As governments work to revitalize negotiations on an international treaty on plastic pollution, front of mind for many officials, stakeholders, and citizens are the myriad public health impacts of plastic pollution and how the treaty can address them.

Throughout negotiations to date, a broad array of countries from all regions have called for the protection of human health and the environment to be central objectives of the future treaty. This approach aligns with numerous existing other multilateral environmental agreements that include protection of both human health and the environment in their objectives, and reflects international recognition of the many interlinkages between our environment and our health. 

When the UN Environment Assembly unanimously decided in 2022 to establish an Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee (INC) to develop an international legally binding instrument on plastic pollution, members called for a comprehensive approach that addresses the full life cycle of plastics. Discussion of ways to deliver on this mandate are ongoing and the next session of the INC will take place in early 2027. Between now and then, discussions are advancing through formal and informal formats in accordance with a “roadmap” to conclude negotiations guided by Ambassador Julio Cordano, the current Chair of the INC.

As the INC negotiations advance, the central question for governments and observers is: How to land a fair, effective, balanced, and ambitious treaty that is capable of spurring and sustaining the international cooperation required to tackle the scale and complexity of plastic pollution, addressing its impacts on both human health and the environment?

To effectively operationalize the objective of human health protection in the treaty text, INC members will need an integrated approach, one that pursues four complementary goals through measures that:

1. Substantively address known health impacts across the full life cycle of plastics;
2. Improve the availability of information relevant to health protection;
3. Support effective implementation and international cooperation in ways that meaningfully contribute to achieving the objective of protecting human health, including by providing effective financial and non-financial support for parties to meet their treaty obligations; and
4. Enable the progressive development of the treaty over time, including in response to the best available science and knowledge.

This article explores each of these goals in turn and also considers the role that a dedicated article on health could play to bolster international cooperation in ways that specifically advance health protection.

Scientific evidence confirms that plastic pollution harms human health at every stage of the life cycle. These harms include direct harms, such as the impacts associated with exposure to hazardous chemicals in plastics and plastic products, and exposure to hazardous air pollutants associated with open burning and other combustion waste management practices. They also include health impacts associated with the presence of plastic waste in the environment, which can exacerbate the spread of vector-borne diseases, disrupt infrastructure vital for clean water and sanitation, and cause microplastic and chemical pollution that affect soil quality and can result in water and food contamination. These examples highlight that the impacts of plastic pollution human health compound an array of wider sustainable development challenges.

While plastic pollution impacts the health of all populations, communities in vulnerable situations are disproportionately affected and at risk. Especially impacted communities include informal waste workers, for whom exposure is high and safety protections low, as well as fence line communities living near production and conversion facilities and in proximity to dumping, open burning, incineration, and landfill sites.

Governments can substantively address the known health impacts across the full life cycle of plastics through specific provisions in the treaty. At the most recent negotiation session in August 2025 (INC-5.2), a broad range of countries proposed specific language that would support health protection in a range of relevant provisions, including those dealing with:

• Plastic products and product design, to ⁠require targeted measures on products that are particularly problematic or harmful to human health and the environment, including those that contain chemicals of concern, and to ensure that the design of plastic products is improved for the protection of human health and the environment and in pursuit of circular economy approaches.
• Releases and leakages of plastics, including microplastics, across the life cycle and from all sources. Notably, addressing releases and leakages of pollutants from plastics, including of chemicals of concern, is also important and warrants more attention from INC members. Explicit requirements and criteria for the design of plastic products to improve safety could make a significant contribution in this respect (e.g. by spurring use of safer additives, product redesign that avoids the need for certain additives, and greater material inertness).
• Management of plastic waste in a manner that protects human health and the environment, including addressing occupational impacts for workers—formal and informal—involved in waste management and end-of-life treatment. Existing international efforts to ensure the environmentally sound management of waste have long reflected health protection imperatives, and this will also be critical in the future treaty.

The composition and design of plastic products, releases, and leakages of plastics (including microplastics) and pollutants across the full life cycle of plastics, and the safe and environmentally sound management of plastic waste, are interconnected issues that require integrated responses. Addressing the most harmful or problematic plastic products and chemicals in plastic products and improving plastic product design are necessary to achieve objectives that a broad range of INC members share; from effective and safe circularity to reduced hazardous waste and a decreased need for costly end-of-life treatment and infrastructure. 

As the adage goes—you can’t manage what you can’t measure.

Effective management of plastics throughout the full life cycle will rely on improved availability of information. Reliable data will also be key to informing assessments of the treaty’s effectiveness over time as well as efforts to further develop the treaty where necessary to effectively address health and environmental impacts over time.

There are many ways that the treaty can improve the availability of information that is critical for protecting human health and foreffective treaty implementation, including through provisions that:

• Improve the availability of information about products and the chemicals they contain, across their value chains, which is vital to enable more effective management of health and environmental impacts across the life cycle;
• Ensure reporting and monitoring to provide the data necessary to adjust measures to effectively address human and environmental impacts over time; and
• Improve public awareness and education, which are pillars of public health programmes. Currently, most citizens do not have either the information or the capacity to effectively manage risks, including those to which they are involuntarily exposed.

Achieving the objective of human health protection will require cooperation on means of implementation. As governments design mechanisms to ensure that effective, timely, and accessible financial, technological, technical, and capacity building support are available where and when required, it will be important that they keep in mind both cross-cutting and specific areas of support that may be required to advance the effective implementation of treaty obligations that meaningfully contribute to health protection objectives.

The plastic pollution treaty negotiations, if successful, will establish an agreement between countries that will set a course for decades. A cornerstone of the instrument’s success will be its ability to adapt to emerging circumstances and to respond to the best available science and knowledge. This will require effective decision-making mechanisms and an effective science-policy interface that enables the Conference of the Parties to be informed by the best available science and expert recommendations.

At INC-5.2, more than 90 governments across all regions supported including a dedicated article on health in the text. Such a dedicated article could complement and support those measures outlined above by explicitly strengthening international cooperation to:

• Build institutional, scientific, and technical capacities to protect human health from plastic pollution, and support the exchange of information and expertise;
• Support education, awareness raising, and behavioural change interventions; and
• Address the health impacts for those in vulnerable situations, and for workers in both formal and informal sectors. 

The international community has an unmissable opportunity to strengthen international cooperation in ways that meaningfully address both the public health and environmental impacts of the plastic pollution crisis in truly integrated ways. Key to realizing that opportunity is to ensure that the objective of human health protection is operationalized through the treaty's substantive provisions.

For all those involved in the treaty negotiations, a critical question for each upcoming discussion, whether on particular treaty articles, topics, or packages of issues is thus: How can we ensure our health is being protected?

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Carolyn Deere Birkbeck is Founder and Executive Director, Forum on Trade, Environment, & the SDGs (TESS).

Lizzie Fuller is Senior Policy Advisor, Plastics Treaty, Forum on Trade, Environment, & the SDGs (TESS).

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