Phthalates

A new chemical to worry about! (Hat tip: Safedrinkingwater.com news e-mail.)

They're in soap. And hair spray. Baby toys. Hand lotion. Deodorant. Vinyl upholstery. Nail polish. And perfume. Chemicals known as phthalate esters are so prevalent, in fact, that most personal hygiene products and soft PVC plastics contain some – and most Americans have traces of the compounds circulating inside their bodies, according to government reports. But can they hurt us?

The answer is, we don't know. And this illustrates the problem with any number of chemicals. The data we want to make a decision just isn't there.

"There's not enough human data to say they are safe and don't cause health effects. But, on the other hand, there's not a lot of human data showing they do," said Russ Hauser, a Harvard associate professor of occupational health, who is among the few researchers to have studied phthalates in humans. Hauser's team found that some phthalates may cause sperm abnormalities.

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Lawmakers have started looking to ban phthalates, and others have called for a voluntary ban on the chemicals.

A grass-roots movement is under way in the United States to encourage cosmetic manufacturers to replace potentially hazardous ingredients with safer alternatives within the next three years. So far, more than 100 companies, including Revlon and Estée Lauder, have agreed to do so. Most are small makers of natural products. "If companies can make personal care products without ingredients linked to cancer...or birth defects, shouldn't they? To me, that's just common sense," said Sucher of the Environmental Working Group. "I'm willing to sacrifice a bit of the creaminess in my hand lotion," she said, "if it means it will be free of chemicals linked to serious health problems."

Of course, the issue is more than just whether there's a link between a chemical and "serious health problems". Before you can make a rational decision, you have to look at how serious the health problem is, how strong the link is, and what will be used instead of the targeted chemical.

Whenver you're weighing a decision, you have to ask, "and then what happens?" What will happen if phthalates disappear from consumer products?

One advantage natural products have over synthetic products is that they don't have to pass any kind of approval process. You can pull pthalates out of products, and maybe the degradation in quality will be minor. In childrens' products, for example, they provide the plasticity that keeps them from being brittle. That means they last longer, and they're less likely to break during play.

Maybe some other chemical will do as well. Or maybe some other chemical will have a greater risk because it hasn't been studied as well. Or, maybe your child will have less exposure to phthalates, but choke on a small piece that breaks off.

You have to weigh the "then whats" before making a decision.

Here's a neat page from the phthalates website. And it's important to keep your eye on the bottom line:

Epidemiology and animal testing rarely offer proof. They offer evidence, and it is the evidence that leads to decisions on how to safeguard public health. A responsible and rational regulatory framework in government is based on science and evidence, not on public or political opinion. There is a need to replicate findings in several different situations, rather than to alarm the public by jumping to conclusions on the basis of the results from just one study. The scare stories, fad diets, and miracle cures we hear about every day do not serve public health and safety; in fact, they often do the opposite. The tools available to public health officials to separate actual risk from needless fear are not perfect, but they produce evidence, and it is the weight of that evidence which helps science to separate the real from the imaginary.