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Most research on toxic exposures in vulnerable populations focuses on air pollution. Synthetic chemical production, however, is a multi-billion-dollar industry that lacks appropriate international regulation to protect those exposed to toxic chemicals. This paper aims to describe the country-level import and export of key groups of synthetic chemicals using data from the United Nations Comtrade Database and provide a narrative review of the evidence from January 2018 to August 2019 on exposure to, health effects of, and interventions to reduce synthetic chemicals in vulnerable populations around the world.

Generally, a small number of high-income countries export the majority of synthetic chemicals, while most low-income countries import more chemicals than they export, which may contribute to higher levels of synthetic chemicals in those settings. However, few studies …