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The Science Behind the Phthalates Ban

<p>With bans on certain phthalates in place in the U.S. and European Union, and the EPA's recent listing of phthalates as &quot;chemicals of concern,&quot; CBS News takes a look at the science behind the bans in a recent 60 Minutes report.</p>

With bans on certain phthalates in place in the U.S. and European Union, and the EPA's recent listing of phthalates as "chemicals of concern," CBS News takes a look at the science behind the bans in a recent 60 Minutes report.

Phthalates are plasticizers, substances that are added to plastic to make them flexible. Like bisphenol A (which is used to make hard plastic), they are found in numerous items like backpacks, medical tubing, shower curtains, vinyl toys and practically any other soft plastic. They are also in shampoos and cosmetics.

The U.S. Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act, passed in 2008, bans the use of six types of phthalates in children's toys and products, similar to an E.U. ban from 2005. Earlier this year, the EPA started creating a Chemicals of Concern list, and said that phthalates would be one of the first additions, and the President's Cancer Panel report from this month recommended that people avoid using phthalate-containing containers when carrying, storing and heating up drinks and foods.

Phthalates, which have been around for about 50 years, have caused such a stir because they have been linked to hormone disruption. The 60 Minutes report, available in full online, says:


Congress came under pressure to act because of a study by Dr. Shanna Swan, an epidemiologist at the University of Rochester Medical School. Dr. Swan compared the levels of phthalates in a group of pregnant women with the health of the baby boys they gave birth to.

Swan told "60 Minutes" correspondent Lesley Stahl she found that the higher the level of phthalates in the mother's urine during pregnancy, the greater the problems occurred in young boys.

Asked what she found in babies, Swan said, "We found that the baby boys were in several subtle ways less completely masculine."



The report notes that instances of hypospadias (a sex organ deformity) and un-descended testicles have increased threefold and twofold, respectively, over the years. Phthalates are suspected to be the cause of such abnormalities.

But the certainty of such conclusions gets fuzzy when other studies come into play.


Dr. Richard Sharpe in Edinburgh Scotland, one of the leading phthalate researchers in the world, exposed pregnant rats to phthalates and produced a string of abnormalities in their male offspring...But when Sharpe tried the same experiment on animals much closer to humans than rats - monkeys - he got an entirely different response. He tested phthalates on pregnant marmoset monkeys. And their offspring? Completely normal.



Like the debate over the safety of bisphenol A (BPA), there is no conclusive evidence of phthalates' negative effects of humans, but also just as with BPA, there is enough concern along with existing safer alternatives that governments have acted and some companies like SC Johnson, Avon and Johnson & Johnson have voluntarily eliminated them from their products.

Toy ducks - CC license by Flickr user Aine D
 

 

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