by Karen Telleen-Lawton, Noozhawk Columnist – read original here.
February 10, 2025
The Precautionary Principle has stuck with me since econ grad school days — mostly because I rarely see it practiced.
At its core it involves discerning and designing for what could go wrong before new technologies are introduced. Had this principle been applied to plastics, we might have saved some of our current angst.
We now know this verity: Plastic is permanent pollution.
When petroleum-based plastics breaks down — in a landfill, on the side of the road, or in the ocean — they don’t decompose. Instead, they disintegrate, spreading across the earth’s surfaces.
Micro- and nano-plastics are pervasive in the deepest oceans, the highest mountains, and the most remote deserts and plains.
Arguably our happiest plastic product — that shiny thin film creating Mylar balloons — is only one in myriad end products with a pernicious lifecycle.
Once you let go of a Mylar balloon, it is instantly permanent plastic pollution.
On land, Mylar balloons have been implicated in wildfires when they contact transmission lines.
At sea, their effect is more subtle. Flora and Fauna reported meta-research summarizing more than 100 scientific papers on plastic ingestion among 500 fish species. Over two-thirds had consumed plastic.
Aside from damage done by the chemical contaminants themselves, plastic gives fish a false feeling of fullness and can result in starvation.
Most Island Packers cruises become makeshift refuse collectors of balloons that have floated out to sea.
And then there’s plastic us. Microplastics have been documented in human lungs, maternal and fetal placentas, breast milk, and human blood.
In an analysis from Vrije University in Amsterdam, researchers under Heather Leslie found microplastics in 17 of 22 healthy adults. This confirmed that microplastics not only could be absorbed, but they are being absorbed into the human bloodstream.
A 2024 University of New Mexico analysis found seven to 30 times more plastic shards in the brains of cadavers than in their kidneys and livers.
The weight of the plastic residing in the brains comprised on average 0.48% of their brains’ weight.
That figure is 50% higher than cadaver brain samples taken in 2016.
Co-lead author Matthew Campen noted there were signs the body’s liver and kidneys can flush some plastics from the body. It is unknown whether the brain has that capability.
However, a 2023 report from a global consortium of scientists, health-care workers, and policy analysists determined plastics are associated with harms to human health at every single stage of the plastic lifecycle.
The permanent plastics problem is supersized when you consider global production and use. By virtue of its wealth, the northern hemisphere — measured as the areas covered by NAFTA, the European Union, and China — is far ahead of the south in creating plastic pollution.
In UCSB’s Science and Technology news, Shelly Leachman estimates that by 2050, increased population and wealth in the global south will result in their contributing nearly quintuple the north’s plastics burden into the waste stream.
The south will have to pick up its pace to compete with the plastic and toxics waste stream from this year’s Los Angeles fires.
“No one yet knows how a massive infusion of ash from urban fires — with its mix of asbestos, lead, microplastics and heavy metals — will affect our food supply,” write L.A. Times writers Corinne Purtill and Rosanna Xia.
Some might consider a future resolution to be colonizing Mars. Naturally, we’d want to declare Mars a plastic-free zone first, before our trash starts arriving. Unfortunately, such a pronouncement would preclude our landing on Mars since our bodies are already plastic-infused.
It’s too late to apply the Precautionary Principle. Fortunately, concerned humans are approaching solutions to earth’s permanent plastics pollution from many angles.
Next column I’ll examine potential answers from scientific, legal, consumer, and societal
perspectives.
Karen Telleen-Lawton, Noozhawk Columnist
Karen Telleen-Lawton is an eco-writer, sharing information and insights about economics and ecology, finances and the environment. Having recently retired from financial planning and advising, she spends more time exploring the outdoors — and reading and writing about it. The opinions expressed are her own.
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