Toxic chemicals in packaging of common household products ‘all around us’
Our bodies are increasingly riddled with chemicals associated with plastics. A new Australian report has collated a series of shocking studies about the problem.
While many of us diligently check ingredient lists for sugar, salt and preservatives, the foods we buy in supermarkets are often packaged using chemicals manufacturers don’t need to disclose.
These can then migrate into our bodies causing illnesses at every stage of human life, according to a new study released overnight by the University of Adelaide's internationally-renowned Joanna Briggs Institute (JBI) and mining billionaire Andrew Forrest’s Minderoo Foundation.
Their scientists looked at thousands of forms of chemicals that migrate out of common plastics we regularly come into contact with. They collated the results of 52 studies involving over 1.5 million people including infants, children, adults and pregnant women.
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Minderoo’s head of plastics and human health, Professor Sarah Dunlop, told Yahoo News it’s not just food packaging that could be migrating chemicals into our bodies. But also building materials, clothing and even electrical equipment.
“It’s all around us. Plastic is an incredible success story, and it’s very convenient, but toxic chemicals are in it and they get into us,” she said.
“It’s a form of toxic trespass. We didn’t ask for them to be in us, and yet we’re caught in this convenience cycle. But it could be death by a thousand conveniences.”
There are so many chemicals used in manufacturing, Dunlop doesn't think they could all fit on packaging, and there are new ones popping up all the time. She argues there is little transparency available to consumers so they can make informed choices.
"At the moment, we are generally doing studies to look for harm in plastics after market release. Then we try to regulate it, so they put in a substitution and dearie me we have to do the same thing all over again," she said.
"I call it chemical Whac-A-Mole."
Where in the human body are the chemicals found?
Worryingly only around 4,000 of 16,000 chemicals regularly used in the creation of plastics have been thoroughly studied. Dunlop warns the disease links highlighted in their peer-reviewed umbrella review of five classes of chemicals (Bisphenols and Phthalates, PBDE, PCBs and PFAS) is “just the tip of the iceberg”.
“From before conception, these chemicals are in seminal fluid, follicular fluids, they're in the womb, they're in cord blood. They're in children's urine and blood. They’re in women’s and men’s blood and urine and organs as well,” she said.
“So we're exposed across our life cycle, and therefore, unsurprisingly we also see health impacts across our life cycle.”
The report, which was published in the journal Annals of Global Health has highlighted links between plastic associated chemicals and a long list of illnesses including endometriosis and polycystic ovarian syndrome in women. While in men there are links to problems with sperm concentration and DNA damage.
It also includes studies that show an association between IQ loss in children and the development of asthma, Type II diabetes, obesity and cardiovascular disease.
JBI’s Associate Professor Edoardo Aromataris said statistically significant health impacts were linked to all of the chemical classes they studied.
“None of the plastic-associated chemicals examined in the umbrella review can be considered safe, with multiple harmful health effects linked to each chemical class,” he said.
What can we do about the plastics problem?
Along with campaigning against the expansion of fossil fuels to slow the growing climate crisis, the Minderoo Foundation has increasingly become an advocate for a Global Plastics Treaty. To coincide with United Nations-led negotiations in Canada last April, it launched a public awareness campaign warning hundreds of kilograms of micro and nanoplastics were regularly falling on the city.
Plastics treaty negotiations stalled after the United States, Saudi Arabia and China favoured negotiations around recycling and changing packaging design, rather than mandating a reduction in its use.
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Minderoo Foundation doesn't think the onus should be on consumers to solve the problem. Its director Jay Weatherill told Yahoo there needs to be a comprehensive international regulatory approach to managing plastics.
He advocates for a framework similar to the management of mercury which regulates all aspects of its lifecycle.
“Once upon a time, mercury was pretty ubiquitous, but then the health effects became widely understood, and the treaty was put in place. And it's now been effectively controlled, and the risk has been minimised,” he said.
“Obviously it’s a much bigger and more complex process for plastics.”
Global Plastics Treaty negotiations will resume in Korea in November.
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