All residents of Longmeadow and surrounding towns are encouraged to attend a screening of Plastics People: The Hidden Crisis of Microplastics”.
Photo credit: Longmeadow Energy and Sustainability Committee
LONGMEADOW — On Feb. 25 in the Longmeadow High School auditorium, a coalition of town committees and organizations will be showing “Plastics People: The Hidden Crisis of Microplastics” to inform the public on the impact microplastics have on human health and the planet.
The event is free for all residents of Longmeadow and the surrounding towns. It will be followed by a Q&A, led by Matt Casale and Susan Waite. Doors open at 6 p.m. and the film will begin promptly at 6:30 p.m.
Longmeadow Energy and Sustainability Committee Chair Andrea Chasen said microplastics are in everything, whether it be in the food we eat – such as fish or meat – or the water we drink.
Instead of decomposing, plastic breaks down into microplastics, which drift in the air and dust, float in all bodies of water and mix into the soil. Scientists first discovered microplastics in the human body in 2018.
Katia Savchuk from Stanford Medicine wrote in “Microplastics and our health: What the science says,” that scientists have estimated adults ingest the equivalent of one credit card per week in microplastics.
Savchuk said research is just beginning, but that particles have been found in multiple organs and tissues, including the brain, testicles, heart, stomach, lymph nodes and placenta.
She added that a “large-scale review of research by scholars at the University of California, San Francisco, concluded that exposure to microplastics is suspected to harm reproductive, digestive and respiratory health and suggested a link to colon and lung cancer.”
Chasen said she hopes that one thing attendees leave with is a checklist of things that can be done to reduce the use of plastics in their own homes and how they can become advocates for reducing plastics in commercial components.
She provided examples of potential ways for advocacy and said that she hopes the film gives people ideas to speak out, such as speaking with grocery stores to lessen plastic on food items or for restaurants to use cardboard instead of plastic containers to package meals.
“If you take out your Chinese food in a plastic container, the heat is going to help create a way of having more microplastics dissolve into your food,” Chasen said. “The hope for attendees is developing their own self awareness, the knowledge that this is happening to what they can do within their own lives to reduce and mitigate their own use of plastics.”
Another way she said consumers can be proactive in their daily lives is to choose products at the grocery store that are more easily recyclable, which can be found in food items packaged in glass and not plastic.
She added that a potential way to start mitigating the presence of microplastics would be for her committee to propose bylaws to the Select Board, such as one banning the sale of nip bottles from liquor stores.
“We don’t need them here,” Chasen said. “A number of communities around the state have already done that…I also chair the Earth Day clean up here in Longmeadow and I can tell you, one of the largest sources of damage is the nip bottles that get thrown out into the environment. They show up in all sorts of places, damaging our wildlife, damaging our community.”
She said this is just the beginning of educational outreach for what needs to be done to make changes in the community and that one of the next steps would be working with the state government on what they should be aware of to reduce plastics.
“I want to be practical,” Chasen said. “There’s probably almost no way we’re going to get to zero plastic. I wear specialized contact lenses, they’re made of plastic. I don’t think I can put glass in my eye, you know, but it’s what we can do to encourage recycling and appropriate recycling.”
