to prostate cancer, miscarriages, and birth defects. However, Health Canada says that the level of BPA in these products is low and normal use doesn't pose a risk to your health.

Also of concern are phthalates (pronounced thay-lates), which give plastic its pliable, flexible properties, and polybrominated diphenyl ethers, or PBDEs, used as a fire retardant. Studies link both to hormone- and reproductive-system damage.

What Should You Do?

"Plastics can and do make sense in some contexts," says Thompson, noting that plastic automobile parts have made lighter cars that consume less fossil fuel. "But we aren't yet doing enough when it comes to plastic recycling," she says.

Still, like 'em or not, plastics are here to stay. So do your part and become plastic savvy. Familiarize yourself with what plastics can be recycled, and keep reusable plastics out of landfills.

For more detailed info on plastics recycling in Canada, visit cpia.ca/epic. Check out myplasticbags.ca for lists of municipalities and retailers in your area that recycle their own plastic bags.

Plastic Recycled-What Your Common Household Plastics Can Be Recycled Into:

household product: disposable utensils, meat packing
type of plastic: polystyrene
recycled into: CD cases, office accessories

household product: bottles, peanut butter jars
type of plastic: polyethylene terephthalate (PET or PETE)
recycled into: stuffing for pillows, carpet backing, and even certain types of sweatshirts

household product: shampoo bottles
type of plastic: high-density polyethylene
recycled into: other bottles, plastic lumber

household product: most bottle tops
type of plastic: polypropylene
recycled into: ice scrapers, industrial packing cases

household product: bottles, film for wrapping meat
type of plastic: polyvinyl chloride
recycled into: insulation for cables and drain pipes

household product: bags, grocery bags
type of plastic: low-density polyethylene
recycled into: plastic lumber and compost bins

Tips for Consuming Less Plastic:

Make an effort to purchase products with minimal plastic packaging.

Use cloth bags for grocery shopping.

Reuse plastic containers within your home. For example, plastic grocery bags can be reused for additional trips to the grocery store, as lunch bags, gym bags, and garbage can liners. Yesterday's yogourt container can become tomorrow's lunch pail. Old margarine containers can become storage vessels for an assortment of household items.

Familiarize yourself with plastic recycling in your community.

BPA and You

BPA is a chemical used during the manufacturing of polycarbonate plastic.

What products is it in?

It's found in baby bottles, sippy cups, and reusable water bottles.

Should you be concerned?

Studies link it to prostate cancer, miscarriages, and certain birth defects, but Health Canada says it does not pose a health risk.

If you're concerned about the health and environmental risks, avoid reusable plastic water bottles, other hard plastic bottles, and sippy cups.

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What's sterile, strong, and everywhere around us? Plastic. Used in everything from food containers to shoe soles, this popular polymer is quickly revealing itself to have adverse health effects. Find out how you can protect yourself from endocrine-disrupting chemicals, and learn proper recycling protocol to minimize impact on the environment.

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Information about bioplastics and problems with traditional plastics

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About Bioplastics | Sustainable Plastics?

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Bioplastics are plastics in which all carbon is derived from renewable feedstocks. They may or may not be biodegradable. Biobased plastics contain both renewable and fossil-fuel-based carbon. The percentage of biobased ingredients and the conditions under which the biobased product may biodegrade, if at all, vary widely.

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"More than 8 million tons of plastic are dumped in our oceans every year."

The Facts Are Overwhelming

The proliferation of plastic products in the last 70 years or so has been extraordinary; quite simply we cannot now live without them. We are now producing nearly 300 million tons of plastic every year, half of which is for single use. More than 8 million tons of plastic is dumped into our oceans every year.

Plastic is cheap and incredibly versatile with properties that make it ideal for many applications. However, these qualities have also resulted in it becoming an environmental issue. We have developed a "disposable" lifestyle and estimates are that around 50% of plastic is used just once and thrown away.

Plastic is a valuable resource and plastic pollution is an unnecessary and unsustainable waste of that resource.

No water, no life. No blue, no green.

Dr. Sylvia Earle

Packaging is the largest end use market segment accounting for just over 40% of total plastic usage.

Annually approximately 500 billion plastic bags are used worldwide. More than one million bags are used every minute.

A plastic bag has an average "working life" of 15 minutes.

Over the last ten years we have produced more plastic than during the whole of the last century.

Beverage Bottles Alone

According to the Container Recycling Institute, 100.7 billion plastic beverage bottles were sold in the U.S. in 2014, or 315 bottles per person.

57% of those units were plastic water bottles: 57.3 billion sold in 2014. This is up from 3.8 billion plastic water bottles sold in 1996, the earliest year for available data.

The process of producing bottled water requires around 6 times as much water per bottle as there is in the container.

14% of all litter comes from beverage containers. When caps and labels are considered, the number is higher.

High-Level Science Review for A Plastic Ocean

Invisibles: the Plastic Inside Us Toolkit

Invisibles: the Plastic Inside Us Report

Synthetic Polymer Contamination in Global Drinking Water

InfoGraphics

Help Create A Wave of Change

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Facts . About Plastic . Help - Plastic Oceans Foundation

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"More than 8 million tons of plastic are dumped in our oceans every year." The proliferation of plastic products in the last 70 years or so has been extraordinary; quite simply we cannot now live without them. We are now producing nearly 300 million tons of plastic every year, half of which is for single use.

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Perils of Plastics: Human Health and the Environment

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Perils of Plastics: Human Health and the Environment

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March 18, 2010

Plastics surround us. A vital manufacturing ingredient for nearly every existing industry, these materials appear in a high percentage of the products we use every day. Although modern life would be hard to imagine without this versatile chemistry, products composed of plastics also have a dark side, due in part to the very characteristics that make them so desirable-their durability and longevity.

Now Rolf Halden, associate professor in the School of Sustainable Engineering at Arizona State University and assistant director of Environmental Biotechnology at the Biodesign Institute has undertaken a survey of existing scientific literature concerning the hazards of plastics to human health and to the ecosystems we depend on. His findings, which appear in the latest issue of the Annual Review of Public Health, are sobering.

Today, plastics accumulate in garbage dumps and landfills and are sullying the world's oceans in ever-greater quantity. And plastics and their additives aren't just around us, they are inside virtually every one of us- present in our blood and urine in measureable amounts, ingested with the food we eat, the water we drink and from other sources.

Halden's study reiterates the fact that the effects to the environment from plastic waste are acute. Measurements from the most contaminated regions of the world's oceans show that the mass of plastics exceeds that of plankton sixfold. Patches of oceanic garbage-some as large as the state of Texas-hold a high volume of non-biodegradable plastics. Aquatic birds and fish are increasingly victims because biodegradation processes are inadequate to eliminate this durable refuse.

The magnitude of society's burden of plastic waste is only beginning to be fully appreciated. In the U.S., the average person produces a half-pound of plastic waste every day. Around the world, some 300 million tons of the material are produced each year-a figure poised to expand, as new forms of plastics are devised to serve a voracious global appetite. As Halden points out, this annual production alone would fill a series of train cars encircling the globe. "We're doomed to live with yesterday's plastic pollution and we are exacerbating the situation with each day of unchanged behavior," he said.

Adverse effects to human health remain a topic of fierce controversy, though a growing consensus is emerging that plastics and their additives are not always the benign companions we once assumed them to be. Halden says he accepted the invitation to write about plastics and human health "because the topic showcases the bigger problem of how to create a sustainable future for modern civilization."

Two broad classes of plastic-related chemicals are of critical concern for human health-bisphenol-A or BPA, and additives used in the synthesis of plastics, which are known as phthalates. Halden explains that plastics are polymers-long chains of molecules usually made of carbon, hydrogen, oxygen and/or silicon, which are chemically linked together or polymerized. Different polymer chains can be used to create forms of plastics with unique and useful properties.

BPA is a basic building block of polycarbonate plastics, such as those used for bottled water, food packaging and other items. While it has been considered benign in the form of a heavily cross-linked polymer, its bonds can break down over time, when plastics are repeatedly washed, exposed to heat or other stresses, liberating the building blocks of the chemical, which are toxic. BPA has been recognized since the 1940s as an endocrine disrupting chemical that interferes with normal hormonal function.

Adding to the health risks associated with BPA is the fact that other ingredients-such as plasticizers-are commonly added to plastics. Many of these potentially toxic components also can leach out over time. Among the most common is a chemical known as di-ethylhexyl phthalate or DEHP. In some products, notably medical devices including IV bags or tubing, additives like DEHP can make up 40 or 50 percent of the product. "If you're in a hospital, hooked up to an IV drip," Halden explains, "the chemical that oozes out goes directly into your bloodstream, with no opportunity for detoxification in the gut. This can lead to unhealthy exposure levels, particularly in susceptible populations such as newborns."

What are the overall effects of the plastics we unwittingly ingest? The literature Halden surveyed is ambiguous on this point, despite more than half a century of study. Part of the difficulty lies in the absence of good controls for studying health outcomes, as plastic exposure is a global phenomenon, and finding unexposed subjects for comparison is nearly impossible. It is known however that health effects vary depending on who is exposed-and when. Infants and pregnant or nursing mothers are at heightened risk for toxic exposure or passage of BPA and additives like DEHP.

This January, the FDA announced an important reversal of its 2008 claims regarding the safety of bisphenol-A, expressing new concern about "potential effects of BPA on the brain, behavior and prostate gland of fetuses, infants and children," and pledging to collaborate with other federal health agencies to reevaluate the chemical's safety.

Studying the effects of low-dose exposure is tricky, usually requiring a very large number of study subjects. Instead, epidemiologists tracking the problem frequently base their conclusions on data gathered from individuals known to have unusually high levels of a chemical-often the result of high-level occupational exposure. Halden insists that further study on low-dose exposure is essential to settle the matter of health risks, noting some evidence in the literature suggests that high-dose studies may be inadequate to properly understand toxic effects from continuous low-level exposures.

Halden explains that while plastics have legitimate uses of benefit to society, their brazen misuse has led to a radically unsustainable condition. "Today, there's a complete mismatch between the useful lifespan of the products we consume and their persistence in the environment." Prominent examples of offending products are the ubiquitous throwaway water bottles, Teflon-coated dental floss and cotton swabs made with plastic PVC sticks. All are typically used for a matter of seconds or minutes, yet are essentially non-biodegradable and will persist in the environment, sometimes for millennia.

Despite the scourge of discarded plastics and the health risks these substances pose, Halden is optimistic that society can begin to make wiser choices and develop more sustainable products, formed from biodegradable, non-toxic chemical building blocks.

New forms of polymer, some made from renewable materials that are digestible by microorganisms, are being explored.

Ultimately, converting to petroleum-free construction materials for use in smart and sustainable plastics will become a necessity, driven not only by health and environmental concerns but by the world's steadily declining oil supply. As Halden emphasizes, the manufacture of plastics currently accounts for about 8 percent of the world's petroleum use, a sizeable chunk, which ultimately contributes to another global concern-the accumulation of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.

"We are at a critical juncture," Halden warns, "and cannot continue under the modus that has been established. If we're smart, we'll look for replacement materials, so that we don't have this mismatch-good for a minute and contaminating for 10,000 years."

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Written by: harth

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Perils of plastics: risks to human health and the environment

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Plastics surround us. A vital manufacturing ingredient for nearly every existing industry, these materials appear in a high percentage of the products we use every day.

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Plastics have changed society in many beneficial ways, from building and construction, aerospace, packaging and electronics

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Check out the video on how engineers are designing and testing different bioplastics

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Plants to Plastics | Engineering is Elementary

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When plastic items are thrown in the trash, they can quickly pile up in landfills and create a big mess! Use your chemical engineering skills to explore problems created by traditional plastic materials and engineer bioplastics-plastics made from plant-based materials-as a potential solution to current plastic problems.Watch this Engineering Everywhere Special Report!Visit a chemical engineering laboratory to see how engineers are designing and testing new forms of plastic that are able to biodegrade over time.

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Plastic is a material designed to last forever, and yet 1/3 of it is only used once before being thrown away.  It never really goes away, though, and has lasting and harmful impacts on human health, wildlife and the environment.  Checkout this link to learn more.

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Everything suffers: tourism, recreation, business, the health of humans, animals, fish and birds-because of plastic pollution. The financial damage continuously being inflicted is inestimable.

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https://www.ck12.org/physical-science/Carbon-Monomers-and-Polymers-in-Physical-Science/lesson/Carbon-Monomers-and-Polymers/?referrer=featured_content

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Difference between a monomer and polymer and examples of natural and synthetic carbon polymers.

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Recognizing Plastics that are Hazardous for Your Health

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Recognizing Plastics that are Hazardous for Your Health

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By George Dvorsky and Joseph Bennington-Castro.The chemicals contained in plastics can be quite harmful. But given that "plastic" can mean a wide variety of substances, it's difficult to know which ones are bad for us. Here's everything you need to know about plastic and an its impact on your health.

Manufacturers often add different chemicals to plastics to give them the exact characteristics they're looking for, like flexibility, strength, and reduced production cost. These components can include phthalates, bisphenol A (BPA), polybrominated diphenyl ethers (PBDE) and tetrabromobisphenol A (TBBPA) - all of which alter hormone expression in nonhuman animals and humans.

These chemicals are known as endocrine-disrupting compounds (EDCs), and each affects different elements of hormone disruption (e.g. inducing estrogen-like activity, thyroid hormone homeostasis disruption, anti-androgens, and so on). Also, some chemicals are made of monomers, which have known mutation-inducing and cancer-causing qualities. And yet other compounds contain toxic metals.

These chemicals can enter the human body in any number of ways and at dramatically different levels. Many of them seep into the environment during the production process or as waste. They enter our waterways and other areas where they eventually make contact with humans.

Frustratingly, these sorts of interactions are (largely) beyond our control, so for the purposes of this discussion we're going to focus solely on the plastics that are used to store and deliver food, drink, medicines, and anything else that can be directly and consciously ingested (including plastic toys, because babies and infants like to suck on them).

Thankfully, there is a classification system, called the Resin Identification Code, that describes the type of plastic resin used to make a container or bottle. Most containers and packages should have a number printed on it, a series ranging from one to seven.

In our analysis, we've included links to published studies showing the potential risks associated with each plastic type. Where possible, we've made note of which studies involve nonhuman animal test subjects, and when toxicity levels fall below dangerous levels. You should interpret and use this information in a way that satisfies you.

Alright, here's what you need to know about the different types of plastics:

Plastic #1: Polyethylene Terephthalate (PET)

These plastics are typically used to hold soft drinks, water, juice, sports drinks, beer, mouthwash, ketchup, and salad dressing. They're also used as containers for peanut butter, jelly, jam, and pickles. This type is also used in oven-friendly film and microwavable food trays.

This plastic is considered to be safe, but there are some issues to be aware of.

The primary problem is that antimony, a metalloid element with toxic qualities, leaches from PET. The rate of leakage increases with temperature. Normally, the amount of antimony that seeps into liquid is well below the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's maximum contaminant level. But that assumes the container stays at room temperature.

According to the U.S. Center for Disease Control (CDC), antimony can cause acute and chronic health issues, such as diarrhea, vomiting, and stomach ulcers.

Studies indicate that storage of these bottles at extended periods of time, and at increased temperatures, can result in unhealthy amounts of antimony. For example, a bottle stored at 60 degrees C for 176 days will yield unhealthy levels (maximum contaminant level (MCL) of 6 ppb), as would a bottle stored at 85 degrees C for just 1.3 days. These are very reasonable temperatures, and could typically be reached in warm garages or cars in the summertime.

Three years ago, a study showed that microwaving can significantly increase the rate at which antimony leaches into PET bottles. The authors recommended that plastic bottle manufacturers wash bottles before first use to remove metal contaminants like antimony.

And in 2012, a study indicated that, in addition to antimony, brominated compounds can also leach into PET bottles. Bromine, a naturally occurring element that is a liquid at room temperature, can irritate the skin, mucous membranes, and tissues. But it's not clear from the study if the concentrations of leaked bromine are at dangerous levels.

Plastic #2: High Density Polyethylene (HDPE)

This plastic is used to bottle milk, water, juice, cosmetics, shampoo, dish and laundry detergents and, household cleaners. Bags for groceries and cereal box liners are also made out of the stuff.

HDPE is considered a low hazard plastic.

But, as a 2011 study pointed out, most plastic products release estrogenic chemicals - including HDPE. Chemicals having estrogenic activity (EA) are suspected to cause health problems, especially at low doses in fetal and juvenile mammals. EA exposure has been shown to alter the structure of human cells, posing potential risks to infants and children. As the authors pointed out, " all commercially available plastic items would leach detectable amounts of chemicals having EA once such items are exposed to boiling water, sunlight (UV), and/or microwaving." [emphasis added]

It's worth noting that, as NPR pointed out, The "study doesn't look at health risks. It simply asks whether common plastic products release estrogen-like chemicals other than BPA."

Plastic #3: Polyvinyl Chloride (PVC)

This versatile plastic can be rigid or flexible, and it's commonly used in the production of blister packs and clamshells (for storing pills, for example). It's used to make bags for bedding, shrink wrap, deli and meat wrap, and tamper resistant lids.

And it's the first of the bad ones.

A Swedish study from 2008 found that plasticized PVC - which can be used to make artificial leather, bath tub toys, inflatable bathing rings and table cloths - and polyurethane - to make artificial leather, floor coating and children's handbags - all leach toxic chemicals into water. The study didn't assess the impacts of these chemicals on humans, instead chronicling its impacts on the Daphnia magna flea and the length of time it was rendered incapacitated.

That said, an investigation into two types of phthalates, which are used as a plastic softener for PVC, has shown an association with asthma in children. Di(2-ethylhexyl) Phthalate (DEHP) is used widely in consumer products, including plastics, vinyl flooring, and personal care products. DEHP is a highly soluble compound that is loosely chemically bonded to plastic and leaches into blood or other lipid-containing solutions that come in contact with the plastic.

A separate study corroborates this research, stating that, "Phthalates from polyvinyl chloride (PVC) plastics may have adverse effects on airways and immunologic systems," but noted that "[t]he lack of objective exposure information limits the epidemiologic data." Meaning that more work needs to be done testing humans.

And a study from last year showed a link between phthalates and female fertility in mice.

You can read more about DEHP and how we're exposed to it here. It's worth noting that DEHP is among the first six compounds that the EU is phasing out under its Registration, Evaluation, Authorization & Restriction of Chemical substances (REACH) program.

Plastic #4: Low Density Polyethylene (LDPE)

These plastics are found in bags for dry cleaning, newspapers, bread, frozen foods, fresh produce, and household garbage.

They're used in shrink wrap, coatings for paper milk cartons and hot and cold beverage cups.

LDPE is used to make container lids, toys, and squeezable bottles (like honey and mustard).

LDPE is considered a low hazard plastic.

Plastic #5: Polypropylene (PP)

PP is used to make containers for yogurt, margarine, takeout meals, and deli foods.

They're also found in medicine bottles, bottle caps and closures, and bottles for ketchup and syrup.

PP is considered a safe plastic.

Plastic #6: Polystyrene (PS)

Sometimes called Styrofoam, this is a plastic that's commonly found in food service items like cups, plates, bowls, cutlery, hinged take out containers (clamshells), meat and poultry trays, and rigid food containers (e.g. yogurt), and aspirin bottles. Polystyrene is also used to make protective foam packaging for furniture.

This is another plastic you'll want to avoid.

A fundamental problem is that styrene can leach from polystyrene. Styrene has been linked to cancer, but the Environmental Protection Agency has not given it a formal carcinogen classification. That said, the EPA admits there's an association to an increased risk of leukemia and lymphoma (among other things). Other studies show that styrene can act as a neurotoxin in the long term. Studies on animals report harmful effects of styrene on red-blood cells, the liver, kidney, and stomach organs. That said, most styrene concerns don't appear to come from polystyrene.

The NIHL lists styrene as a probable carcinogen, but says that the styrene leached from polystyrene food containers are at "very low" levels. It also notes that styrene is known to cause lung tumors in mice.

A 2007 study showed that, in Styrofoam and PS cups, "hot water was found to be contaminated with styrene and other aromatic compounds." Temperature was shown to play a major role in the leaching of styrene. But whether or not styrene leaches into food and water from polystyrene at dangerous levels is a claim that's still contested. But as the 2007 study concludes, "Considering the toxic characteristic of styrene and leaching in water and other products, PS material should be avoided for food packaging."

You can also read the CDC's official statement on styrene here.

Plastic #7: Other

Last but certainly not least, we have the nastiest one of all, Plastic #7. It's a kind of catch-all designation that describes packages made of a resin other than the six standard types. It's also used to describe plastics made from any combination of the standard six plus other resin types.

These plastics are used to make such things as three- and five-gallon reusable water bottles, including some citrus juice and ketchup bottles. It's also used to make oven-baking bags, barrier layers, and custom packaging.

Obviously, it's difficult to pin down the health risks for such an unspecified category, but the most significant issue with this class of plastics is the hormone-disrupting chemical bisphenol A (BPA). Some bottles, including baby bottles, are made of polycarbonate plastic, a polymer made with BPA. Just one week of polycarbonate plastic use can increase urinary BPA concentration by two-thirds. And indeed, BPA is ubiquitous; it may be present in as many as 95% of adults.

A quick summary of the health risks associated with BPA include reproductive abnormalities like lower sperm counts, hormonal changes, enlarged prostate glands, asthma, abnormalities in the number of chromosomes in eggs, and pre-cancerous changes in the breast and prostate (at least in mice). It's also been linked to obesity and insulin resistance.

There are also epigenetic factors to consider. BPA suppresses the expression of a gene that's vital to nerve cell function and to the development of the central nervous system. It may also predispose both animals and humans to neurodevelopmental disorders, autism included.

Read the label!

So very quickly, you should avoid any plastic designated #7, #3, and #6. Plastics that are safe, or at least relatively so, are #1, #2, #4, and #5. In terms of the specific plastics themselves, the most hazardous are polyurethanes, PVC, and styrenic copolymers.

But as noted, all plastics contain a certain amount of nastiness, even if at levels deemed safe by scientists. A good rule of thumb, therefore, would be to minimize the use of plastics when storing and delivering food and drink. In its place, use glass, metal, wood, or paper (like paper cups in place of Styrofoam).

Sources not cited: American Chemistry Council; " Components of plastic: experimental studies in animals and relevance for human health"; " Environmental and health hazard ranking and assessment of plastic polymers based on chemical composition."
Image: Monticello/Shutterstock.

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How To Recognize the Plastics That Are Hazardous To Your Health

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By George Dvorsky and Joseph Bennington-Castro. The chemicals contained in plastics can be quite harmful. But given that "plastic" can mean a wide variety of substances, it's difficult to know which ones are bad for us. Here's everything you need to know about plastic and an its impact on your health.

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What really happens to the plastic you throw away - Emma Bryce

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Tiny House Boat & Cruise UK Canals Full-Time

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Plastic House from Tiny House Nation's Zack Giffin Travels to Pittsburgh

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A wide range of plastic building materials contribute to energy efficiency. Plastics Make it Possible® partnered with Zack Giffin of Tiny House Nation to build this house in Boulder, CO.

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Editor's note: This is an unformatted reprint of a post we first published in 2009. We lost the original URL as we switched to a new platform in October, 2017. But we found readers still referencing the piece, so we dove into our archives. Thanks for reading us.
By Jessica A. Knoblauch

Environmental Health News
July 2, 2009

From cell phones and computers to bicycle helmets and hospital IV bags, plastic has molded society in many ways that make life both easier and safer. But the synthetic material also has left harmful imprints on the environment and perhaps human health, according to a new compilation of articles authored by scientists from around the world.

More than 60 scientists contributed to the new report, which aims to present the first comprehensive review of the impact of plastics on the environment and human health, and offer possible solutions.

"One of the most ubiquitous and long-lasting recent changes to the surface of our planet is the accumulation and fragmentation of plastics," wrote David Barnes, a lead author and researcher for the British Antarctic Survey. The report was published this month in a theme issue of Philosophical Transactions of The Royal Society B, a scientific journal.

As the scrutiny of the environmental toll of plastic increases, so has its usage, the scientists reported.

The amount of plastic manufactured in the first ten years of this century eclipses the total produced in the entire last century

Since its mass production began in the 1940s, plastic's wide range of unique properties has propelled it to an essential status in society. Next year, more than 300 million tons will be produced worldwide. The amount of plastic manufactured in the first ten years of this century will approach the total produced in the entire last century, according to the report.

"Plastics are very long-lived products that could potentially have service over decades, and yet our main use of these lightweight, inexpensive materials are as single-use items that will go to the garbage dump within a year, where they'll persist for centuries," Richard Thompson, lead editor of the report, said in an interview.

Evidence is mounting that the chemical building blocks that make plastics so versatile are the same components that might harm people and the environment. And its production and disposal contribute to an array of environmental problems, too. For example:

Chemicals added to plastics are absorbed by human bodies. Some of these compounds have been found to alter hormones or have other potential human health effects.

Plastic debris, laced with chemicals and often ingested by marine animals, can injure or poison wildlife.

Floating plastic waste, which can survive for thousands of years in water, serves as mini transportation devices for invasive species, disrupting habitats.

Plastic buried deep in landfills can leach harmful chemicals that spread into groundwater.

Around 4 percent of world oil production is used as a feedstock to make plastics, and a similar amount is consumed as energy in the process.

People are exposed to chemicals from plastic multiple times per day through the air, dust, water, food and use of consumer products.

For example, phthalates are used as plasticizers in the manufacture of vinyl flooring and wall coverings, food packaging and medical devices. Eight out of every ten babies, and nearly all adults, have measurable levels of phthalates in their bodies.

In addition, bisphenol A (BPA), found in polycarbonate bottles and the linings of food and beverage cans, can leach into food and drinks. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported that 93 percent of people had detectable levels of BPA in their urine.

The report noted that the high exposure of premature infants in neonatal intensive care units to both BPA and phthalates is of "great concern."

Polybrominated diphenyl ethers or PBDEs, which are flame-retardants added to polyurethane foam furniture cushions, mattresses, carpet pads and automobile seats, also are widespread.

The plastics industry maintains that its products are safe after decades of testing.

"Every additive that we use is very carefully evaluated, not just by the industry, but also independently by government agencies to look at all the materials we use in plastics," said Mike Neal, a consumer and environmental affairs specialist at PlasticsEurope, an industry trade association, and a co-author of the report.

But some of these chemicals have been shown to affect reproduction and development in animal studies, according to the report. Some studies also have linked these chemicals with adverse effects in people, including reproductive abnormalities.

"We have animal literature, which shows direct links between exposure and adverse health outcomes, the limited human studies, and the fact that 90 to 100 percent of the population has measurable levels of these compounds in their bodies," said John Meeker, an assistant professor of environmental health sciences at the University of Michigan School of Public Health and a lead author. "You take the whole picture and it does raise concerns, but more research is needed."

Shanna Swan, director of the University of Rochester's Center for Reproductive Epidemiology, conducted studies that found an association between pregnant women's exposure to phthalates and altered genital development in their baby boys.

Also, people with the highest exposure to BPA have an increased rate of heart disease and diabetes, according to one recent study. Animal tests studies of PBDEs have revealed the potential for damaging the developing brain and the reproductive system.

Yet the effects on human health remain largely unknown. To help shed more light on the issue, the report recommends more sophisticated human studies.

"It's tough to have a smoking gun with a single animal study or observational human study," Meeker said. "We need to have different types of studies indicating a consistent pattern to more definitively determine health effects resulting from these chemicals."

But testing humans for endocrine disruptors can be tricky because phthalates and BPA pass through the body so quickly. In addition, tests for each chemical cost about $100 a pop.

Deciding which chemicals to test and at what dose is also an issue. To date, most studies have addressed single chemicals, and there are limited data on the interactions between chemicals. Compounding the problem is the discovery that endocrine disrupting chemicals may have effects at doses lower than those used in the Environmental Protection Agency's standard toxicity tests.

Swan said the old model of testing should be thrown out and that the new goal should be tests that mimic real human exposure.

"It's a very complicated picture and the laboratory model of just taking one isolated chemical and giving it to a genetically pure strain of rats in clean cages, clean air and clean water and seeing what it does just doesn't come close to mimicking the human situation," she said.

Many researchers recommend studies that test pregnant women as well as their children. The National Children's Study will do just that by examining environmental influences on more than 100,000 children across the United States, following them from before birth until age 21.

"There are so many questions now with these chemicals in relation to cardiovascular disease, age and puberty, obesity, developmental disorders," said Swan. "We don't know what's causing it, only hints, so the beauty of the National Children's Study is that we can look at all of these endpoints and it should reveal a lot of answers."

Plastic's problems extend beyond the human body, according to the report. More than one-third of all plastic is disposable packaging like bottles and bags, many of which end up littering the environment.

Although the image of a bird tangled in a plastic necklace is by now burned into the public's eye, ingestion of plastic fragments is much more common. Once inside, plastic can pack a one-two punch by both clogging an animal's stomach and poisoning it with chemicals that have concentrated in the plastic. Some chemicals are then transferred to the food web when animals eat them.

More than 180 species of animals have been documented to ingest plastic debris, including birds, fish, turtles and marine mammals, according to the report.

Unfortunately, collecting data on plasticizers' impacts on wildlife suffers the same pitfalls as studying human health. Still, there is already evidence that chemicals associated plastics might harm wildlife.

For example, laboratory studies have shown that phthalates and BPA affect reproduction in all studied animal groups and impair development in crustaceans and amphibians.

"While there is clear evidence that these chemicals have adverse effects at environmentally relevant concentrations in laboratory studies, there is a need for further research to establish population-level effects in the natural environment," according to the report.

Charles Tyler, a professor at the University of Exeter School of Biosciences in the United Kingdom and a senior author of the report, said that scientists have shown that "some of these chemical compounds are getting into the environment and are in some environments at concentrations where they can produce biological effects in a range of wildlife species."

Traveling from coast to coast, plastic can endure for thousands of years due to the reduced UV exposure and lower temperatures of aquatic habitats.

Barnes demonstrates plastic's mobility with his account of a plastic sighting during an expedition to the Amundsen Sea where he took biological samples, the first there ever. The Amundsen, located in the Pacific Sector of Antarctica, is the only sea in Antarctica with no research station on its coast and the nearest urban center thousands of miles away.

"Even for us, getting in was a challenge because there's so much ice and it's so difficult to get there," said Barnes. "But even in that remotest of environments, there was plastic floating on the sea surface.

Plastic also serves as a floating transportation device that allows alien species to hitchhike to unfamiliar parts of the world, threatening biodiversity. Global warming further aids the process by making previously inhospitable areas like the Arctic livable for invasive species, which can be detrimental to local species.

For example, plastic items are commonly colonized by barnacles, tubeworms and algae. Along the shore of Adelaide Island, west of the Antarctic Peninsula, ten species of invertebrates were found attached to plastic strapping that was littering the ice.

"Raising the temperature just one degree can make the difference between getting to someplace and actually surviving once you get there," said Barnes.

Plastic is so resilient that even burying it deep within the earth doesn't keep it from impacting the environment. Currently it accounts for approximately 10 percent of generated waste, most of which is landfilled. But, as the report notes, placing plastics in a landfill may simply be storing a problem for the future, as plastic's chemicals often sink into nearby land, contaminating groundwater.

In addition, production of plastics is a major user of fossil fuels. Eight percent of world oil production goes to manufacturing plastics.

As plastics grow in volume at a rate of about nine percent each year, the authors emphasize that tackling its problems means addressing its sustainability.

One solution is to treat plastic as a reusable material rather than as a disposable commodity that's quickly discarded. That means making plastic more easily recyclable from the get-go by using fewer materials in the manufacturing process and increasing recycling facility availability.

"The recycling message is simple; both industry and society need to regard end-of-life items, including plastics, as raw materials rather than waste," stated the report.

Increasing the availability of biodegradable plastic, which can be made from renewable materials from plants such as corn and soy, is another option.

"Biodegradable plastics have the potential to solve a number of waste-management issues, especially for disposable packaging that cannot be easily separated from organic waste in catering or from agricultural applications," according to the report.

However, currently production capacity for biodegradable plastics worldwide is around only 350,000 tons, representing less than 0.2 percent of petrochemical-based plastic. In addition, "most of these materials are unlikely to degrade quickly in natural habitats, and there is concern that degradable, oil-based polymers could merely disintegrate into small pieces that are not in themselves any more degradable than conventional plastic," stated the report.

To help mitigate the potentially harmful chemicals in plastics, the authors recommend that more studies be conducted on the biological mechanisms that may be affected by plastic additives and in particular, low-dose chronic exposures.

In the meantime, the report recommends reducing the use of these chemicals and developing safer alternatives, a strategy known as green chemistry.

"Had this approach been in place 50 years ago it would probably have prevented the development of chemicals that are recognized as likely endocrine disruptors," the report said.

The report also suggests that plastic waste can be reduced by using labels that allow consumers to choose packaging based on a lifecycle analysis that includes all components of the manufacturing process. For example, if the product were made of mostly recycled materials, used minimal packaging and could be easily recycled, it would get a green dot. If the product were made of excessive packaging that used a lot of virgin materials, it would get a red dot.

"Personally, I feel that's the way to do it, rather than a knee jerk reaction where legislation says we can't use certain types of plastic," said Thompson. "Having that information will help drive the system because I think consumers are keen to make the right choice when provided with all the information."

Neal of PlasticsEurope said consumers, not the industry, are responsible for making sure plastics don't wind up littering the environment.

"In my view the responsibility is fairly and squarely on the consumer," he said. "People tend to pick on plastics because perhaps it's the most visible form of litter and because it's lightweight so it can move around a bit, but actually it's only a small part of the litter problem."
The authors said that if plastics are made and used responsibly, they can help solve some environmental problems.
For example, one study found that packaging beverages in PET (a type of plastic) versus glass or metal reduces energy use by 52 percent and greenhouse gas emissions by 55 percent. And, solar water heaters containing plastics can provide up to two-thirds of a household's annual hot water demand, reducing energy consumption.

Plastics, if used wisely, "have the potential to reduce mankind's footprint on the Earth," Thompson said.

The above work, by Environmental Health News, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.

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A study finds we're really polluting our world with plastic.

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Where does your recycling go? In most places in the U.S., you throw it in a bin, and then it gets carted off to be sorted and cleaned at a Materials Recovery Facility (MRF). From there, much of it is shipped off to mills, where bales of paper, glass, aluminum, and plastic are pulped or melted into raw materials. Some of these mills are here in the U.S. And once upon a time, many of them were in China.

Since 2001, China was one of the biggest buyers of American recycling.  That is, until last year, when China pulled a move that no one saw coming: they stopped buying.

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Where does your recycling go? In most places in the U.S., you throw it in a bin, and then it gets carted off to be sorted and cleaned at a Materials Recovery Facility (MRF). From there, much of it is shipped off to mills, where bales of paper, glass, aluminum, and plastic are pulped or melted into raw materials. Some of these mills are here in the U.S. And once upon a time, many of them were in China.

Since 2001, China was one of the biggest buyers of American recycling. That is, until last year, when China pulled a move that no one saw coming: they stopped buying.

Suddenly, a lot of materials that were getting recycled previously weren't anymore. The lists of accepted materials are shrinking in some cities. In some places, certain types of plastic and paper and cardboard simply aren't being collected anymore - they go to landfill or incineration, instead. Even those municipalities that are still collecting recycling are having a hard time finding places to sell it. Instead of making money by selling recyclable materials, they are losing money by paying storage companies to take it. And this isn't just a problem in the United States - Europe, Australia and Canada have been impacted, too.

Operation National Sword

When China joined the World Trade Organization, they started taking in the most of the world's scrap. The shift coincided with a ramping up of global exports, and China sold wares all around the world in shipping containers. Rather than sending these containers back to China empty, it made sense to fill them with heavy bales of recycling. This made the whole cycle more cost-effective, and it became cheaper to send recycling to China than anywhere else. Cities around the world were able to subsidize their recycling program with the money from selling their waste, while also not having to deal with as much of the process - at least until National Sword.

Basically, National Sword was China's ban on foreign recyclables. It banned four categories and 24 types on imports starting in 2018. And National Sword has steadily expanded, banning more recyclables since then, and it could potentially lead to the banning of all incoming recyclable materials by 2020, but that piece isn't entirely clear yet. No one is sure exactly why this shift in policy happened, but some experts point to one particular turning point: a documentary film.

Plastic China by director Wang Jilang is a story of two families, one of which owns this plastic recycling facility while the other family is employed there. The main character is the employee's daughter, who never gets sent to school because she is helping her parents watch her younger siblings and sort through mountains of shredded plastic.

The movie provides a grim look at the actual process of breaking down materials, in an informal recycling facility. It shows the families cutting up plastic, melting, soaking it and turning it into a sludge - then turning it into hardened pellets. The little girl washes her face in the gray plastic-polluted water and eats fish that have choked on bits of plastic. They live and work (and eat and sleep) near a plastic-shredding machine, inhaling dust and microparticles that are byproducts of the process. The whole village is enveloped in plastic detritus.

And much of this garbage was imported from other countries. The girl cuts out shoes from European catalogues and cleans off dirty Mickey Mouse figures to play with. It's heartbreaking.

Plastic China made the film festival circuit and was even seen in China for a while before the government pulled it from Chinese Internet. Coincidence or causation, National Sword came shortly thereafter. China moved to crack down on informal recycling plants and build newer, better, safer and more efficient recycling systems. Beyond that, the country also shifted focus to recycling internally rather than taking on recyclables from the rest of the world.

Nowhere to Throw

In the US, where there is no national recycling policy, this shift has thrown the recycling industry for a loop. Different cities and states have tried dealing with China's ban in different ways, including selling to other countries or trying to find domestic markets for various materials. One upside of all of this is a rise in more local recycling infrastructure.

None of these alternatives, though, will really solve the problem - there are just too many things to recycle and a lot of it is just too dirty. Liquids and foods and oils make it harder to recycle things, many of which end up in landfills or incinerators as a result. Some MRFs are investing in better sorting and cleaning machines, but even that won't be sufficient to tackle this huge and growing waste issue.

Somewhere along the way, key parts of the "reduce, reuse, recycle" mantra got lost. We have lost track of reducing and reusing. Single-use products including straws, bags, cups and bottles are a big part of the problem, as are items made of multiple different materials (particularly ones that are hard to pull back apart, like toothpaste tubes).

Consumers can make a difference by buying less, or buying products that can more easily be reused or recycled, but that's only part of the equation.

Countries, states and cities need to press producers to design more sustainable products and packaging, and develop more recycling infrastructure. People create pollution and people can stop it, but it has to be done at all levels and steps of the process, starting with better design.

Designers can (and should) visit MRFs and mills, to learn how their products and packaging sorts out (or doesn't) and breaks down (or doesn't). They can choose materials that biodegrade or recycle more easily, and design products that break down into recyclable constituent parts.

In the end, Operation National Sword could be a wakeup call. But only if producers, consumers, and governments tune in and listen.

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Where does your recycling go? In most places in the U.S., you throw it in a bin, and then it gets carted off to be sorted and cleaned at a Materials Recovery Facility (MRF).

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PET is commonly used in commercially sold water bottles, soft drink bottles, sports drink bottles, and condiment bottles (like ketchup). While it is generally considered a "safe" plastic, and does not contain BPA, in the presence of heat it can leach antimony, a toxic metalloid, into food and beverages, which can cause vomiting, diarrhea and stomach ulcers. Some studies have shown up to 100 times the amount of antimony in bottled water than in clean groundwater. The longer the bottle is on the shelf or exposed to heat or sunshine, the more antimony is likely to have leached into the product.
2. HDPE: high-density polyethylene.
HDPE is commonly used in milk and juice bottles, detergent bottles, shampoo bottles, grocery bags, and cereal box liners. Like PET, it is also considered "safe," but has been shown to leach estrogenic chemicals dangerous to fetuses and juveniles.
3. PVC: polyvinyl chloride.
PVC can be flexible or rigid, and is used for plumbing pipes, clear food packaging, shrink wrap, plastic children's toys, tablecloths, vinyl flooring, children's play mats, and blister packs (such as for medicines). PVC contains a phthalate called DEHP, which can cause male traits to become more feminized (DEHP-containing products have been banned in many countries, but not the U.S.). In some products, DEHP has been replaced with another chemical called DiNP, which has similarly been shown to have hormone disruption properties.
4. LDPE: low-density polyethylene.
LDPE is used for dry cleaning bags, bread bags, newspaper bags, produce bags, and garbage bags, as well as "paper" milk cartons and hot/cold beverage cups. LDPE does not contain BPA, but as with most plastics, it can leach estrogenic chemicals.

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Awash in plastic: It's all around us - and its impact on human health is insidious

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PET is commonly used in commercially sold water bottles, soft drink bottles, sports drink bottles, and condiment bottles (like ketchup). While it is generally considered a "safe" plastic, and does not contain BPA, in the presence of heat it can leach antimony, a toxic metalloid, into food and beverages, which can cause vomiting, diarrhea and stomach ulcers.

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Learn how to make plastic from synthetic monomer and polymer resins.

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Plastic now pollutes every corner of Earth

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From supermarket bags to CDs, man-made waste has contaminated the entire globe, and become a marker of a new geological epoch

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"Are we all addicted to ultra-processed food? 

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"Are we all addicted to ultra-processed food? 

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Are We All Addicted to Ultra-Processed Foods? - Freakonomics

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DUBNER: I had a cow that once had chocolate milk. You're saying that was an anomaly? * * * DUCKWORTH: I'm Angela Duckworth. DUBNER: I'm Stephen Dubner. DUCKWORTH + DUBNER: And you're listening to No Stupid Questions. Today on the show: are ultra-processed foods addictive?

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From DNA to Silly Putty: The diverse world of polymers - Jan Mattingly

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chemicals in plastic home products linked to health issues

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Chemicals in plastic home products linked to health issues

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A series of studies found that replacements for potentially harmful plastic compounds that were thought to be safer may be just as risky, especially for children. The phthalates are increasingly used to strengthen products including plastic wrap, soap, cosmetics and processed food containers.

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http://science.howstuffworks.com/plastic.htm

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Plastics can be found in a wide variety of products. They are everywhere. Find out how plastics are made and learn about uses for plastics.

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This story is part of Planet or Plastic?-our multiyear effort to raise awareness about the global plastic waste crisis. Learn what you can do to reduce your own single-use plastics, and take your pledge.

Read this story and more in the June 2018 issue of National Geographic magazine.

In a world that can seem overwhelmed by potentially eternal plastic waste, are biodegradables the ultimate solution? Probably not. But it's complicated. The industry is still debating what "biodegradable" actually means. And some plastics made of fossil fuels will biodegrade, while some plant-based "bioplastics" won't.

Biodegradable plastics have been around since the late 1980s. They initially were marketed with the implied promise that they'd somehow disappear once they were disposed of, just as leaves on the forest floor are decomposed by fungi and soil microbes. It hasn't quite worked out that way.

Biodegradables don't live up to their promise, for example, in the dark, oxygen-free environment of a commercial landfill or in the cool waters of the ocean, if they should end up there. You can't throw them in your backyard compost either. To break down, they require the 130-degree heat of an industrial composter. Many industrial composters accept only plastics that meet certain standards, ensuring they will leave no fragments behind that can harm the environment or human health. And if you throw some biodegradables in with recyclables, you might ruin the latter, creating a mix that can no longer be relied on to make durable new plastic.

In 2015 the United Nations Environment Programme wrote off biodegradables as an unrealistic solution that will neither reduce the amount of plastic flowing into the oceans nor prevent potential chemical or physical harm to marine life. It concluded that the label "biodegradable" may actually encourage littering.

Some engineers are looking for ways around these obstacles. Jenna Jambeck and her colleagues at the University of Georgia's New Materials Institute are using polymers synthesized by microbes to make packaging they hope will compost readily and biodegrade in the ocean. Corn chip bags are their first target.

Polymateria, a British firm, is taking a different approach, developing chemical additives to help biodegrade any plastic-bio based or synthetic-more quickly. The firm aims to be the "Tesla" of biodegradable plastics; CEO Niall Dunne says the goal is a product that will "harmonize plastics with the biosphere."

It's a tall order. Even the best biodegradable product won't magically disappear. A plastic container robust enough to carry a gallon of milk can't decompose like paper. A flowerpot, one of Polymateria's experimental products, could take up to two years to dissolve if tossed in a ditch, Dunne concedes. Biodegradables, some critics say, don't address the fundamental problem: our throwaway culture.

"What is it that we are promoting?" asks Ramani Narayan, a Michigan State University chemical engineering professor. "Throw it away, and eventually it will go away?" The more responsible approach, he says, is a "circular economy" model, in which everything is reused or recycled and "any 'leakage' into the environment, whether biodegradable or not, is not acceptable."

Norway has shown how far the recycling of plastic bottles-a big part of beach trash-can go. It now recovers 97 percent of them. Its trick: deposits as high as 2.5 kroner (32 cents) and machines, found at most supermarkets, that ingest bottles and spit out refunds.

But recycling can go only so far. Part of the solution, many say, must be to use less disposable plastic in the first place. The "zero waste" movement, which dates to the mid-1990s, is gaining favor. Hundreds of communities worldwide are embracing it-including the downtrodden industrial town of Roubaix, France, where the success of a citizens' campaign shows that zero waste is more than an affectation of wealthy liberals.

On the contrary, the idea seems to have a cross-cutting, almost spiritual appeal. In the U.K., the Church of England asked its flock to give up plastic packaging and disposables for Lent this year. Conservative Prime Minister Theresa May called for supermarkets to set up plastic-free aisles, where food is sold in bulk. She's also considering a tax on single-use plastics such as take-out containers. It's all part of her government's campaign to rid the country of plastic waste within 25 years.

China is providing motivation. For nearly three decades it has bought about half the world's recyclable plastic. But this year it called a halt to most scrap imports. Recyclables are now piling up in the countries that generated them. "That pushes the question upstream," Jambeck says. "We hope it will push towards more circular management."

Six Things You Can Do (and Feel No Pain)

1. Give up plastic bags. Take your own reusable ones to the store. A trillion plastic shopping bags are used worldwide every year, and 100 billion in the United States alone-that's almost one per American per day. The average Dane, in contrast, goes through four single-use bags per year. Denmark passed the first bag tax in 1993.

2. Skip straws. Unless you have medical needs, and even then you could use paper ones. Americans toss 500 million plastic straws every day, or about 1.5 per person.

3. Pass up plastic bottles. Invest in a refillable water bottle. Some come with filters if you're worried about water quality. A handful of cities, including Bundanoon, Australia, and San Francisco, have banned or partially banned bottled water. But around the world, nearly a million plastic beverage bottles are sold every minute.

4. Avoid plastic packaging. Buy bar soap instead of liquid. Buy in bulk. Avoid produce sheathed in plastic. And while you're at it, give up plastic plates and cups. The French are (partially) banning the stuff.

5. Recycle what you can. Even in rich countries, recycling rates are low. Globally, 18 percent of all plastic is recycled. Europe manages 30 percent, China 25-the United States only 9.

6. Don't litter. The Ocean Conservancy has run beach cleanups for 30 years. Of the top 10 types of trash they find, the only nonplastic item is glass bottles. Worldwide, 73 percent of beach litter is plastic: cigarette butts (the filters), bottles and caps, food wrappers, grocery bags, polystyrene containers. In 2016 the conservancy collected 9,200 tons of trash in 112 countries-around a thousandth of what enters the ocean each year.
Correction: A previous version of this article misidentified the jar in the caption as a quart jar (32 ounces), when in fact it is a pint jar (16 ounces).

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You Can Help Turn the Tide on Plastic. Here's How.

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This story is part of Planet or Plastic?-our multiyear effort to raise awareness about the global plastic waste crisis. Learn what you can do to reduce your own single-use plastics, and take your pledge. Read this story and more in the June 2018 issue of National Geographic magazine.

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Cheap, capable of being made into any conceivable shape, strong and durable, plastic is something of a wonder material. It has proved so useful to humans that since the 1950s we have produced an estimated 8.3 billion metric tonnes of the stuff.

However, the victim of this success appears to be much of life on Earth. And humans, one day, could find themselves among them.

For some 79 per cent of the plastic produced over the last 70 years has been thrown away, either into landfill sites or into the general environment. Just nine per cent is recycled with the rest incinerated.

This has been described as " an uncontrolled experiment on a global scale" by scientists.

How much plastic is in the sea?

With more than eight million tonnes going into the oceans every year, it is estimated there will be more plastic than fish by 2050 and 99 per cent of all the seabirds on the planet will have consumed some. It is thought the sea now contains some 51 trillion microplastic particles - 500 times more than stars in our galaxy.

It is found all over the planet, with 300 billion pieces in the once-pristine Arctic and a remote island in the Pacific, the uninhabited Henderson Island, one of the Pitcairns, believed to have the highest concentration of plastic pollution in the world.

Is it dangerous?

Some plastic is toxic and it can disrupt hormones crucial for a healthy existence. Even when it is not dangerous itself - or not known to be - plastic acts like a magnet for a range of other poisons and pollutants we have spilled into the natural world.

To sea turtles, plastic bags in the water can look like jellyfish, floating on the surface plastic can appear to be a tasty snack for a seagull, based on millennia of experience, and to baby perch it appears more appetising than the plankton they are supposed to eat.

Unsurprisingly, gulping down all this indigestible poison instead of food is bad for their health. So far, it is known that marine litter harms more than 600 species amid what some regard as the beginning of the sixth mass extinction of life on Earth.

Why should we worry about pollution in the sea?

Killing off sea creatures is bad for humans because we consume so much of it ourselves. Some 92.6 million tonnes were caught worldwide in 2015, according to the United Nations' Food and Agriculture Organisation.

Given plastic degrades to pieces small enough to pass through the stomach into the flesh of fish and other animals, we are already eating some of the plastic we have thrown into the sea.

And, of course, just like other animals that plastic is likely to be finding its way into the tissues of our bodies with potentially harmful consequences.

What's being done about it?

The world is, finally, starting to wake up to the problem.

In February this year, the United Nations announced it had " declared war on ocean plastic ".

Thirty countries have now joined the UN's CleanSeas campaign, including the UK, Canada, France, Indonesia, Sierra Leone, Brazil, Norway, Italy, Costa Rica, Kenya and Peru. The US, China, Russia and Japan have not.

The UK has banned microplastics in "rinse-off" cosmetics, like facial scrubs, but not "leave-on" products like make-up and suntan cream.

Any other problems I should know about?

Plastic may also be contaminating the air we breathe.

Plastic microparticles from cosmetics and microfibers from synthetic clothes are washed into the sewage system. While many pass through treatment plants and end up in the sea, others particles are caught up in sewage used to fertilise farmers' fields. After it dries out, it may get picked up by the wind and blown about.

Professor Frank Kelly, an expert in environmental health from King's College London, told a committee of MPs last year: "There's a real possibility that some of those microparticles will be entrained into the air and they will be carried around and we will end up breathing them."

Just how bad is it?

Perhaps not Earth-shattering, but definitely Earth-trashing. Plastic may end up being one of the defining characteristics of a new epoch in the planet's history.

Eventually, the layer of plastic spread around the world from the 1950s onwards will form a noticeable line in the sedimentary rocks of the future.

And that is one reason - along with radioactive fallout from nuclear bomb tests, pollution, climate change effects such as higher sea levels, and the extinction of many animal species - that geologists are considering declaring the end of the Holocene and the beginning of the Anthropocene or the 'Epoch of the Humans'.

In a few decades, a blink of an eye in Earth's 4.5-billion-year history, plastic has not only changed the fabric of life but the very rocks.

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Cheap, capable of being made into any conceivable shape, strong and durable, plastic is something of a wonder material. It has proved so useful to humans that since the 1950s we have produced an estimated 8.3 billion metric tonnes of the stuff. However, the victim of this success appears to be much of life on Earth.

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The principle behind E.S.G. is that investors should look beyond just whether a company can make a profit and take into account other factors, such as its environmental impact and action on social issues.

But critics of that investment strategy, mostly Republicans, say that Wall Street has taken a sharp left turn, attacking what they term “woke capitalism.”

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What Is E.S.G., and Why Are Republicans So Mad About It?

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President Biden’s first veto could be in defense of an investment philosophy most Americans have never heard of.