To the Editor:

I remember years ago when I saw the first TV advertisements for stackable Pringles potato chips and heard a friend say, “Wow, it is amazing what they can do with plastics.”

Plastics are no joke today.

In recent years, a number of high-quality studies have documented ubiquitous plastics pollution on land and in the ocean; warnings that aquatic, terrestrial and human impacts are and will be significant; many synthetic plastics compounds are widely used and never tested for safety; and the public is mostly unaware of the growing dangers.

We live in an era of considerable, visible and invisible, dangerous, worsening pollution of many types. One is micro- and nano-plastics that are increasingly found in everything: water, soils, plants, terrestrial and aquatic species, and in multiple human body organs.

Efforts to create a worldwide plastics manufacturing reduction policy have so far been unsuccessful.

Invisible slivers of plastics can cross the blood-brain barrier and accumulate in brain tissues in surprisingly large amounts. Not only are the physical plastic particles hazardous but so are the chemicals in the plastics.

Predictably, the plastics industry says there are no proven dangers and plastics are safe.

Worldwide plastics manufacturing is soaring, very little of it is recycled and much carelessly disposed of in the Global South. With increasing evidence of harm, do we want our children to accumulate plastics for decades to come? Are we concerned and smart enough to demand and force sharp reductions in plastics manufacturing?

We need sustained organizing, competent governments, and international cooperation much more than ever before. Unfortunately, the Trump administration is rapidly moving the United States in the opposite direction and the state government ignores much of the best science. 

Tom Ellis

Albany