Indigenous groups call for health protections in plastic deal [Video]

For Caleb Justin Smith-White, negotiations in South Korea on a landmark global deal to curb plastic pollution are about more than the environment. They are about saving lives.

He is one of dozens of people who have travelled from across the world to the city of Busan to share personal stories about the ways they say plastic — from its production to its disposal — has harmed their communities and their health.

Smith-White describes his home in Canada’s Ontario as a “petrochemical valley” and blames production of plastic for a string of leukaemia deaths in Aamjiwnaang, his community of around 2,000 people from the Chippewa Indigenous group.

“We are too small of a population for cancer studies to be effective,” he said, adding that “we don’t have the money for that”.

But his message to negotiators is that plastic causes harm, a position backed by a coalition of scientists attending …