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Some doctors are now advising their pregnant patients to avoid plastic itself, which contains harmful chemicals that can hurt some mothers and babies alike.
Marya Zlatnik, a University of California at San Francisco fetal medicine specialist, told the Washington Post that when giving some of her early-pregnancy patients the rundown of what they should and shouldn't consume or be exposed to, she's begun adding plastic products to her no-no list.
Her concern: the chemicals known as phthalates, which make plastics stronger and more flexible but also act as a hormone disruptor that has been linked to everything from attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and asthma to obesity and premature birth, among countless other health issues.
Unlike per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances or PFAS, another widespread and terrifying class of contaminants referred to as "forever chemicals" due to their longevity, some scientists have taken to calling phthalates "everywhere chemicals," because they dissipate quickly but are nonetheless constantly contaminating basically everyone on the planet thanks to massive plastic overconsumption.
Phthalates are believed to be inside basically every human body on Earth, and it's not hard to see why: the Food and Drug Administration has approved nine different types of these compounds for food packaging, and they invariably rub off onto what we eat and then are ingested into our bodies.
While these chemicals are, as WaPo notes, detrimental to everyone's health, gynecologists and obstetricians are becoming increasingly worried about how they specifically affect prenatal health as a growing body of evidence suggests they're unduly dangerous for pregnant women and babies. Other scientists are also growing concerned about phthalate exposure in utero affecting fertility down the line, especially in men.
"If any of these chemicals get into a woman while she's pregnant, the chemicals will go right across into the baby," explained Boston College pediatrician Philip Landrigan in an interview with the newspaper. "The placenta provides no protection at all."
The results of prenatal phthalate exposure can be immediate and dramatic.
In 2022, the National Institutes of Health found, based on a large systemic review involving more than 6,000 participants over more than three decades, that women with higher levels of phthalate byproducts in their urine were more between 12 to 16 percent likely to deliver their babies preterm, defined as least three weeks before their due dates.
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