plastics

A study based on models and data concludes that adverse health effects related to plastic emissions could more than double by 2040 if current practices do not change. The authors note that their model could not assess the potential impacts associated with many chemicals contained in plastics, nor with the microplastics and nanoplastics that form throughout their life cycle, due to a lack of data and “a serious lack of transparency regarding their composition.” The results are published in The Lancet Planetary Health. 

A study published in Nature estimates that atmospheric microplastic emissions have been overestimated. The authors compared measurements of atmospheric microplastics from 76 studies conducted between 2014 and 2024 at various locations around the world with model simulations. According to the simulations, atmospheric microplastic concentrations were between 100 and 10,000 times lower than previously estimated.

Recycling household PET waste—such as plastic bottles—using a new chemical process could generate a compound useful for synthesizing drugs, according to a study published in the journal Angewandte Chemie International Edition. The team discovered that, thanks to semi-hydrogenation, the waste could be broken down into a compound called EHMB, which is key to producing the cancer drug imatinib, a chemotherapy drug called procarbazine, and the insecticide fenpyroximate.

According to a study compiling data from 10,000 marine animal necropsies, 35% of birds, 12% of mammals, and 47% of turtles examined had ingested macroplastics, causing death in 1.6%, 0.7%, and 4.4% of these animals, respectively. The types of plastic that pose the greatest risk are rubber for birds, soft plastics and fishing debris for mammals, and hard and soft plastics for sea turtles, concludes this study published in PNAS.

After 10 days of meetings and beyond the deadline, representatives from more than 180 countries gathered at the UN headquarters in Geneva (Switzerland) have failed to agree on a global treaty against plastic pollution, the first legally binding one. This negotiation was, in principle, the last chance to reach an agreement, after the last meeting in Busan (South Korea) also ended without a treaty in December, two and a half years after negotiations began.

Ahead of the anticipated conclusion of a United Nations global treaty on plastics, a group of international experts calls for greater attention to health effects when addressing plastic pollution. The work, published in The Lancet, reviews current evidence on how plastics—including microplastics and plastic chemicals—affect health, and announces the launch of a new project to monitor these effects.

Most research on the presence of plastics in the seas has focused on macro- and microplastics. Now, an international team has analyzed the presence of nanoplastics - smaller in size - in different locations and depths of the North Atlantic Ocean, including areas near the European coasts. The results suggest that these may account for the majority fraction of the total mass of plastic in the oceans and that the total mass of marine plastic may be greater than previously thought. The work is published in the journal Nature. 

A research team from Murcia has found several types of microplastics in 69% of follicular fluid samples from 29 women and 55% of seminal fluid samples from 22 men, according to a presentation at the annual meeting of the European Society of Human Reproduction and Embryology (ESHRE), being held from 29 June to 2 July in Paris, France. The most frequent polymer in both types of samples was polytetrafluoroethylene (PTFE). The abstract of the research is published in the journal Human Reproduction.

Research published in Science Advances concludes that the level of microplastics in the environment could be three times higher in 2060 than in 2019, even if one of the two more ambitious policy scenarios proposed by the OECD to reduce plastics is implemented.

Only 9.5% of plastics produced globally in 2022 were generated from recycled materials. The findings, published in Communications Earth & Environment, are part of a comprehensive analysis of the global plastics sector, which also reveals a large increase in the amount of plastic being disposed of by incineration and substantial regional differences in its consumption.