44 | August 2022
T
here's a good chance that as you're reading this,
you've already touched multiple items of plastic
so far in your day. Perhaps you've brushed your
teeth with a plastic toothbrush, typed an email on
a plastic computer keyboard, tucked a handful of Goldfish
crackers into a Ziploc bag for your child's lunch, or donned
a disposable N95 mask. Maybe you've joined a 5-year-old
in an epic kitchen table battle between Barbie and Buzz
Lightyear. Maybe you've put a plastic bandage on a small,
scraped knee.
Even for those of us who are already trying to minimize
our use of plastic, avoiding it entirely can feel nearly im-
possible. And while many of us are aware of the growing
harms of plastic pollution and some of the frightening po-
tential health impacts of plastic exposure, many of us don't
realize that the plastic we use in our everyday lives is made
from fossil fuels—the very same fossil fuels that are caus-
ing climate change.
Plastics are the largest category of petrochemicals,
which are extracted from deep in the earth to create the
products we use in our everyday lives. The ubiquity of plas-
tics and other petrochemicals comes at a steep cost to our
health, especially for those living near production and pro-
cessing facilities. People living near petrochemical produc-
tion facilities have higher risk of numerous types of cancer,
adverse birth outcomes, asthma and respiratory illness,
and kidney disease. Children are especially vulnerable to
harms from petrochemical pollutants.
Petrochemical Pollution and Our Health
By Elizabeth Bechard
