Each piece of plastic we encounter carries with it stories of bodily violence, lives cut short and planetary heating. The plastics supply chain releases potent carcinogens and greenhouse gases at every step. Most at risk are the millions of low-income and historically marginalized Americans who reside in the shadow of plastics fabrication facilities, unprotected from the round-the-clock toxic pollution and the all-too-frequent petrochemical leaks, fires, and explosions.
The nation’s laws governing the plastics industry are weak, inconsistent, and riddled with astonishing loopholes, a relic of long-outdated science and relentless petrochemical industry influence. Many laws go unenforced. And notwithstanding industry propaganda, there is no safe and economical way to recycle or get rid of plastics.
Plastics are a lifeline for oil and gas companies determined not to let climate change and the promise of renewable energy cut into their profits. Production is on track to double by 2040 and triple by 2050. This expansion will accelerate planetary heating and will impose severe consequences on workers and frontline communities.
Harmful at Every Step
Plastics are made by combining gas, oil, or coal with synthetic chemicals. Every step in the supply chain releases harmful chemicals and climate-heating gases. It is predicted that by 2040, as much as 19 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions will come from plastics.
Plastics Feedstocks
In the United States, about 90 percent of plastics are made from fossil gas, nearly all of which is extracted by hydraulic fracturing of shale rock. This minimally regulated process involves drilling miles-long wells, detonating explosive charges in the rock, and injecting several million gallons of water, thousands of tons of sand, and thousands of gallons of chemicals. These include substances with extreme developmental and reproductive toxicity, such as arsenic, benzene, cadmium, lead, formaldehyde, chlorine, and mercury.
In 2011, despite the grave concerns of its own scientists, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) approved the use of PFAS chemicals as fracking fluids. Into more than 1,000 fracking wells, companies inject these “forever chemicals,” which are highly toxic, persistent, and bioaccumulative and are linked to cancers and immune, thyroid, kidney, and reproductive problems.
Many Americans, including nearly half the populations of Oklahoma and West Virginia, live within a mile of an active well.
Plastic Manufacturing
The fracked gases or other fossil fuels are distilled and ultimately “cracked” at very high temperatures, breaking the molecular bonds and rearranging the atoms. To these feedstocks are added combinations of the more than 16,000 chemicals used to make plastics. Many of these chemicals are toxic, flammable, and explosive.
Plastics manufacturing releases dioxins, ethylene oxide, formaldehyde and other extremely hazardous air pollutants. Researchers have identified elevated cancer risks as well as adverse respiratory and reproductive effects among those who work in or live near these facilities. EPA has a complicated patchwork of laws meant to limit the pollution from petrochemical facilities.
In addition, there is the danger of chemical disasters. These leaks, fires and explosions occur every other day in the United States, whether at petrochemical facilities or along the routes of the trucks, pipelines, and mile-long trains transporting the hazardous and volatile chemicals that are turned into plastic.
The Use of Plastic Products
Plastics harm consumers as well. The chemicals in plastic (such as PFAS, phthalates, bisphenols, and flame retardants) are not physically bound to the polymer and can leach from the plastic into our foods, our bodies, and our surroundings. In addition, each of us inhales and ingests hundreds of thousands, or even millions, of microplastic particles annually.
The wide-ranging sources of microplastic and nanoplastic pollution include everything from the plastic coatings on agricultural fertilizers and pesticides to the application of sewage sludge on farmland, to the microplastic beads in cosmetics (e.g., to exfoliate skin, to make lotion feel silky, to make it easier to comb your hair after shampooing, etc.). Other microplastic sources include tire abrasion, clothes, cleaning products, carpets, waste incinerators, and infill material on artificial turf fields. A recent study identified an average of 240,000 plastic particles in each one-liter bottle of water.
Microplastics have been found throughout the human body, including in the human placenta, breast milk, testicular tissue, heart tissue, and blood clots. A growing body of research suggests that plastics may be linked to the accelerating decline in the quantity and quality of human sperm—counts have decreased by more than 50 percent globally over the past half-century.
Plastic Waste Disposal
More than 40 percent of plastics are “disposable,” designed to be used just once, yet there is no way to safely and economically get rid of them. The industry has been promoting plastics recycling, a process hindered by the thousands of chemicals in plastic. Recycling generates stunning amounts of microplastics. The reclaimed plastic that emerges is of lower grade and higher toxicity.
The United States sends large volumes of plastic trash to Mexico, Malaysia, Vietnam, and other countries in the Global South, where much of it is landfilled or burned. Officially, this counts as recycling. The Basel Convention regulates the international trade in plastic waste, but the United States has not ratified it and has opposed its plastics export amendments.
Desperate to convince the public and regulators that it has solved the plastics crisis, the plastics lobby is now engaged in a high-stakes campaign to burn plastic trash. They are calling the process “advanced recycling,” yet most of these technologies involve a decades-old incineration process that turns the plastic into air pollution, toxic ash, and contaminated oils. The plastics lobby has pushed through legislation in 25 states and is now trying to convince Congress and the EPA that plastics burning is not incineration and that plastics waste is not solid waste, thus exempting “advanced recycling” from the federal Clean Air Act.
The pyrolysis oils that emerge from these incinerators can be made into fuel. A 2023 investigation shows the elevated toxicity of such fuels: A Chevron refinery in Pascagoula, Mississippi, received EPA approval to use the pyrolysis oils to make jet and boat fuel. EPA scientists determined that air pollution produced from burning the jet fuel is expected to cause cancer in one in every four people exposed over a lifetime. The boat fuel ingredient is even more toxic: every person exposed over a lifetime would be expected to get cancer.