Three out of four yogurt cups, bath sponges and coffee cup lids contain a cocktail of potentially dangerous chemicals, according to a new study that examined the toxicity and chemical composition of various everyday plastic products.
Other toxic plastics that are in contact with our food included food wraps and gummy candy packaging. These examples underscore a much bigger problem, scientists say: more than 4,000 chemicals are used in plastics and no one knows how many of those chemicals are safe.
'Such chemicals simply shouldn't be in plastics in the first place,' says Martin Wagner from the Norwegian University of Science and Technology, a senior author on the study published recently in Environmental Science and Technology. 'Given that we live in the plastic age, we need to make sure they don't affect our health.'
'The problem is that plastics are made of a complex chemical cocktail, so we often don't know exactly what substances are in the products we use. For most of the thousands of chemicals, we have no way to tell whether they are safe or not,' says Wagner.
'This is because, practically speaking, it's impossible to trace all of these compounds. And manufacturers may or may not know the ingredients of their products, but even if they know, they are not required to disclose this.'
The researchers used cell cultures to investigate the effects of the mix of chemicals in each product. They found that many plastics contain chemicals that induced general toxicity, oxidative and endocrine disrupting effects.
'Three out of four products contained toxic chemicals,' says Lisa Zimmermann, first author of the study, based at Goethe University in Frankfurt am Main, Germany.
It is impossible to pinpoint specifically which chemicals were the culprits: the team discovered more than 1,400 substances in plastics but identified only 260 of them. That means that most of the plastic chemicals remain unknown and cannot be assessed for their safety.
'Plastics contain chemicals that trigger negative effects in a culture dish. Even though we do not know whether this will affect our health, such chemicals simply shouldn't be in plastics in the first place,' Wagner says.
Plastic chemicals in polyvinyl chloride (PVC) and polyurethane (PUR) were the most toxic, whereas polyethylene terephthalate (PET) and high-density polyethylene (HDPE) were less toxic.
Traditionally, plastics are made from petroleum products, but now there are also green alternatives - bioplastics made from renewable biomass sources, such as plants, instead of from petroleum.
The team also investigated products made of polylactic acid (PLA), a common type of bioplastic. They found toxicity in all of them.
'Regarding toxicity, it's the same problem,' Wagner says. 'We are in the dark as to which chemicals are used in the bioplastics as well.'
The researchers says it's almost impossible for consumers to know whether a product is safe or not, as even plastic products that seem similar may contain different substances. 'We examined four different yogurt cups and found toxicity in two of them, but not in the other two,' Zimmermann says.
Ultimately, Wagner says, it is the responsibility of manufacturers and retailers to improve the chemical safety of their products.
But policymakers, too, should to consider the safety of plastics to which the public is exposed to regularly a priority. 'We need to avoid demonizing plastics. But given that we live in the plastic age, we need to make sure they don't affect our health,' he says.
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