Representatives from over 170 nations gathered in late November with hopes of formulating a robust plan to tackle the spiralling plastic waste crisis. However, the talks ended amidst entrenched divisions, delaying a resolution many consider critical to the planet’s future.

Diverging Visions

At the heart of the negotiations lay a chasm between two factions: the “high-ambition” coalition of over 100 countries advocating for legally binding limits on plastic production and oil-producing nations, along with some developing states, who resisted such measures. “The objective of this treaty is to end plastic pollution, not plastic itself,” declared Kuwait’s negotiator, encapsulating the resistance to production caps from nations heavily reliant on the oil and petrochemical industries.

Plastic production, which has soared from two million tonnes in 1950 to over 400 million tonnes annually today, is projected to double by 2040. This trajectory threatens to exacerbate environmental degradation and could constitute 15% of global carbon emissions by mid-century.

Frustration and Resolve

The failure to produce a treaty text has drawn sharp criticism. Campaigners decried the lack of progress, with Sean Savett, a spokesperson for the U.S. National Security Council, lamenting how “a small group of countries and producers stood in the way of progress to protect their profits.” Such sentiments echoed a broader frustration with corporations that continue to prioritise recycled plastics over more sustainable, reusable alternatives. Coca-Cola, for instance, recently abandoned its commitment to 25% reusable packaging by 2030, drawing accusations of “greenwashing” from activists.

Despite the disappointment, some observers are cautiously optimistic. Sr. Patty Johnson, attending on behalf of the Sisters of St. Joseph of Carondelet, remarked, “I had a general sense that everyone agreed this is a once-in-a-generation opportunity. The challenge lies in how ambition is defined.”

The Path Forward

The incomplete negotiations underscore the complexity of addressing a problem deeply intertwined with global economics, environmental health, and corporate interests. Plastic’s lifecycle, from production to waste management, remains contentious. While some nations champion comprehensive measures encompassing production, use, and disposal, others favour a narrower focus on waste management and recycling.

Adding to the challenge, microplastics and their effects on health and ecosystems intensify the urgency for action. Research linking microplastics to severe health risks, including heart attacks and strokes, has only amplified calls for decisive intervention.

Still, progress, albeit incremental, has been made. Key elements of a treaty framework, such as a financial mechanism to support implementation (which could involve a global fund for plastic pollution reduction) and criteria for regulating specific polymers (which could include setting limits on the use of certain types of plastic), are taking shape. Negotiators are expected to reconvene in 2025 to build on these foundations.

Reimagining Solutions

A shift in the narrative around plastics is essential to achieve meaningful change. Von Hernandez of Break Free from Plastic encapsulated the issue, criticising corporations for perpetuating single-use culture: “Recycled single-use items still pollute the environment. The focus must be on reuse and reduction at the source.”

Incentivising innovation in alternative materials, expanding reusable systems, and integrating scientific research into policymaking could pave the way for more sustainable practices. However, bridging the gap between nations’ varied economic dependencies and environmental goals will require exceptional diplomacy and commitment.

A Global Imperative

Plastic pollution transcends borders, washing up on remote island shores and infiltrating the deepest ocean trenches. While the Busan talks fell short of expectations, they underscored the shared recognition that a global solution is imperative. “We have not yet reached the summit of our efforts,” affirmed Luis Vayas, Ecuador’s vice minister of foreign affairs and negotiations chair. His words reflect the determination of many to persist despite the obstacles.

The road to a global plastics treaty may be fraught with challenges, but it remains a journey worth taking. The stakes — ecological integrity, public health, and the sustainability of our planet — demand nothing less than a collective and unwavering resolve.

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Let’s explore phthalates: What are they? Why are they used? What are the potential consequences of exposure to these substances?

What are phthalates?

The United States Centers for Disease Control (CDC) explains that phthalates are “a group of chemicals used to make plastics last longer.” Some companies use phthalates to help dissolve other materials.

You can find phthalates in a variety of products, including:

• lubricating oils
• vinyl flooring
• personal-care products such as hair sprays, shampoos, and soaps
• medical supplies, including intravenous tubing, bags, and gloves (BPA, phthalates)

Some phthalates are in materials in products such as garden hoses and plastic packaging.

Phthalate dangers

We have long known the hormone-disrupting properties of phthalates. Phthalates can affect your endocrine system. What effect does endocrine disruption have on our health?

Endocrine-disrupting chemicals mess with our endocrine physiology by interfering with the creation of hormones, metabolism, and cellular actions.

Did you know that endocrine-disrupting chemicals are in legumes, soy, and other plant-based products? Still, the primary source of these substances is industrial processes. We can find EDCs in the air, soil, and water.

Endocrine-disrupting chemicals can cross the placenta. Here are some of the medical conditions that may be related to in-utero phthalate exposure:

• type-2 diabetes
• cancer
• male reproductive disorders

However, we do not have definitive evidence that endocrine-disrupting chemicals are the culprits for these conditions in humans.

Phthalates in the population

As noted above, phthalates can cross the placenta to affect a fetus. The toxins can also enter our bodies via sites such as personal care products, clothing, or toys.

To better understand the volume of phthalates that have entered people’s bodies, scientists have measured phthalate metabolites in the urine of individuals in the United States. The researchers measured 13 phthalate metabolites in the urine of over 2,600 individuals.

Here are the findings of this historical study, published in 2010 by the Centers for Disease Control (CDC):

• Phthalate exposure appears widespread in the population.
• Adult women have higher levels of many phthalate metabolites (compared with men), given that soaps, body washes, shampoos, cosmetics, and other personal care products can contain phthalates.
• Non-Hispanic Blacks have higher levels of phthalate exposure compared with non-Hispanic whites.

The finding of phthalate metabolites does not necessarily translate to ill health effects.

Phthalates — A new study

New York University researchers recently evaluated 5,000 adults ages 55 to 64 years. Publishing in the journal Environmental Pollution, they report this disturbing finding:

Phthalate exposure is associated with early death. Those with higher urinary levels of phthalates appeared more likely to die of heart disease. No association with cancer death emerged.

Extrapolating to those ages 55 to 64 years, the study authors identified more than 90,000 phthalate-attributable deaths per year in the USA.

However, higher concentrations did not increase the risk of death from cancer.

Study lead author Leonardo Trasande explains that “until now, we have understood that the chemicals connect to heart disease, and heart disease in turn is a leading cause of death, but we had not yet tied the chemicals themselves to death.”

Phthalates — My take

The New York University phthalate does not establish a causal relationship between phthalate exposure, cardiac disease, and early mortality. In addition, we do not fully understand the biological mechanisms that may underlie the phthalate/early death relationship.

Other studies suggest that phthalate exposure is associated with over 10,000 deaths per year (given an association with low testosterone in males) in the United States.

Phthalate exposure may be undermining our health and well-being. Exposure to endocrine-disrupting agents can occur in many ways, including through inhalation of gases and particles in the air, skin contact, ingestion of dust, food, and water, across the placenta, or from mother’s milk.

I am reducing my use of plastics in food preparation and storage. No more bringing grapes to work in plastic bags — welcome the stainless steel Japanese-style lunch box (bento box). We may also reduce our phthalate exposure through the use of filtered water.

Finally, do we all need many fragrance-containing cosmetics, detergents, or soaps? We may drop our phthalate exposure by going fragrance-free. The study authors call for regulatory intervention.

In 2017, the US Consumer Product Safety Commission banned the use of eight ortho-phthalates in children’s toys and child-care articles. But for vinyl plastics and personal care products, there’s no specific legislation by other governmental agencies:

Why phthalates should be restricted or banned from consumer productsMarch 10, 2021 – In this Big 3 Q&A, Russ Hauser, Frederick Lee Hisaw Professor of Reproductive Physiology, and…www.hsph.harvard.edu

Read about the approach for the European Union here. Thank you for joining me.

The post Are You Exposing Yourself to This Potentially Lethal Chemical? appeared first on Medika Life.

The Chinese have figured out that they have a giant environmental problem. Folks in Beijing, some days, literally can’t breathe. Over a million Chinese die prematurely every year because of air pollution. — Joe Biden

Alzheimer’s disease isn’t a disease of old age; it begins in infancy, possibly even before birth, because of pollution. Pollution, therefore, initiates the death spiral even before children can walk and talk. 

Babies’ fates are sealed by the pollution created in the air we breathe, the water we drink, and the pollutants in the food we eat as well as the oceans in which we swim. 

Not a fancy of fanatical environmental groups, the facts are coming in daily with ever-increasing disturbing research making a strong case for pollution as the ultimate brain destroyer. 

In the Beginning

Somewhere in the Eastern or Western hemispheres, a baby is born. A gift from God, the people, may say, but the child is already damaged by the greed, carelessness, and behavior that had betrayed this infant’s trust before it even knew trust existed. 

Detailing how this child has been damaged before birth, after birth, and into its childhood and adult years is a torturous route. The journey reveals a total disregard for this planet, its oceans, its air, and every living creature on it. Is that why we want to go to other planets and explore the stars? 

We’ve worked diligently to ruin Earth, and it is going to be an incredibly difficult, dangerous, and expensive repair. Uppermost in this chain of events that must take place to return health to the planet is our behavior and our business models. 

Both go hand-in-hand and contribute to this early beginning demise of an infant’s brain.

Urban planners, too, have played their role in this dire drama of destruction. For example, once the most powerful man in New York State, Robert Moses, believed that highways were the city’s future and that of Long Island. Accordingly, he began to destroy neighborhoods and build highways through the city and out to Long Island. 

In a minor effort at goodwill for children, Moses created something in addition to highways; playgrounds. Where were the playgrounds placed? All of them were along the highways that Moses was building. When air pollution was of no concern to him or most others, the children in those playgrounds inhaled deeply. 

The kids took in the lead and all of the damaging byproducts of automobile emissions. They didn’t have to eat lead paint, they inhaled lead and the residual microgarbage from car tires.

Lead is one of the most invasive substances to burrow its way into the brain, where it stays forever, causing developmental damage. These children would carry this “gift” from Moses with them for the rest of their lives.

Moses’ plans were cut short by an urban activist, Jane Jacobs, who saw how the city plans were damaging. Readers can catch a glimpse of the battle for New York City here and a documentary here.

A Climate Change Pioneer Ignored

One hundred-sixty-four years ago, when no one thought about the environment or the new science of ecology and climate change wasn’t a word in any books, one woman stands out. Eunice Foote published a paper in 1856 on the heat-trapping effects of CO2. Climate change science and the greenhouse effect were born.

Foote’s paper was left to languish (on p. 382) in the back of a prestigious journal, The American Journal of Science and Arts, and basically ignored. A scientist, feminist, and pioneer in climate change science, she would write long before “Silent Spring” by Rachel Carson. A brief animation of the effects of climate change can be viewed here. 

Now that we’ve waited for so many years to notice how the climate is warming, we have to face that infant’s realities and how this all came to be.

The Word Is Plastics

The scene from “The Graduate” comes to mind whenever I hear this word. However, the miracle product, plastics, for consumers and manufacturers has become the bane of our existence. Wrapping everything imaginable in plastic and then discarding it became a way of life. Who thought it wouldn’t break down, and we’d be fine? 

Even clothing contains cloths derived from plastic. Natural fibers have been pushed out of the market, and we are encouraged to keep buying more clothing to keep up with the latest fashions. The garbage keeps piling up as a result.

One of my oceanography professors decades ago told us about plastics and The Sargasso Sea. An area rich in seaweed, the “sea,” serves both as a birthing and protective area for sea life, but it has one other main distinction: the North Atlantic garbage patch. But plastics don’t merely float there.

Plastic debris absorbs toxic chemicals, potentially poisoning anything that eats it. Microbes that eat plastics may not be the solution for which we prayed. This is because “…it’s unclear whether this enzyme or similar enzymes, are safe to use in widespread environmental remediation.” 

But that’s only part of the equation leading us to that baby that greeted the world with its first cry. The real danger, which may be worse than what we can see, is the unseen plastic; microplastic is found in our food and the air we breathe.

The Seen and Unseen Plastic Menace

As the bits of plastic degrade into smaller and smaller bits of microplastic (MP), the danger to that just-born child increases. 

MP are of special concern since their bioaccumulation potential increases with decreasing size. MP may be ingested by various organisms ranging from plankton and fish to birds and even mammals, and accumulate throughout the aquatic food web. In addition, plastics contain a multitude of chemical additives and adsorb organic contaminants from the surrounding media. Since these compounds can transfer to organisms upon ingestion, MP act as vectors for other organic pollutants and are, therefore, a source of wildlife exposure to these chemicals.

By the year 2025, we are estimated to have dumped over 11 billion tons of plastics in our environment where the winds will take the tiny bits and spread them to urban and wilderness areas. We will have done an excellent job of destroying our living space. 

Worse than that, we will have contributed to the painful disabilities of the world’s infants and children with all forms of pollution. What an accomplishment to put into history books.

Some scientists are now referring to a phenomenon called “plastic rain,” which is spiraling the Earth. The normal earth atmospheric movement, the Coriolus Effect, would indicate “that while urban centers may be the initial source, plastics accumulate in the atmosphere over longer time periods, are transported long distances, and are deposited during favorable conditions such as slower air-mass velocities or intersections with mountain ranges.” Contamination by plastic pollution, therefore, can be found anywhere on Earth. How much pollution is on Mt. Everest?

Of course, we will have continued our staunch attack on our oceans, too. Almost 16 million tons of microplastics are expected to be currently or soon to be embedded in the ocean floor. The total of it all, including in the Mariana Trench, is “up to 35 times more than the estimated weight of plastic pollution on the ocean’s surface.”

Thanks to all for the discarded plastic coffee cups, the shopping bags, food trays, trinkets, toys, and many other “disposable” plastic objects. And let’s not forget the clothing industry with its ever-changing designs to create a constant need to buy new and discard the old. In 2017, it was estimated to generate $2.5 trillion in business. Many garments are made from plastic-derived fabrics.

Childhood, Pollution, and Alzheimer’s

Research with older adults has found a relationship between Alzheimer’s and air pollution. In one study in China, long-term exposure to air pollution showed poor performance on nonverbal and math tests. Obviously, this does not indicate Alzheimer’s since that disease can only be, at this time, established on autopsy. But it points to a form of cognitive decline and dementia other than Alzheimer’s (SDAT).

A second study in England of adults age 50 to 79 with Alzheimer’s and living in greater London found that 39% of those with the highest annual concentration of air pollution in their areas showed the highest degree of dementia; up to 1.4 times the risk of those living in areas with lower pollution concentration. 

Another study in the United States of 998 women showed a greater decline in the learning of words for those exposed to a high concentration of air pollution in the preceding three years. Neuroimaging also indicated atrophy of the brain in areas typically affected by Alzheimer’s.

A study of 19,000 retired nurses found that those exposed over the years to fine particle pollution experienced faster cognitive decline than those who had not been in these polluted areas.

The internal combustion engine exhaust has been established as one source of pollution, augmenting cognitive decline in numerous studies.

However, children get an early start on pollution-related brain damage, as shown by another study in Mexico City. 

Alzheimer’s disease starts in children’s brainstems and has been found in residents of Mexico City as young as 11 months of age. According to this research, “Alzheimer’s disease starting in the brainstem of young children (is) affecting 99.5% of young urbanites in a serious health crisis.”

On autopsy, typical amyloid-beta was found at age 11 months, and in children and teens, there was a noted loss of neuronal density, loss of synapses, and changes to the hippocampus.

We strongly suggest the first two decades of life are critical for brain damage associated to environmental pollutant exposures, and although there is no doubt considerable individual AD progression differences are likely determined by APOE and factors such as gender, metabolism, nutrition, genetics, occupational history and others.

Pollution Impairment and Dementia

As has been shown by studies of pollution, the air we breathe may have an effect on and possible involvement in diseases such as Parkinson’s and multiple sclerosis. But new research appears to have proven this untrue.

Researchers note a higher incidence of dementia but not Parkinson’s disease or multiple sclerosis related to proximity to major highways. A study in Canada looked at a large cohort of patients who were free of these diseases. 

They did a meta-analysis of a group of 243,611 incident cases of dementia, 31,577 cases of Parkinson’s disease, and 9,247 cases of multiple sclerosis between the years 2001 in 2012. There appeared to be a strong dementia relationship between urban residents who lived in major cities near major traffic roads and who had never moved for a period of years. 

The conclusion of the researchers was that “living close to heavy traffic was associated with a higher incidence of dementia but not with Parkinson’s disease or multiple sclerosis.” 

One pollutant that appears to be evident in many of these studies and it is lead pollution from vehicles. One other problematic pollutant was nitrogen dioxide (NO2), but it is lead that is the greater danger, according to one expert in the field. 

Unlike NO2, lead persists in the human body, with more than 95% of the adult
body burden of lead stored in bones, where it can remain for decades. Stored
lead is mobilised when bone turnover is higher than the normal turnover
rate — ie, in patients with osteoporosis. Consequently, mobilisation of stored
lead coupled with decline of bone mineralisation in elderly Canadian
residents means that their blood lead levels can remain elevated many years
after road-borne lead exposure.Early exposure, therefore, remains with us for a lifetime. 

The evidence regarding children and brain damage, similar to Alzheimer’s related to air pollution, is shocking. If nothing else, it is reasonable to show strong concern for the air we breathe. But pollution may not be confined to lead because plastic rain may also play a role as can the contaminants in the foods we eat. 

The post Is Alzheimer’s Damage Linked to Deadly Pollution of Babies, Not Old Age? appeared first on Medika Life.