A Pollution Crisis of Synthetic Plastic Polymers and their Hidden Chemical Complexity

The diverse material properties of plastic polymers have prompted their extensive use, resulting in widespread pollution, including environmental contamination by chemical additives used to enhance polymer properties. Additives have diverse biological impacts, underscoring a need to understand the hidden complexity of additive exposures from plastic polymer pollution.

The socioenvironmental problems created by synthetic plastic polymers will require deep integration across sectors of society. Guided by scientific innovation in artificial intelligence, high-throughput laboratory techniques, and novel materials design, we can both better understand the exposures of highest concern and create new and truly sustainable polymers. To achieve this, scientists, governments, corporations, and policy experts will need to work across disciplines to determine additives of concern, make suitable replacements, and inform the public of the potential risks. For better or worse, we have learned from other global environmental challenges that the problems we create, we can also solve.