Chemical safety and health: Burden of disease from chemicals

The latest data addendum estimates that 2 million lives and 53 million disability-adjusted life-years were lost in 2019 due to exposures to selected chemicals. These estimates continue to be higher than previously published estimates (1.6 million lives and 45 million disability-adjusted life-years lost in 2016, and 1.3 million lives and 43 million disability-adjusted life-years lost in 2012).

Data are however only available for a small number of chemical exposures and people are exposed to many more chemicals every day. These estimates of the burden of disease are therefore underestimated.