Environmental Law Monitor

State-based consumer protection claims related to microplastics continue to be filed in various jurisdictions, and in a number of those matters, courts have dismissed claims on various grounds. One recent case involving baby bottles highlights the hurdles faced by plaintiffs. On March 30, 2026, the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois issued …

Plastics are inescapable. They are used in packaging, home supplies, medical devices, and countless other items. Naturally then, over the past several years, and as covered by ELM and GS’s Toxic Tort and Environmental Law team, microplastics have gained notoriety in the United States. These small fragments of plastic, smaller five millimeters, have increasingly been …

By Joshua Fine, Manager, Environmental Claims, Crum & Forster and George Buermann, Partner, Goldberg Segalla LLP Seventy-nine percent of plastic waste ends up in landfills or the environment, much of which eventually ends up in our oceans. A March 8, 2023 study, estimated the average amount of small plastics in the ocean surface layer using available …

Microplastics have been detected in human lungs and placentas, stool and blood, and the latest finding: heart tissue. In a pilot study published in Environmental Science & Technology, researchers studied 15 patients, ranging in age from 41 to 75, who underwent heart surgery at the Beijing Anzhen Hospital in China. Through the use of laser-direct …

Earlier this month, a team of researchers out of the UK, Canada, and New Zealand published a first-of-its-kind study in the peer-reviewed Journal of Hazardous Material Advances, examining the microplastics pollution potential for plastic recycling facilities. The study found that the recycling process, even with plastic pollution mitigation and high removal efficiencies, might potentially discharge …