Futurity

Why you should worry about plastic and your health

We should be "very worried" about the effects of plastics on our health, says Desiree LaBeaud. "Plastic... was never meant to be part of us."
A plastic gallon jug sits on a table outside casting a long shadow against a brick wall.

Recent studies have found evidence of microplastics in the human body, including the bloodstream and lungs. But that’s not the only way plastic can affect human health.

While studying mosquito-borne viral infections (arboviruses) in Kenya, Desiree LaBeaud and collaborators realized that the mosquitoes were coming from the plastic trash.

“This work has changed me forever,” says LaBeaud, an infectious disease physician, global health researcher, and epidemiologist at Stanford University.

“We recently launched a nonprofit, HERI-Kenya, to try to tackle the plastic pollution crisis by inspiring community education, new research, policy change, and grassroots activism in environmental health issues such as the plastic pollution crisis.”

Here, LeBeaud talks about how worried we should actually be, what each person can do, and more:

The post Why you should worry about plastic and your health appeared first on Futurity.

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