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Climate Action in Healthcare—No Capes Required
It's time for physicians to step up and join the climate fight. This is not just an environmental issue; it’s a public health issue.
Apr 28, 2026
April 28 is National Superhero Day. It’s a shame that Superman is fictional, because our planet needs saving from its most deadly threat: climate change. Our real heroes will come from science, not planet Krypton.
The threat of climate change is not theoretical, and neither are the health impacts. The Earth was 2.3°F warmer in 2024 than during the 20th-century average, and the 10 warmest recorded years have all taken place between 2015 and 2024. According to the World Health Organization, 3.6 billion people already live in areas highly vulnerable to climate change. Climate-driven deaths are rising, from heat illness and malnutrition to vector-borne disease and disasters such as flooding. Thirty-seven percent of heat-related deaths are linked to human-induced warming, a number expected to climb.
Yet at the very moment when the world needs bold climate action, the Trump administration has taken major steps backward. The United States, historically the world's largest emitter, pulled out of the Paris Agreement and failed to show at last year's United Nations Climate Change Conference, sending clear messages to international partners. Federal disinvestment has been staggering: The latest proposed federal budget will cut the Environmental Protection Agency’s budget by 52% and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's by 32%. Funding for climate change research has been gutted across major universities. We are not on track to reach net-zero emissions by 2050, a deadline scientists view as essential for planetary stability. This backslide disproportionately harms low-income communities, contributing to rising climate-related mortality.
Even as the US retreats from its international and domestic commitments to reduce emissions, America still has a league of planet defenders made up of scientists, engineers, and activists. They may not have capes, but their work saves lives.
No one is coming to save us, and while the impacts of climate change may feel distant to some healthcare providers, the rest of us cannot afford to sit this one out.
It's time for physicians to step up and join the fight. This is not just an environmental issue; it’s a public health issue. All the statistics about heatwaves, floods, and disasters aren’t just abstract; they’re at the bedside. We’re seeing the direct impacts of climate change in emergency medicine as it affects both the types of diseases we’re treating and how we deliver care.
As a physician myself, I know asking overworked healthcare providers to do more is, well, a big ask. But research shows that physicians are viewed as credible messengers on climate-related issues. Our voices and expertise matter, not just in clinics and operating rooms, but in our communities. We know that change does not just come in the form of lobbying and big communication campaigns. Often, it can come from everyday conversations. It can look like asking patients how they keep their medications cool during a heatwave or reviewing their asthma action plan in preparation for wildfire season. By leading with curiosity, we can help patients make the connection between their environment and its effect on their health.
It can take the form of a discussion with your colleagues about eco-friendly prescribing, like opting for tablets over liquid formulations or dry powders instead of propellant inhalers. Within our hospitals and clinics, we can make simple changes like adding recycling bins and minimizing the use of single-use disposables. Plastic waste is a huge problem in the medical field, but it’s a scalable problem within our control.
No one is coming to save us, and while the impacts of climate change may feel distant to some healthcare providers, the rest of us cannot afford to sit this one out. Joining the Justice League of climate change advocacy does not mean taking on everything; it means starting with doing something. The planet doesn’t need a superhero; it needs all of us to take a step toward changing our practice.
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Plastic-Free Friday: Renewal After Mardi Gras in a Transcultural Diasporic Tradition
Rather than framing plastic reduction as individual sacrifice, the campaign presents it as a communal act of care, rooted in culture, seasonality, and public health.
Feb 17, 2026
Mardi Gras is a transnational, diasporic cultural tradition rooted in Christian liturgical calendars and continually reshaped through Afro-diasporic, colonial, and migrant histories. Across cultures and centuries, the passage from winter to spring has carried a shared meaning: renewal. It is a moment marked not only by seasonal change but by intentional pause, a time to reassess habits, responsibilities, and the ways individual actions shape collective life.
In New Orleans and across South Louisiana, that pause arrives right after Mardi Gras. Carnival season, with its music, artistry, and communal joy, gives way to Lent, a period traditionally devoted to reflection, restraint, and service. Similar practices appear across faiths and cultures, from Ramadan in Muslim communities to Passover in Jewish tradition and secular observances tied to the spring equinox. Each reflects a collective understanding that cycles of abundance must be balanced by intention.
Within Christian tradition, Lent centers on three practices: prayer, fasting, and almsgiving. These concepts readily translate into environmental responsibility. Fasting becomes a restraint from unnecessary consumption. Prayer becomes a reflection on the consequences of habitual behavior. Almsgiving becomes solidarity with communities bearing the costs of environmental harm.
Plastic-Free Friday, a weekly initiative launched by RISE St. James, draws directly from these shared values. Rather than framing plastic reduction as individual sacrifice, the campaign presents it as a communal act of care, rooted in culture, seasonality, and public health. That framing matters, particularly along the Gulf Coast, where plastic pollution is a lived and often encouraged reality.
Mardi Gras Was Never Meant to Be Disposable
Mardi Gras is among the world’s most recognized cultural celebrations and is central to New Orleans’ identity and economy. Yet when the parades end, and the streets are cleared, the environmental consequences of Carnival season remain.
In 2023, Mardi Gras celebrations generated approximately 1,162 tons of waste over 11 days, according to data from the City of New Orleans Department of Public Works. An estimated 25% of that waste consisted of plastic beads, according to local waste audits and bead recovery organizations. While recovery efforts have expanded, reclaiming more than 10,000 pounds of beads during the 2025 Carnival season, these initiatives capture only a fraction of the plastic distributed each year.
Plastic-Free Friday leverages cultural timing, community norms, and shared identity to reframe plastic reduction as a public health intervention rather than a personal moral test.
Much of the remainder enters landfills, clogs storm drains, or is carried into surrounding waterways. Over time, these plastics degrade into microplastics that are now detected in soil, seafood, drinking water, and human tissue. Peer-reviewed research increasingly links microplastic exposure and associated chemical additives to endocrine disruption, reproductive harm, immune dysfunction, and elevated cancer risk.
These risks extend far beyond festival cleanup. They intersect with a deeper public health and environmental justice crisis that has long shaped life along the Gulf Coast.
Plastic Is a Public Health Issue
Plastic pollution is often framed as a waste management issue. In communities along Louisiana’s industrial corridor, it is also a determinant of health.
Plastic production relies on fossil fuels and petrochemical infrastructure that is disproportionately concentrated in low-income and predominantly Black communities along the Mississippi River. Residents living near these facilities experience elevated exposure to air and water pollution, higher rates of respiratory illness, and increased cancer risks, trends documented by the Louisiana Tumor Registry and federal environmental justice screening tools. From extraction and production to disposal, plastic reinforces structural inequities that shape who bears the health costs of modern consumption.
Every single-use item, whether a bottle, a bag, or a Mardi Gras bead, participates in that system. The connection between consumption and harm is rarely visible in moments of celebration, but it becomes clear when examined through a public health lens.
Plastic-Free Friday situates that connection within everyday life. By encouraging individuals and communities to reduce plastic use one day a week, the campaign lowers barriers to participation while fostering habit formation and collective awareness. Behavioral science research shows that recurring, socially reinforced practices are more likely to produce sustained change than isolated actions. Plastic-Free Friday leverages cultural timing, community norms, and shared identity to reframe plastic reduction as a public health intervention rather than a personal moral test.
Legal Challenges Along the Gulf Coast
Along the Gulf Coast, particularly in Louisiana, residents and environmental organizations have turned to the courts to challenge permitting practices they argue ignore cumulative pollution and disproportionate health risks. Lawsuits supported by national groups, including Earthjustice, contest permit extensions for proposed petrochemical and plastics projects in St. James Parish, where residents already face elevated rates of respiratory illness and cancer.
Through small but consistent acts of restraint, reflection, and solidarity, communities across the Gulf Coast can reduce plastic exposure, protect public health, and support those most affected by the plastic economy.
Additional litigation seeks broader remedies. Residents of St. James Parish, represented by the Tulane Environmental Law Clinic, have filed civil rights lawsuits alleging discriminatory land-use practices and calling for a moratorium on new petrochemical development. A federal judge’s decision to allow key claims to proceed reflects increasing judicial scrutiny of cumulative environmental harm linked to industrial siting.
These cases emphasize the limits of addressing plastic pollution solely through waste management. Plastic-Free Friday complements, rather than replaces, legal and regulatory accountability by addressing demand and public awareness.
Culture Endures
Mardi Gras is sustained by continuity, creativity, and collective participation. Plastic pollution imposes a lasting burden on the environment and health systems, persisting long after its causes are forgotten.
Plastic-Free Friday offers a culturally grounded and scalable response. Through small but consistent acts of restraint, reflection, and solidarity, communities across the Gulf Coast can reduce plastic exposure, protect public health, and support those most affected by the plastic economy.
As environmental challenges intensify, the path forward may not always begin with a sweeping transformation. Sometimes it begins more simply, with a pause at the end of a season, a shared intention, and a decision to choose differently, together.
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Lancet Study Warns Plastics Could Cost Humanity 83 Million Years of Healthy Life
"Systemic change is needed 'from the cradle to the grave' of plastic production, use, and disposal," said the lead author, calling for "ambitious action from governments and industry transparency."
Jan 27, 2026
A study published Tuesday in the Lancet Planetary Health highlights how humanity's continued reliance on plastics—which are primarily derived from planet-heating fossil fuels—is expected to harm global health over the next couple of decades.
"Plastics life cycles emit a range of gases and pollutants that contribute to the global burden of disease, including greenhouse gases that drive climate change, air pollutants linked to respiratory illnesses, and hazardous chemicals associated with cancers and other noncommunicable diseases," the study explains.
"These emissions occur across all stages of the plastics value chain: from oil and gas extraction, which provides the feedstocks for more than 90% of global plastics; to polymer production and product manufacturing, global transportation, recycling, and formal or informal waste management and mismanagement; to the gradual degradation of plastics in the environment," the publication continues.
Researchers from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine (LSHTM) and University of Exeter in the United Kingdom, as well as France's University of Toulouse, modeled various scenarios of plastics production, consumption, and disposal from 2016-40.
"The study is the first of its kind to assess the number of healthy years of life lost ('disability-adjusted life years' or 'DALYS'—a measure of harm) due to greenhouse gases, air pollutants, and toxic chemicals emitted across the life cycle of plastics at a global scale," according to LSHTM.
The team estimated that without any changes in global plastics policies and practices, annual health impacts would soar from 2.1 million DALYs in 2016 to 4.5 million DALYs by 2040—with a total of 83 million healthy years of life lost over the full study period. Under a business-as-usual scenario, 40% of the health harms would be tied to rising temperatures, nearly a third to air pollution, and over a quarter to toxic chemicals.
Because of limited data—particularly on the use stage of plastics and the chemicals they contain—lead author Megan Deeney of LSHTM told Agence France-Presse that "this is undoubtedly a vast underestimate of the total human health impacts."
new paper in @thelancet.com estimating the global health burdens of plasticsI think this is one of the first analyses that quantifies the impacts of plastics across its entire lifecycle (from extraction to waste) and highlights the pretty staggering health effects of our current economic system
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— Rob Ralston (@policyrelevant.bsky.social) January 27, 2026 at 6:54 AM
Still, the researchers were able to offer some insight into the adverse health impacts—thanks to their repurposing of modeling methods typically used to evaluate the environmental footprint of individual products and technologies.
These methods "are an increasingly important tool to tackle sustainability questions at a much larger scale," study co-author and Exeter professor Xiaoyu Yan said in a statement. "Our study shows that this approach can help uncover the massive impacts of plastics on human health throughout the life cycle. We now need urgent action to reduce the impacts of plastics on the environment and ultimately human health."
Deeney stressed that such action can't be restricted to consumers. As she put it, "Our research shows that the adverse health impacts of plastics stretch far beyond the point at which we buy a plastic product or put plastic items in a recycling bin."
In the US alone, government data suggests that just 5% of plastic waste is recycled annually, according to a Greenpeace report published last month. The advocacy group also noted that only a fifth of the 8.8 million tons of the most commonly produced types of plastics are even recyclable.
"Often the blame is put on us as individual consumers of plastics to solve the problem, but while we all have an important role to play in reducing the use of plastics, our analysis shows systemic change is needed 'from the cradle to the grave' of plastic production, use, and disposal," Deeney said Tuesday. "Much more ambitious action from governments and industry transparency is needed to curb this growing global plastics public health crisis."
The lead author said that the most effective measure is slashing the production of "unnecessary" plastic. She also pointed out that lack of data doesn't just impact studies like this one: "Industry nondisclosure and inconsistent reporting of plastics' chemical composition is severely limiting the ability of life cycle assessments (LCAs) to inform effective policy to protect humans, ecosystems, and the environment."
The study comes after the latest round of global plastics treaty negotiations stalled in August—which environmentalists called an "abject failure" that should be blamed on the Trump administration, Saudi Arabia, and other major governments opposed to curbing production.
"The inability to reach an agreement in Geneva must be a wake-up call for the world: Ending plastic pollution means confronting fossil fuel interests head-on," Greenpeace USA's Graham Forbes said at the time. "The vast majority of governments want a strong agreement, yet a handful of bad actors were allowed to use process to drive such ambition into the ground."
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