Micro menace

As nations negotiate a global treaty to regulate plastics, scientists have released a damning report highlighting the health impacts on humans

- RAJIT SENGUPTA NEW DELHI

PLASTICS ARE cheap to buy, but expensive to use, says Sarah Dunlop, director, plastics and human health of Australia-based nonprofit Minderoo Foundation and emeritus professor at the University of Western Australia. She is not talking about the price we pay at checkout counters—but the invisible, long-term cost to our health. “We have studied three chemicals commonly used in plastics—PDBE (a flame retardant), BPA (used in plastics for strength and clarity) and DEHP (used for flexibility)—across 38 countries, covering a third of the global population. The health cost of just these three substances amounts to $1.5 trillion,” says Dunlop. “That is enough to vaccinate every newborn on the planet for the next 200 years.”

Dunlop is referring to the results of “The Lancet Countdown on Health and Plastics”, released on August 3, ahead of the Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee (INC) on Plastic Pollution 5.2, a global meet of countries, civil society and other stakeholders. The meeting on August 5-14 in Geneva is slated to be the final round of negotiations on a Global Plastics Treaty, which was passed in 2022 through a unanimous resolution by the UN Environment Assembly to develop a legally binding agreement to end plastic pollution based on a comprehensive approach that addresses its entire lifecycle.

The Lancet article aims to highlight the staggering toll of plastic on human health, which remains invisible in most public discussions. “Industry externalises these costs while our bodies and the environment absorb the damage,” says Dunlop. What makes it worse is that governments continue to heavily subsidise petrochemicals, the raw material for plastics. In 2024, fossil fuel subsidies in the US reached $43 billion—a figure projected to rise to $78 billion by 2050, according to the Lancet article.