Your Health

Consumers need to demand less plastic packaging, always recycle, and change buying habits

W. Gifford-Jones MD & Diana Gifford-Jones

April 19, 2022

BY W. GIFFORD- JONES MD & DIANA GIFFORD-JONES

Why is humankind so bent on destruction? Why so apathetic in the face of annihilating warfare, repeated massive oil spills and choking urban smog? Equally awful is the “Plastic Soup” in our oceans.

A picture of a Hawaiian beach reveals the folly of humans. It shows a huge amount of plastic washed ashore – an insult to a beautiful beach. Such ocean garbage is a serious hazard for sea life. Don’t believe the rest of us are immune to this environmental disaster. Our lives, too, depend on our oceans.

Small planktonic organisms, through photosynthesis, transform carbon in air and seawater into organic compounds, an essential element of earth’s carbon cycle. They generate about half the atmosphere’s oxygen, as much per year as all land plants. Plankton also provides a food source for marine animals, but these animals are also ingesting plastic particles. This poses a major problem for us all.

Microplastics carry toxic chemicals such as DDT and heavy metals. Scientists say concentrations can reach a million times higher than present in the natural environment. The worrying point is that these contaminated particles are in our food chain and who knows what new diseases will emerge.

Humankind should get its act together. Ocean plastics are concentrated in large offshore patches, extending for miles, consisting of floating and submerged debris. Microplastics and other garbage are present in all oceans and found even at the deepest levels. It’s been called “Plastic Soup.”

It’s estimated the “Great Pacific Garbage Patch” contains at least 70,000 tons of ocean plastic across an area twice the size of Texas, but don’t believe it is only the large garbage patches that are the concern. Most of the plastic material is small and distributed throughout the ocean.

The 2018 study confirmed that most waste products in the ocean were made from plastic. A major culprit is cigarettes containing plastic filters. When will humans understand this smoking madness must end?

The fishing industry is not so innocent either. As dependent as it is on preserving a healthy ocean environment, it gets a big F grade. The World Animal Protection Federation, a non-profit association, reports fishers dump an estimated 700 tons of “ghost fishing gear” into the oceans every year. Why? They do not want to spend the money for repairs.

This further pollutes the ocean. It also traps and ensnares sea life. Animals face another problem. They are eating all this garbage. For instance, in 2018 a dead sperm whale washed ashore on the Spanish coast. A necroscopy revealed the whale’s stomach contained 64 pounds of plastic trash! This trash is part of the diet of 800 marine species!

The US-based Natural Resources Defense Council is trying to get this “Plastic Soup” from getting into the ocean in the first place. Other organizations are monitoring the presence of microplastics so small they float in the air. Very, very small nanoparticles have been proven to pass through cell walls in fish and humans, where they can be chemically active and potentially affect endocrine function, for example.

We are late in realizing the impact of plastic waste and far too slow to act. If we want to protect our brain, lungs, kidneys, endocrine system, and other organs, it means getting active. Banning plastic bags and radically reducing plastic consumption is required. Eliminating microplastics from common products is also needed. Consumers need to demand less plastic packaging, always recycle, and change buying habits.

Let’s not make plastic soup our every meal – and our demise.

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Written By W. Gifford-Jones MD & Diana Gifford-Jones

Dr. W. Gifford-Jones, MD is a graduate of the University of Toronto and the Harvard Medical School. He trained in general surgery at Strong Memorial Hospital, University of Rochester, Montreal General Hospital, McGill University and in Gynecology at Harvard. His storied medical career began as a general practitioner, ship’s surgeon, and hotel doctor. For more than 40 years, he specialized in gynecology, devoting his practice to the formative issues of women’s health. In 1975, he launched his weekly medical column that has been published by national and local Canadian and U.S. newspapers. Today, the readership remains over seven million. His advice contains a solid dose of common sense and he never sits on the fence with controversial issues. He is the author of nine books including, “The Healthy Barmaid”, his autobiography “You’re Going To Do What?”, “What I Learned as a Medical Journalist”, and “90+ How I Got There!” Many years ago, he was successful in a fight to legalize heroin to help ease the pain of terminal cancer patients. His foundation at that time donated $500,000 to establish the Gifford-Jones Professorship in Pain Control and Palliative Care at the University of Toronto Medical School. At 93 years of age he rappelled from the top of Toronto’s City Hall (30 stories) to raise funds for children with a life-threatening disease through the Make-a-Wish Foundation. Diana Gifford-Jones, the daughter of W. Gifford-Jones, MD, Diana has extensive global experience in health and healthcare policy. Diana is Special Advisor with The Aga Khan University, which operates 2 quaternary care hospitals and numerous secondary hospitals, medical centres, pharmacies, and laboratories in South Asia and Africa. She worked for ten years in the Human Development sectors at the World Bank, including health policy and economics, nutrition, and population health. For over a decade at The Conference Board of Canada, she managed four health-related executive networks, including the Roundtable on Socio-Economic Determinants of Health, the Centre for Chronic Disease Prevention and Management, the Canadian Centre for Environmental Health, and the Centre for Health System Design and Management. Her master’s degree in public policy at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government included coursework at Harvard Medical School. She is also a graduate of Wellesley College. She has extensive experience with Canadian universities, including at Carleton University, where she was the Executive Director of the Global Academy. She lived and worked in Japan for four years and speaks Japanese fluently. Diana has the designation as a certified Chartered Director from The Directors College, a joint venture of The Conference Board of Canada and McMaster University. She has recently published a book on the natural health philosophy of W. Gifford-Jones, called No Nonsense Health – Naturally!

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