The Extent of Toxic Trespass
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Residents in a small Maine town are grappling with the fallout from a malicious poisoning: A couple who sought better water views from their seasonal property killed stately oak trees on neighboring land with a persistent herbicide that is now contaminating a public beach.
This egregious case of “toxic trespass,” the intrusion of chemicals onto land and into bodies without permission, has prompted anger and calls for redress. But what happens when toxic violations are routine?
Although not subjected to acute poisoning like the oaks, each of us endures repeated chemical intrusions—from household cleaners, pesticides, personal care products, food packaging, building materials, furnishings, electronics and treated linens—with cumulative effects that are likely harmful. We tolerate this trespass with surprisingly complacency.
Upward of 60 percent of the U.S. population may be drinking water that contains per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS), highly persistent compounds associated with a growing list of health concerns. These “forever chemicals” and thousands of chemical additives in microplastics and even tinier nanoplastics now fall in the rain and blow about in the atmosphere—venturing uninvited into virtually every ecosystem on earth.
We tolerate this [toxic] trespass with surprisingly complacency.
“Estimates suggest that more than 24 percent of human diseases and disorders globally are attributable to environmental factors, with such factors playing a role in 80 percent of the deadliest diseases, including cancer, heart disease, and others,” a report released last month by the Endocrine Society notes. For chemicals like PFAS and plastic additives that can disrupt endocrine (hormonal) systems, the report adds, “there may be no safe dose for exposure.”
Virtually all Americans now have some PFAS circulating in their blood, among many other compounds. A National Exposure Report gathers biomonitoring data on 37 categories of chemicals. Tracking these compounds is an ongoing challenge given that the U.S. generates an estimated 1,500 new chemical substances each year.
A newly released report found that in plastic alone, 16,325 chemicals are used. Roughly two-thirds of those have undergone no hazard testing, and fewer than 1,000 are regulated globally. The vast majority of the remaining third, 4,219, are known to be hazardous (toxic, persistent, bioaccumulative and/or mobile).
The in-depth PlastChem analysis confirms that we are all unwitting experimental subjects, immersed in a chemical miasma from synthetic stuff.
There are small steps underway toward a policy response. Negotiations on a global plastics treaty stalled out last fall, but more discussion will happen in Ottawa next month. An international science panel, similar to the IPCC, is forming to provide decision-makers with reliable data on chemicals, waste and pollution.
To achieve a wholesale reform of chemical production and regulation, though, more people need to grasp—on a visceral level—the extent to which we are all now victims of toxic trespass.
Research: Human Health Effects of Microplastics
“The study of toxicity in microplastics is in its infancy, but we’re beginning to learn they’re a transport mechanism for getting bad chemicals into people,” observes Pete Myers, chief scientist at Environmental Health Sciences, in a new documentary called “Plastic People: The Hidden Crisis of Microplastics.“
Plastics present “significant harms to human health… at every stage of the plastic life cycle,” concluded a March 2023 report by the Minderoo-Monaco Commission on Plastics and Human Health. As plastic waste breaks apart, it can carry thousands of toxic chemicals into plants and animals, including humans.
A recent study published in “The New England Journal of Medicine” confirms that microplastics accumulate in the plaque that can line arteries, potentially heightening inflammation. Among individuals studied for three years following surgery for atherosclerosis, the 60 percent who had accumulated microplastics and nanoplastics in their plaque tissue were more than twice as likely to have a stroke, heart attack or death than those who did not.
Recent research in China found microplastics in all 17 samples of the three different types of arterial tissue analyzed.
Inflammatory effects are also evident in the digestive system: “Microplastics could be accomplices in the development of IBD [inflammatory bowel disease] and could cause severe intestinal inflammation,” three scientists at China’s Nanchang University report.
Antonio Ragusa, an obstetrics researcher in Bologna, Italy featured in the film, describes how microplastics are destroying some cells within placentas; “Plastic will alter the way DNA is expressed,” he says. A study newly published in “Toxicological Sciences” found microplastics in all 62 of the placentas that researchers analyzed.
Study co-author Matthew Campen, of the University of New Mexico, told The Guardian that the concentrations of microplastics being found in human tissue could account for growing rates of IBD, colon cancer in younger patients and falling sperm counts.
The additives in microplastics concern cancer researchers like Jason Somarelli, a professor of medicine at Duke University. In work not yet published, he told PBS Newshour, he has found more than 100 carcinogenic chemicals in microplastics.
Turkish medical researcher Sedat Gündoğdu has found pigments used in PVC production in brain tumor tissue removed from a patient. “If microplastic can transfer from blood to brain,” he told journalist Ziya Tong in the film, “it means it can transfer from everywhere to everywhere. There is no barrier… no limitation for plastics.”
In Gündoğdu’s view, our collective immersion in synthetic chemicals is transforming not just our bodies but our species. “The current situation, with the amount of plastic waste we generate…,” he says, “makes us Homo plasticus, not Homo sapiens anymore.”
Plastic waste is forecast to almost triple by 2060.
News of Note
Since getting a patent on aqueous film-forming foam (AFFF) in 1966, the U.S. Department of Defense used this PFAS-laden firefighting foam on military bases and in trainings until required by Congress to find alternatives. Now the U.S. government is claiming immunity in 27 suits seeking damages for the contamination and health impacts from AFFF use at bases.
As Maine and Minnesota move toward a ban on most uses of PFAS, industries are struggling to find substitutes and some are pushing back against mandated deadlines. But for a growing number of companies. as Brooks Johnson and Chloe Johnson write in the Star Tribune, “with or without a ban, PFAS is looking toxic from a business perspective.”
The U.N. Human Rights Commission issued a strong rebuke of PFAS manufacturer Chemours (a spinoff of DuPont) for knowingly contaminating the Cape Fear watershed in North Carolina, and it criticized state and federal regulators for being “captured” by industry.
Living in a state where roughly half of households rely on private wells, Senators Angus King and Susan Collins of Maine (and two other senators) have proposed bipartisan legislation to help private well owners receive federal support for PFAS water testing.
The challenges of communicating PFAS risks at the local level are highlighted in a High Country News article that traces one water utility’s outreach to customers. This piece underscores the need for transparency in sharing data, honest portrayal of risks, and clear guidance on means to reduce exposure.
An article in Grist on microplastic pollution from clothes notes that one potential solution might involve expanding “Extended Producer Responsibility” laws to synthetic clothing.
Resources
Plastic People: The Hidden Crisis of Microplastics, a sobering new feature documentary, provides diverse insights from scientists, medical researchers, authors and activists around the world.
A compelling new short documentary, Sludge: A PFAS Uprising, portrays the devastating impacts from PFAS on some of Maine’s farms. (Maine is unusual in systematically testing for persistent chemical contamination on agricultural lands spread with municipal and industrial sludge—a practice that is still promoted by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and permitted in every other state.)
Thanks for reading!