Plastic has transformed modern life. It is cheap, lightweight, and found in almost every home, office, and hospital.
From food packaging and cosmetics to medical tubing and cleaning products, plastics are deeply woven into everyday living. Yet scientists are increasingly concerned that some of the chemicals used in plastics may come with hidden health costs.
A new study from researchers at NYU Langone Health suggests that one of these chemicals may be linked to hundreds of thousands of deaths from heart disease around the world. The findings were published online on April 29 in the journal Lancet eBiomedicine.
The researchers investigated a group of chemicals called phthalates. These chemicals are added to plastics to make them softer and more flexible. Because phthalates are not permanently bound to plastic products, they can slowly leak into the environment and enter the human body.
People may be exposed by eating contaminated food, drinking water, breathing in particles, or touching products that contain these chemicals.
The study focused on one specific phthalate known as DEHP. Previous studies have linked DEHP exposure to inflammation and damage in the cardiovascular system. Inflammation is the body’s natural response to injury or harmful substances.
However, when inflammation becomes long-lasting, it can damage blood vessels and increase the risk of serious conditions such as heart attacks and strokes.
To estimate the global health impact of DEHP, the researchers collected information from population surveys around the world. They used urine samples to measure breakdown products left behind by the chemical and combined these data with international mortality records. The analysis covered about 200 countries and territories.
The scientists estimated that DEHP exposure may have been associated with more than 356,000 deaths from heart disease in 2018 among people between the ages of 55 and 64 years. This represented a substantial share of heart disease deaths worldwide in this age group.
The burden was not spread evenly across the globe. The study found that countries in South Asia, East Asia, the Middle East, and the Pacific region experienced the largest share of deaths. India had the highest estimated death count, followed by China and Indonesia.
The researchers suggest that rapid industrial growth and increasing plastic production may partly explain these higher exposure levels.
The economic consequences could also be enormous. The estimated financial losses ranged from about 510 billion dollars to nearly 3.74 trillion dollars. These costs include lost productivity and the wider effects of premature deaths on societies and economies.
The researchers caution that their analysis has limitations. The study was observational and therefore cannot prove that DEHP alone caused heart disease.
It also did not include younger or older age groups and did not examine other phthalates that may have similar effects. For these reasons, the true health impact of plastic-related chemicals could be higher than estimated.
Reviewing the findings, this study provides one of the first global estimates of how exposure to a common plastic chemical may affect heart health. Its large international scope makes it an important contribution to environmental health research.
At the same time, more studies are needed to understand exactly how these chemicals influence disease and whether reducing exposure can lower death rates. The findings nevertheless suggest that the health effects of everyday plastic chemicals deserve much closer attention from scientists, regulators, and the public.
If you care about heart health, please read studies that yogurt may help lower the death risks in heart disease, and coconut sugar could help reduce artery stiffness.
For more information about health, please see recent studies that Vitamin D deficiency can increase heart disease risk, and results showing vitamin B6 linked to lower death risk in heart disease.
Source: NYU Langone Health.
