We already know about how plastics choke our gutters and result in flooding.
Have you considered the plastic menace and its health implications other than the obvious cholera, typhoid and malaria? Have we considered how this plastic menace could impact our health outside of what we see everyday??
How about autism, and cardiovascular diseases?
Yes you read right. The plastics menace may be contributing to more than just infections. So if you didn’t pay attention before, now you better do!
Plastics have become an omnipresent feature in every aspect of life today. The light weight, malleable and high strength of plastics makes them very useful in various applications.
It is no surprise then that the global production of plastics has doubled over the past 2 decades, and is projected to continue to increase as the use of plastics continues to increase.
The ubiquitous nature of plastics doesn’t end with what we see physically.
Researchers have found micro- and nanoplastics in breast milk and in stool of infants. Now that definitely sounds scary, and rightly so.
Microplastics are a complex puzzle of tiny plastic particles, not even acknowledged until 2004, when an oceanographer from Plymouth University, Prof. Richard Thompson, named them. His research showed they had been present in the world’s oceans since the 1960’s and now they are pretty much everywhere. Microplastics are in the air we breathe, every body of water we interact with and in the food chain. It is impossible to escape their presence even if you set out to do just that. As we produce more plastics, we will definitely be exposed to more microplastics.
The health implications of microplastics have not been fully understood.
Ongoing research into various aspects is however generating some likely associations. Such links as increased risk of development of autism in children, infertility among both men and women, as well as development of cardiovascular diseases.
“Indeed, a 10-year longitudinal study found that high exposure to BPA was associated with a 46–49% higher hazard ratio for cardiovascular mortality and all-cause mortality compared with low exposure to BPA6. Moreover, epidemiological studies have reported associations between elevated urinary phthalate or bisphenol levels and an increased risk of coronary and peripheral artery disease, chronic inflammation, myocardial infarction, angina, suppressed heart rate variability and hypertension (reviewed previously2). The association with hypertension was further supported by data from a randomized controlled trial, which found a direct link between drinking from BPA-lined cans, a sharp increase in urinary BPA levels and a ~4.5 mmHg increase in systolic blood pressure compared with participants drinking from glass containers”
This is a quote from an article on Plastics and Cardiovascular disease, reference below. It simply points out how various types of microplastics have affected the cardiovascular system.
Suffice to say that we must as a matter of urgency put in place measures to reduce our exposure to plastics. Otherwise, soon flooding will be the least of our worries.
References
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8335843/
