23/07/2025
🫧🫧 It is considered that the benefits of plastic usage are irrefutable. However, those containers are one of the primary elements that engendered negative effects to our everyday life, including health risks, environmental devastation, and global warming as well. As can be seen in the list of disadvantages below:
-> 😷😷 Affecting our health (source: Does Plastic Cause Cancer? Myths and Facts - OncoDaily) 🏥
- The chemical bisphenol A (‘BPA’), which is used to make plastics, can mimic or block natural hormones by interacting with hormone receptors, thereby disrupting endocrine system functions.
- BPA acts as an estrogenic compound by binding to estrogen receptors (ERα and ERβ), altering gene expression and downstream signaling pathways, and also interferes with thyroid hormone receptors, impairing thyroid function. Phthalates exhibit anti-androgenic effects and disrupt thyroid hormone signaling by antagonizing receptor activity and altering gene expression in the hypothalamic-pituitary-thyroid axis. These disruptions affect critical physiological processes such as reproductive development, metabolism, and cellular growth regulation.
- Many researchers have also strongly suggested that all plastics may leach chemicals if they're scratched or heated at certain exposure levels. Some of the chemicals in these products, such as bisphenol A (BPA), may cause cancer in people.
-> ♻️ Plastic takes tons of years to decompose (source: How long does it take for plastic to decompose?) 🧤
- Despite the fact that plastics are easy to manufacture,cheap,and easy to use, it causes bigger trouble than use for us. The decomposition of plastic takes hundreds, thousands of years. Even our future generations could find the plastic we threw out long ago. For example, plastic bottles, or fishing nets take 400-600 years to decompose.
- Polyethylene and polypropylene are the main causes of plastic pollution. Not only years, but a special environment is also needed to decompose these plastics.
-> 🔥 Combustible attribute (source: The Process Of Plastic Combustion And Factors Affecting Plastic Combustion - News) ⚡️🧯
- There are many factors that affect the combustion of plastics, including the combustion characteristics of polymers as internal factors and the combustion environmental conditions as external factors.
- The vast majority of commonly used plastics are flammable or combustible in the air, producing a large amount of smoke and toxic gases when burned, causing poisoning and suffocation, and affecting firefighting and rescue work.
-> 🐬🐠 Risks to aquatic life (source: Derivatives of Plastics as Potential Carcinogenic Factors: The Current State of Knowledge - PMC) 🐳🐢
- In 360 million metric tons (Mt) of plastic that have been produced worldwide each year, most of it is discarded into the environment. Estimate that if the current trends in production and economy are maintained, by 2050, there will be 12,000 Mt of plastic in the environment. Other more drastic estimates are that if we do not stop GPPP, one day, we will have more plastic than fish in the sea (considering the mass).
- In the article “Plastic pollution and potential solutions”, author Rhodes C.J agree that plastic pollutants are delivered to the marine environment via rivers from land, where they are generated. Numerous models estimate that up to 30 Mt of plastic can end their ’life-cycle’ in the earth’s aquatic environment.
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I summarised these data points a little bit. You can follow these sources below, where I collected information, to research for more!! Thanks for reading and liking ❤ ✨✨
https://oncodaily.com/oncolibrary/does-plastic-cause-cancer
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9562888/ -cancers-14-04637
https://www.breastcancer.org/risk/risk-factors/exposure-to-chemicals-in-plastic
https://group.met.com/en/mind-the-fyouture/mindthefyouture/how-long-does-it-take-for-plastic-to-decompose/
https://www.oceanchemgroup.com/news/the-process-of-plastic-combustion-and-factors-79279285.html