Microplastic accumulation in the human body could be a serious health hazard, according to some researchers, and might be linked to cancer, heart attacks, and other threatening medical conditions. [emphasis, links added]
We’ll never eliminate all microplastics from the environment, but we could significantly reduce the volume if we shut down plastic recycling.
A Stanford Medicine article says scientists estimate that “adults ingest the equivalent of one credit card per week in microplastics,” which sounds frightening, even though only a “few studies have directly examined the impact of microplastics on human health, leaving us in the dark about how dangerous they really are.”
The fear, however, is already out there, and policymakers, particularly in California, have gone to war with all plastic, hoping to ban as much of this modern convenience as possible.
These, of course, are the same policymakers who regard recycling as a golden calf that can never be challenged. Not that they’d ever admit it, but they are part of the problem – a large part.
There are [several] pathways by which microplastics enter the human body. Plastic litter that’s been degraded into tiny particles can be inhaled and ingested.
But we also pick up plastic from automobile tire wear, microwave-heated food containers, and textile fibers.
But for this argument, we focus on one source: recycling.
Recycling plastic requires the destruction of consumer products, which are shredded by industrial machinery, washed, rinsed, dried, and transported.
The process creates an enormous body of microplastics.
“Environmental exposure can almost double the microplastic generation during the shredding step in the recycling plant,” says Faisal Hai, head of the School of Civil, Mining, Environmental and Architectural Engineering at the University of Wollongong in Australia.
“The commercial process for plastic recycling may have been emitting microplastics since its first use nearly half a century ago.”
Other research suggests that as much as 400,000 tons, “or the equivalent of about 29,000 dump trucks of microplastics,” are produced by recycling each year in the U.S. alone, says Inside Climate News.
Hai based his comments on a research article published last year in Science, Recycling Process Produces Microplastics, which he and doctoral candidate Michael Staplevan wrote.
Read rest at Issues & Insights
