The effects of plastic exposures on children's health and urgent opportunities for prevention

Abstract

Children face an urgent threat in the form of hazards posed by plastics in the environment. Despite robust and rapidly accumulating evidence on the effects of plastic on children's health, plastic presents a paradox for child health providers: while plastic is a vehicle for so many interventions, robust evidence from laboratory and human studies show that chemicals used to produce plastics contribute to chronic conditions in multiple organ systems and disrupt hormone function, and exposure to plastic-derived toxins is associated with adverse birth outcomes, metabolic conditions, neurodevelopmental disease and disability, and reproductive conditions. Evidence-based, safe, simple, and low-cost steps exist for child health providers in primary care to help families limit children's exposure to plastic-derived toxins. Health-care providers also have a crucial opportunity to protect the health and wellbeing of future generations of children by supporting local and global campaigns for governments, industries, and the general public to reduce the accumulation of plastics in the environment and minimise the use of plastics within health-care systems.