Every year, 11.6 million pounds of plastic trash makes its way into Lake Michigan, Chicago’s largest source of drinking water.
Even as the city tries to tackle this issue, it means that microplastics — the tiniest pieces — pass through the cities’ filtration systems and into our faucets.
Researchers have found that ingesting plastics can have detrimental effects on our cognitive abilities, fertility and overall cardiovascular health. And there’s no end in sight, with the projected exponential growth of plastic production tripling by 2050.
“Markets always respond to what the people want,” Gail Prins, co-director of the Chicago Center for Health and Environment at the University of Illinois Chicago said. “Without the public voice, they just push us scientists aside. We need the public’s backing.”
Prins was one of the Chicago-based scientists and environmental activists who met April 25 at a city hall joint committee meeting to advocate for the ban of single-use plastics.
Another was Dr. Robert Sargis, an environmental scientist at the University of Illinois Chicago. He is part of a lab that has studied the impact of environmental toxicants in the development of obesity, diabetes, fatty liver disease and neurocognitive disorders since 2007.
“If these chemicals are associated with these disorders prevalent in society, our obligation as health care providers is to reduce exposures as best we can,” Sargis said.
Sargis’ research has found that chemicals that leach from plastic, such as phthalates and what’s known as “per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances” (PFAS), are associated with metabolic and endocrine disorders causing severe morbidity and mortality.
Researchers have found that these toxic substances can cause alterations in our reproductive systems including lowered testosterone and sperm counts, as well as infertility. Exposure is also linked to an increased risk of cancer and ADHD symptoms.
And the problem is only getting worse.
A study published in February 2025 by scientists at the University of New Mexico’s Health Sciences Center found that between 2016 and 2024, concentrations of micro- and nanoplastics — which are even smaller pieces — increased in all organs of people they studied.
“There’s this bioaccumulation of these particles. The longer we’re exposed to them, the more and more we’re going to have in our bodies,” Prins, the UIC scientist, said.
This is because chemicals like PFAS, known as a “forever chemical,” stay in your body for years. It takes four years for other chemical concentrations to be cut in half in humans, Prins said.
As of now the average person consumes 250 grams of plastic each year. According to the Plastic Pollution Coalition, this is equivalent to eating a credit card every week.
With dangerous chemicals from plastics in our bodies and our constant and growing consumption of them — what can the public do about this?
“This is a huge problem that we need to address at a systemic level,” Illinois Environmental Council senior policy manager Gabby Plotkin said.
Right now, she added, municipal filters can’t remove microplastics.
“The only way to do that would be on an individual level, like buying a filter that particularly addresses microplastics,” Plotkin said. “That’s why we’re pushing for policy changes.”
As Sargis points out, a failure to enact systemic change also worsens health inequality. With cardiovascular diseases being dispropriate in low-income communities and communities of color, he said individual change would only benefit the most affluent.
“Individual action doesn’t address the broader risks to the population,” Sargis said. “All that does is contribute to anxiety and allow people who already have the knowledge and the means to protect themselves a little better. But it still leaves the more vulnerable, vulnerable.”
Plotkin, Prins and Sargis said the City Hall was receptive to them and their colleagues’ advocating for a single-use plastic ban in Chicago.
As Chicagoans await for action from the city, they all urged us to do what we can to limit our own plastic intake and spread the word on the dangers associated with microplastics.
This article was published as part of a Telemundo Chicago-NBC Chicago collaboration with DePaul University to amplify the work of Chicago student journalists.
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