A story in Inside Climate News notes that so much plastic waste ends up in dumps around the world that millions of people, mostly in poor countries, make their living as “waste pickers,” sifting through mountains of trash, looking for recyclable materials to sell.
Not surprisingly, waste pickers, who work alongside burning garbage with no protective gear, are highly exposed to toxic chemicals in plastics, according to a new report assessing differences in chemical exposures between people who handle plastic and those who work in offices.
To highlight how hazardous chemicals in plastic pervade daily life, the International Pollutants Elimination Network, or IPEN, repeated an exposure experiment it launched last year, during the previous round of treaty negotiations in South Korea.
IPEN-affiliated nonprofit groups in Thailand and Kenya recruited plastic recyclers, waste pickers and office workers to wear silicone wristbands for five days at work. The wristbands absorb chemicals in the environment to simulate exposure through the lungs or skin.
IPEN also asked a dozen U.N. officials and treaty delegates to wear the wristbands last year, and added four more delegates this year.
The wristbands were analyzed at an independent lab for representatives of six classes of unregulated chemicals associated with plastics that have known or suspected health risks. The study authors treated office workers as a control group, thinking their exposures would be minimal.
Yet all the participants, even Luis Vayas Valdivieso, chair of the U.N. plastics treaty negotiating committee, were exposed to at least 21 of 73 chemicals from all six classes.
There was just a slight difference in exposure between the plastic workers and office workers, which is “extremely concerning,” said Dorothy Adhiambo Otieno, an author on the report, at a press conference in Geneva Wednesday announcing the study results.
“It doesn’t matter whether you’re a waste picker working in a dump site or you’re a person who works in the office,” said Otieno, a project manager at the Centre for Environment Justice and Development in Kenya who wore a wristband for the study. “Wherever you are, you are exposed to these toxic chemicals almost at the same level.”
“In our work we see in study after study that plastics are exposing people to toxic chemicals, transporting them into our homes and into the environment,” Therese Karlsson, an IPEN science advisor, told Inside Climate News.
See the full story here.