Question 16073 — health

Summary

Ms. Véronique Ludmann draws the attention of the Minister of Health, Families, Autonomy and People with Disabilities to the health, social and economic issues of exposure of the French population to microplastics. Since the first detections in human blood and lungs in 2022, the list of tissues concerned has continued to grow: liver, testicles, blood vessels and, more recently, the brain. A study published in Nature Medicine on February 3, 2025, led by the team of Professor Matthew Campen (University of New Mexico), measured concentrations of microplastics of the order of 0.5% of the mass in brain tissue taken post-mortem, increasing by around 50% between 2016 and 2024. The authors noted concentrations three to five times higher in patients with dementia, while emphasizing that no link of Causation cannot be established at this stage. The exposure takes multiple routes: food, inhalation, drinking water. A study by Columbia and Rutgers (PNAS, 2024) counted 110,000 to 370,000 particles per liter of bottled water, of which approximately 90% were nanoplastics; in France, a study by CNRS and the University of Toulouse (PLOS Water, January 2025) showed that 98% of microplastics present in drinking water measure less than 20 µm, i.e. below the detection threshold provided for by European Directive 2020/2184, which likely leads to their presence being underestimated. Health signals are piling up. An Italian study published in the New England Journal of Medicine (March 2024) detected microplastics in the carotid plaques of surgical patients: those affected had a risk of heart attack, stroke or death multiplied by 4.5 over an average follow-up of 34 months. A systematic review from the University of California, San Francisco (2024) concludes that exposure to microplastics is “suspected” of harming fertility, digestive health, with a possible link to colorectal cancer, and respiratory health. These findings call for foresight. Global production of plastic waste is expected to increase from 360 to 617 million tonnes between 2020 and 2040 (OECD projections, cited during the OPECST hearing in October 2024): the exposure of future generations, and in particular of children born in the coming decades, will be greater than that of today. However, the health cost of chemical pollution linked to plastics is already considerable: exposure to endocrine disruptors, of which plastics are a major vector, is estimated at around 157 billion euros. per year for the European Union, nearly 1.3% of GDP, an order of magnitude confirmed by the IGAS-IGEDD report of May 2024. Acting upstream is therefore as much a matter of public health as of good management of social finances: prevention costs less in the long term than treatment. If the law of February 10, 2020 relating to the fight against waste and the circular economy has enabled progress, the exposure of the population does not seem to have decreased. This is why she asks what concrete measures and according to what timetable the Government intends to: firstly, reduce the population's exposure to microplastics in food, drinking water and air at the source; secondly, have the health and economic cost of this contamination assessed, in order to inform a proportionate and budgetarily sustainable prevention strategy; thirdly, support public research into its long-term effects; and, fourthly, establish a national biomonitoring program to monitor its evolution in the population, primarily among children and pregnant women.

Machine translation from French. The official text remains authoritative.

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