Plastic released to the environment poses a substantial threat to ecological and human health globally1,2. This is reflected in rising concern, internationally; according to Espen Barth Eide and quoted in the Washington Post on 8 February 2022, countries around the world are “increasingly seeing [plastic pollution] as a top-level threat”.
In addition to being Norway’s Environment Minister, Eide also led discussions at the recently concluded (2 March 2022) 5th session of the United Nations Environment Assembly to establish an Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee that will work towards a legally binding global agreement to mitigate plastic pollution. 175 nations signed-up to the agreement in Nairobi, which targets the full cycle of plastic, production-(re)use-disposal. The aim is to have a fully legally-binding agreement by the end of 2024.
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Open in new tab The agreement is likely to result in caps on the production and disposal of plastic, similar to the voluntary limits on CO2 emissions linked to the 2015 Paris Accord. Determining those caps requires data on how much plastic is produced, how much ends up as waste and where, what chemicals are incorporated within and attached to plastic waste, and, from a planetary health perspective, how much plastic pollution can the Earth system sustain before critical processes, such as the maintenance of soil fertility and ocean productivity, are altered, possibly irreversibly3.
While the prospect of an international agreement aimed at reducing and even reversing plastic pollution has to be a good thing, we know from experience that reaching global agreements where the environment is concerned and where there is a complex array of competing, vested interests at play, is generally a long drawn out process. This process will be made all the more difficult because, for most parts of the world, reliable forms of data are lacking or at best very scarce ~ and this is particularly the case for micro-plastics. Micro-plastics are of particular concern, because they can remain suspended in the atmosphere for several days (atmospheric micro-plastics, or At-MPs) and this enables their transport over large distances and across international boundaries. Their small size also makes micro-plastics both difficult to detect in sites of deposition and accumulation, and easy to ingest and thus pass into and along food chains. Once ingested and as with other forms of fine particulate matter, levels of micro-plastics and other toxins and pathogens that might be incorporated or attached to the surface of the particle, can accumulate and magnify through food chains, thereby presenting a direct, cumulative risk to human health and food security.
Nowhere is the problem of a plastic data deficit more true than in Southeast Asia, which is widely regarded as a hotspot of global plastic pollution.
This shortcoming and the uncertainties concerning the human and planetary health risks that arise from it, together with the complex of competing interests and stages of development of countries involved, are likely to hamper the development and effective implementation of any global agreement aimed at mitigating and ideally reversing rising levels of plastic pollution ~ just as they have international attempts to limit global warming.
The shortcoming does, however, create exciting opportunities for research aimed at addressing the data deficit. Such research would improve our understanding of plastic pollution in all its forms, and the risks of our long-term exposure, both outdoors and indoors, to micro-plastics in particular.
- Jahnke, A. et al. Reducing Uncertainty and Confronting Ignorance about the Possible Impacts of Weathering Plastic in the Marine Environment. Environ. Sci. Technol. Lett. 4, 85–90 (2017).
- Macleod, M. et al. The global threat from plastic pollution. Science (80-. ). 373, 61–65 (2021).
- Persson, L. et al. Outside the Safe Operating Space of the Planetary Boundary for Novel Entities. Environ. Sci. Technol. 56, 1510–1521 (2022).