Report Reveals: Over 90% of Common Household Items Contain Hazardous Plastic Chemicals

- A new investigation exclusively available to Afaq News reveals that approximately 93% of known plastic chemicals used in food packaging, clothing, toys, and other common household and personal care products pose a high risk to human health. Potential health harms include cancer, genetic changes, endocrine disorders, and toxicity that may affect the reproductive system and organs, according to Naima Finderl, the lead author of the report titled: "Toxic Plastic: How Chemicals in Everyday Plastics Harm Your Health," released on Wednesday.

Finderl, a researcher at the Environmental Justice Foundation, a non-profit environmental organization based in London that prepared the report, stated: "We studied what these plastic chemicals can do to the body, in parallel with exposure levels, to calculate the overall health risks." The report analyzed exposure levels in 5 categories of plastic products that people use almost daily: For his part, pediatrician Dr. Philip Landrigan, director of the Global Observatory on Planetary Health and the Global Public Health and Common Good Program at Boston College, said: "The report does an excellent job of presenting information related to everyday plastic in a way that is very accessible to the user."

Landrigan, who was not involved in the report's preparation, added: "Suddenly, people can realize how close the problem is to them and how these plastics infiltrate their lives in ways they were not aware of." There is insufficient data to measure potential harm, but the report warns that about 80% of the 3,552 chemicals used in common plastics lack sufficient data to assess their toxicity and exposure risks.

Landrigan said: "We do not know the extent of the harm these substances may cause to us and our children, nor even the composition of many of them, even though this information is supposed to be available from manufacturers." In contrast, the American Chemistry Council, which represents chemical manufacturing companies, called for handling the report "with extreme caution," considering that it overlooked regulatory databases and key information sources in the United States and the European Union.

Kimberly Wise White, Vice President of Regulatory and Scientific Affairs at the council, stated that the report presented a misleading picture of chemical regulation, adding: "Without taking these regulatory frameworks into account, the report contributes to making headlines more than it contributes to advancing science." Plastic is everywhere; plastic is present in most aspects of our lives.

More than 80% of agricultural products sold in American supermarkets come packaged in single-use plastic, while about 60% of clothing is made from synthetic fabrics based on plastic. Estimates suggest that 90% of toys used by children are made from plastic, many of which contain chemicals that may harm health.

Plastic products also include household items, food storage containers, furniture, as well as personal care products and medical products, increasing the potential exposure to these materials. In 2024, international scientists established the "PlastChem" database, which includes known chemicals found in plastics.

Among the 16,000 substances identified by researchers, 4,200 were classified as "highly hazardous" to human health and the environment, while no data was available for more than 10,000 other substances. The Environmental Justice Foundation used the database in its analysis, according to Jean Monki, a co-author of "PlastChem" and the Executive Director and Chief Scientific Officer at the Food Packaging Forum.

The database aggregates chemicals into 15 priority groups that can be targeted for regulation. Among them are bisphenols, such as BPA, phthalates, and PFAS substances known as "forever chemicals," which studies have linked to health harms and healthcare costs in the billions of dollars.

Many of the chemicals found in plastics, according to Martin Wagner, leader of the "PlastChem" project: Wagner stated that some concerning chemicals are characterized by stability, as they do not easily decompose in the environment, accumulate in the body over time, and spread easily in water and aquatic environments. However, more than 50% of known high-risk chemicals are not regulated by major entities such as the European Union or under several international environmental agreements, according to Vinderl.

Vinderl said that the United States has not ratified several of these agreements, including the Basel, Rotterdam, and Stockholm agreements, which makes consumers in the United States, according to her, more susceptible to these health risks. According to the report, the problem has worsened with the massive expansion in plastic production.

In 1950, global production was about two million metric tons annually, compared to more than 430 million metric tons today. Scientists expect plastic production to more than double by 2050, along with the production of about two billion metric tons of chemical additives used in it.

Landrigan stated that the chemical industry has invented and manufactured about 325,000 synthetic chemicals since its expansion after World War II, adding that data regarding the toxicity of these substances is available, at best estimates, for only about 20% of them.