address this global crisis, researchers warned Tuesday. A British-French team of researchers attempted to cover all the different ways that plastic affects health, from oil and gas extraction during production to all the products that end up in landfills. However they said that their modelling study still does not take into account an array of other ways plastic could harm health, such as microplastics or chemicals that can leach out of food packaging.

"This is undoubtedly a vast underestimate of the total human health impacts," lead study author Megan Deeney of the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine told AFP. The study, published in The Lancet Planetary Health, said it was the first to estimate the number of healthy years of life lost due to the lifecycle of plastic worldwide. The researchers used a measure called DALYs, which represents the number of years lost to either early death or diminished quality of life from illness. Under a business-as-usual scenario, the number of DALYs caused by plastic was projected to more than double from 2.1 million in 2016 to 4.5 million in 2040. Planet-heating greenhouse gas emissions from plastic production had the biggest health impact, followed by air pollution and toxic chemicals. (Bssnews)