Editorial: Emerging challenges and solutions for plastic pollution

Laboratory and occupational epidemiology studies link plastic exposure to respiratory irritation, cardiovascular disease, gut disturbance, inflammation, oxidative stress, and cancer (Morrison et al., 2022; World Health Organization (WHO), 2022). City governments, managers, and community groups may 1) collect data on dominant plastic litter or waste to understand the magnitude of the problem, 2) develop policies that reduce plastic consumption and waste, and 3) utilize controls (e.g., stormwater covers, riverine booms) to capture and prevent pollution (Lauer and Nowlin, 2022). Diverse stakeholder inputs are needed to reduce plastic pollution and reverse deleterious environmental and human health effects. Funding Research reported in this publication was supported by the National Institute Of Environmental Health Sciences of the National Institutes of Health under Award Number T32ES021432 (Duke University Program in Environmental Health) and National Research Foundation of Singapore (NRF-NERCSEAP-2020-04 (WBS No.