Microplastic

This ground-breaking feature documentary investigates our addiction to plastic and the growing threat of microplastics on human health. What are the impacts and what can be done about it?

Plastic Waste Poisons Indonesia's Food Chain reports on the high levels of dioxins being dumped into the environment and food networks as a result of plastic incineration — plastics which are being imported along with waste papers into Indonesia and other countries. Measured levels of dioxin in eggs rivals some of the worst polluted areas in human history.

This synthesis of data on toxic chemical ocean pollution, including hazardous pesticides, pharmaceuticals, persistent organic pollutants (POPs) like PCBs, plastics, microplastics, and heavy metals, exposes their sweeping impacts on marine and human life.

This joint report of the Endocrine Society and IPEN provides the current best knowledge about the effects of endocrine-disrupting chemicals (EDCs) on human health. It discusses chemicals known to be hazardous to human health yet actively used in plastics, exposures, the problem of microplastics, and the issues surrounding alternative plastics.

This medical study analyses extant US data to study associations of 20 phthalate metabolites with gestational age at birth, birthweight, birth length, and birthweight for gestational age z-scores. It also estimates attributable adverse birth outcomes and associated costs. 

Global Plastic Laws is an extensive database and resource library focused on plastic legislation that has been passed around the world.

Unlike other pollutants that are single elements or simple chemical compounds, microplastics represent a cocktail of toxicity: plastics contain at least 10,000 different chemicals. Those chemicals are linked to diseases from diabetes to hormone disruption to cancers.

Plastic clean-ups have proliferated in response to the growing plastic crisis. Such clean-ups may involve large-scale unsupervised methods of plastic collection that do not discriminate between aquatic life, plastic and organic matter. As a result, the rise of these plastic cleanup technologies has raised red flags in civil society and academia.

The Nurdle Hub proposes solutions to plastic pellet pollution and offers a variety of resources and initiatives in order to tackle nurdle pollution.

The Great Nurdle Hunt is Fidra’s flagship project working to end nurdle pollution. We provide the tools and information so that anyone can contribute to, and build evidence of this, issue.