There ’ s Almost No Research on the Health Impact of Plastic Chemicals in the Global South

This story was produced in partnership with the Pulitzer Center’s Ocean Reporting Network. Some 13,000 chemicals are associated with plastic production, of which only 7,000 or so have been investigated for their health and environmental impacts. Nearly half of those studied have elements deemed hazardous to human health, but the research—spanning 50 years, multiple languages, thousands of publications, and an alphabet soup’s worth of acronyms, synonyms, and chemical compounds—is difficult to navigate. Yet doing so has become increasingly important as plastic production ramps up, along with its potential for causing serious threats to human health. [time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”] A new research map brings order to the chaos, indexing the existing research by chemical compound, health outcomes, affected population groups, and geography. There are hundreds of thousands of studies about chemicals in plastics. So far, the map only covers some 3,500 human health-related peer-reviewed studies—a third of which demonstrate impacts on human endocrine, nutritional, and metabolic systems—but it provides valuable insight into what we already know about plastic’s role in human health, and what remains to be known. The Plastic Health Map, produced by Australia’s Minderoo Foundation, a philanthropic organization with a strong focus on reducing plastic pollution, brings welcome transparency to a historically opaque industr...
Source: TIME: Health - Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Tags: Uncategorized climate change Climate Is Everything Source Type: news