Saving Ourselves, Saving our Planet: Stopping our Plastics Disaster
This October 2024, as our alternative to Breast Cancer Awareness Month, Breast Cancer Action Quebec (BCAQ) invites you to join a unique project that connects health, social justice, and the environment. Entitled " Saving Ourselves, Saving our Planet: Stopping our Plastics Disaster " this initiative aims to educate and mobilize against the destructive effects of plastics on our health, communities, and planet.
This project highlights the links between plastic toxicity, cancer risks, environmental racism, and the urgent need to act for a healthier future. Together, we can make a difference by advocating for sustainable and equitable solutions and by calling on the Canadian government to take an ambitious position during the UN plastic treaty negotiations in Busan, South Korea, in December 2024. The treaty must, among other things, include bans on plastic production and plastic waste exports, in addition to being legally binding.
Join us over the coming weeks and month for a webinar, discussions, and concrete actions aimed at addressing the impact of plastics and building a future where health and justice prevail.
Be the change. Let’s end the plastic era.
We recently sent a collective letter to Steven Guilbeault, Minister of Environment and Climate Change, to express our concerns about the devastating effects of plastics on health, the environment, and historically marginalized communities. Supported by 31 other groups, this letter calls on Canada to advocate for an ambitious and legally binding UN treaty aimed at reducing plastic production. Ahead of the upcoming negotiations in Busan, South Korea, we are requesting a meeting with the Minister to discuss Canada’s position and its commitment to protecting public health and combating environmental racism.
This large-scale mobilization represents an essential step toward greater social, environmental, and health justice. We will keep the signatory groups and our members informed of upcoming developments, the Minister’s response, and Canada’s stance throughout the negotiations.
Illustrations by Niti Marcelle Mueth.
Project made possible thanks to the support of Dragonfly Ventures.
Plastics are toxic and forever
Plastics are made from oil or natural gas to which toxic plasticizers are added to create the desired characteristics for whichever plastics product is being produced. Every plastic item ever produced still exists and will exist for hundreds, if not thousands more years. They never fully decompose. They just break down into smaller microplastics.
Plastics increase the risk of breast cancer
Some of the toxic plasticizers leach out of plastics, including microplastics, creating a wide range of health harms to humans, animals, and our environment generally. A wide range of plasticizers, such as bisphenols, phthalates, flame retardants, and PFAS, have estrogenic endocrine-disrupting effects which increase breast cancer risk as well as other toxic health effects.
Plastics are neurotoxic and reprotoxic
Many of the chemicals used in plastic production are neurotoxic, meaning they damage the nervous system. Phthalates, bisphenols, and other endocrine-disrupting chemicals can interfere with brain development, cognitive function, and even contribute to neurodevelopmental disorders. At the same time, these chemicals also affect reproductive health, altering hormone function, reducing fertility, and increasing risks of reproductive disorders.
Plastics increase the risk of endometriosis and fibroids
Plastic-related chemicals, particularly endocrine disruptors like bisphenols and phthalates, are linked to the development of endometriosis and uterine fibroids. These toxic chemicals mimic or interfere with hormones, leading to imbalances that can trigger or exacerbate these painful and chronic conditions in women.
Plastics are environmental racism
From their extraction as fossil fuels to their production, use, and disposal, plastics disproportionately harm racialized and Indigenous communities. Toxic plasticizers pollute the air, water, and land of marginalized communities, both locally and globally. Plastics are dumped in the Global South, poisoning land and water sources and perpetuating environmental injustice and racism at every stage of their life cycle.
Let's take action together! It’s time to break the cycle of plastic pollution and stand up against the toxic effects of plastics on our health and the environment. Let’s raise awareness, demand stricter regulations, fight against environmental racism, and support safer, more sustainable solutions. Our actions today will protect future generations!