Experts tell lawmakers about harmful effects of microplastics

Microplastics can be found virtually anywhere, from the bristles of a toothbrush to packaged food, and experts who study the harmful effects plastic has on people’s bodies want lawmakers to consider legislation to mitigate their spread. 

“There’s only so much we can do as individuals, so we need the state of New Jersey to act,” Bennington College professor Judith Enck told lawmakers Monday.

Professors from around the country testified about their concerns over harmful plastic chemicals accumulating in the environment at a joint hearing of the Senate and Assembly environment committees timed for Earth Day.

Phoebe Stapleton, professor at Rutgers University’s Ernest Mario School of Pharmacy, said humans are so exposed to these microscopic plastics through skin, inhalation, and ingestion that studies have found evidence of plastic in people’s organs, blood, breast milk, tissue, and placentas. 

Only about 10% of plastic waste in America is recycled, according to the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine. Between 1950 and 2017, 9.2 billion tons of plastics have been produced.

Plastic takes centuries to break down, so it remains in the environment as microplastics, which are less than five millimeters, or nanoplastics, which are so small they cannot be detected with the naked eye. These tiny bits of plastic have been found across all continents, landscapes, and locations, Stapleton said.

Stapleton estimated that 590 million tons of plastic will be produced annually by 2050, up from the estimated 400 million tons produced in 2022. She noted scientists “do not yet understand how, if, or when they may be eliminated from our bodies.” She said federal and state support is “paramount to unravel the human health concerns” that will likely arise from plastic exposure. 

Shanna Swan, an environmental and reproductive epidemiologist at the Icahn School of Medicine in Mount Sinai, cited a link between the creation of plastic and dramatically declining fertility rates and sperm counts. She said she measured sperm counts in different environments and saw major differences in places with greater exposure to microplastics and pesticides. She wondered why lawmakers aren’t more alarmed about global fertility rates declining an average of 50% over 50 years. 

“If I told you IQ dropped 1% per year, you would be really concerned. I think we should be really concerned about this decline,” said Swan, who testified via video from California. 

Microplastics are also disrupting men’s testicle size and women’s hormones, she said. And this isn’t just evident in humans, but across all species, she added. She believes there’s a link between the increasing number of endangered species and microplastics disturbing the environment. 

“Who cares if the genitals are a little different? Turns out it does matter,” said Swan. 

Bottle bill and other recommendations

Almost everyone is familiar with the phrase “reduce, reuse, recycle,” but there’s little being done on the reduction and reusing side, and recycling alone isn’t going to fix the problem, said Enck, a former U.S. Environmental Protection Agency administrator. 

And while lawmakers didn’t discuss any specific legislation — the hearing was only for discussion from the invited panelists — Enck suggested several proposals for lawmakers to weigh.

One of her recommendations is to pass laws to reduce packaging by 50% in the next decade. She pointed to Amazon packaging with unnecessary bubble wrap, and said taxpayers foot the bill for all this waste to be trashed. In states like Maine and California and countries like Japan and Germany with packaging reduction laws, people receive less plastic packaging, she said. 

“Companies can innovate when legislative bodies tell them the rules of the road,” she said. 

She urged lawmakers not to believe lobbyists for plastic companies who say plastic can be easily recycled. She warned against chemical recycling — a process that breaks down used plastics into raw materials that can be reused as chemicals, producing air pollution — saying it’s “absolutely not the answer.”

Gary Sondermeyer, vice president of Bayshore Recycling Group, said plastic recycling is “highly effective” in New Jersey. About 37% of solid waste in New Jersey is recycled, according to the state Department of Environmental Protection. 

What can be recycled varies from county to county. Sondermeyer recommended creating a uniform recycling list of what’s accepted across the state, which has been done in Connecticut, Oregon, and Colorado. And he agreed that plastic waste needs to be reduced. He also serves on a plastic advisory council that will present a report to the Legislature with recommendations, like avoiding buying single-use plastics for schools and other government facilities and creating a waste reduction steering committee. 

He objected to claims that recycling serves no purpose, he said. Nearly every resident has access to curbside recycling collection, and plastics are highly valuable to recyclers, he said. If the material wasn’t being recycled, companies would be losing money instead of making money, he stressed. 

Sen. Bob Smith (D-Middlesex), the Senate committee’s chair, pressed Sondermeyer on the impact of a “bottle bill,” which would require beverage producers to pay consumers a deposit for containers they return to the company. At least 10 states have deposit-refund systems for beverage containers.

It would have “incredibly negative repercussions” and “dismantle the system we have in New Jersey,” said Sondermeyer. If such legislation passed, he questioned how his recycling group would stay in business, estimating 40% of revenue would be taken away. 

Enck argued bottle bills lead to litter reduction and higher recycling rates. In states with deposit-refund systems, the recycling rate for plastic bottles is 37%, compared to 17% in states without these programs, she said. 

“We’ve got to get the details right,” she said. “The plastics industry knows the walls are closing in, and so they’re promoting bills that don’t really get the job done.”