Recent studies have found evidence of microplastics in the human body, including the bloodstream and lungs. But that’s not the only way plastic can affect human health.
While studying mosquito-borne viral infections (arboviruses) in Kenya, Desiree LaBeaud and collaborators realized that the mosquitoes were coming from the plastic trash.
“This work has changed me forever,” says LaBeaud, an infectious disease physician, global health researcher, and epidemiologist at Stanford University.
“We recently launched a nonprofit, HERI-Kenya, to try to tackle the plastic pollution crisis by inspiring community education, new research, policy change, and grassroots activism in environmental health issues such as the plastic pollution crisis.”
Here, LeBeaud talks about how worried we should actually be, what each person can do, and more:
LaBeaud is a professor of pediatrics at the School of Medicine, a senior fellow at the Woods Institute for the Environment, and a member of Stanford Bio-X and the Maternal & Child Health Research Institute (MCHRI).
Source: Stanford University