AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org. I’m Amy Goodman, with Nermeen Shaikh.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: Negotiations are underway in Geneva, Switzerland, on a legally binding Global Plastics Treaty as the crisis of pollution from plastics worldwide has grown more acute. An estimated 8 billion metric tons of plastic waste now pollute the planet. Without changes, plastic production is expected to triple by 2060, much of it driven by single-use plastics. Only 10% plastic can be recycled. Representatives from 184 countries are participating in the U.N. negotiations that will conclude next week.

AMY GOODMAN: Also this week, the medical journal The Lancet published a “Countdown on health and plastics,” which begins, quote, “Plastics are a grave, growing, and under-recognised danger to human and planetary health.”

In the study, Dr. Philip Landrigan and an international team of co-authors outline the latest in what’s understood about the dangers of plastics through its entire life cycle. They estimate $1.5 trillion a year in health-related costs are due to plastics.

We go right now to Dr. Philip Landrigan, one of the co-authors of the review. He’s also a pediatrician and epidemiologist and director of the Global Observatory on Planetary Health at Boston College, joining us from Cape Cod, Massachusetts.

Welcome to Democracy Now!, Dr. Landrigan. Why don’t you summarize the Lancet findings and how serious this global threat is?

DR. PHILIP LANDRIGAN: Thank you, Amy.

So, the global plastics threat has been quietly worsening now for three or four decades. Global plastic production has increased 250 times since it began in the 1950s. And as you said a moment ago, it’s on track to double by 2040 and triple by 2060. The reason plastic production is growing so rapidly, and the reason it’s — the focus especially is on the production of single-use plastics, is that the fossil fuel industry, which produces most plastic — 99% of plastic is made from oil, gas and coal — the fossil fuel industry is pivoting to plastic manufacture as they see the market for fossil fuels declining, maybe not as fast as we would like, but nonetheless, they see the long-term trend for the fossil fuel market going down, and so they’re putting enormous resources into plastic manufacture — for example, just completed a $6 billion facility outside Pittsburgh to transform fracked gas from Appalachia into plastic.

And what our Lancet report showed is that plastic harms human health at every stage of the plastic life cycle, starting with the fracking, then through the manufacture and the fabrication of plastic products, and then, finally, on when plastic is discharged into the environment, that waste plastic contains thousands of toxic chemicals that cause human exposure and result in disease and disability and premature death.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: Dr. Landrigan — 

DR. PHILIP LANDRIGAN: So, my colleagues and I — 

NERMEEN SHAIKH: Just to clarify that 10% of plastic is recycled at the moment, not that that’s what can be recycled. If you could speak specifically about the impact of plastic on children?

DR. PHILIP LANDRIGAN: Sure. The reason so little plastic is recycled is not that people don’t care. It’s that plastic is so complex and so toxic, it cannot be recycled. Recycling rates for plastic are way below glass or steel or cardboard or aluminum.

Plastics are — children, infants in the womb and young children, are very vulnerable to plastics, because they’re going through these incredibly complicated, tightly choreographed processes of early development, and plastic contains thousands of chemicals, ranging from phthalates to bisphenols to brominated flame retardants. Those chemicals get out of plastics, they get into pregnant women and then pass through to their children. They get into little kids. And in children, they can cause a whole range of diseases that encompass brain injury, resulting in decreased IQ, injury to the reproductive organs, resulting in decreased fertility when today’s child becomes tomorrow’s adult, and damage to the liver, which interferes with cholesterol metabolism and increases risk for obesity, for diabetes, for heart disease and stroke.

AMY GOODMAN: Dr. Landrigan, we just have 30 seconds. Plastics and climate change are both born of the fossil fuel industry. Talk about how they’re connected.

DR. PHILIP LANDRIGAN: Well, they both originate from fossil fuels. And the other connection is that plastic production is energy-intensive. It liberates 2.4 gigatons of greenhouse gases to the atmosphere every year. That’s more CO2 than comes out of Brazil or Russia.

AMY GOODMAN: And finally, what you’re hoping to come out of the Lancet report, in 20 seconds, if you would?

DR. PHILIP LANDRIGAN: We need two big things out of the negotiations in Geneva: firstly, a cap on global plastic production, because the current trend is not sustainable, and, secondly, strict regulation of the more than 16,000 chemicals in plastics, which currently are responsible for most of plastics’ known hazards to human health.

AMY GOODMAN: I want to thank you for being with us, Dr. Philip Landrigan, director of the Global Observatory on Planetary Health at Boston College. We’ll link to your piece in The Lancet, “Countdown on health and plastics.” I’m Amy Goodman, with Nermeen Shaikh. Our website is democracynow.org. Thanks for joining us.