By AFP - Agence France Presse
Indigenous groups call for health protection in plastics deal.
Isabel MALSANG
For Caleb Justin Smith-White, the negotiations in South Korea on a landmark global agreement to reduce plastic pollution go beyond the environment. It's about saving lives.
He is one of dozens of people who have traveled from around the world to the city of Busan to share personal stories about the ways they say plastic - from its production to its disposal - has damaged their communities and their health.
Smith-White describes her home in Ontario, Canada, as a “petrochemical valley” and blames plastic production for a series of leukemia deaths in Aamjiwnaang, her community of around 2,000 people from the Chippewa indigenous group.
“We are too small a population for cancer studies to be effective,” he said, adding that ‘we don't have the money for it.’
But his message to negotiators is that plastic causes harm, a position supported by a coalition of scientists taking part in the talks.
“The known and emerging health risks constitute a serious and evolving concern for global health,” they warned ahead of the negotiations.
Near the village of Smith-White, in Sarnia, there are factories run by industrial giants - Imperial Oil, Shell, and Suncor Energy, among others - that handle the chemicals needed to produce plastic.
INEOS, one of the largest producers of styrene - a component of polystyrene plastic - said earlier this year that it would close its plant near Sarnia by 2026.
Smith-White said her community has long been “pushing for better regulations” on chemicals in water sources and, more recently, also on benzene emissions in the air.
“We didn't close INEOS,” he said. “They decided it wasn't worth investing money in the plant to bring it up to the standards we demand.”
- 'Public health crisis' -
First Nations groups from oil-producing US states such as Texas and Alaska and indigenous peoples from Australia to Latin America used their time in Busan to describe the harms associated with plastic.
These damages range from the growing incidence of once-rare diseases to the fact that mountain villages are being progressively buried by plastic.
“It's everywhere, in the streets, around the houses,” said Prem Singh, part of the Tharu indigenous group, about his village in western Nepal.
“We don't have a garbage dump,” and the community's cattle and goats are eating the plastic waste, he told AFP.
Pamela Miller, executive director of the NGO Alaska Community Action on Toxics (ACAT), warned of a “public health crisis.”
“We see a cancer crisis in many of the indigenous communities we work with in Alaska,” she told AFP, linking the problem to the extraction of fossil fuels used to make plastic and the growing consumption of plastic among the population.
Microplastics and nanoplastics have been found in the human body, including in the lungs, blood, and brain.
Although it is still unclear exactly how harmful they are, several studies have linked their presence to a range of health problems.
Of the more than 16,000 chemicals used or found in commercial plastic, more than a quarter are considered potentially hazardous to human health, according to the Coalition of Scientists for an Effective Plastics Treaty.
Health concerns include “infertility, obesity and non-communicable diseases, including diabetes, cardiovascular disease and many types of cancer,” the group states.
- 'Chemicals inside us
The draft agreement in Busan describes plastic pollution as a “serious environmental and human health problem.”
But a section dedicated to health remains virtually empty, offering only a choice between deleting the section and reinforcing the health language elsewhere or deciding its content at a later date.
On Sunday night, negotiators failed to reach an agreement on the treaty, and the president asked for more time for discussions.
Controversial issues included setting targets for reducing plastic production or phasing out chemicals known or considered harmful to human health.
Some countries accuse a handful of oil-producing nations, such as Russia, Iran, and Saudi Arabia, of obstructing the UN process.
Some oil-producing countries have said in negotiations that plastic is not dangerous to health and claim that existing bans on harmful chemicals are sufficient.
But Sarah Dunlop, a neuroscientist who runs the plastics and human health division of the Minderoo Foundation in Australia, is not convinced.
“If chemical regulations were working as some people say, why would we find these chemicals inside us?” she said.
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