"In places like Indonesia, plastic refuse is often burned in unregulated low-tech furnaces that pose grave health risks."
"Tropodo is a pretty village of narrow streets and brightly colored houses, set amid lush green fields in the eastern part of Java, Indonesia’s most populous island. Tall chimneys puffing streams of black smoke jut up behind many of its homes, but they’re only noticeable from a distance, so they hardly mar the town’s rustic feel.
While most of my reporting has focused on where plastic comes from — the oil and petrochemical companies that are pushing ever more of it into our lives — I’ve come to Tropodo to see where some of the hundreds of millions of tons produced every year end up.
About 12 percent of plastic waste is burned globally, according to a landmark study based on data through 2015. Even when done in incinerators equipped with air scrubbers and filters, such burning is linked to higher rates of premature birth, congenital abnormalities including heart and neural tube defects, and may increase cancer risk for those living nearby, studies have found.
But when plastics — which a Nature study last year found can contain any of more than 16,000 different chemicals, a quarter of which may pose health concerns — are burned in low-tech furnaces lacking any pollution-reduction technology, the dangers are far greater."
