Sharon Lavigne remembers when she realized pollution in her neighborhood was a matter of life or death.

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“We have 12 refineries and industries within a 10-mile radius where there’s homes and people that live here,” Lavigne said of her hometown, St. James Parish, Louisiana. “The people are getting cancer, asthma, and other illnesses. And they are dying.”

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She said funerals happen frequently.

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“You can’t count ‘em. There’s just that many. I got to go back and look at the records to see how many we had in one year,” Lavigne lamented. 

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In an interview with FCNews, Lavigne said toxins in the environment specifically impact women: some are suffering from breast cancer, having miscarriages, and giving birth prematurely. The issue hit particularly close to home for Lavigne, whose daughter had a miscarriage while living in the area. 

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St. James Parish, Louisiana, sits in “Cancer Alley” – an 85-mile stretch along the Mississippi River between New Orleans and Baton Rouge.  The region’s ominous moniker warns about the fatal and cancerous impacts of toxic pollution, which disproportionately falls on Black and impoverished communities. Nearly every census tract in this area ranks nationally in the top 5% for cancer risk from toxic air pollution, according to a 2022 study. Plastics manufacturing and petrochemical production are the major contributors.

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Globalization, mass production and consumerism are all contributing factors to an increasing deterioration in air quality and rise of pollution in the United States. In light of the ill effects on the planet at large and individual people’s health outcomes, some Catholic activists and organizations are launching concerted efforts to immediately reduce their plastic waste and decrease how much they consume long-term.

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“We are living at a time where it is so easy for us to live our lives without looking at what we are throwing away,” said Paz Artaza-Regan, program manager for the Catholic Climate Covenant. Artaza-Regan referenced the “throwaway culture” that Pope Francis decried in his 2015 encyclical Laudato Si. Catholic Climate Covenant brings together Catholic individuals and institutions to work together on caring for people in poverty and reducing the harms of climate change.

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In addition to alleviating the environmental impact of plastic manufacturing and disposal, Artaza-Regan said Catholics must advocate for the members of society who are bearing the brunt of the impact.

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“Who does it impact, this creation and disposal of plastics?” Artaza-Regan said in an interview with FCNews. “When you look at that, from that perspective, it is usually the most vulnerable.”

Microplastics’ impact on women’s health

Microplastics are small pieces of plastic less than five millimeters long, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Microplastics come from a variety of sources, including from the manufacturing of plastic products and the natural chemical breakdown of larger plastics. They can be found in polyester clothing, processed meats, and even clouds.

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Scientists have grown concerned about microplastics because these tiny plastic particles do not easily decompose. They can take years to break down and, in the process, adversely impact the environment. 

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But microplastics do not just harm the planet, they can damage human bodies when consumed or inhaled, according to a 2023 study on the toxicity of microplastics. These tiny plastics negatively impact women’s health, according to a report by The Endocrine Society, a global nonprofit of doctors and scientists committed to understanding how hormonal health can impact public health. 

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The Endocrine Society’s report said plastics, pesticides, household and industrial chemicals are the main ways women are introduced to endocrine-disrupting substances. Their report found exposure to endocrine disruptors like microplastics compromised women’s fertility and increased women’s risk of hormone-sensitive cancers, like breast cancer.  

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And a recent study from The University of New Mexico found microplastics present in every human placenta the researchers tested. Scientists are just starting to grasp the health impacts of microplastics in placentas on infants. 

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The Apgar score is a test administered to newborns that checks for a baby’s heart rate, muscle tone and other vital signs in the minutes after birth. Microplastics seem to negatively impact that score, said Matthew Campen, the lead author of the study and professor in the Department of Pharmaceutical Sciences at the University of New Mexico.

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“We need to be thinking more collectively about getting that waste into incinerators, or find some other ways to get rid of it,” Campen said in an interview with FCNews. He believed the microplastic problem must be tackled from a country or planet-wide level.

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Because, Campen said, stopping plastic use today would still leave humans’ health vulnerable to the plastics already in our environment. “Because there's 20 to 30 years of time for these plastics to break down and become microplastics,” he said.

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“There's been a lot of misconception that if you're drinking from a plastic water bottle, you're getting plastics from that bottle, but that's not the case,” Campen said. “The fact is that the microplastics in that bottle probably already existed and formed over the last 30 years.”

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“That fresh bottle you are using, that's not a problem for you, it's a problem for your grandchildren,” he added.

Women fighting throwaway culture 

When Sharon Lavigne learned about the toxins in “Cancer Alley,” she realized action was necessary beyond the individual level. In 2018, she founded the faith-based organization RISE St. James. They focus on decreasing petrochemical plant pollution in the area. The organization lobbied to stop the construction of a $1.25 billion plastics manufacturing plant in 2018. 

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“Shut them down, shut them all the way down,” Lavigne said of companies that do not abide by legal environmental standards. “We want to rebuild. We want to rebuild our community.” 

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Last year, 23 communities of women religious in Illinois ran a “Refuse to Use'' campaign during Catholic Sisters Week. The Dominican Sisters of Springfield helped launch the effort. They refused to use plastic water bottles for the week. 

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Although the official campaign is over, some of the sisters and their affiliates have continued to reduce plastic use. Sister Beth Murphy, the order’s communications director, said one of her colleagues stopped buying plastic bottles altogether, and another is still getting rid of plastic bottles in his house.

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“As individuals, it can feel futile. Absolutely futile. What good does it do that I’m assiduously putting my cardboard in the recycling when I don’t even know if it’s actually getting to a recycling center, to be truthful?” Murphy said in an interview with FCNews. 

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“What has been proven, however, is it’s the witness value of that. People see us doing those things and they say, ‘Maybe I can do that, too,’” Murphy added. “That’s how transformative change happens. Very slowly.” 

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Paz Artaza-Regan is the program manager for Catholic Climate Covenant’s Creation Care Teams, which were started in 2015. She helps mobilize the Catholic Church to work locally on living out what Pope Francis called the eighth work of mercy: to care for the earth. Their initiatives include community gardens and helping parishes reduce their carbon footprint. 

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This year, Artaza-Regan is helping create materials for the covenant’s Earth Day campaign, which focuses on the growing problem of plastic pollution. The materials encourage users to make concrete commitments such as refilling steel water bottles instead of buying plastic ones or opting for glass containers instead of plastic ones. 

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“We don't think about the cost of creation of those materials. We don't think of where they end up and who suffers during the whole process,” she said. 

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Artaza-Regan hopes Catholics will focus on eliminating the throwaway culture, or what Pope Francis sometimes calls the “culture of disposal.” 

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“We seem to be in a time where things don't seem to matter whether they are human lives which we dispose of very easily – the unborn, the elderly, the disabled,” she said.

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Artaza-Regan said this culture is especially detrimental for women and unborn children.

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“We are ending up impacting the unborn with chemical issues, their mothers, the health of children, the health of marginalized communities that live sometimes, in those very communities where plastics are, either the petroleum is extracted, or the materials are manufactured,” Artaza-Regan said.

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For Catholics like Lavigne, Murphy and Artaza-Regan, reducing one’s carbon footprint and recycling plastic waste amounts to more than kitschy slogans to “save the planet.” They see it as an integrated way to live out the Catholic Church’s respect for human dignity. 

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“It is a natural fit for the Church, who speaks about the necessity to care for the most vulnerable, including the unborn,” Artaza-Regan says. “It is an area where the Church needs to have a lot more connection to.”

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Main Photo by Naja Bertolt Jensen on Unsplash

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