The DOI matches its Crossref record; 76 of the 76 references it cites were found in a registry or an index.
Human health impacts of exposure to phthalate plasticizers: An overview of reviews
Open accessAbstract
In this review of reviews, we overview the current global body of available evidence from structured reviews of epidemiological studies that explore human health outcomes associated with exposure to phthalates (chemical plasticisers commonly found in plastics). We found robust evidence for an association with lower semen quality, neurodevelopment and risk of childhood asthma, and moderate to robust evidence for impact on anogenital distance in boys. We identified moderate evidence for an association between phthalates/metabolites and low birthweight, endometriosis, decreased testosterone, ADHD, Type 2 diabetes and breast/uterine cancer. There was some evidence for other outcomes including anofourchette distance, fetal sex hormones, pre-term birth, lower antral follicle count, reduced oestrodiol, autism, obesity, thyroid function and hearing disorders. We found no reviews of epidemiological human studies on the impact of phthalates from recycled plastics on human health. We recommend that future research should use urine samples as exposure measures, consider confounders in analyses and measure impacts on female reproductive systems. Our findings align with emerging research indicating that health risks can occur at exposure levels below the "safe dose" levels set out by regulators, and are of particular concern given potential additive or synergistic "cocktail effects" of chemicals. This raises important policy and regulatory issues for identifying and controlling plastics and health related impacts and highlights a need for more research into substances of concern entering plastics waste streams via recycling.
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Cites
Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses: the PRISMA statement
Moher, D., Liberati, A., Tetzlaff, J., Altman, D. G., & for the PRISMA Group (2009) · BMJ · doi:10.1136/bmj.b2535 · Cited by 83,823
Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses: The PRISMA Statement
Moher, D., Liberati, A., Tetzlaff, J., Altman, D. G., & The PRISMA Group (2009) · PLoS Medicine · doi:10.1371/journal.pmed.1000097 · Cited by 64,042
Preferred reporting items for systematic reviews and meta-analyses: the PRISMA Statement.
(2009) · PubMed Central · Cited by 44,859
Rayyan-a web and mobile app for systematic reviews.
Ouzzani, M., Hammady, H., Fedorowicz, Z., & Elmagarmid, A. (2016) · Systematic Reviews · doi:10.1186/s13643-016-0384-4 · Cited by 26,092
Shea, B. J., Reeves, B. C., Wells, G., Thuku, M., Hamel, C., Moran, J., Moher, D., Tugwell, P., Welch, V., Kristjansson, E., et al. (2017) · BMJ · doi:10.1136/bmj.j4008 · Cited by 10,636
Hahladakis, J. N., Velis, C. A., Weber, R., Iacovidou, E., & Purnell, P. (2018) · Journal of Hazardous Materials · doi:10.1016/j.jhazmat.2017.10.014 · Cited by 3,873
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Systematic review finds overlapping reviews were not mentioned in every other overview
Pieper, D., Antoine, S.-L., Mathes, T., Neugebauer, E. A. M., & Eikermann, M. (2014) · Journal of Clinical Epidemiology · doi:10.1016/j.jclinepi.2013.11.007 · Cited by 1,318
Overview of known plastic packaging-associated chemicals and their hazards
Groh, K. J., Backhaus, T., Carney-Almroth, B., Geueke, B., Inostroza, P. A., Lennquist, A., Leslie, H. A., Maffini, M., Slunge, D., Trasande, L., et al. (2019) · Science of The Total Environment · doi:10.1016/j.scitotenv.2018.10.015 · Cited by 913
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Research works printed but not linked: 1
- Hauser, 2005, Phthalates and human health, occupational, Environ. Health, 62, 806
Cited by
Huang, S., Dong, Q., Che, S., Li, R., & Tang, K. H. D. (2025) · Science of The Total Environment · doi:10.1016/j.scitotenv.2025.178911 · Cited by 132
Abdi, K., Ezoddin, M., Novasari, V., & Lamei, N. (2024) · Journal of Separation Science · doi:10.1002/jssc.202300878 · Cited by 6
Metadata
- Authors
- Eales, J., Bethel, A., Galloway, T., Hopkinson, P., Morrissey, K., Short, R. E., & Garside, R.
- Venue
- Environment International
- Publisher
- Elsevier BV
- Published
- 2022-01
- Volume
- 158
- Pages
- 106903
- ISSN
- 0160-4120 (ISSN-L)
- OpenAlex
- W3204400069
- Cited by
- 367
- References
- 76
- FWCI
- 16.45
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- gold
- Licence
- www.elsevier.com/tdm/userlicense/1.0/ (tdm)
- www.elsevier.com/legal/tdmrep-license (tdm)
- creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ (vor)
- Funders
- Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EP/S025529/1)
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- The paper
- Eales, J., Bethel, A., Galloway, T., Hopkinson, P., Morrissey, K., Short, R. E., & Garside, R. (2022). Human health impacts of exposure to phthalate plasticizers: An overview of reviews. Environment International. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.envint.2021.106903
Data sources
Bibliographic data: Semantic Scholar, OpenAlex, Crossref.
Contains information from the Semantic Scholar Academic Graph Datasets, made available under the ODC Attribution License (ODC-BY 1.0).
Semantic Scholar’s data is described in: Kinney, R., et al. (2023). The Semantic Scholar Open Data Platform. arXiv:2301.10140.
