Potentially harmful plastics in soil could impact health

an image showing the effects of microplastics in the soil

There may be more microplastic pollution in the soil than in the ocean, according to the UN.
The UN’s FAO have called for “decisive action to curb the disastrous use of plastics”.
Some plastics contain toxic chemicals, and plastics can also collect and transport diseases and chemicals when they enter the ocean.
The FAO report called for improving the management of agricultural plastics through “the 6R model” – refuse, redesign, reduce, reuse, recycle and recover.

A lot of the talk surrounding plastic pollution focuses on its impact on marine ecosystems. But there may actually be more microplastic pollution in the soil than in the ocean, according to UN research.

The UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) has released a report warning of the “disastrous” impacts of the use of plastics in agriculture.

“The report serves as a loud call for decisive action to curb the disastrous use of plastics across the agricultural sectors,” FAO deputy director general Maria Helena Semedo wrote in the report foreword.

Plastics are used in agriculture for a variety of purposes, from mulching films to plastic tree guards to controlled-release fertilizers coated with polymers. In fact, world agriculture used 12.5 million tonnes (approximately 13.8 million U.S. tons) of plastic for plant and animal production in 2019 and 37.3 million tonnes (approximately 41.1 million tonnes) for food packaging the same year.

While plastic can be beneficial to agriculture, its widespread use also raises concerns about its impact on public health and the environment when it degrades.

This is especially concerning for the world’s soils. When microplastics from mulching film build up in surface soils, for example, they reduce agricultural yields. There is also a concern that microplastics in agricultural soils could work their way up the food chain to harm human health. Some plastics contain toxic chemicals themselves, and plastics can also collect and transport diseases and chemicals when they enter the ocean.

University of Sheffield professor Jonathan Leake told The Guardian that there was evidence that plastic pollution in the soil harms earthworms, which are important for soil health.

“Plastic pollution of agricultural soils is a pervasive, persistent problem that threatens soil health throughout much of the world,” he said. “We are currently adding large amounts of these unnatural materials into agricultural soils without understanding their long-term effects.”

The UN agreed that more research is needed to understand how plastic pollution is impacting the world’s soils.

More than 90% of plastic is never recycled, and a whopping 8 million metric tons of plastic waste are dumped into the oceans annually. At this rate, there will be more plastic than fish in the world’s oceans by 2050.

The Global Plastic Action Partnership (GPAP) is a collaboration between businesses, international donors, national and local governments, community groups and world-class experts seeking meaningful actions to beat plastic pollution.

In Ghana, for example, GPAP is working with technology giant SAP to create a group of more than 2,000 waste pickers and measuring the quantities and types of plastic that they collect. This data is then analysed alongside the prices that are paid throughout the value chain by buyers in Ghana and internationally.

It aims to show how businesses, communities and governments can redesign the global “take-make-dispose” economy as a circular one in which products and materials are redesigned, recovered and reused to reduce environmental impacts.