The Environmental Racism Linked to Plastic Toys

Although the people who profit from the manufacture of plastic toys strive to present themselves as part of a creative force slavishly devoted to your child’s development and delight, they are in fact drivers of an industry that is destroying Planet Earth. That plastic egg you use to hide treats for your own child was manufactured at a facility that exposed the children leaving near it to noise, odors and chemical emissions that greatly increase their chances of developing diseases like asthma and diabetes in their early years and cancer as they mature.

Known as “fenceline communities,” the areas adjacent to the chemical plants where plastic is made are home to populations with inordinately high levels of life-threatening illnesses. It should be no surprise to anyone that the people living in these communities are also predominantly Black and Latinex.

According to the Environmental Justice Health Alliance for Chemical Policy Reform, nearly 40% of the U.S. population lives within three miles of a facility that poses a public health risk due to the potential for a chemical explosion or poison gas leak. This likelihood of a catastrophic event is added to the impacts of long-term low level exposure to chemical emissions, a situation that is significantly worse in countries where environmental regulations are more lax or non-existent and where the percentages of BIPOC residents is even higher.

The region in the U.S. with the highest density of plastic manufacturing facilities is an 85-mile stretch along the Mississippi River in Southern Louisiana that has become known as Cancer Alley; in the environmental justice movement it is also known as a sacrifice zone, a place where the natural environment has been completely destroyed by human activities.

If all this weren’t bad enough, children who play with plastic toys are exposed to residues of the deadly chemicals used to manufacture them, with the cheapest toys (those most frequently purchased by low-income families), having the highest levels of contaminants.

A study released in April, 2022 by the Campaign for Healthier Solutions found high rates of toxic substances in products purchased from Dollar Tree, Family Dollar, Dollar General, Five Below and 99 Cents Only Stores. These substances included toxic metals and endocrine-disrupting chemicals like flame retardants, bisphenol-A and its substitutes, phthalates and PFAS, also known as per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances. Of the 635 products tested, 226 had one or more chemicals of concern, with children’s headphones the worst examples.

Every time you buy a plastic toy to please your child, you are increasing the chances that a child who lives near the plant where the plastic in that toy was manufactured will die of cancer. Buying plastic toys is an act of environmental racism.

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