1 in 10 Premature U.S. Births Linked to Chemicals Found in Common Plastic Products

Microwaving plastic food containers can lead to phthalates exposure. FreshSplash / E+ / Getty Images

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A large-scale study in the United States has found that one out of 10 premature births is linked with pregnant women’s exposure to phthalates — chemicals commonly found in consumer plastic goods.

Frequently used to soften plastic, phthalates are found in items from plastic wrapping and containers to toys and personal care products, reported AFP.

“Phthalates are synthetic chemicals widely used in consumer products and have been identified to contribute to preterm birth,” the study’s authors wrote. “Increasingly, synthetic chemicals are being recognised for potential independent contributions. One class of synthetic chemicals, phthalates, which are used in personal care products and food packaging, induce inflammation and oxidative stress, and are endocrine disruptors, with varying degrees of estrogenic and anti-androgenic effects. Moreover, these pathways interact; inflammation can influence hormonal regulation in pregnancy.”

For decades, scientists have known that phthalates are “hormone disruptors” that affect the endocrine system. The compounds have been associated with heart disease, obesity, some cancers and fertility issues, AFP said.

“Phthalates can also contribute to inflammation that can disrupt the placenta even more and set the steps of preterm labor in motion,” said Dr. Leonardo Trasande, the study’s lead author and NYU Langone Health’s director of environmental pediatrics, as CNN reported. “Studies show the largest association with preterm labor is due to a phthalate found in food packaging called Di(2-ethylhexyl) phthalate, or DEHP. In our new study, we found DEHP and three similar chemicals could be responsible for 5% to 10% of all the preterm births in 2018. This could be one of the reasons why preterm births are on the rise.”

About 10 percent equals 56,600 premature births in the U.S. that year.

The study, “Prenatal phthalate exposure and adverse birth outcomes in the USA: a prospective analysis of births and estimates of attributable burden and costs,” was published in The Lancet Planetary Health.

The researchers analyzed the amount of phthalates in urine samples from 5,006 women who were pregnant to see how exposure could have impacted the timing of the births.

They found that the ten percent of women with the highest phthalate levels were 50 percent more at risk of early birth before 37 weeks than those with the lowest 10 percent, reported AFP.

Babies born early or who weigh less at birth have a tendency to experience more health issues later on.

It was estimated by the researchers that the social and medical costs of phthalate exposure in the U.S. for premature births was from $1.6 to $8.1 billion.

Trasande pointed out that the ubiquity of phthalates meant that, even though the study was conducted in the U.S., five to 10 percent of preterm births in most other nations could likely be associated with the toxic compounds.

Trasande estimated that more than 75 percent of phthalate exposure is from plastic. He said that plastic’s benefit to society versus its harms needed to be considered and called for a worldwide treaty to greatly reduce its production.

“The people who are producing plastic are not paying for the health effects. They’re not caring for these preterm babies,” Trasande said, as AFP reported.

There has been increased awareness of the threat caused by DEHP, but when companies replaced it with other chemical compounds from the phthalate group, the negative effects got even worse.

“What was even more frightening” was that “replacement phthalates were associated with even stronger effects than DEHP,” Trasande said.

Trasande called not for the regulation of specific compounds, but for the group as a whole to be controlled.

In order to avoid exposure to phthalates, Stephanie Eick — a University of California, San Francisco, researcher of reproductive health, who was not part of the study — advised people to reduce their consumption of food wrapped in plastic, as well as to steer clear of personal care products containing phthalates.

Trasande explained that microwaving or washing plastic containers in a dishwasher can draw out phthalates, which can be absorbed into food later.

We can “reduce our plastic footprint by using stainless steel and glass containers, when possible,” Trasande said, as reported by CNN. “Avoid microwaving food or beverages in plastic, including infant formula and pumped human milk, and don’t put plastic in the dishwasher, because the heat can cause chemicals to leach out. Look at the recycling code on the bottom of products to find the plastic type, and avoid plastics with recycling codes 3, which typically contain phthalates.”

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