Breathing Plastic, Drinking Poison: How Environmental Collapse Is Making Us Sick

The Earth isn’t whispering warnings anymore — it’s screaming. From the smoke-choked skies over megacities to rising oceans swallowing coastlines, we’re watching in real time as our planet crosses red lines. But this crisis is not just ecological. It is deeply personal. It’s about the child struggling to breathe through an asthma attack, the farmer standing in a cracked field of failed crops, the family displaced by floods.

On World Environment Day, 2025, in an interview Dr. Amit Dias mentioned, I sound the alarm not as a climate scientist, but as a physician — because the climate crisis is a public health emergency.

The World Health Organization indicates that nearly 13 million deaths each year — one in four — are linked to environmental sources. Fine particulate matter (PM2.5) alone contributes to over 7 million deaths each year, and it is classified as a Group 1 carcinogen. Children inhale poison with every breath in South Asian and African cities, setting them up for long-term heart and lung disease.

Unsafe water and poor sanitary conditions claim another 829,000 lives each year, mainly caused by diarrheal illnesses — completely avoidable if ecosystems were intact and infrastructure equitable. And on top of these, throw in the resurgence of vector-borne illnesses — dengue, malaria, chikungunya — now extending their reach due to climate-driven changes in rainfall and temperature.

Nature is not an adversary to human existence. It is existence. And without a living planet, the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) — specifically SDG 3 (Good Health and Well-being), SDG 6 (Clean Water), and SDG 13 (Climate Action) — will never be achieved. In fact, all 17 SDGs are inextricably connected to environmental wholeness.

Plastic pollution is the focus of global attention this year. While over 400 million tonnes of plastic are produced annually, nearly half of it being disposable, we are suffocating under our own filth. Microplastics have been found in human blood, lungs, and placentas. The same plastic intended to be "disposable" has become uncomfortably persistent — not only in the environment, but inside us.

But here's the silver lining: it's not a death sentence. We do have solutions.

Ban single-use plastics. Enforce extended producer responsibility. Encourage alternatives like jute, cloth, and biodegradable ones. Make environmental literacy a part of school curriculums. Have community-led clean-up drives. Demand policy reform.

The list is endless. Sikkim, the first organic state in India, shows that there can be harmony between agriculture and environment. Rwanda banned plastic bags in 2008 and boasts of the cleanest streets in Africa. In Goa, panchayats are starting waste segregation and composting programs which are openly improving health and hygiene.

Environmental degradation is not some future concern for scientists and activists. It's a real and immediate health hazard for all human life. Climate change is the most potent health threat of the 21st century, but it's also our greatest opportunity to envision a cleaner, more equitable, healthier world.

Make World Environment Day 2025 more than just a date. Make it a turning point.

Because when we conserve the environment, we don't just conserve trees — we conserve lives