Policy: Classify plastic waste as hazardous

By Chelsea M. Rochman, M. Browne, B. Halpern, B. Hentschel, E. Hoh, H. Karapanagioti, L. M. Rios-Mendoza, H. Takada, S. Teh, Richard C. Thompson. Nature, 2013

1,480 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Subfields: Health, Toxicology and Mutagenesis, Industrial and Manufacturing Engineering, Pollution

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/63fe7f79d0902596e9e381b94cd58526f968a70e

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In Health, Toxicology and Mutagenesis

In Industrial and Manufacturing Engineering

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Citations in the corpus

More than 1000 rivers account for 80% of global riverine plastic emissions into the ocean (2021, background): “INTRODUCTION Plastic pollution in oceans and rivers is an emerging environmental hazard (1), and accumulation on riverbanks, deltas, coastlines (2), and the ocean surface (3) is rapidly increasing.”
Organic fertilizer as a vehicle for the entry of microplastic into the environment (2018, background): “Accordingly, scientists have suggested to “classify plastic waste as hazardous” because it may have “significant ecological impacts, causing welfare and conservation concerns” (6).”
Microplastics and Nanoplastics in Aquatic Environments: Challenges and Threats to Aquatic Organisms (2020, background): “Polymeric plastic production has greatly increased all over the world since the 1960s and has become dominant in the consumer marketplace [1].”
Oyster reproduction is affected by exposure to polystyrene microplastics (2016, background): “P production is continually increasing, with 299 million metric tons produced in 2013 and estimations of 33 billion tons for 2050 (1).”
Characteristic of microplastics in the atmospheric fallout from Dongguan city, China: preliminary research and first evidence (2017, background): “…et al. 2011), heavy metals (Holmes et al. 2012; Rochman et al. 2014; Turner and Holmes 2015) absorbed from the surrounding environment, and the unreacted monomers, additives, and other ingredients in microplastics (Lithner et al. 2011; Rochman et al. 2013), are potentially exposed to the organisms.”
Microplastic moves pollutants and additives to worms, reducing functions linked to health and biodiversity. (2013, neutral): “Transfer of Chemicals from Microplastic and from Sand to the Tissues of Lugworms Plastics discarded into habitats accumulate pollutants, such as nonylphenol and phenanthrene [1, 8] (Table S1 available online) and could release these by desorption.”
Microplastic ingestion decreases energy reserves in marine worms. (2013, background): “We have shown that microplastics can cause physical harm to an important marine species, emphasizing the need to reconsider how discarded PVC, polystyrene, polyurethane and polycarbonate (30% of global production) are classified in terms of hazard [10].”
Current influence of China’s ban on plastic waste imports (2019, background): “Plastic debris is the major pollutant listed by the EU (61%) and the USEPA (78%) [3].”