World in $1.5tn ‘plastics crisis’ hitting health from infancy to old age, report warns

Plastic production has increased more than 200 times since 1950 and hits health at every stage from extraction to disposal, says review in the Lancet

Plastics are a grave, growing and under-recognised danger" to human and planetary health, a new expert review has warned. The world is in a plastics crisis", it concluded, which is causing disease and death from infancy to old age and is responsible for at least $1.5tn (1.1tn) a year in health-related damages.

The driver of the crisis is a huge acceleration of plastic production, which has increased by more than 200 times since 1950 and is set to almost triple again to more than a billion tonnes a year by 2060. While plastic has many important uses, the most rapid increase has been in the production of single-use plastics, such as drinks bottles and fast-food containers.