In 2016, Plymouth became the first town on the South Shore to ban single use plastic shopping bags. Today, every single town along the South Shore and many inland have followed suit. Now Plymouth takes the lead again by being the first on the South Shore to ban the use of Expanded Polystyrene (EPS aka: Styrofoam) take-out containers from use by food service establishments in town. The Board of Health took this action as evidence becomes clearer regarding the dangers EPS presents to human health.
Most everyone recognizes that Styrofoam plays a significant role in litter. It is light, aerodynamic, and easily breaks into small particles which can be found miles away from where the item may have been left in the open or blown out of a barrel. It is quite prevalent on our beaches and when it reaches the ocean it readily binds with other chemicals contributing to a toxic soup. Furthermore, it is not recycled except in a very few plants that take clean white packing material, but not small pieces or those used food ware due to being soiled.
But more important, from a public health perspective, it’s been known for well over a decade that Styrofoam leaches styrene (a basic building block of the material) into food or liquids, especially so with heat. Styrene is classified by the National Toxicology Program “as reasonably anticipated to be a human carcinogen” and was recognized as far back as 2014 as a potential food and beverage contaminant that may “leach from polystyrene containers used for food products.” In 2018, the World Health Organization’s International Agency for Research on Cancer also cited styrene as a “probable human carcinogen.”
Even more disturbing is recent research regarding the presence and impacts of micro- and nano-plastics in the human body. Medical researchers have found concentrations of plastics in human blood, hearts, lungs, kidneys, livers, in the placentae of pregnant women, in breast milk, and even in newborns.
Recent studies have found an association between concentrations of plastics in women and premature births. And a study released just this month found bioaccumulation of microplastics in the brains of deceased subjects at levels higher than in livers and kidneys. In the past, it was thought no such substances could cross the brain / blood barrier, but plastics have found a way. The thinking is that these higher levels of accumulation are attributed to the brain’s inability to process and remove the material, unlike other organs in our body. These concentrations were significantly higher in brain samples from 2024 than those taken in 2016. Disturbingly, scientists found an association between higher concentrations of plastics (three to five times as much as in other subjects) and dementia.
So, while the clinical implications of these finding remain unclear from this emerging field of study, what is clear is that plastics are beginning to permeate our bodies and new data as well as common sense says we should be very concerned.
It should not then be surprising that as of May 2024, within Massachusetts, 64 cities and towns across 12 counties representing over 1.4 million people had already banned some form of polystyrene. Eight states (Colorado, Maine, Maryland, New York, New Jersey, Vermont, Virginia, Washington) and Washington, D.C., have all banned Styrofoam containers. It’s good we have joined this list.
One more point. At the urging of our DPW, the Select Board just voted unanimously to re-constitute a Recycling Committee. By a combination of recycling with efforts to eliminate as much single use plastic products as possible, we may, over time, reverse the glut of plastic contaminating our bodies and our world.
– Kenneth Stone
Stone is a member of the Sustainable Plymouth board of directors.