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Plastics pollution led to $250 billion in disease over one year

Amelia Landess

Photo credit: AP Photo / Rajanish Kakade, File - A boy walks on the plastic waste at the Badhwar Park beach on the Arabian Sea coast on World Environment Day in Mumbai, India, June 5. Negotiators at U.N.-led talks in Nairobi have failed to agree on how to advance work towards the development of a global treaty to end plastic pollution. Environmental advocates say some oil-producing governments used stalling tactics designed to ultimately weaken the treaty.

Read the full article by Saul Elbein (The Hill)

“Chemicals leaching from plastics are leaving Americans notably sicker and poorer, according to a new study.

In 2018 alone, the hormone-disrupting effects of plastics in the nation’s food and water led to a quarter of a trillion dollars in additional health care costs, according to findings published on Thursday in the Journal of the Endocrine Society.

That’s the equivalent of 5 percent of U.S. health care costs and more than 1 percent of the national gross domestic product (GDP), the New York University researchers found.

To put that number in context, 2018 saw a year-over-year GDP growth of about 3 percent, a third of which chemicals such as PFAS, phthalates and biophenols ate up.” …

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