Scientists have issued an urgent warning that some of the synthetic chemicals that help underpin the current food system are driving increased rates of cancer, neurodevelopmental conditions and infertility, while degrading the foundations of global agriculture.
The health burden from phthalates, bisphenols, pesticides and Pfas “forever chemicals” amounts to up to $2.2tn a year – roughly as much as the profits of the world’s 100 largest publicly listed companies, according to the report published on Wednesday.
Most ecosystem damage remains unpriced, they say, but even a narrow accounting of ecological impacts, taking into account agricultural losses and meeting water safety standards for Pfas and pesticides, implies a further cost of $640bn. There are also potential consequences for human demographics, with the report concluding that if exposure to endocrine disruptors such as bisphenols and phthalates persists at current rates, there could be between 200 million and 700 million fewer births between 2025 and 2100.
The report is the work of dozens of scientists from organisations including the Institute of Preventive Health, the Center for Environmental Health, Chemsec, and various universities in the US and UK, including the University of Sussex and Duke University. It was led by a core team from Systemiq, a company that invests in enterprises aimed at fulfilling the UN sustainable development goals and the Paris agreement on climate change.
The authors said they had focused on the four chemical types examined because “they are among the most prevalent and best studied worldwide, with robust evidence of harm to human and ecological health”.
One of the team, Philip Landrigan, a paediatrician and professor of global public health at Boston College, called the report a “wake-up call”. He said: “The world really has to wake up and do something about chemical pollution. I would argue that the problem of chemical pollution is every bit as serious as the problem with climate change.”
Human and ecosystem exposure to synthetic chemicals has surged since the end of the second world war, with chemical production increasing by more than 200 times since the 1950s and more than 350,000 synthetic chemicals currently on the global market.
Three years ago, researchers from the Stockholm Resilience Centre (SRC) concluded that chemical pollution had crossed a “planetary boundary”, the point at which human-made changes to the Earth push it outside the stable environment of the past 10,000 years, the period in which modern human civilisation has developed.
Unlike with pharmaceuticals, there are few safeguards to test for the safety of industrial chemicals before they are put into use, and little monitoring of their effects once they are. Some have been found to be disastrously toxic to humans, animals and ecosystems, leaving governments to pick up the bill.
This report assesses the impact of four families of synthetic chemicals endemic in global food production. Phthalates and bisphenols are commonly used as plastic additives, employed in food packaging and disposable gloves used in food preparation.
Pesticides underpin industrial agriculture, with large-scale monoculture farms spraying thousands of gallons on crops to eliminate weeds and insects, and many crops treated after harvest to maintain freshness.
Pfas are used in food contact materials such as greaseproof paper, popcorn tubs and ice-cream cartons, but have also accumulated in the environment to such an extent they enter food via air, soil and water contamination.
All have been linked to harms including endocrine (hormone system) disruption, cancers, birth defects, intellectual impairment and obesity.
Landrigan said that during his long career in paediatric public health he had seen a shift in the conditions affecting children. “The amount of disease and death caused by infectious diseases like measles, like scarlet fever, like pertussis, has come way down,” he said. “By contrast, there’s been this incredible increase in rates of non-communicable diseases. And of course, there’s no single factor there … but the evidence is very clear that increasing exposure to hundreds, maybe even thousands of manufactured chemicals is a very important cause of disease in kids.”
Landrigan said he was most concerned about “the chemicals that damage children’s developing brains and thus make them less intelligent, less creative, just less able to give back to society across the whole of their lifetimes”.
“And the second class of chemicals that I worry really worried about are the endocrine-disrupting chemicals,” he added. “Bisphenol would be the classic example, that get into people’s bodies at every age, damage the liver, change cholesterol metabolism, and result in increased serum cholesterol, increased obesity, increased diabetes, and those internally to increase rates of heart disease and stroke.”
Asked whether the report could have looked beyond the groups of chemicals studied, Landridge said: “I would argue that they’re only the tip of the iceberg. They’re among the very small number of chemicals, maybe 20 or 30 chemicals where we really have solid toxicologic information.
“What scares the hell out of me is the thousands of chemicals to which we’re all exposed every day about which we know nothing. And until one of them causes something obvious, like children to be born with missing limbs, we’re going to go on mindlessly exposing ourselves.”
