In a village in Ontario, Canada, three young people of the same age died of leukemia. Caleb Justin Smith-White, 33, is convinced: it's not a coincidence, “plastic” killed them.
“We have no study that can link these cancers, we are too small a community for them to be effectively carried out,” explains the young man, a member of the Aamjiwnaang indigenous people, a Chippewa community which numbers a little more than 2,000 people. installed near one of the largest Canadian petrochemical complexes.
CJ Smith-White participated this week in Busan, South Korea, as part of a coalition of indigenous peoples who brought their voices to diplomats from more than 170 countries who were negotiating the first treaty on plastic pollution there.
Their goal? Obtain that the text, under discussion for two years, is legally binding for manufacturers and States, and protective for the health of populations. In particular, they demand that the extraction of oil, the raw material for almost all plastic polymers, be included in the treaty.
– “Cancer Valley” –
Leukemia is “a very common cancer in the region” of Sarnia, nicknamed “the petrochemical valley” or the “cancer valley”, explains CJ to AFP, referring in particular to “benzene leaks” in the air .
Very close to his village, one of the world's leading manufacturers of styrene, the main component of polystyrene, Ineos, announced in early November the permanent closure by 2026 of its factory, opened in the 1950s.
“We weren't the ones who closed the factory, but we pushed hard for new environmental regulations, and they decided it was no longer worth investing in this factory to bring it up to the required level.” , explains the young man.
The subject of plastic has interested him since the fourth session of UN negotiations, which were held in April in Ottawa.
In Busan, testimonies on the harmful effects of plastic on health and the environment have accumulated. Representatives of indigenous peoples from American oil states such as Texas or Alaska, from Australia, Nepal and Latin America testified.
With similar stories, ancestral lands exploited by multinationals, the poverty of neighboring village communities, rare diseases which are developing.
In Alaska, “we are seeing a cancer crisis developing in several of the indigenous communities with which we work,” Pamela Miller, executive director of the NGO Alaska community action on toxics, told AFP.
-In some cases, it is plastic waste that has flooded mountain villages lacking waste treatment infrastructure, such as Prem Singh in western Nepal. “We have plastic everywhere,” he told AFP.
According to him, livestock ingest plastic debris left everywhere, and die. In his village, which has a thousand inhabitants, people are losing the traditional know-how of making plates from vegetable leaves. Single-use plastic cutlery has replaced them.
While the UN negotiation was initiated to preserve the oceans, risks to human health gradually became an important theme.
– “Toxic relationship” –
Many speakers in Busan asked that lists of chemical additives dangerous to health or types of polymers deemed “of concern” (bisphenol, phthalate, etc.) be annexed to the text of the future treaty.
Scientists, members of a global coalition calling for an “effective” treaty, have pushed in this direction.
A Brazilian doctor from Sao Paulo, Thais Mauad, invited by Greenpeace, presented a study according to which micro-plastics have been spotted even in the human brain.
“There is no doubt” that chemicals linked to plastic “affect human health,” notes Jane Muncke, environmental toxicologist at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich. She denounces in particular the “toxic relationship” between ultra-processed industrial food and plastic packaging.
In June, a study published in The Lancet showed that one in ten premature births in the United States was associated with the exposure of pregnant women to phthalates, present in plastics, cosmetics and paints.
But during the debates, several diplomats from oil-producing countries opposed to any coercive treaty (Russia, Saudi Arabia, etc.) did not hesitate to publicly affirm that plastic was not dangerous for health. This forced the World Health Organization (WHO) to come out of its usual reserve to publish a note correcting certain comments.
“If all the 'already existing' chemical regulations worked as well as some say, why are these chemicals found in the human body?” asks Sarah Dunlop, an anti-plastic activist neurologist from Perth, Australia.
