The Types of Plastics Families Should Avoid (2024)

Take a look around your home and count the items that are made with plastic. Then, consider the less obvious sources: the dust accumulating on your bookshelf, the linings of soup cans, food packaging, cosmetics, even your tap water and beer. Plastic is everywhere, and like many parents, I worry about the danger it poses to my kids’ health, as well as to my own.

On Jan. 27, the Environmental Defense Fund, along with several other organizations, submitted a petition to the Food and Drug Administration that urged the agency to limit the use of the chemical bisphenol-A (BPA) in food packaging. BPA is just one of many chemicals used in plastics that are concerning because of their links to certain health conditions, said Dr. Leonardo Trasande, a pediatrician and director of the Center for the Investigation of Environmental Hazards at the N.Y.U. Grossman School of Medicine.

But while Dr. Trasande supports stricter limits on the use of BPA, he said that the F.D.A. is “woefully outdated” in its approach to regulating chemicals used in food packaging. Focusing on a single chemical like BPA rather than the entire suite of harmful chemicals in plastics and other materials leads to “chemical whack-a-mole, in which one chemical gets replaced with something very similar that may be equally problematic,” he said. For now, the burden of reducing exposure to many of these chemicals remains with consumers.

Given this reality, here’s what you need to know about how chemicals in plastics and other consumer products might affect your health and how you can lower your exposure.

What to Do

• Understand which plastics are worrisome.
• Prioritize fresh, whole foods.
• Avoid using certain types of plastic containers.
• Avoid heating plastics.
• Swap out vinyl products.
• Avoid handling store receipts more than necessary.
• Reduce exposures from toys.
• Take care with personal care products.
• Reduce exposure to dust.

Understand which plastics are worrisome.

Plastics may look inert, but the chemicals inside them are not. “There are chemicals used in plastics that are not tightly bound to the material, which means they easily leach away,” especially when exposed to heat, said Dr. Sheela Sathyanarayana, a pediatrician and researcher at the University of Washington and the Seattle Children’s Research Institute.