About event
Plastic forms an important and necessary part of our daily life through consumer products, building materials, and food packaging, among other uses. To impart the broad range of properties and functions that we need from plastics, most plastic materials include a range of chemical additives to impact structure, colour, resistance to fire and degradation, etc. Yet there is growing concern regarding the health and environmental hazards associated with many plastic additives. This talk will give an overview of human exposure to plastic additives. We will consider how plastic additives are released from products and enter environments through which humans are exposed, such as indoor air, dust, and food products. Flame retardants, a category of plastic additives that has received much regulatory attention, will be used as a case study to demonstrate the link between patterns of human exposure to flame retardants identified through human biomonitoring, and aspects of chemical policy and human behaviour that drive our exposures.
