We are belatedly waking up to the many health risks of microplastics. Yet too little research focuses on the most exposed demographic of all
This is an often hidden downside of plastic recycling. It’s usually shipped to where labor is super cheap to be sorted, but there are often longer term health risks that aren’t accounted for.
@JohnDClay and the article points out that it’s not necessarily recycled at all:
The plastic waste that ends up moving from north to south is mostly heading for fake recycling – it will be buried in landfills or burned, often on unregulated sites. Its chemicals leach into nearby waterways and settlements. This is especially worrying because microplastics shed from waste are known to carry bacteria and viruses into the human body, as well as heavy metals.
Even if it was recycled, most of it wouldn’t be able to be, and would still be disposed of in the ways you describe.
It is stuff like this that makes me wonder how they can get away with this stuff.
Some of us will look at fish and find it gross that they swim in their own waste but humanity is doing the same thing with plastic which does not even break down for hundreds of years.
@Gamers_Mate yeah we’re modifying ourselves and not in a good way.
I think this article makes a very good point that by not studying children in LICs we are likely seriously underestimating the scope of the problem.
