Tag: the environment

The news everybody knew: plastics make you sick

Medical journal The Lancet just published a straight-up report on plastics: they make you sick. Is your baby chewing on plastic teething rings? Is your tween’s room filled to the rafters with Barbies? Choose healthier.

On August 3, 2025, the Lancet, a well-known medical journal, published a report that went straight to the point regarding plastics. The Lancet Countdown on Health and Plastics, says:

“Plastics are a grave, growing, and under-recognised danger to human and planetary health. Plastics cause disease and death from infancy to old age and are responsible for health-related economic losses exceeding US$1·5 trillion annually.”

There has been enough talk about plastics harming our environment.

We have all seen the ubiquitous images of the mountains of plastic containers clogging waterways, decimating oceanic health, and blighting landscapes. What we have not seen or heard enough is talk of the health hazards caused by rooms full our children’s plastic toys, refrigerators with plastic containers, pantries with plastic-lined food cans, doors and windows encased in polyvinyl chloride (PVC, an acknowledged toxic plastic), and water pipes made of PVC.

So, lets talk about the human danger of plastics.

The human danger largely comes from two sources: (1) From inhaling chemicals that emanate from building materials like PVC, furniture made of engineered “wood,” and products — from toys to medical equipment — made from plastics. (2) From ingesting microplastics that enter our bodies via water, food, and breathing.

These foreign substances wreck havoc in endocrine and neurological systems, especially the systems of fetuses and children. Such disruptions increase risks for obesity, diabetes, lower fertility, and ADHD.

The remedy discussed in the Lancet report?

The several authors of the referenced Lancet report must be commended for sounding alarm in a popular journal, the publications of which are often picked up by the general media.

They must also be commended for starting a serious effort to track amelioration of harms done by plastics. The tracking – or “Countdown” — will begin after member states of the United Nations finalize a global plastics treaty during meetings in Geneva, Switzerland from August 5 – 14.

A press release dated August 5, 2025, on the The UN Environmental Programme website defines the objective of the upcoming sessions on global plastics:

“… to develop an international legally binding instrument on plastic pollution, including in the marine environment … to finalize and approve the text of the agreement and forward it for consideration and adoption at a future Diplomatic Conference of Plenipotentiaries.”

What was not discussed in the Lancet report?

Understandably, the scope of the Lancet report does not include two questions that hopefully will be addressed by ordinary concerned individuals.

* Have the climate change global agreements worked as expected? Some will say “yes” judging by the proliferation of laws regarding oil production, transportation, and infrastructure. Others will say “no” judging by the fact that climate continues to present increasing challenges since the Paris Agreement was signed in 2015.

* What will replace the innumerable plastic products in the market today? Some will say not to worry because that will be solved once enough plastics are banned. Others will say that the sheer volume of replacements needed requires that consumers become convinced that plastics threaten their health, start purchasing the alternatives that are already in the market, and producers reach economies of scale to make alternatives to plastics affordable to everyone. In other words, where mandates, like those made as a result of climate change treaties, do not work, consumer awareness might.

Replacement products must precede or accompany reduction in plastics.

In the old days, children’s toys were made of wood, cotton and wool, straw, paper, tin and other products derived from nature. The same with household products.

In 1907, the first completely synthetic plastic, made from phenol and formaldehyde, was developed. It was named Bakelite. Its many uses, including the manufacturing of colorful bangles, helped propel the development of more plastics.

As development and production of plastics grew, economies of scale made plastics cheap compared to naturally-sourced materials. New technologies made plastic products in all kinds of shapes, sizes, textures, strengths, and colors. And omnipresent advertising and powerful lobbying succeeded in selling plastics like polyvinyl chloride as safe for our water infrastructure (like PVC pipes), our homes’ building materials (like “luxury vinyl”), our children’s toys (like the plushy ones), and containers of things we put in our bodies (like IV bags).

Given such universal use of plastics, talk of reducing use via government mandates – as the UN global efforts seem to advocate – is unrealistic.

More realistic would be to increase consumers’ awareness.

To reduce the use of plastics, consumers must (1) become believers in the health hazards of plastics, and (2) become comfortable with using plastics alternatives, many of which are already in the market today.

Here is an example of the effectiveness of strategy (1).

The public’s awareness that cigarettes were deadly and not the safe glamorous indulgence they were portrayed to be helped to lower smoking addiction. Cigarettes were not banned, they just became yucky in the eyes of a lot of people.

The same could happen to most plastics. The environmental lobby has already succeeded in developing some distaste for plastics by publicizing realities like the island of plastic garbage located in the North Pacific and sea creatures helplessly tangled in plastic containers’ packaging yokes.

Now health enthusiasts could make inhaling the volatile organic compounds (VOCs) off-gassed by luxury vinyl, plushy toys, and the innumerable other plastic products in our homes and workplaces equally undesirable. Even easier to make unpleasant is the ingestion of micro plastics.

Strategy (2) is seen in trends like the general public of the 1970s feeling comfortable using computers or using recycling bins.

Some statistics show that demand for alternatives to plastic products is increasing. Maybe selling “sustainability” works, maybe plastic teething rings became a bridge too far for some, maybe more people now know that most plastic products are not recyclable and end up in landfills.

That trend could accelerate with clever promotion of alternative products that already exist, appeals to “early adopters,” encouraging the purchase of less but healthier stuff, support of politicians that advocate using petroleum (the raw material of many plastics) for essential industries and transportation not vinyl doors and Barbies.

Find out about the interesting plastic alternatives!

An online store (Impack, with no connection with this blog) selling non-plastic packaging has a good chart of alternative materials and their relative cost. The two more interesting products are glassine bags and mushroom cushioning.

Glassine bags are resistant to grease, air, and water vapor. They are also biodegradable, translucent, cost effective, and not coated with anything. Glassine is a healthy way to wrap food.

Mushroom cushioning is made of mushroom roots combined with agricultural waste like corn husks. It is a highly effective protective material for expensive fragile products like electronics and high-end cosmetics.

Choose healthy.

What keeps people from moving away from plastics is feeling comfortable with plastics’ image of trustworthy useful affordability. That image was carefully curated to consumers.

A 4th of July checkered tablecloth made of PVC looks just like grandma’s oilcloth made of cotton and linseed oil. Vinyl sheet flooring comes right up when you Google “linoleum,” also mostly of linseed oil. Parents and children are constantly fed images of happy kids surrounded by piles of cute and colorful plastic.

Pulling back the curtain on plastics, as the Lancet report has just helped do, and making people feel even more comfortable with natural alternatives to plastics is a good way to make us all much healthier.

Picture: Disney Princess Gourmet Kitchen sold at Target. 42.32 H x 49.37 W x 12.59 D. Material: Plastic.

California dreamin’ of EVs

Often, when reading news from California, one wonders whether the state is at the forefront of innovation or delusion. California’s fixation with climate change and electric vehicles serves as example.

Often, when reading news from California, one wonders whether the state is at the forefront of innovation or delusion. California’s fixation with climate change and electric vehicles serves as example.

Here is a quote from one of the more progressive members of San Francisco’s Board of Supervisors, Rafael Mandelman.

“We have to take action to expand our public EV-charging infrastructure and make EV ownership more accessible and practical for all San Franciscans.” … “Our curbside EV charging program is not just about installing charging stations. It’s about creating a more equitable and sustainable transportation ecosystem.” The City wants to add thousands of EV chargers by 2030, San Francisco Examiner, March 19, 2024.

San Francisco, as California, does have ambitious climate mandates, including plans for EVs for everyone and a ban on the sale of new gas-powered cars after 2035.

Given the real world, such climate ambitions border on delusional.

Supervisor Mandelman must be aware that San Francisco is projecting a deficit of $245 million in 2025 and a deficit of $554 million in 2026. He must also be aware that about 10% of the City’s residents live below San Francisco’s poverty rate, necessitating substantial subsidies if this population segment is to switch from gas-powered cars to EVs.

It is unknown whether Supervisor Mandelman wants to include the City’s 7,700 plus homeless population in his “equitable and sustainable transportation ecosystem.”

The high cost directly associated with EVs is not the only issue. Well-known shortcomings of current EVs include unreliable performance in extreme weather, need for more frequent charging than gasoline fill-ups, and electric grids that limit EV charging to specific times.

Beyond immediate inconveniences, EVs pose environmental challenges of their own.

Industry boasts that 95% of battery components can be recycled; extraordinarily expensively, but it can be done. However, industry seldom mentions that EV battery recycling is in its infancy, placing in question whether EV mandates are getting ahead of recycling capacity. As we all know, EV batteries are the last thing one would want in a landfill.

Although extraction of minerals necessary to produce EV batteries – mainly lithium and cobalt –is increasing, only a few countries extract these minerals in significant quantities. Australia, Chile and China extract the most lithium, while the Democratic Republic of the Congo extracts 70% of the world supply of cobalt. If EV mandates continue at the present rate, how long until environmentalists jump on the environmental challenges posed by widespread mining?

Despite mandates and incentives, drivers in the U.S. are not entirely sold on electric vehicles, according to an April 2023 Gallup poll. Current ownership is of EVs in the U.S. is only 4%. Gallup summarizes as follows.

“While ownership of electric vehicles is on the rise in the U.S., the percentage of Americans who say they own one remains limited at 4%. Though they are often promoted as a key way to reduce carbon dioxide emissions and address the effects of climate change, the public remains largely unconvinced that the use of EVs accomplishes this aim.”

As with all consumer goods, electric vehicles respond to price competitiveness and consumer needs. Without those two essentials, adoption of EVs at present can significantly increase only through government intervention. And here is where leaders like the aforementioned member of San Francisco’s Board of Supervisors, Rafael Mandelman, comes in.

Money to subsidize projects is never really a problem for governments, since taxpayers willing to fork over their hard-earned cash are always available. Consumer concerns with EVs are easily overcome by removing the alternative of purchasing gas-powered vehicles. Uneasiness with widespread mining is minimized by exporting environmental degradation.

Leaders have created a delusional world where petroleum disappears without credible supplies of products to replace petroleum and its thousands of derivatives. They have created an unnatural market where people buy what they don’t really want.

In the real world and the real market place innovators step in with new products that reliably and competitively replace products that no longer satisfy consumers. When whale bone became too costly due to overkilling of whales, plastics were invented. The decline of silkworms brought on the invention of nylon.

But, what can today reliably fly the thousands of airplanes in our skies except petroleum? What can credibly replace the hundreds of plastic products in our homes, especially our less affluent homes? Nothing. Because oil is efficient, and kept cheap relative to alternatives in large part as a result of government subsidies.

“The oil and gas industry is expected to reap $1.7 billion in 2025 from the intangible drilling tax break, and $9.7 billion over the next 10 years, according to the White House. It is expected to realize $880 million in benefits from the depletion allowance tax break in 2025, and $15.6 billion by 2034.” The Zombies of the U.S. Tax Code: Why Fossil Fuels Subsidies Seem Impossible to Kill, The New York Times, March 20, 2024.

As long as oil is efficient and relatively cheap, it will take either gargantuan innovation to make EVs competitive or massive taxpayer-funded subsidies to make EVs affordable.

The real, non-delusional world, seldom allows us to have our cake and eat it too.

Pictured: Henry Ford’s electric vehicle prototype. The dream of electric vehicles is not new. Henry Ford worked with Thomas Edison for several years on an EV project before abandoning it. Some say the project did not work because of battery shortcomings, and some say the oil companies conspired to deep-six the project. Good article on the subject on Wired Magazine, Ford, Edison and the Cheap EV That Almost Was, June 18, 2010.

Who stole Arbor Day?

In 1885, Nebraska declared Arbor Day a state holiday, to be celebrated on April 22. Within the next 20 years, Arbor Day was celebrated in most states. Tree-planting on this holiday remained popular, until the 1970’s. Then events overshadowed it.

A question meriting even more attention than who stole Arbor Day is “Why?” Who would want to hijack a holiday? Half a century after the takeover, events have developed sufficiently for a reasonable guess.

The story started way back in 1854.

In 1854, a journalist named Julius Sterling Morton and his wife Caroline moved to the wind-swept territory of Nebraska. There were few trees to serve as windbreaks, and few trees to protect soil from erosion or crops from burning in the sun.

For several years, Morton editorialized on the benefits of trees and encouraged his fellow Nebraskans to plant trees. As part of his campaign, Morton proposed an Arbor Day.

In 1885, Nebraska declared Arbor Day a state holiday, and April 22 the date of annual observance. April offered ideal weather for planting trees, and the 22nd of April was J. Sterling Morton’s birthday. By that time, Morton had led the planning of more than 1 million trees.

Within the next 20 years, Arbor Day was celebrated in all states of the U.S., except Delaware. The Arbor Day concept also spread outside the U.S., to Japan, Europe, Canada, and Australia.

Enter Senator Gaylord Nelson of Wisconsin.

In 1969, Senator Gaylord Nelson saw the opportunity to capitalize on a populace spooked by environmental ruin. Rachel Carson’s widely read Silent Spring, published in 1962, lifted the veil that theretofore had hidden massive pollution caused by pesticides. In January of 1969, an oil well off the pristine coast of Santa Barbara, California, blew up, and hundreds of images of aquatic animals covered oil flooded the airwaves.

In the same year as the Santa Barbara oil spill, Senator Nelson started organizing nation-wide rallies to bring attention to what was happening to Mother Earth. The day he picked for the coordinated rallies was April 22, for the purported reason that young college students, who were expected to play a big role, would be on spring break. April 22 was also the original day for Arbor Day celebrations already established throughout the nation. (Critics of Earth Day point out that April 22 is also Vladimir Lenin’s birthday, but any connection between the environmental movement and abolition of private property shall be left for another day.)

Earth Day 1970, with its catchy slogan “Give Earth a Chance” and heavy promotion, was a success. An estimated 20 million people attended various rallies and festivities.

Meanwhile, Richard Nixon promoted environmental legislation.

President Richard M. Nixon embarked on a series of environmental legislation. He signed the National Environmental Policy Act (January 1970), creation of the Environmental Protection Agency (December 1970), Clean Air Act (December 1970), Marine Mammal Protection Act (October 1972), Endangered Species Act (December 1973).

As part of his environmental plan, Nixon signed two proclamations:

Proclamation 4042, dated April 2, 1971, designated the period of April 18 through April 24, 1971, as Earth Week.

Proclamation 4126, dated April 24, 1972, designated the last Friday of April 1972, April 28, as National Arbor Day.

These celebrations today continue, but at different levels.

Today, Arbor Day is still observed by avid supporters on the last Friday in April, as well as on several other dates in different states. The Arbor Day Foundation, a 501(c)(3) organization, claims more than 1 million members.

However, Earth Day, remains much more visible, and some have given it the mantle of fighting climate change.

The Earth Day Network (Earthday.org), a 501(c) corporation, whose mission is to “Broaden and diversify the environmental movement worldwide”, picked “Invest in our Planet” as the theme of Earth Day 2023. Its press release states,

Investing in a green economy is the only path to a healthy, prosperous, and equitable future. Human influence is unequivocally to blame for the warming of the planet and the sad truth is some forms of climate disruption will be felt for centuries to come. However, we must collectively push away from the dirty fossil fuel economy and old technologies of centuries past – and redirect attention to creating a 21st century economy that restores the health of our planet, protects our species, and provides opportunities for all.

On April 21, 2023, President Joe Biden issued A Proclamation on Earth Day, 2023.

On Earth Day, we celebrate the modern environmental movement that kicked off 53 years ago, when millions of Americans of every age and background first rallied together to change our laws and become better stewards of our planet …

This work has never been more urgent. Climate change is a clear and present danger — in the words of UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres, it is a “code red for humanity.

The last Presidential Proclamation helping to celebrate Arbor Day appears to be that of President George H.W. Bush in 1990.

It would have been nice if both celebrations remained popular.

Arbor Day and Earth Day occupy different spheres of influence. Arbor Day incentivizes individuals to develop personal awareness of the benefit of trees in absorbing carbon dioxide, combating soil erosion, protecting people and crops from sun overexposure, and adding beauty. Earth Day has the much broader objective of fixing the environment by any means necessary.

Senator Gaylord Nelson could have meant well when he chose to celebrate Earth Day on the same day as Arbor Day had been celebrated for more than 80 years – perhaps as a nod to J. Sterling Morton’s birthday.

But surely Senator Nelson must have considered the possibility that the massive publicity received by Earth Day would overshadow Arbor Day. Environmental action by any means necessary?

Pictured: Arbor Day celebration in New York City, 1908.