Plastics have flooded our daily lives. In the supermarket shopping cart, it wraps bananas, tomatoes, and mushrooms, it serves as a container for washing machine detergent or toothpaste. This material derived from petroleum is also present in the clothes we wear every day under other labels (polyester, polyamide, acrylic, elastane, polypropylene). Despite these components having accompanied us over the past decades, science reveals that they are harmful to health and the planet.
Their use has grown so much that plastic pollution has become a global problem. Furthermore, to make this plastic more durable, flexible, or resistant to the sun, it is supplemented with additives, which can be toxic and become an added problem.
An endocrine disruptor, also called an endocrine-disrupting chemical (EDC), is a substance capable of altering the functions of the endocrine system and causing adverse health effects, according to the World Health Organization. The endocrine system is composed of glands that produce hormones that travel through the blood and regulate vital functions, from metabolism to sleep, growth, development, mood, or reproduction.
The effects of endocrine disruptors can occur in people, but also in other living beings. In the case of humans, these disruptors are related to fertility problems, genital malformations in newborns, or increases in hormonal cancers. WHO research has also linked them to diagnoses such as attention deficit or hyperactivity in children.
In addition to causing effects on humans, these disruptors also cause damage to the environment. "Cases have been reported in marine organisms, for example, of sex changes, hermaphroditism, proliferation of unisexual populations," explains the industrial chemical engineering technician from the University of Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, Rayco Guedes. The researcher adds that in the natural environment, endocrine disruptors cause "all individuals to tend towards one of the sexes (either female or male), which implies that in the end that population disappears."
Hermaphroditism or feminization has also been recorded among fish and mollusks in the archipelago.
A simple bottle takes decades to degrade
"The plastic from a water bottle, for example, has a very short useful life, but in the environment it can last for decades," explains the researcher. As bottles degrade, they generate two types of environmental problems: microplastics and pollution caused by plastic additives, which are released more easily.
Guedes argues that it is preferable and cheaper to drink tap water directly and points out that daily consumption of water in plastic bottles means constant exposure to some additives that act as endocrine disruptors.
Meanwhile, the technical engineer explains that the migration of chemicals from plastic to food has a very low risk. However, he indicates that inadequate preservation of bottles, "with incorrect storage, a lot of light, or if it gets very hot, can favor this migration of compounds into the water."
Bisphenol A and phthalates
Endocrine disruptors can come from natural substances, but also from artificial sources. Among the latter, the Catalan Food Safety Agency classifies them into four groups: natural contaminants (micoestrogens); environmental contaminants (PCBs, dioxins, benzopyrene, some components of household products and heavy metals, such as Pb, Cd, and Hg); materials in contact with food (bisphenol A, phthalates); and agricultural production residues (phytosanitary products). In addition to others intentionally used in some medications, such as birth control pills.
One of the endocrine disruptors that has been present in the daily lives of the population for decades is **bisphenol A**, known as BPA. This chemical substance is used to coat the inside of various products, from food and soda cans to water bottles, and over the years, restrictions around this product have increased in Spain and Europe.
In 2023, the European Food Safety Authority re-evaluated the risk that this component generated for health, as it is an endocrine disruptor. In 2024, the European Commission prohibited the use of bisphenol A in materials intended to come into contact with food. It had already been prohibited in Europe to make baby bottles, bottles, and infant feeding containers with this additive. "Many times [...] it is sold with a large sign saying Bisphenol A (BPA) free, and well, it is free, because it really should be because it is harmful," indicates the expert.
Regarding phthalates, the Spanish Food Safety Agency states that, although they act as endocrine disruptors, the average daily intake level of these products (DBP, BBP, DEHP, DINP, and DIDP) is seven times below the risk level established in their research. However, these risks are usually re-evaluated over the years.
Emerging contaminants
Academic Rayco Guedes and a team of researchers delve into the presence, distribution, fate, and mechanisms for eliminating emerging contaminants in the atmosphere. "Emerging contaminants do not necessarily have to be newly developed compounds," explains Guedes, who points out that some are products that have been used for decades, but until now, the technology to discover that they were accumulating in the environment had not been available.
The research team Guedes is part of delves into different types of contaminants. Among them, those found in wastewater (detergents, pharmaceutical residues), but also others in beaches or coastal areas (more linked to tourist activity and a higher presence of sunscreens).
In this regard, the researcher adds that these contaminants are producing a phenomenon known as pseudopersistence, which occurs when the rate at which the environment degrades these compounds is lower than the rate at which humans introduce them into the environment. In other words, the continuous introduction of contaminants into the environment is causing them not to be able to biodegrade at the same rate at which they are being introduced into the atmosphere.
As an optimistic message, this engineer advocates for the power of the consumer to choose which types of products they want to pay for and which ones they don't. "Instead of going to a supermarket where everything is plastic-wrapped, try to go to local stores, which perhaps have more local products and are probably not as plastic-wrapped," he points out.
"Change the habit, rather than trying to change everything or legislate everything or prohibit everything. We really have much more power than we think," he concludes.
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