Plastic pollution is a “grave, growing and under-recognised danger to human health”, an international team of scientists and doctors warned ahead of a UN conference this week to negotiate a global plastics treaty.

The group of 27 health experts reported in The Lancet on Sunday that the materials were causing extensive disease “at every stage of the plastics life cycle and at every stage of human life”. Infants and young children were particularly vulnerable, they said.

“The impact of plastics on human health has been a sleeper issue compared to climate change and air pollution, but evidence is now emerging to show how serious it is,” said the report’s lead author, Philip Landrigan, director of the Global Observatory on Planetary Health at Boston College.