Microplastics have invaded the air and our bodies. Can a plastics treaty clear the air?

Thousands of delegates have come down to Geneva this week in terms of being the culmination of years of negotiations which, in the event of success, are supposed to end with a revolutionary treaty in world plastic. They could breathe in the very thing they are trying to clean when they negotiate.

Greenpeace tested the air around the city just before the start of the talks this month and found a small amount of microplastics. It was not so much a rigorous study that it was a way to prove a point. Microplastics arise everywhere, including in the air that we breathe.

This is why the defenders of health and the environment, as well as a coalition of governments, put pressure for an ambitious plastic treaty in Geneva. Recycling is not enough – only limit production can stem the tide of plastic pollution, they say.

“That you can find microplastics in Urban Air, it is not really shocking because it has been reported before in other cities. I think it’s just a way of illustrating that is nowhere to be sheltered from this pollution, ”explains David Santillo, a main scientist to the Greenpeace research laboratories.

Greenpeace attached an air surveillance system to a person while spending her day in Geneva, spending about eight hours in and outside shops, coffees, office spaces and a station. The samples they taken on July 17 were intended to show what a visitor typical of the city could be exposed; They could not take samples in the negotiation rooms that the delegates would really use.

The device had a replaceable silver filter that the Greenpeace researchers were then able to analyze to see which particles they captured, which amounts to at least 165 fibers and fragments. The filters have picked up a range of different materials like pieces of skin, plant -based fibers and what was probably soot. Greenpeace was however interested in synthetic materials and was finally able to identify 12 pieces of microplastics, including polyester, nylon, polyethylene used to make bottles and bags and other types of plastics. It might not seem much, but the organization had only the equipment to detect larger particles which were at least 10 microns. (By way of comparison, average human hair is around 70 microns in diameter.)

“If they found the big ones, it is a fairly fair bet that the little ones were also there,” said Philip Landrigan, director of global public health and the good joint program at Boston College, which was not involved in the Greenpeace study.

Generally, the smaller the particle, the more potential it can cause problems by being able to penetrate more deeply into the organs and tissues of the human body. A human brain can contain as much as the spoon of microplastics, research published in the journal Nature Medicine Earlier this year suggests.

“Unfortunately, microplastics are almost everywhere in today’s world,” said Landrigan. He is the main author of a August report, published in the review LancetOn the links between plastic pollution and health results.

“Plastics cause diseases and the death of early childhood to old age,” said the report, adding that plastics are responsible for 1.5 billion of dollars of economic losses linked to health each year. The report explains all the risks along the plastic life cycle, including the chemicals to which workers and communities near the manufacturing facilities are exposed, and the waste decomposed into nanoplastic particles that have been found in the human body and breast milk.

Scientists are still working to understand the health of inhalation of the inhalation of microplastics in the air. Landrigan stresses that we at least know that all plastics are made up of two main components, a spine based on carbon derived from fossil fuel and chemical additives.

“When the microplastic enters the human body, you inhale or drink it with your water or eat it with your food, when it enters you and plastics move from your gastrointestinal tract in the blood circulation, the microplastic particles transport all these chemicals with them,” explains Landrigan.

The more than 16,000 different chemicals used in the production of plastics – including carcinogen vinyl chloride, for example – are mainly responsible for the known health risks associated with plastics. But the toxicity of more than 75% of chemicals in plastics has not yet been studied.

Greenpeace does not claim to assess air quality in Geneva or the health impacts of what they found in their air samples. All they can show is the presence of microplastics in the air, adding to previous research that has done the same. What is remarkable now is that Greenpeace documented this at a time when leaders around the world have the opportunity to do something.

Negotiations on a plastic treaty in Geneva should end on August 14. In 2022, United Nations Member States agreed to develop a legally binding pact on plastic pollution. Since then, it is a difficult battle to agree on the terms. The main producer fossil fuels have blocked an agreement in December, pushing negotiations after the initial deadline in 2024. So far this year, there is always a fight to find out if the concentration of recycling and the reduction of plastic waste is enough. The fossil fuels industry and countries, including the United States, which produce many plastics and its ingredients, are fighting to exclude the limits of plastic production from the treaty.

A “high ambition coalition” launched by Rwanda and Norway, on the other hand, wants to tackle the full plastic life cycle, starting with production. It is also open to the use of the treaty to eliminate or restrict the use of problematic chemicals in plastics.

This does not make sense to simply mop up the plastic sheets of disorder without deactivating the tap, explains Angel Pago, leader of Greenpeace Global Plastics Campaitics Media. “We are overflowing with plastic because of overproduction. And we cannot resolve this crisis with fair, you know, cleaning, ”explains Pago The penis from Geneva.

Lancet The article says in the same way “the main engine of this [health] The crisis accelerates the growth in plastic production. The production traveled 2 metric megatons in 1950 to 475 in 2022. Less than 10% of plastic waste has never been recycled, partly because the many chemicals used to make different types of plastics make it difficult or not economical to rehabilitate the material.

“If we want to do something for plastics, we have to cap plastic production,” says Landrigan. “I hope and I pray for the treatying treaty to actually produce a treaty that protects human health.”