A Chemical in Plastics is Tied to Heart Disease Deaths
Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:
In 2018, about 13.5 percent of the more than 2.6 million deaths from cardiovascular disease among people ages 55 to 64 globally could have been related to exposure to a type of chemical called a phthalate, researchers report April 28 in eBioMedicine.
Phthalates are a group of chemicals found in shampoos, lotions, food packaging and medical supplies including blood bags. The chemicals are often added to plastics to make them softer and more flexible.
Phthalates can enter the body when you consume contaminated food, breathe them in or absorb them through the skin. Once inside, they act as endocrine disruptors, which means they affect hormones. Previous research has also linked the chemicals to diabetes, obesity, pregnancy complications and heart disease.
The new study looked at the effects of one particular phthalate, known as di-2-ethylhexylphthalate, or DEHP, which is often added to PVC plastics to soften them. Sara Hyman, a research scientist at NYU Langone Health, and colleagues focused on the relationship between DEHP exposure levels and cardiovascular disease, the leading cause of death worldwide. Hyman and colleagues compared estimated DEHP exposure in 2008 with death rates from cardiovascular disease ten years later in different parts of the world. By studying how the two changed together, they determined what portion of those deaths might be attributable to phthalates.
More than 350,000 excess deaths worldwide were associated with DEHP exposure in 2018, the team found. About three-quarters of those occurred in the Middle East, South Asia, East Asia and the Pacific. This disparity might be due to the regions' growing plastics industries, the researchers suggest. The new work does not show that DEHP exposure directly causes heart disease, though - only that there's an association between the two.
[...] The findings offer yet another reason to decrease plastic use, researchers say. We're going to become the plastic planet," Zhou says. We need to start to really address this serious issue."
S. Hyman et al. Phthalate exposure from plastics and cardiovascular disease: global estimates of attributable mortality and years life lost. eBioMedicine, 105730. Published online April 28, 2025. doi: 10.1016/j.ebiom.2025.105730.
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