Scientist Shanna Swan helped several couples reduce their exposure to increase their fertility.
The culprits are chemicals added to make plastic flexible (phthalates) or durable (BPA).
These disrupt hormones, affecting fertility, metabolism, and in-utero development, and are a major factor in cancers, obesity, chronic inflammation, and dementia.
Chemical industries respond to evidence of harm by saying that plastic is essential for safety, protecting food, transporting water, and producing safety devices.
They say the health benefits outweigh the harm, while failing to note that novel toxins in water, soil, and air cause harm to all living things, not just humans.
Also, they discount the impacts on smaller infant bodies highly sensitive to tiny amounts of novel toxins.
Plastics are derived from fossil fuels, and the fossil fuel industry has transformed our planet in three major ways:
Firstly, landscapes have been visibly altered by roads, sprawling cities, and vast industrial sites.
Secondly, chemical pollution leaches into air, water, soil, and bodies, including fertilisers and pesticides derived from fossil fuels.
Lastly, temperatures are rising faster than at any era in global history, with catastrophic disruptions of ocean flows and weather.
All of these, and other extreme changes, interact to create disastrous situations we can’t easily anticipate.
A study in Nature published in March shows the rate of warming has nearly doubled in ten years.
The kind of scenario we must discuss is what happens when more extreme heat meets the waste plastics in our oceans, landfills, and cities.
So, to bring this closer to home, when the 3G pitch is installed in Sloughbottom Park in Norwich, what will be the impact on hotter days when volatile compounds are released?
Those defending the pitch say it’s essential to help young people get active and outdoors.
In other words, the health benefits outweigh the risks.
I wonder if they have been precautionary enough about human health in their planning.
More widely, accusations fly about who cares most about people and nature, with a sense of justice on each side.
However, are the defenders of toxic plastics considering the most sensitive bodies, including the other species we depend upon?
Are they considering the needs of future generations as conditions grow more extreme?
Are they imagining alternatives, accepting that this might mean slower, more expensive production, for example, using plant sources and making durable products that can be repaired?
If you are concerned about the effects of plastic chemicals in our changing environment, here are some actions you could take.
Carry out an audit of exposure to plastic-related chemicals in your home, school, community space, or workplace.
This might include counting plastic waste, perhaps helping the Big Plastic Count.
While doing that, check your contact with polyvinyl chloride (PVC), and don’t forget the linings of card and metal containers.
It also means checking toxic sources, like shopping receipts, fire retardant sprays, perfumes in toiletry products, and plastic-derived clothing.
Then reduce your exposure where it counts most.
If you were microwaving food in plastic packaging, start putting it into a sturdy bowl.
Wear cotton next to the skin and avoid sweating in synthetic clothes.
If you waste money on plastic water bottles, invest in a glass or metal bottle.
Discover and support groups working to end plastic pollution and dependence, such as members of the East of England Plastics Coalition.
If you are adults in conflict over what is best for children’s futures, support children to learn about the risks of plastic pollution.
You might want to pose the arguments of the industrial lobbies too.
Children can then understand how different lobbies influence debates, and they can contribute with their brilliant imaginations to suggest alternatives.
Explore creative organisations raising awareness of these issues, such as Precious Plastic East.
Visit the Groundwork Gallery in King’s Lynn, where artists George Nuku and Frances Kearney are addressing plastic, oceans, and our relationship to nature.
Our children have a right to live well into their futures, to live in clean and safe environments that don’t cause life-limiting diseases and reduce their fertility.
Climate impacts will make life extremely hard for them, but there is much we can do to clean up our world and reduce the threats of intersecting impacts.
Did the participants on The Plastic Detox manage to have babies by reducing exposure after years of infertility?
I will leave you to guess or find out.