Experts tell lawmakers about harmful effects of microplastics • New Jersey Monitor

Microplastics are found virtually everywhere, from the bristles of a toothbrush to packaged food, and experts who study the harmful effects of plastic on people’s bodies want lawmakers to consider legislation to curb their spread.

“There’s only so much we can do as individuals, so we need the state of New Jersey to take action,” Bennington College professor Judith Enck told lawmakers Monday.

Professors from across the country testified about their concerns about harmful plastic chemicals accumulating in the environment during a joint hearing of the Senate and General Assembly environmental committees scheduled for Earth Day.

Phoebe Stapleton, a professor at Rutgers University’s Ernest Mario School of Pharmacy, said people are so exposed to these microscopic plastics through the skin, through inhalation and ingestion, that studies have found evidence of plastic in their bodies. people’s organsblood, breast milk, tissue, and placentas.

According to the American newspaper, only about 10% of plastic waste in America is recycled National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine. Between 1950 and 2017, 9.2 billion tons of plastic were produced.

Plastic takes centuries to break down, so it remains in the environment as microplastics, which are less than five millimeters in size, or nanoplastics, which are so small they cannot be detected with the naked eye. These tiny pieces of plastic have been found on all continents, landscapes and locations, Stapleton said.

Stapleton estimates that 590 million tons of plastic will be produced annually by 2050, up from the estimated 400 million tons produced in 2022. She noted that scientists “do not yet understand how, if and when they can be eliminated from our bodies.” She said federal and state support is “critical to unraveling the human health challenges” that are likely to arise from plastic exposure.

Shanna Swan, an environmental and reproductive epidemiologist at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, cited a link between the creation of plastic and its dramatic consequences. declining fertility rates and sperm count. She said she measured sperm counts in different environments and saw big differences in places with higher exposure to microplastics and pesticides. She wondered why lawmakers aren’t more concerned that global fertility rates have fallen by an average of 50% over the past 50 years.

“If I told you that IQ is dropping 1% per year, you would be really concerned. I think we should really be concerned about this decline,” said Swan, who testified via video from California.

Microplastics are too to disturb the size of men’s testicles and women’s hormones, she said. And this is evident not just in humans, but in all species, she added. She believes there is a link between the increasing number of endangered species and microplastics that disrupt the environment.

“What difference does it make if the genitals are a little different? Turns out it does matter,” Swan said.

Bottle bill and other recommendations

Nearly everyone knows the phrase “reduce, reuse, recycle,” but little is being done on the reduction and reuse side, and recycling alone won’t solve the problem, said Enck, a former administrator of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

And while lawmakers did not discuss specific legislation — the hearing was intended only for discussion by the invited panelists — Enck proposed several proposals for lawmakers to consider.

One of her recommendations is to adopt laws to reduce the amount of packaging by 50% over the next ten years. She pointed Amazon packaging with unnecessary bubble wrap, and the said taxpayers foot the bill for disposing of all this waste. In states like Maine and California and countries like Japan and Germany with packaging reduction laws, people are receiving less plastic packaging, she said.

“Companies can innovate when regulators tell them the rules of the road,” she said.

She urged lawmakers not to believe plastic company lobbyists who say plastic can be easily recycled. She warned against chemical recycling – a process that breaks down used plastics into raw materials that can be reused as chemicals, causing air pollution – saying it is “absolutely not the solution”.

Gary Sondermeyer, vice president of Bayshore Recycling Group, said plastic recycling is “very effective” in New Jersey. According to the state Department of Environmental Protection, approximately 37% of New Jersey’s solid waste is recycled.

What can be recycled varies from province to province. Sondermeyer recommended creating a uniform recycling list of what is accepted in the state, which has been done in Connecticut, Oregon and Colorado. And he agreed that plastic waste needs to be reduced. He is also a member of a plastics advisory board that will submit a report to the Legislature with recommendations such as avoiding the purchase of single-use plastics for schools and other government facilities and creating a waste reduction steering committee.

He took issue with claims that recycling serves no purpose, he said. Nearly every resident has access to curbside recycling collection, and plastics are highly valuable to recyclers, he said. If the material were not recycled, companies would lose money instead of making money, he points out.