The negotiation of the first global treaty to curb plastic pollution generated wide expectation as it is more and clearer than the rate of consumption production is unsustainable for the environment and that this also has repercussions on human health.
The objective is not to prohibit plastic production, an economic and versatile material that allowed advances in many areas, but of putting a few years to some years to what practically became a way of life and that consists of the uncontrolled consumption of plastic of using and throwing.
What are the plastic problems?
The plastic is not biodegraded, but is broken down into invisible particles with the naked eye, but that are present in the air we breathe, the water we drink and in food, having introduced in the food chain, another route through which it enters the human organism.
The plastic of using and pulling is consumed massively: a plastic bag lasts 12 minutes in our hands, while every minute a million plastic bottles are bought, according to estimates of the World Economic Forum.
At the same time, the United Nations Environment program states that every minute the equivalent of a trash truck full of plastics is thrown into the sea, which is believed to be causing that for every three tons of fish in the sea, there is one of plastics.
It is projected that by 2050 the demand of some of the most common plastic types increases by 90% compared to the current one.
The industry produces between 430 and 460 million tons per year.
Read more: International pressure increases to close a treaty to stop plastics
What is your relationship with climate change?
Plastic production causes emissions of powerful greenhouse gases and, if nothing is done to limit it, in 2050 it will involve 13% of carbon emissions, compared to 5.3% currently and 4% in 2019.
The recycling of plastic waste is not a real solution, since in practice only 9 % of these waste is recycled and less than 1 % is recycled twice.
According to the United Nations data since the plastic began to become popular in the 1950s until today more than 9,000 million tons of plastic were manufactured, of which about 75% became waste, much accumulated in landfills or in the natural environment.
As a comparison point, that amount is more or less equivalent to the weight of 820,000 Eiffel towers, 25,000 buildings such as Empire State, 80 million blue whales (the largest known) or 1,000 million elephants.
What are the effects of plastic on human health?
Hundreds of scientific studies highlighted the toxicity of certain additives used in the manufacture of plastic products and their detrimental effect on human being.
Numerous research on the presence of microplastics in the human organism and their relationship with a wide variety of diseases are also ongoing.
The expert of the Hygiene & Tropical Medicine of London, Megan Deeney, who participated in the Geneva negotiations as part of an international alliance of independent scientists of commercial interest, recalled that there are more than 1,600 chemicals that are used in the production of plastics or have been measured in them.
He states that a quarter of them are “dangerous.”
At the same time, less than 6 % of such chemicals are covered by some type of regulation and two thirds do not have any public data related to their potential health risk.
The American doctor Leonardo Trasande, a renowned expert in the environmental components of child health and who also went to Geneva for these negotiations, argues that dangerous chemicals in plastic are related to various types of cancer (including breast and prostate), with premature births, growth problems, childhood obesity, diabetes and cardiovascular diseases.
With EFE information
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