Under business as usual, annual health harms from the plastics system more than double from 2.1 million DALYs in 2016 to 4.5 million in 2040, costing 83 million healthy life-years in total. Cutting primary plastics production delivers the largest health benefit, while better recycling or waste collection alone has little effect.
A Lancet Planetary Health study led by LSHTM with the University of Toulouse and University of Exeter modelled the health damage from emissions across the full life cycle of predominantly single-use plastics under six global scenarios. It is the first global-scale assessment of healthy life-years lost to greenhouse gases, air pollutants and toxic chemicals released from plastics production through to disposal.
