The Minderoo-Monaco Commission on Plastics and Human Health brought together doctors, toxicologists and economists to review the evidence on how plastics affect people at each stage: fossil-fuel extraction, chemical manufacturing, product use, and waste.
It was funded by the Minderoo Foundation, a philanthropic organisation, the Centre Scientifique de Monaco and the Prince Albert II of Monaco Foundation, and seven of its authors work for Minderoo. The paper says Minderoo had no influence over how the review was done or what it found.
It found harms at every stage. Plastic production has grown 230-fold since 1950 and is expected to triple by 2060. The commission estimated that in the US alone, exposure to the plasticiser di(2-ethylhexyl) phthalate (DEHP) was linked to about 90,762 deaths a year among people aged 55–64, and that plastics-attributable health costs in the US were about US$250 billion in 2015.
The review matters because it framed plastics as a medical problem for the first time in a comprehensive way, and set the agenda for the Lancet Countdown that followed.
The cost and mortality figures are modelled attributions from observational studies, so say 'linked to', not 'caused by'.