Nearly 93% of known plastic chemicals used in food wrapping, clothing, toys, household goods and personal care products pose a high risk to human health, according to a new investigation provided exclusively to CNN.

The Environmental Justice Foundation released its report, “Poison Plastics: How Chemicals in Everyday Plastics are Harming Your Health,” on Wednesday. The London based environmental nonprofit examined chemical hazards and exposure across products people regularly use.

Potential harms identified in the report include cancer, genetic changes and toxicity affecting the endocrine system, reproductive system and organs. Lead author Naima Fenderl said researchers considered both what the chemicals can do to the body and exposure levels when calculating overall health risk.

The report examined five categories of plastics. Almost 92% of chemicals found in plastics that contact food were considered a high risk to human health, while nearly 89% of children’s toys contained high risk plastics.

Some 93% of textiles and clothing were made with dangerous chemicals. About 60% of clothing is made from synthetic fabrics based on plastics, according to the source material cited in the report.

More than 92% of common household products contained high risk chemicals. Those products included bottled water, kitchenware, tableware, gardening tools, toilet articles and office supplies.

Nearly 93% of hygiene and medical plastics also contained dangerous chemicals. Examples included dental floss, tampons and other menstrual products, pill casings, patches and syringes.

Pediatrician Dr. Philip Landrigan, who was not involved in the report, praised its accessible presentation of information about everyday plastics. Landrigan directs the Global Observatory on Planetary Health and the Program for Global Public Health and the Common Good at Boston College.

The report also highlighted major gaps in scientific knowledge. Nearly 80% of the 3,552 chemicals found in plastics people commonly use lacked sufficient information for researchers to determine toxicity or exposure risks.

Landrigan said the public does not know what harm those chemicals could be causing adults or children. He also said the names and composition of many chemicals in consumer products are not publicly available, although the chemical industry presumably has that information.

The American Chemistry Council, a trade association representing chemical manufacturers, told CNN that the report should be viewed with “considerable caution.” It said the analysis omitted important sources, including the International Council of Chemical Associations’ publicly available database of plastic additives.

Kimberly Wise White, the council’s vice president of regulatory and scientific affairs, also said the report did not consider regulatory databases in the United States and European Union. “Without them, this report does more to generate headlines than to advance the science.”

The Environmental Justice Foundation based its analysis on PlastChem, a database developed by international scientists in 2024. Of 16,000 identified chemicals in plastics, 4,200 were considered highly hazardous to human health and the environment, while more than 10,000 had no available data.

PlastChem groups chemicals into 15 priority categories that could be targeted through regulation. They include bisphenols such as BPA, phthalates and PFAS, which are known as forever chemicals.

Martin Wagner, PlastChem project lead and a biology professor at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology in Trondheim, said many chemicals of concern can interfere with hormones. He linked endocrine disruption to obesity, low birth weight, gestational diabetes, birth defects and neurodevelopmental disorders.

More than 50% of known high risk chemicals of concern are not regulated by major jurisdictions or several international environmental treaties, Fenderl said. She added that the United States has not ratified the Basel, Rotterdam and Stockholm conventions, leaving US consumers particularly vulnerable.

Plastic production has risen sharply, from roughly 2 million metric tons annually in 1950 to more than 430 million metric tons each year today. Scientists project production will more than double by 2050, alongside 2 billion metric tons of chemical plastic additives.

Landrigan said 325,000 synthetic chemicals are now in the hands of the chemical industry, although not all are on the market. At most, he said, toxicological information is available for perhaps 20% of them.