EPA panel warns plastics threaten kids’ health — Bayer says evidence lacking

The committee gave the EPA multiple suggestions to reduce kids’ exposures.

SEATTLE (Scrap Monster): A committee of expert advisers is calling for stronger environmental regulations to protect children from plastics and other harmful chemicals, despite a dissenting industry position claiming there is little evidence that plastic is toxic to children. 

The Children’s Health Protection Advisory Committee was asked a year ago by the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to review scientific findings and then weigh in on several questions related to how plastic and related chemicals may affect children and what the agency should do about it.

The committee’s responses were posted publicly to the EPA website last week. A letter from the committee signed by 23 scientists, local government officials, health experts and advocates, pointed to “significant human health concerns” across the entire life cycle of plastic, with children especially vulnerable, and laid out several moves the agency should take.

“The science is clear that plastic pollution can harm children’s health and raise risks of developmental disabilities, birth defects, cancers, and other serious diseases — especially in communities that are subject to cumulative and aggregate exposures,” the committee letter states. “These harms can occur throughout the life cycle of plastics.”

Committee members warned that plastic can harm children’s health from the extraction of fossil fuels used as building blocks for plastic, to production, use, and disposal or recycling. Getting fossil fuels out of the ground brings air pollutants such as particulate matter and volatile organic compounds (VOCs), and producing plastic uses a variety of toxic chemicals including bisphenol-A (BPA), various per- and poly-fluoroalkyl substances (PFAS), phthalates and flame retardants that can also escape during use, incineration or recycling. 

These pollutants — and several more of the more than an estimated 16,000 chemicals in plastics — are linked to a variety of health issues, including developmental, reproductive and immune system problems, respiratory issues and some cancers. They found that children of color or those in low-income communities are most at risk.

“Plastic pollution is not just plastic waste, it’s all the pollution and harmful chemicals related to plastics from beginning to end, starting with fossil fuels and continuing with plastic products and plastic waste,” said Veena Singla, an affiliate researcher with the University of California, San Francisco, and one of the letter’s signees. “Children also have higher exposures to many chemicals because they breathe, eat and drink more for their body weight compared to adults.” 

The committee gave the EPA multiple suggestions to reduce kids’ exposures. The top priority: less plastic.

“When plastics are not essential, we should be getting rid of them,” said Jean-Marie Kauth, a professor and researcher at Benedictine University and signee of the letter. 

Other top priorities, they said, should be supporting an international plastics treaty that aims to reduce plastic production, and testing chemicals and additives in both virgin and recycled plastics for any harmful health effects before allowing them to be used. 

Several suggestions encouraged the agency to strengthen or more rigorously enforce existing pollution regulations that would limit plastic-related pollution, including the Clean Air Act, the Toxic Substances Control Act and the Safer Communities by Chemical Accident Prevention rule.

 

Courtesy: www.thenewlede.org