(AP) — The world produces 57 million tons of plastic pollution each year, spreading from the deepest oceans to the highest mountain peaks and even inside human bodies, according to a new study that found more than two-thirds of plastic comes from countries in the Global South.

That’s enough pollution each year — about 52 million metric tons — to fill New York’s Central Park with plastic waste as tall as the Empire State Building, according to researchers at the University of Leeds in the U.K. They examined local waste in more than 50,000 cities and towns around the world for a study published Wednesday in the journal Nature.

The study looked at plastic that ends up in the open environment, not plastic that ends up in landfills or is properly incinerated. For 15% of the world’s population, governments don’t collect and dispose of waste, the study authors said — a major reason why Southeast Asia and sub-Saharan Africa produce the most plastic waste. That affects 255 million people in India, the study said.

Lagos in Nigeria emits the most plastic pollution of any city, according to study author Costas Velis, professor of environmental engineering at Leeds. Other major plastic-polluting cities include New Delhi; Luanda in Angola; Karachi in Pakistan and Al Qahirah in Egypt.

India is the world leader in generating plastic pollution, producing 10.2 million tons per year (9.3 million metric tons), more than twice as much as the next biggest polluters, Nigeria and Indonesia. China, often maligned for its pollution, ranks fourth but is making great strides in reducing waste, Velis said. The other biggest plastic polluters are Pakistan, Bangladesh, Russia and Brazil. Those eight countries account for more than half of the world’s plastic pollution, according to the study.

According to the study, the United States ranks 90th in plastic pollution with more than 52,500 tons (47,600 metric tons), while the United Kingdom ranks 135th with almost 5,100 tons (4,600 metric tons).

In 2022, most of the world’s countries agreed to the first legally binding treaty on plastic pollution, including oceans. Final treaty negotiations will take place in November in South Korea.

The study used artificial intelligence to focus on plastics that were improperly burned — about 57 percent of the pollutants — or simply thrown away. In both cases, the extremely small microplastics, or nanoplastics, are turning the problem from a visual nuisance on beaches and a problem for marine life into a threat to human health, Velis said.

Several studies have been conducted this year to determine how widespread microplastics are in drinking water and human tissues such as hearts, brains and testicles. Doctors and scientists are still unsure about the implications in terms of human health risks.

“The big microplastic time bomb is microplastics that are being released mainly in the Global South,” Velis said. “We already have a huge problem with them being spread. They are in the most remote places… the peaks of Everest, in the Mariana Trench, in the ocean, in what we breathe, what we eat, what we drink.”

He called it “everyone’s problem” that will haunt future generations.

“We should not blame, at all, the Global South,” Velis said. “And we should not in any way brag about what we are doing in the Global North.”

The reason, Velis says, is simply the government’s lack of resources and ability to provide necessary services to citizens.

Outside experts worry that the study’s focus on pollution rather than overall production absolves the plastics industry of responsibility. Plastic production emits large amounts of greenhouse gases that contribute to climate change.

“These people have defined plastic pollution in a much narrower sense, as just macroplastics that are released into the environment after consumers, and that risks losing focus upstream and saying, hey, now we just need to manage waste better,” said Neil Tangri, senior director of science and policy at GAIA, a global network of advocacy organizations working on zero waste and environmental justice initiatives. “That’s necessary, but it’s not the whole story.”

Theresa Karlsson, scientific and technical adviser to the International Pollutants Elimination Network, another coalition of environmental, health and waste groups, called the scale of pollution identified in the study “alarming” and said it shows the amount of plastic being produced is now “unmanageable.”

But she said the study ignores the importance of the global trade in plastic waste, which rich countries send to poor countries. The study says the trade in plastic waste is declining, and China has banned waste imports. But Karlsson said the overall trade in waste is actually growing, and plastics are likely to be too. She cited EU waste exports, which have risen from 110,000 tonnes (100,000 metric tons) in 2004 to 1.4 million tonnes (1.3 million metric tons) in 2021.

Velis said the amount of plastic waste being traded is small. Kara Lavender Law, a professor of oceanography at the Sea Education Association who was not involved in the study, agreed, based on trends in plastic waste in the U.S. She said it was also one of the more comprehensive studies on plastic waste.

Representatives from the plastics industry praised the study.

“This study highlights that uncollected and unmanaged plastic waste is the largest contributor to plastic pollution and that prioritizing proper waste management is critical to ending plastic pollution,” Chris Jahn, secretary of the board of the International Council of Chemical Associations, said in a statement. The industry has opposed restrictions on plastic production in treaty negotiations.

The United Nations forecasts that plastic production will likely increase from about 440 million tons (400 million metric tons) per year to more than 1,200 million tons (1,100 million metric tons), meaning “our planet is suffocating on plastic.”

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