Chemicals in everyday plastics pose widespread health risks

Nearly 93% of known plastic chemicals used to wrap food and make clothes, toys, and other common household and personal care products pose a high risk to human health, according to a new investigation provided exclusively to CNN. Potential health harms include cancer, genetic changes, and endocrine, reproductive and organ toxicity, said Naima Fenderl, lead author of “Poison Plastics: How Chemicals in Everyday Plastics are Harming Your Health,” released Wednesday. “We looked at what these plastic chemicals can do to the body along with exposure levels to calculate overall health risk,” said Fenderl, a researcher at the Environmental Justice Foundation, or EJF, a London-based environmental nonprofit which produced the report. The report analyzed exposure to five categories of plastics people use nearly every day: “The report does a brilliant job of presenting information on everyday plastics in a very user-friendly form,” said pediatrician Dr.