Health was supposed to be central to the UN plastics treaty. Now it’s up for debate.

Anti-tobacco NGOs struggle to link health, environment in plastics treaty talks

Cigarette filters that can pollute up to 1,000 litres of water are at the centre of NGOs’ push to make tobacco firms pay for waste management

Scientists urge ambitious global plastics treaty to protect health – The Mail & Guardian

An ambitious, effective global plastics treaty offers a “once-in-a-planet” opportunity to not only protect human health and the environment, but also to restore public trust in plastics and foster industrial innovation.  “That opportunity lies before us; we hope it is not wasted,” Richard Thompson, a professor of marine biology at the University of Plymouth and a coordinator of The Scientists’ Coalition for an Effective Plastics Treaty, told a m…

Health was supposed to be central to the UN plastics treaty. Now it’s up for debate.

Since negotiations for a United Nations treaty to address plastic pollution began more than three years ago, protecting human health has risen to the top of many countries’ priority lists. This is partly because the science on the issue has evolved so rapidly. There are now thousands of scientific papers showing how plastics affect people’s health at every stage of the material’s life cycle — from the extraction of oil and gas to the disposal of…