News

SEA’s Research Professor of Oceanography Kara Lavender Law is coauthor of a comprehensive new study examining the health effects of plastics. The Minderoo-Monaco Commission on Plastics and Human Health report, published March 21 in Boston College’s Annals of Global Health, examines the impact of plastics on human health, the environment, the economy, and vulnerable populations, and offers recommendations to protect human health and support a Global Plastics Treaty.

According to the report: “plastics are both a boon to humanity and a stealth threat to human and planetary health. Plastics convey enormous benefits, but current linear patterns of plastic production, use, and disposal with little attention paid to sustainable design or safe materials and a near absence of recovery, reuse, and recycling are responsible for grave harms to health, widespread environmental damage, great economic costs, and deep societal injustices. These harms are rapidly worsening.”

Read more about the report in a press release from Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, WHOI helps lead groundbreaking study on the human and ocean health impacts of ocean plastics.

Contact: Douglas Karlson, Director of Communications | 508-444-1918 | [email protected] | www.sea.edu