A new report published in The Lancet issues a fresh clarion call: plastic pollution is a grave and growing danger to human and planetary health. As Ministers and diplomats arrive in Geneva for the final round of talks to conclude a global plastics treaty, the report provides the most up-to-date assessment of the links between health and plastic pollution across the full life cycle of plastic.
An estimated 8 billion metric tons of plastic waste now pollute the planet. Micro- and nanoplastic particles and multiple plastic chemicals are found in the most remote reaches of the environment and in the bodies of marine and terrestrial species worldwide, including humans. Plastics harm human health at every stage of the plastic life cycle, and at every stage of human life. While we are all affected, vulnerable populations bear a disproportionate burden. This new report chronicles the impacts of plastics and plastic pollution for disease and death from infancy to old age, and highlights the significant health-related economic costs.
While the impacts of plastic pollution on human health and the environment are growing, a worsening of plastics' harms is not inevitable. UN Member States will gather in Geneva, Switzerland from 5 – 14 August 2025 for the expected final round of talks to conclude a global plastics treaty to end plastic pollution. The mandate for these negotiations, unanimously agreed at UNEA5.2 in 2022, is to develop an international legally binding instrument on plastic pollution, including in the marine environment, based on a comprehensive approach that addresses the full life cycle of plastic.
Prof Philip Landrigan, MD, a paediatrician and epidemiologist, Director of the Global Observatory on Planetary Health at Boston College - and the lead author of the new report - emphasised the imperative for the global plastics treaty to include measures that protect human health and the environment across the full life cycle of plastic: "We know a great deal about the range and severity of the health and environmental impacts of plastic pollution across the full life cycle of plastic. These impacts fall most heavily on vulnerable populations, especially infants and children. They result in huge economic costs to society. It is incumbent on us to act in response. To those meeting in Geneva: please take up the challenge and the opportunity of finding the common ground that will enable meaningful and effective international cooperation in response to this global crisis."
Coincident with the expected finalization of the global plastics treaty, the report also announces the launch of an independent, health-focused global monitoring system on plastics: The Lancet Countdown on Health and Plastics. The Countdown is inspired by the model and impact of the Lancet Countdown on Health and Climate Change (https://lancetcountdown.org). Prof Joacim Rocklöv, Heidelberg University, Co-Chair of the new Countdown and also Regional Co-Director, Europe, of the Lancet Countdown on Health and Climate Change said: "Through its publications, the Lancet Countdown on Health and Climate Change has moved consideration of climate change's health impacts to the mainstream of the climate conversation, and played a key role in the decision to incorporate an explicit focus on human health into the annual climate negotiations, beginning with COP 28. This new Countdown will provide the data to ensure that health remains at the centre of the plastics pollution conversation."
The new Countdown will identify and regularly report on a suite of scientifically meaningful and geographically and temporally representative indicators across all stages of the plastic life cycle, and track progress towards minimising exposures and mitigating human health impacts. In doing so, the Countdown will provide independent data that can continue to inform decision-making for the benefit of public health.
Margaret Spring, one of the report's co-authors and Co-Lead of one of the working groups within the new Lancet Countdown, said: "Decision-makers around the world will need access to the best available scientific evidence to guide the implementation and development of this important treaty in the months and years to come. The Countdown reports will offer a robust, independent, and accessible data source that can help to inform development of effective policies addressing plastic pollution at the international, regional, national, sub-national and local levels."
The Countdown will develop and track indicators across four domains: Production and Emissions, Exposures, Health Impacts, and Interventions and Engagement. The first three domains follow a classic source-exposure-effects model, and provide a framework for tracking plastics' impacts on human health across every stage of the plastic life cycle. The fourth domain will track interventions across the plastic life cycle that have the potential to affect exposures and human and planetary health, as well as activities that enable and support these interventions.
Prof Sarah Dunlop, Director, Plastics & Human Health at Minderoo Foundation, a philanthropic foundation which is the principal supporter of the new Countdown, said: "Our knowledge of the impacts of plastics on human health is growing all the time, and signal a need for immediate action. In 2023, the Minderoo Monaco Commission on Plastics and Human Health concluded that plastics endanger human health at every stage of their life cycle – in production, use, and on disposal. This report looks at the breadth of new information that has emerged in the short time since, which has included even more evidence of the range of harms associated with a number of toxic groups of chemicals that are commonly used in the plastic products we encounter every day."
Dr Herve Raps, Research Delegate Physician, Centre Scientifique de Monaco, one of the report's co-authors and Co-Lead of one of the working groups within the new Lancet Countdown, said: "Protection of human health and the environment should be our guiding star; to achieve this, we know that addressing the harms associated with plastics and plastic chemicals across the full life cycle of plastics is necessary."
