Chemicals used in plastic materials: an estimate of the attributable disease burden and costs in the United States
Trasande L, Krithivasan R, Park K, Obsekov V, Belliveau M (2024). Journal of the Endocrine Society.
What they found
Estimated US$249 billion (range $226–289 billion) in US disease costs in 2018 from chemicals used in plastics: PBDE flame retardants, phthalates, bisphenols and PFAS. Most came from PBDEs; phthalates accounted for $66.7 billion and PFAS $22.4 billion. The authors estimated that plastics account for 97.5% of BPA exposure and 98% of DEHP exposure.
Read this too
A correction (February 2024) added missing repository details for the supplementary material (reference 11); the estimates were not changed.
- What it can't tell you
- A model that stacks disease-burden estimates from earlier studies, each assuming causal links; uncertain links (and the PFAS share, 16–96%) drive the totals. Not new health data.
- Funding
- US National Institutes of Health (P2C ES033423) and The Passport Foundation, per the paper's funding statement
- Topics
- Health effects, Chemicals
- Checked against
- Abstract (Europe PMC, PMID 38213907, PMC10783259); funder via Crossref