According to the World Health Organization, some 4.2 million individuals die every year due to exposure to some form of air pollution. While yes, certain considerations must have been made before arriving at this number, it nevertheless doesn’t take away from the urgency of the situation when it comes to curbing our collective waste output.
Data from a recent study from the Stockholm Research Centre (SRC), published in the journal Environmental Science & Technology, certainly don’t help alleviate any fears, as it appears that we may have already passed the so-called “safe planetary boundary” for environmental pollutants.
Said co-author Patricia Villarubia-Gómez, from the SRC: “There has been a 50-fold increase in the production of chemicals since 1950. This is projected to triple again by 2050.” This metric encompasses a number of chemicals produced around the world every day, including pesticides, plastics, raw materials, and pharmaceutical materials.
Co-author Bethanie Carney Almroth, from the University of Gothenburg, continued: “The rate at which these pollutants are appearing in the environment far exceeds the capacity of governments to assess global and regional risks, let alone control any potential problems.”
This study builds upon research published all the way back in 2009, which listed nine “planetary boundaries” that the authors believed to contribute the most to Earth’s “stable state”—a state that they say Earth has managed to maintain for the last 10,000 years. These boundaries include freshwater use, ocean acidification, stratospheric ozone depletion, and so on.
Carney Almroth added: “Some of these pollutants can be found globally, from the Arctic to Antarctica, and can be extremely persistent. We have overwhelming evidence of negative impacts on Earth systems, including biodiversity and biogeochemical cycles,” noting the several negative impacts chemicals and plastics impart on our planet’s health.
Naturally, the authors called for responsible parties and parties in power to reduce their emissions in order to prevent the worst effects of their damaging activities. “We need to be working towards implementing a fixed cap on chemical production and release,” says Carney Almroth.
SRC’s Sarah Cornell went further: “[…] [Shifting] to a circular economy is really important. That means changing materials and products so they can be reused not wasted, designing chemicals and products for recycling, and much better screening of chemicals for their safety and sustainability along their whole impact pathway in the Earth system.”
References
- Air pollution. (n.d.). World Health Organization. Retrieved 28 January 2022, from https://www.who.int/westernpacific/health-topics/air-pollution
- Lavars, N. (2022, January 19). Study finds chemical pollution is now beyond safe boundary for the planet. New Atlas. https://newatlas.com/environment/chemical-pollution-safe-boundary-planet-study/
- Persson, L., Carney Almroth, B. M., Collins, C. D., Cornell, S., de Wit, C. A., Diamond, M. L., Fantke, P., Hassellöv, M., MacLeod, M., Ryberg, M. W., Søgaard Jørgensen, P., Villarrubia-Gómez, P., Wang, Z., & Hauschild, M. Z. (2022). Outside the safe operating space of the planetary boundary for novel entities. Environmental Science & Technology. https://doi.org/10.1021/acs.est.1c04158
- Rockström, J., Steffen, W., Noone, K., Persson, Å., Chapin, F. S. I., Lambin, E., Lenton, T., Scheffer, M., Folke, C., Schellnhuber, H. J., Nykvist, B., de Wit, C., Hughes, T., van der Leeuw, S., Rodhe, H., Sörlin, S., Snyder, P., Costanza, R., Svedin, U., … Foley, J. (2009). Planetary boundaries: Exploring the safe operating space for humanity. Ecology and Society, 14(2). https://doi.org/10.5751/ES-03180-140232
- Safe planetary boundary for pollutants, including plastics, exceeded, say researchers. (2022, January 18). Stockholm Resilience Centre. https://www.stockholmresilience.org/research/research-news/2022-01-18-safe-planetary-boundary-for-pollutants-including-plastics-exceeded-say-researchers.html
