Plastic production worldwide is expected to triple by 2060. That creates problems that are very big and very, very small. Microplastics have now been found in our food, air, water – and even – in our blood, bones and organs. So, what do these microplastics mean for our health and where do we go from here?
Top regulatory officials met with agricultural and chemical industry representatives dozens of times in the first few months after President Donald Trump took office in January, government records show — meetings that were followed by a series of regulatory rollbacks and a downplaying of pesticide concerns by the administration’s “Make America Healthy Again” (MAHA) Commission.
The White House’s health strategy report released Tuesday directs the EPA to carry out research to improve the health of children exposed to chemicals and pesticides, but it doesn’t encourage controls to limit such exposures.
A White House report released Tuesday rehashes Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s frequent complaints about the state of American health and outlines strategies to improve children’s health.
Early this year, Steven Cook was a lawyer representing chemical companies suing to block a new rule that would force them to clean up pollution from “forever chemicals,” which are linked to low birthrates and cancer.
So much plastic waste ends up in dumps around the world that millions of people, mostly in poor countries, make their living as “waste pickers,” sifting through mountains of trash, looking for recyclable materials to sell.
In Geneva, negotiators from 175 nations are trying to hammer out the first-ever legally binding treaty on plastic pollution. The urgency of the talks was underscored this week by a new study published in The Lancet.
A new poll released by Grove Collaborative and the 5 Gyres Institute this month shows that 77% of the American public is familiar with the term microplastics. However, just over half of that group is unsure what microplastics are, where they originate, or what they mean for our health and the environment.
In the wake of the Trump administration’s decision to dismantle the research arm of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, a robust if little-known California agency called the Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment is poised to take on an even bigger role to bridge the gap.
Microplastics are really small pieces of plastic — less than five millimeters long on one side or about the size of a pencil eraser. That means some of them are visible to the naked eye, but others are so tiny that you can’t even see them — smaller than the width of your hair or even a red blood cell.
An unorthodox argument from anti-abortion advocates that abortion pills and the at-home abortion process pose a substantial environmental risk is gaining traction in state legislatures across the country.
In the oceans, the most widespread type of plastic pollution may be the kind you can’t see. A new study published Wednesday in the journal Nature estimates that the North Atlantic Ocean alone contains 27 million metric tons of nanoplastic — plastic particles 100 times smaller than the width of a human hair. That figure is 10 times higher than previous estimates of plastic pollution of all sizes across all the world’s oceans, according to the study’s authors.
A leading expert in the health impacts of plastic pollution and microplastics is calling on the UN to end the use of toxic chemicals in all plastics, cap and reduce plastic production and argues against a treaty focused on waste management and recycling, as part of an international Plastics Treaty.
No place on Earth is safe from plastic pollution. Plastic garbage and tiny shards of these long-lived petroleum-based polymers taint the highest Himalayan mountains, deepest ocean trenches, outermost Antarctic field stations and hidden recesses of the human body.
I used to love my Teflon pans. I crisped tofu, fried latkes, and reduced sauces to sticky glazes in them, marveling at how cleanup never took more than a swipe of a sponge. Then I started to worry that my skillets might kill me.