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Endocrine hormone

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SEE PFAS FOREVER CHEMS

see colborn

see BPA

see pthalates

6/16 name change, added hormone

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AI Overview

PFAS ("forever chemicals") are synthetic compounds that take centuries to degrade, accumulating in the body and the environment. Health organizations formally classify certain types, like PFOA, as known human carcinogens. Prolonged exposure is scientifically linked to significantly increased risks of specific cancers. [1, 2, 3, 4, 5]

Primary Cancer Links

According to the National Cancer Institute and extensive research, PFAS exposure is primarily associated with:

Researchers suggest that PFAS act as endocrine disruptors. They interfere with hormone functions, alter reproductive and metabolic systems, and can damage DNA. Because they resist natural degradation, continuous low-dose exposure can lead to years of cellular damage. [1, 2, 3, 4, 5]

Common Exposure Sources

You can encounter PFAS in everyday products and environments:

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http://archive.jsonline.com/watchdog/watchdogreports/54195297.html

bpa fights back

by Meg Kissinger and Susanne Rust of the Journal Sentinel

Published on: 8/22/2009

Bill Carteaux paced the stage with the intensity of a general about to send troops into bloody battle.

He is at war against mounting momentum to ban bisphenol A,a key ingredient in hard, clear plastic products. Studies have linked BPA to breast cancer, testicular cancer, reproductive deformities and neurological defects.

Carteaux, president of the Society of the Plastics Industry, represents manufacturers of thousands of products made with BPA. Sales of that chemical now top $6 billion a year.

For decades, the chemical industry has been able to control the debate on whether BPA is harmful to human health. Now the Food and Drug Administration, which had relied on industry-financed studies to declare the chemical safe, is reconsidering its determination. The decision is expected by Nov. 30.

"We are under attack from all fronts," Carteaux told the audience at the group's annual meeting in June.

And with increasing urgency, the industry is pushing back - hard.

The industry has launched an unprecedented public relations blitz that uses many of the same tactics - and people - the tobacco industry used in its decades-long fight against regulation. This time, the industry's arsenal includes state-of-the-art technology. Their modern-day Trojan horses: blogs, Facebook, Twitter, Wikipediaand YouTube.

A four-month investigation by the Journal Sentinel reveals a highly calibrated campaign by plastics makers to fight federal regulation of BPA, downplay its risks and discredit anyone who characterizes the chemical as a health threat. The newspaper examined thousands of pages of Internal Revenue Service reports, disclosure forms and e-mails between government scientists and lobbyists as well as the industry's own public relations materials.

The documents offer a rare glimpse at the hardball politics of chemical regulation, where judgments about safety are made not necessarily on the merits of science but because of the clout of lobbyists working the system.

In May, the Journal Sentinel reported e-mails obtained from the FDA showed how federal regulators deferred in recent years to chemical industry lobbyists, allowing them effectively to write public policy on the chemical's safety.

The newly discovered documents show agency scientists have relied on chemical industry lobbyists to help draft public safety standards on BPA for much longer, more than a decade.

Details of meetings between federal regulators and chemical industry lobbyists are found in the archives of the Tobacco Institute, the lobby group of the tobacco industry. A court settlement in 1998 disbanded the institute and opened the records to the public.

Lobbyists for tobacco closely followed the government's assessment of BPA because of concerns that a ban on the chemical would affect cigarette filters and plastic packaging. The two industries share the same lobby firm, the Weinberg Group.

The Tobacco Institute documents show administrators from the FDA routinely turned to chemical industry scientists to establish the government's safety level for BPA. Government scientists relied on test results performed by industry scientists without independent confirmation.

A 1997 briefing by lawyers for plastics industry executives confirms how government regulators looked to industry scientists to determine how much BPA was safe in food packing. After discussions with government scientists on their conclusions,Jerome Heckman of the Washington, D.C., law firm Keller and Heckman wrote: "We believe FDA relied heavily on original data supplied by (the association)."

'Tipping point'

Carteaux, the industry official who spoke at the June convention, declined to be interviewed. But the urgency of his message is clear in the videotape of his presentation to association members.

"We are at the tipping point," Carteaux said. "Legislation and regulation threaten to fundamentally change our business model."

At another point, he noted: "We can't continue to fight back just at the reactive stage when things are emotionally charged. We have to take the offensive and react quicker."

New public relations materials show how the chemical industry is getting more aggressive about protecting its image as worries about chemicals in plastics mount - often in new and subtle ways.

Chemical makers and plastics industry executives are putting up their own versions of news clips on social media outlets such as YouTube, MySpace, Wikipedia, Twitter and blogs. Often, they are disguised as neutral, unbiased information and rarely reveal the source.

So what might look to consumers researching BPA on the Internet as independent information are often stories written by chemical industry public relations writers.

Allegiances are not always explained. The most impassioned defense of BPA on the blogs comes from Trevor Butterworth, editor of Statistical Assessment Service,also known as STATS. He regularly combs the Internet for stories about BPA and offers comments without revealing his ties to industry.

Butterworth explained his stealth public relations campaign in a 2006 article in Chemical Week magazine.

"Companies need to develop a public information policy that is proactive in educating the public and tackling the claims of activist groups in real time," Butterworth said. "Most of the companies are like a deer in the headlights, and traditional PR is useless in dealing with these problems."

In June, Butterworth authored a 27,000-word review of the media's coverage of BPA that is featured on plastics industry Web sites.

STATS claims to be independent and nonpartisan. But a review of its financial reports shows it is a branch of the Center for Media and Public Affairs. That group was paid by the tobacco industry to monitor news stories about the dangers of tobacco.

Media managers for the plastics industry also monitor the Internet for negative stories about chemicals, including BPA. They post their own version of the stories, significantly downplaying any potential danger and dismissing concerns about BPA safety as "e-rumors."

For instance, in April 2008, after Canada announced it was declaring BPA a toxin and moving to ban it from baby bottles, chemical makers launched their own Web site, www.factsonplastic.com. It features nine videos, all posted on YouTube and intended to debunk worries about BPA.

One video shows Liz Weiss, a registered dietitian, discussing how to microwave with plastic.

"If it says 'microwave safe' or 'microwavable,' feel confident that you can use that plastic wrap in the microwave," she says.

The Journal Sentinel reported last year that 10 products labeled "microwave safe" or marketed for children's use actually leached the chemical when heated. The label "microwave safe" is not a government designation or a guarantee the product does not contain BPA.

In the video, Weiss smiles into the camera and says of plastic containers: "You can make beautiful vegetables, high in nutrition."

What's more, her recipes are featured on a Web site, plasticsinfo.org, sponsored by the American Chemistry Council.

In another video, Sharon Kneiss, vice president of the organization's plastics division, criticizes a report that had aired on NBC-TV's "Today" show, advising parents to discontinue using certain plastic food containers.

"That report clearly confused and frightened the public, and they hurt the integrity of the products," she says.

Kneiss says the FDA declared the chemical to be safe for all use - but does not mention that this determination is under review or that another government group, the National Toxicology Program, found some concern for infants and fetuses exposed to BPA.

"Parents should be confident in that affirmation and that we are safely using these products," Kneiss says.

Industry image makers also plan to link to search engines such as Google and Yahoo, so their items will pop up when readers are searching the Internet for information about BPA, public relations materials show.

The group also plans to launch a Web site aimed at helping consumers, particularly young shoppers, find information about plastic products.

"It is a targeted sharpshooter approach as opposed to spray and pay," Tracy Cullen, senior vice president of marketing and communications for the plastics association, told Plastics News Reports, a trade publication.

$10 million campaign

Carteaux's group - the Society of the Plastics Industry - has launched a $10 million campaign to sell the benefits of plastic to people ages 18 to 28 who are the likeliest to be buying baby products in the next decade. The association has committed $400,000 to the effort and hopes to raise the rest in the next few years.

This is running in conjunction with efforts by the group's sister organization, the American Chemistry Council, which represents the chemical makers that supply the raw materials.

Notes obtained by the Journal Sentinel of a meeting last May by food packaging association executives and chemical industry lobbyists showed how desperately they are trying to downplay concerns about BPA's safety.

The newspaper reported they talked about how to find "the holy grail" - a pregnant woman to serve as spokeswoman for the industry. The plan called for the woman to talk about the benefits of BPA, presumably to undermine concerns about the chemical's damaging effects on fetuses and infants.

Industry executives also discussed scare tactics that they might use to discourage government bans of BPA, such as spreading word of infant formula shortages if the chemical were outlawed in food packaging.

That report led to an ongoing congressional investigation.

In that meeting, lobbyists talked about the importance of "befriending people who are able to manipulate the legislative process."

The Journal Sentinel also has found numerous examples of the plastics industry lobby exaggerating claims of BPA's safety and using outdated studies to support their position.

For instance, the industry's Web site - www.bisphenol-a.org- claims that "potential human exposure to BPA from polycarbonate plastic and epoxy resin food contact applications is minimal and poses no known risk to human health." That statement is based on a 1983 assessment.

The Web site, which is not labeled as being owned and operated by the chemical lobby group, makes no mention of hundreds of studies conducted since 1983 that linked the chemical to harm. In 2007, the Journal Sentinel reviewed 258 scientific studies of BPA and found that the overwhelming majority determined the chemical is harmful.

The chemical industry also typically overstates safety assessments in statements it sends out.

In early July, industry association lobbyists issued a press release about studies done by the Canadian government claiming that they proved BPA to be safe.

"The ACC applauds new data from Health Canada confirming the safety of BPA in bottled water, baby food and infant formula," said Steven Hentges, chief lobbyist for the American Chemical Council.

But Hentges failed to distinguish between these findings and earlier studies that found the concern about BPA is in polycarbonate bottles and in liquid formula stored in cans lined with BPA.

"Those are two very different things," said Philippe Laroche, media relations officer for Health Canada. This study was "not related to polycarbonate, for which we have a proposed ban," he said.

David Rosner, professor of public health and history at Columbia University, watched Carteaux's 52-minute June speech and saw striking similarities between the plastics and tobacco industries. Rosner is the author of several books on industry efforts to control government regulation, including "Deceit and Denial: the History of Industrial Pollution."

"If I hadn't studied how this industry has operated in the past, I would say I was shocked," Rosner said. "But this attempt to deflect and distort public opinion is par for the course. They will ultimately do virtually anything to protect their product, even attack the messengers."

He added: "We're watching a propaganda campaign in the making."

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intercept

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Sense About Science does not always disclose when its sources on controversial matters are scientists with ties to the industries under examination.And the group is known to take positions that buck scientific consensus or dismiss emerging evidence of harm. When journalists rightly ask who sponsors research into the risks of, say, asbestos, or synthetic chemicals, they’d be well advised to question the evidence Sense About Science presents in these debates as well.

iN 2002, DICK TAVERNE, an English politician and business consultant, founded Sense About Science “to expose bogus science,” he explains in his memoir, “Against the Tide.” Through his consulting work, Taverne had cultivated relationships with energy, communications, food, and pharmaceutical companies. Sense About Science’s early sponsors included some of Taverne’s former clients and companies in which he owned stock.

Taverne must have known the power of media narratives about science firsthand, because he had experience with the tobacco industry, which labored mightily to change the conversation about its product in the face of evidence that cigarettes were lethal. According to internal documents released in litigation by cigarette manufacturers, Taverne’s consulting company, PRIMA Europe, helped British American Tobacco improve relations with its investors and beat European regulations on cigarettes in the 1990s. Taverne himself worked on the investors project: In an undated memo, PRIMA assured the tobacco company that “the work would be done personally by Dick Taverne,” because he was well placed to interview industry opinion leaders and “would seek to ensure that industry’s needs are foremost in people’s minds.” During the same decade, Taverne sat on the board of the British branch of the powerhouse public relations firm Burson-Marsteller, which claimed Philip Morris as a client. The idea for a “sound science” group, made up of a network of scientists who would speak out against regulations that industrial spokespeople lacked the credibility to challenge, was a pitch Burson-Marsteller made to Philip Morris in a 1994 memorandum.

It’s not hard to identify traces of this approach in Taverne’s later work. Writing in his 2005 book, “The March of Unreason,” Taverne complained that “eco-fundamentalists” and fearmongers had fomented a backlash against science and technology, which had in turn produced a “multiplication of health and safety regulations.” That yearBritish Petroleum donated 15,000 pounds to Sense About Science, and Taverne argued in the House of Lords that as much as 80 percent of global warming might be attributable to solar activity, even though that theory had been discredited two years earlier. Taverne, who stepped down as chairman of Sense About Science in 2012, did not respond to The Intercept’s requests for comment.

Sense About Science established an American affiliate in 2014, under the direction of a Brooklyn-based journalist named Trevor Butterworth. In financial documents, Sense About Science claims Sense About Science USA as a sister organization “with close ties and similar aims.” High-profile scientific publishers, as well as such reputable institutions as the Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy and the Columbia Journalism Review, have promoted Butterworth’s services to scientists and journalists.

From 2003 to 2014, Butterworth contributed to the website of an organization called STATS, a nonprofit that promoted statistical literacy. STATS had its own connections to the tobacco industry, in this case through founder Robert Lichter,a conservative political scientist and now a communications professor at George Mason University. Lichter also co-founded and continues to run the Center for Media and Public Affairs, which Philip Morris hired in 1994 to survey news reports about tobacco as part of its strategy, outlined in a memo from March of that year, to counter “personal and public bias” in stories about cigarettes’ health risks.

[pix “Why Scientists Disagree About Global Warming” by Craig D. Idso, Robert M. Carter, S. Fred Singer.

Photo: Heartland Institute

Lichter, like Sense About Science’s Tracey Brown, has argued that industry money doesn’t necessarily taint the science it supports. In 2003, a congressional report charged the George W. Bush administration with stacking a government committee on childhood lead poisoning with industry scientists. Lichter appeared as an analyst on CNN and said, “Studies have found that scientists who have consulted for industry do not differ in their assessment of risks, of health risks, from scientists who have not consulted for industry.” Lichter did not respond to The Intercept’s requests for comment or citations to these studies.

Before STATS was dissolved in 2014, and its web site adopted by Sense About Science USA, it received regular grants from free-market sources. Between 1998 and 2014, STATS received $4.5 million, 81 percent of its donations, from the Searle Freedom Trust, the Sarah Scaife Foundation, the John M. Olin Foundation, Donors Trust (a fund largely sustained by Charles Koch), and other right-wing foundations. Searle, which describes its mission as promoting “economic liberties,” gave STATS $959,000 between 2010 and 2014. Anti-regulatory foundations, including these, spent over half a billion dollars between 2003 and 2010 to “manipulate and mislead the public over the nature of climate science and the threat posed by climate change,” according to a 2013 study by Drexel University sociologist Robert Brulle.

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wITH THESE ROOTS, Sense About Science should not surprise anyone when it promotes anti-regulatory voices on issues like asbestos. In a 2006 brochure called “Science for Celebrities” and purporting to correct misperceptions about synthetic chemicals, Sense About Science offers John Hoskins, a toxicologist formerly of the Medical Research Council Toxicology Unit at the University of Leicester. Under the rubric “Toxic effects depend on dose,” Hoskins reassures us: “Away from the high doses of occupational exposure a whole host of unwanted chemicals finds their way into our bodies. Most leave quickly but some stay: asbestos and silica in our lungs, dioxins in our blood. Do they matter? No!”

More than two decades ago, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the International Agency for Research on Cancer declared asbestos a proven human carcinogen. Since then, as countries continue to mine asbestos, industry groups have argued that certain varieties, including chrysotile and crocidolite, are not so toxic. In response, several groups, including the Collegium Ramazzini, an international body of occupational and environmental health experts, have issued consensus statements warning that no form of asbestos is safe at any dose. In calling for a universal ban on all forms of asbestos in 2010, the Collegium Ramazzini observed that the asbestos industry’s attacks on evidence that “irrefutably” links its product to cancer “closely resemble those used by the tobacco industry.”

Brown maintains that Sense About Science has not disagreed with the scientific consensus on asbestos, and she notes that dose and type of exposure are the issue. But when I asked Hoskins why his position differed from the scientific consensus, he shrugged over email, “Once upon a time the consensus was that the earth is flat.” Hoskins further replied, “Unfortunately, to say that within a population low-level exposure of many chemicals must be dangerous is not borne out by reality, much to the chagrin of those who live in the fantasy world of ‘chemical-free.’ ”

Hoskins’s résumé states that he has represented the Chrysotile Institute in “discussion with the governments of several countries.” But he did not disclose this relationship to the Epidemiology, Biostatistics and Public Health journal when he co-authored two scientific papers disputing claims that chrysotile or crocidolite caused a rare cancer in exposed populations. When his industry ties came to light, the journal issued errata for both papers to disclose this competing interest. (Hoskins denies any conflict of interest, insisting that his role in authoring the papers was confined to providing information the other authors requested. Yet all but one of the other authors had also failed to disclose their asbestos interests, which now appear in the errata.)

Soon after the first paper appeared, eight public health researchers wrote a letter to the editors of Epidemiology, Biostatistics and Public Health expressing outrage that the journal would publish a paper with “gross mistakes” and “no scientific content.” A group that included many of the letter’s signatories asked the journal to consider retracting the second paper, citing “seriously misleading information.” But the journal’s editors declined to retract the papers, which remain in the technical literature, casting doubt on the scientific consensus that all forms of asbestos are hazardous to human health.

IT’S HARD TO make a case for the safety of a substance like asbestos, which most people know causes cancer. Other commercial products are easier to defend, not because they are less hazardous, but because consumers are not as familiar with the evidence questioning their safety and utility. Scientists have known since 1997 that flame retardants, for example, can cause cancer. These brominated and chlorinated chemicals are used in a wide range of consumer products, including nursing pads and car seats. For more than three decades, studies in animals and humans have linked them to cancer, developmental delays, and other serious health problems. By 2010, the evidence was so persuasive that nearly 150 scientists from 22 countries signed a statement warning that flame retardants “are a concern for persistence, bioaccumulation, long-range transport, and toxicity.” Flame retardants’ fire safety benefit not only remains unproven, the scientists asserted, but the chemicals form highly toxic byproducts when burned.

Sense About Science has long relied on dubious numbers to insist on the efficacy of these chemicals. In 2006 it published a pamphlet on “misconceptions about chemicals” in which it claimed that British laws requiring flame retardants in furniture had reduced fire deaths by 20 percent, citing a 2000 European Commission report called “Flame Retardants.” A European Commission press officer told me she knows of no such report. “The reference to the 20 percent reduction in fire deaths is repeatedly quoted in papers and publications from flame retardant industries and associations, and they always refer to ‘Flame Retardants, DG Environment Video 2000,’ which we cannot find.” On the contrary, she told me, it is simply “not possible to correlate fire deaths to non-flammability requirements.”

Who did make the claim? Flame retardant industry trade groups, including the :{European :(style="background-color:#ffff66;"):}::{Flame Retardant:(style="background-color:#ffcc66;"):}::{ Association:(style="background-color:#ffff66;"):}: and the Bromine Science and Environmental Forum, run by Philip Morris’s longtime PR firm Burson-Marsteller. The U.S.-based Citizens for Fire Safety also repeated the claim until it disbanded, following revelations in 2012 that leading flame retardant producers ran the organization, not the grassroots group of “staff and volunteers committed to national fire safety” its literature asserted.

The same year, Sense About Science again called on John Hoskins, identified as an independent toxicologist, this time to fact-check a study that found potentially carcinogenic flame retardants in sofas. In his response, Hoskins wrote: “The bottom line is that danger of fire is many, many times greater than any imagined danger from chemicals used to prevent it.”

“Everything I wrote about flame retardants was taken from published works,” Hoskins told me. “Reviewers at the time found nothing to criticize and I have had no comment from the thousands of people who must have read the pieces.”

Sense About Science reprinted its guide on chemicals in 2014. “The trade-off between fire risk and toxicology is changing, and we represented that newer precautionary thinking in our most recent publications,” Brown, the group’s director, told The Intercept in an email. The new guide acknowledged “allegations of side effects” from flame retardants, including persistence in the environment and toxicity to humans and animals. But it also retained the unsupported claim that regulations requiring the chemicals saved lives. The guide even retained the text that countered concerns about traces of flame retardants found in children’s bodies by asserting that because the chemicals protected children from death or injury from fire, “To fail to expose them to such chemicals could be regarded as negligent.”

Scientists who reviewed human studies had come to a different conclusion the year before. They warned that although such links were impossible to prove conclusively, the evidence suggested that children’s exposure to flame retardants could have serious health consequences, including neurobehavioral and developmental problems. The scientists called for regulatory oversight.

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}:OF ALL THE controversial chemicals in the public eye, the one Trevor Butterworth, Sense About Science USA’s director, has most fervently defended is bisphenol A, a **compound used to make plastics**. BPA is found in hard plastics, the lining of canned drinks and foods, thermal receipts, and other consumer and industrial products, including cigarette filters. Manufacturers produce billions of pounds of BPA each year. Its market value is projected to reach $20 billion by 2020. And numerous studies and scientific consensus statements have linked BPA, which can interfere with hormone signaling, to developmental and reproductive disorders.

Leading reproductive biologists released a consensus statement in 2007 warning that “the wide range of adverse effects of low doses of BPA in laboratory animals exposed both during development and in adulthood is a great cause for concern with regard to the potential for similar adverse effects in humans.”

Two years later, while working for STATS, Butterworth published a 27,000-word investigation sharply questioning the validity of the scientific studies and news reports about BPA’s health effects. Butterworth’s central claim was that a handful of scientists, journalists, and environmental activist groups had ignored good science in a crusade to paint BPA as “the biological equivalent of global warming.” He singled out a widely acclaimed special report by Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel reporters Susanne Rust and Meg Kissinger called “Chemical Fallout.” These reporters, he claimed, relied on flawed studies by independent researchers and unfairly dismissed the industry-funded studies that found no harm. But the independent studies were not, in fact, flawed. Regulators just didn’t consider them useful, because, like many such academic studies, they didn’t measure toxicity but tested hypotheses about how BPA could alter living systems.

BPA trade groups have long insisted that the substance is metabolized too quickly to cause harm. Butterworth cites a 2009 Centers for Disease Control and Prevention study that measured BPA concentrations in newborns to make the same case. The study, he argues, “provides important evidence that infants — even those born prematurely — are able to detoxify BPA in the same way as adults.”

The CDC study he cited was designed to gauge exposure, not metabolism. BPA has been detected in the urine of nearly every American tested. Premature babies’ fragile systems make them particularly vulnerable to environmental contaminants.The researchers suspected that the use of plastic medical devices in neonatal intensive care units might expose premature infants to higher than average levels of BPA. And that’s exactly what they found: Average BPA concentrations in hospitalized premature babies were about 10 times higher than those measured in adults. The authors noted that although premature babies appear to have some ability to metabolize BPA, their detoxification pathways “are not expected to be functional at adult rates until months after birth.”

Butterworth ended his critique of what he called “the BPA is dangerous thesis” by suggesting that banning the chemical could result in greater harm: “What if some parents who turned to glass bottles for fear of … ‘leaching’ BPA drop and break them, causing injury to their babies?”

Butterworth’s arguments have reverberated across an echo chamber of free-market organizations, including Philip Morris’s product defense law firm, Koch-funded think tanks, chemical and food-packaging industry trade groups in Europe and the U.S., and an ostensibly neutral environmental health research foundation run by a chemical industry PR firm.

Reached by email for comment, Butterworth did not account for his questionable characterization of the CDC study. He said that his critique relied on the work of scientists from regulatory agencies involved in risk assessment, and that these scientists had criticized smaller studies that claimed adverse effects. He maintained that studies assessing the effects of low doses of BPA are inconsistent and unlikely to capture significant results because of methodological and statistical problems.

The year after Butterworth’s 2009 investigation, the anti-regulatory Donors Trust awarded STATS $86,000 for its “research efforts,” and the Grocery Manufacturers Association, which belongs to the BPA Joint Trade Association, gave Lichter’s Center for Media and Public Affairs $10,000 for “research support.” Butterworth continued to defend BPA in news outlets and in 2013 made his case on a blog for Coca-Cola, another BPA Joint Trade Association member.

That year Coca-Cola gave more than $30,000 to Butterworth’s future partner, Sense About Science, which hosted a BPA forum the next year. (Since then, Sense About Science has not received corporate donations, which “represented less than 3 percent of our income,” Brown wrote in an email.) In the forum, a Q&A on social media,Sense About Science put forward a representative of the British Plastics Federation and a toxicologist whose longstanding ties to the chemical industry the organization did not disclose. Participants were assured that BPA posed no risk to human health. Several plastic industry trade sites praised the event. One welcomed Sense About Science’s efforts, reporting that “plastic packaging was stoutly defended.”

THE TOBACCO INDUSTRY pioneered tactics to fight regulations by manufacturing doubt about the scientific consensus that cigarettes kill. So it should be no surprise to encounter a strategy among defenders of the e-cigarette that also centers around doubt.

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ew 220

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https://www.ecowatch.com/highly-hazardous-pesticides-investigation-2645202101.html

Poor people in developing countries are far more likely to suffer from exposure to pesticides classified as having high hazard to human health or the environment, according to new data that Unearthed analyzed.

The analysis shows that the world's top five pesticide makers are making billions, accounting for more than 36 percent of their income, from chemicals that are proven to hazards to humans and the environment and are contributing to the precipitous demise of bee populations, as Unearthed reported.

The researchers found that the sale of these highly hazardous pesticides (HHPs), disproportionately occurred in poorer nations, which often have fewer regulations than industrialized nations, according to The Guardian. In India, for example, sales of HHPs were nearly 60 percent, while in the UK it was just 11 percent.

The report from the investigative team at Unearthed focused on the practices of Bayer, BASF, Corteva (formerly Dow and DuPont), FMC and Syngenta, which are continuing to sell HHPs like neonicotinoids and glufosinate that have been banned in other parts of the world, according to the produce industry publication Fresh Produce Journal.

Unearthed dove into data collected by Phillips McDougall, the leading agribusiness analysts, from buyer surveys that concentrated on the best sellers in the top 43 pesticide buying countries, as The Guardian reported.

While regulations have stopped the sale of certain pesticides in Europe, the U.S. and Canada, it has hardly slowed down chemical companies, which sold $4.8 billion worth of products containing HHPs in 2018,as The Guardian reported. guk] Bayer called the analysis "misleading" but did not offer proof of that assessment.

Since the investigation focused on just 43 countries, it covered less than half of the companies' global sales. That suggests that the companies actually made billions more from pesticides that regulatory agencies have said pose hazards like acute poisoning or chronic illness in people, or high toxicity to bees and other wildlife, according to Unearthed.

The investigation found that pesticide manufacturers sold the majority of its highly hazardous pesticide in low- and middle-income countries like Brazil and India, where experts say the risks posed by using these chemicals are greatest, according to Unearthed. The biggest market for HHPs were for corn and soya crops.

About a quarter of sales were from products known to be human carcinogens or dangerous toreproductive health.Another 10 percent were toxic to bees. An additional 4 percent of chemicals sold are acutely toxic to humans. Every year, nearly 200,000 suicides are linked to pesticide poisoning, almost entirely in developing countries, according to The Guardian.

"This investigation shows that there is a huge disconnect between what those companies are saying in the international policy arena and what they are actually doing," Meriel Watts, a senior science and policy advisor to the Pesticide Action Network, said to Unearthed.

Baskut Tuncak, the United Nations' special rapporteur on toxic substances and human rights, told Unearthed, "There is nothing sustainable about the widespread use of highly hazardous pesticides for agriculture."

"Whether they poison workers, extinguish biodiversity, persist in the environment, or accumulate in a mother's breast milk, these are unsustainable, cannot be used safely, and should have been phased out of use long ago," Tuncak said....

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http://www.alternet.org/personal-health/early-puberty-girls-epidemic

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Endocrine disrupting chemicals (EDCs) and potential EDCs are mostly man-made, found in various materials such as pesticides, metals, additives or contaminants in food, and personal care products. EDCs have been suspected to be associated with altered reproductive function in males and females; increased incidence of breast cancer, abnormal growth patterns and neurodevelopmental delays in children, as well as changes in immune function.

Human exposure to EDCs occurs via ingestion of food, dust and water, via inhalation of gases and particles in the air and through the skin. EDCs can also be transferred from the pregnant woman to the developing fetus or child through the placenta and breast milk. Pregnant mothers and children are the most vulnerable populations to be affected by developmental exposures, and the effect of exposures to EDCs may not become evident until later in life. Research also shows that it may increase the susceptibility to non-communicable diseases.

In response to these concerns,WHO published several publications, including the latest information on the subject in the State of the Science of Endocrine Disrupting Chemicals 2012, which was done in collaboration with UNEP and key scientific experts. A resolution to include EDCs as an emerging issue under Strategic Approach to International Chemicals Management (SAICM) was also adopted in September 2012 by the third International Conference on Chemicals Management (ICCM3) in Nairobi during which WHO and UNEP jointly raised public awareness on EDC issues during a ise-event and technical briefing session (partially supported by the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences).

Short information documents for decision makers

pdf, 2.84Mb

Publications for action

http://www.alternet.org/environment/pesticide-exposure-linked-abnormal-sperm

Exposure to organochlorine chemicals, such as DDE and PCBs, is linked to increased rates of sperm abnormalities that may lead to fertility problems, according to a new study published in the journal Environmental Health Perspectives. This is the latest study in a long line of research implicating endocrine (hormone)-disrupting chemicals in reproductive diseases.

Researchers investigated this issue by observing the blood serum and sperm quality of 90 men, aged 22-44, participating in health studies in the Faroe Islands, an archipelago under Denmark’s control that is located between Iceland, the UK and Norway. Faroe islanders consume a high seafood diet that often consists of pilot whale, integral historically as a food source for the Faroese people. However, this practice exposes the Faroese to higher than average levels of environmental contaminants. For the study, data on umbilical cord blood and blood serum at age 14 was available for 40 of the participants, allowing a researchers to measure lifetime impacts....

http://www.alternet.org/environment/pesticide-exposure-linked-abnormal-sperm

==

The Institute for Regulatory Policy, a research group headed by Thorne Auchter, and affiliated with Federal Focus, Inc., recently submitted a report to the Vice President's Council on Competitiveness [CSE} proposing an Executive Order that would provide centralized guidance for the scientific objectivity of risk assessments. The 170-page report is titled "Toward Common Measures: Recommendations for a Presidential Executive Order on: Environmental Risk Assessment and Risk Management Policy."[2]

Federal Focus is a Philip Morris-funded 501(c)(3) non-profit organization set up by Thorne Auchter and James Tozzi in 1986. Later James Tozzi changed his focus to his company Multinational Business Services (MBS) while Thorne Auchter foundedIRPas a subsidiary of Federal Focus. [2] Other Federal Focus subsidaries were 'Center for Epidemiological Studies' (director: Gary Kayajanian, Ph.D.), 'Health Policy Institute' (director: Joel Rosenblatt, Ph.D.) [3] and the 'Center for the Study of Environmental Endocrine Effects' (CSEEE). 

Only IRP and CSEEE are still mentioned of the Federal Focus site as 'Past Operating Subunits. [4] The 990 form of Federal Focus for 2002 (last available one on GuideStar) has 4 people listed as managers: Jim J. Tozzi (director), Barbara Tozzi (treasurer), William Kelly (secretary), and James Tang (vice president). [5] Federal Focus still uses the same address in Washington that was also used for MSB. [6] Joel Rosenblatt represented on June 7, 1999 the 'Center for Regulatory Effectiveness' (CRE) which some people see as the successor of IRP. [7]

energy in depth

http://energyindepth.org/wp-content/uploads/marcellus/2012/07/Endocrine-Disrupters-and-All-That.pdf

ENDOCRINE DISRUPTERS, PLASTICS, DIOXIN AND DEATH —

WHAT’S THAT ALL ABOUT?

Fear Profiteers, 45

After lunch, Syngenta introduced a guest speaker, a statistical consultant, who listed numerous errors in Hayes’s report and concluded that the results were not statistically significant. Hayes’s wife, Katherine Kim, said that the consultant seemed to be trying to “make Tyrone look as foolish as possible.” Wake, the biology professor, said that the men on the EcoRisk panel looked increasingly uncomfortable. “They were experienced enough to know that the issues the statistical consultant was raising were routine and ridiculous,” he said. “A couple of glitches were presented as if they were the end of the world. I’ve been a scientist in academic settings for forty years, and I’ve never experienced anything like that. They were after Tyrone.”

Hayes later e-mailed three of the scientists, telling them, “I was insulted, felt railroaded and, in fact, felt that some dishonest and unethical activity was going on.”

When he explained what had happened to Theo Colborn, the scientist who had popularized the theory that industrial chemicals could alter hormones, she advised him, “Don’t go home the same way twice.”Colborn was convinced that her office had been bugged, and that industry representatives followed her. She told Hayes to “keep looking over your shoulder” and to be careful whom he let in his lab. She warned him, “You have got to protect yourself.”

 Catherine Buni
More than 25 years ago, Dr. Theo Colborn blazed the trail in endocrine disruption research, facing detractors at every turn. In 2013, at 86, Colborn announced she would step down as president of the nonprofit she founded, The Endocrine Disruption Exchange (TEDX), to promote chemical safety. But she’s still working.

Perplexed by the Great Lakes paradox, Colborn began hunting down scientific papers documenting the effects of synthetic chemicals on wildlife around the world—in Florida, the Baltic, the high Arctic, the Great Lakes, and Siberia’s Lake Baikal. “In the beginning I worried about the wildlife. But, then,” she says, “there was more.”I

In 1985, when she was 58, Dr. Theo Colborn moved from Paonia, Colorado, to Washington, D.C. She’d just earned her Ph.D. in zoology, having left behind a successful career as a pharmacist. For two years, as a Congressional Fellow in the Office of Technology Assessment, she pored over research on air pollutants and ozone. Then, in 1987, she took a job as a scientist at the Conservation Foundation (affiliated with the World Wildlife Fund). Birds, mammals, and fish were struggling to survive on the Great Lakes—cancer, immune and fertility failure, newborn birds born without eyes, wasting away and dying. But dangerous algae blooms and trash along the shores had disappeared. Why were these animals failing to thrive? What were we not seeing in our testing? Colborn had a hunch.

As a girl named Theodora Decker, growing up in rural Warren County, New Jersey, Colborn loved to wade in the creek that ran below the family farmhouse. She looked for crayfish, and the creatures who clung to the bottoms of stones she overturned. “Rachel Carson’s *The* *Sense of Wonder*describes so well the innate curiosity I have always had about natural things,” Colborn said last winter. “I always asked lots of questions, and nobody ever had the answers.”

Colborn entered high school in 1940, “an era,” she said, “when scientific courses were strictly for boys.” She started calling herself Theo, took the science courses, and aced every one. But then her father, who’d had a great run as a cookie salesman until that point, was called to work in the factory, paid by the hour, making K-ration biscuits for WWII servicemen. “There was no way I could go to college,” she said. “But I wanted never to get in the position my father was in at that time.”

Recognizing Colborn’s gift for science, Colborn’s high school counselor arranged a visit to Rutgers University College of Pharmacy. “I loved what I saw there,” Colborn said, “but I knew I couldn’t apply.” And, so, a week after graduating high school, she took a job as a lab technician. Two weeks later, recommended by Rutgers, she won a full four-year scholarship from the Vicks Chemical Company. Under wartime pressure to produce medical personnel, Colborn finished her four-year pharmacy degree in less than three. She also met her husband-to-be, Harry Colborn, a WWII veteran studying pharmacy on the GI Bill. Over the next 30 years, Colborn raised four children, owned three pharmacies, and moved to Paonia, Colorado, where she started raising purebred sheep in her scant free time. But, she said, this was not enough.

In Paonia, coal and agriculture were in battle. “The government decided that it was going to sacrifice our valley for its coal,” she said. Air, water, land, people—all were threatened by the coal industry’s plan to expand. Colborn loved the West, its precious little clean water. She wanted good data to fight back. She didn’t have it. Within a year, she’d returned to college. Eight years later, she held a masters and a Ph.D. Her children grown and graduated from college (one daughter, now a vet, took the sheep) and her marriage ended (Harry was unhappy with her decisions, she said), Colborn packed her bags for D.C.

In the D.C. offices of the World Wildlife Fund, Colborn assimilated some 24,000 reports. What she found surprised and troubled her. Yes, everyday synthetic chemicals caused cancer in laboratory animals. But even in trace amounts—amounts so small they’d never been tested by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency—DDT, PCBs, and other synthetic chemicals containing chlorine appeared to overwhelm natural hormone systems in wildlife and laboratory animals, causing neurological, metabolic, and behavioral abnormalities, as well as freakish genitals. More disturbing, the hormone-disrupting chemicals appearing in wildlife could also be found in humans at increasing rates, in places as remote as the Arctic Circle. And the population most severely affected appeared to be the children of mothers who’d been exposed.

One of the studies that Colborn considered reported that children of mothers who had eaten two to three meals of Great Lakes fish a month were born sooner, weighed less, and had visible changes in their brains (as demonstrated by MRIs). The more PCBsfound in umbilical cord blood, the more poorly the child tested for neurological development.

In 1996, writing with journalist Dianne Dumanoski and scientist John Peterson Myers, Colborn reported the new science on synthetic chemicals in the book Our Stolen Future.Described as “a frightening, detective-style narrative” by The Wall Street Journal, Our Stolen Future was aggressively vilified by industry insiders—“innuendo on top of hypothesis on top of theory,” wrote one. So, too, was Colborn.

But Colborn kept pushing, publishing hotly contested papers and advocating better monitoring on boards and committees, including EPA’s Science Advisory Board, the Ecosystem Health Committee of the International Joint Commission of the U.S. and Canada, and EPA’s Endocrine Disruption Methods and Validation Subcommittee.

It has now been nearly 20 years since Colborn sat on the EPA’s first Endocrine Disruptor Screening and Testing Advisory Committee, yet the EPA still has not approved suggested testing protocols. How could this happen?

“Our government operates via the stakeholder approach,” says Colborn, “where those who are creating the problem are invited to solve the problem.”

Since WWII, she says, some 100,000 chemicals have been manufactured and sold to make plastics, cosmetics, pharmaceuticals, fire retardants, herbicides, pesticides, toys, food storage containers, furniture, carpets, computers, phones, appliances, and more. But “only a pittance have been thoroughly tested for their effects on the endocrine system.” Currently, TEDX’s list of potential endocrine disruptors is 1,000 chemicals long.

“The government requires industry to test for cancer,” she says, “but not for any connection with the increasing epidemics of endocrine system-related disorders.” Colborn’s list includes attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, autism, intelligence and behavioral problems, diabetes, obesity, cancers, abnormal genitalia, infertility, and Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s diseases. “Disorders connected with endocrine disrupting chemicals are costing families and governments a fortune,” she says. And, as natural gas production explodes across the U.S., including increasing use of hydraulic fracturing, the threat of endocrine disrupting chemical contamination is growing.

Colborn stresses the difficult nature of the research and testing, and the risk and repercussions of pushing for data and accountability. In a February 2014 New Yorker articleabout Syngenta, the manufacturer of the herbicide atrazine(suspected of causing birth defects in animals and humans),journalist Rachel Aviv described Colborn as the scientist who “popularized the theory that industrial chemicals could alter hormones.” Aviv also detailed how Syngenta pursued Tyrone Hayes, a researcher and one-time colleague of Colborn’s. “[W]hile Hayes was studying atrazine, Syngenta was studying him,” Aviv reported. The company “drafted a list of four goals. The first was ‘discredit Hayes.’”

And yet, to do nothing in the face of the weight of the evidence is not an option, says Colborn.

“There have been a lot of knives out to get her, because she’s been on the leading edge,” says Rich Liroff, the World Wildlife Fund senior program officer who hired Colborn in 1987. “She’s been very brave.”

In 2002, Colborn returned home to Colorado full-time. A year later, in a remodeled Harvester Tractor repair garage in downtown Paonia that could accommodate a 20-year, 10,000-pound collection of journal articles and government documents, she launched The Endocrine Disruption Exchange (TEDX).

Today, Colborn is no longer marginalized as a “bunny hugger” (her words) who asks too many questions. TEDX is internationally recognized for its education and advocacy, and its website includes Colborn’s long list of awards and honors: Honorary Doctor of Science from the University of Colorado, the TIME Global Environmental Heroes Award, the International Blue Planet Award, the National Council on Science and the Environment Lifetime Achievement Award, and four different Rachel Carson Awards.

Colborn likes to quote Johann Wolfgang von Goethe: “Once committed, all good things will come your way.” And committed she remains. “Whenever I can,” she says, “I will help physicians, nurses, and other health professionals understand the insidious effects of natural gas extraction on communities and individuals.”She’s also working to secure funding for an air-sampling program conducted by people living in gas patches. She’s reading books and writing essays. “But,” she says, “I intend to dedicate most of my time left to spreading the word that fossil fuels are not only linked to climate change but also to the plethora of epidemics resulting from exposure to their end-use products.” The skyrocketing costs related to all this, she says, “are undermining the global economy and efforts to restore world peace.”

For additional information on endocrine disruption, visit the TEDX website: endocrinedisruption.org.

==

Scientist, Uninterrupted: Dr. Theo Colborn • Terrain.org

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phthalates

Phthalates (US: /:{ˈθæleɪts:(style="border-bottom:1px dotted"):}:/,[1] UK: /:{ˈθɑːleɪts:(style="border-bottom:1px dotted"):}:/[2]), or phthalate esters, are esters of phthalic anhydride. They are mainly used as plasticizers, i.e., substances added to plastics to increase their flexibility, transparency, durability, and longevity. They are used primarily to soften polyvinyl chloride (PVC).

Lower-molecular-weight phthalates, those derived from C3-C6 alcohols, are being gradually replaced in many products in the United States, Canada, and European Union over health concerns.[3][4] They are being replaced by high-molecular-weight phthalates (those with more than 6 carbons in their backbone, which gives them increased permanency and durability), as well as alternative plasticizers not based on phthalic anhydride.

In 2010, the market was still dominated by high-phthalate plasticizers; however, due to legal provisions and growing environmental awareness and perceptions, producers are increasingly forced to use non-phthalate plasticizers.[5] This transition to phthalate-free plasticizers has prevented manufacturers from using post-consumer recycled plastic as that recycled content would likely contain phthalates. Thus, manufacturers have moved to use only virgin plastic in their products.[6][7][8]

Prevalence and human exposure

Due to the ubiquity of plasticized plastics, the majority of people are exposed to some level of phthalates. For example, most Americans tested by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have metabolites of multiple phthalates in their urine.[9] In studies of rodents exposed to certain phthalates, high doses have been shown to change hormone levels and cause birth defects.[10]

Uses

PVC is used extensively in sewage pipe due to its low cost, chemical resistance and ease of jointing. Phthalate plasticizers are essential to the utility of PVC, which is otherwise too brittle.[11]

Phthalates are used in a large variety of products, from enteric coatings of pharmaceutical pills and nutritional supplements to viscosity control agents, gelling agents, film formers, stabilizers, dispersants, lubricants, binders, emulsifying agents, and suspending agents. End-applications include adhesives and glues, agricultural adjuvants, building materials, personal-care products, medical devices, detergents and surfactants, packaging, children's toys, modelling clay, waxes, paints, printing inks and coatings, pharmaceuticals, food products, and textiles. Phthalates are also frequently used in soft plastic fishing lures, caulk, paint pigments, and sex toys made of so-called "jelly rubber". Phthalates are used in a variety of household applications such as shower curtains, vinyl upholstery, adhesives, floor tiles, food containers and wrappers, and cleaning materials. Personal-care items containing phthalates include perfume, eye shadow, moisturizer, nail polish, liquid soap, and hair spray.[11]

2015 Review of the different end use applications where plasticiser is used

Review of different plasticiser types used in Europe compared with the Global picture

Phthalates are also found in modern electronics and medical applications such as catheters and blood transfusion devices. The most widely used phthalates aredi(2-ethylhexyl) phthalate (DEHP), diisodecyl phthalate (DIDP), and diisononyl phthalate (DINP). DEHP was the dominant plasticizer used globally in PVC due to its low cost. Benzylbutylphthalate (BBP) is used in the manufacture of foamed PVC, which is used mostly as a flooring material, although its use is decreasing rapidly in the Western countries. Phthalates with small R and R' groups are used as solvents in perfumes and pesticides.[citation needed]

Approximately 8.4 million tonnes of plasticizers are produced globally every year, of which European produced accounts for approximately 1.5 million metric tonnes.[12] Approximately 70% of those totals are phthalates, down from about 88% in 2005. The remaining 30% are alternative chemistries. Plasticizers contribute 10-60% of total weight of plasticized products. More recently in Europe and the US, regulatory developments have resulted in a change in phthalate consumption, with the higher phthalates (DINP and DIDP) replacing DEHP as the general purpose plasticizer of choice because DIDP and DINP were not classified as hazardous. All of these mentioned phthalates are now regulated and restricted in many products. DEHP, although most applications are shown to pose no risk when studied using recognized methods of risk assessment, has been classified as a Category 1B reprotoxin,[13] and is now on the Annex XIV of the European Union's REACH legislation. DEHP has been phased out in Europe under REACH and can only be used in specific cases if an authorisation has been granted. Authorisations are granted by the European Commission, after obtaining the opinion of the Committee for Risk Assessment (RAC) and the Committee for Socio-economic Analysis (SEAC) of the European Chemicals Agency (ECHA).

History

The development of cellulose nitrate plastic in 1846 led to the patent of castor oil in 1856 for use as the first plasticizer. In 1870, camphor became the more favored plasticizer for cellulose nitrate. Phthalates were first introduced in the 1920s and quickly replaced the volatile and odorous camphor. In 1931, the commercial availability of polyvinyl chloride (PVC) and the development of di(2-ethylhexyl) phthalate (DEHP) began the boom of the plasticizer PVC industry.

...

Environmental impact

Phthalates are easily released into the environment. In general, they do not persist due to rapid biodegradation, photodegradation, and anaerobic degradation. Outdoor air concentrations are higher in urban and suburban areas than in rural and remote areas.[16] They also pose no acute toxicity.[11]

Because of their volatility, DEP and DMP are present in higher concentrations in air in comparison with the heavier and less volatile DEHP. Higher air temperatures result in higher concentrations of phthalates in the air. PVC flooring leads to higher concentrations of BBP and DEHP, which are more prevalent in dust.[16] A 2012 Swedish study of children found that phthalates from PVC flooring were taken up into their bodies, showing that children can ingest phthalates not only from food but also by breathing and through the skin.[17]

Diet is believed to be the main source of DEHP and other phthalates in the general population. Fatty foods such as milk, butter, and meats are a major source. Studies show that exposure to phthalates is greater from ingestion of certain foods, rather than exposure via water bottles as is most often first thought of with plastic chemicals.[18] Low-molecular-weight phthalates such as DEP, DBP, BBzP may be dermally absorbed. Inhalational exposure is also significant with the more volatile phthalates.[19] Another study, conducted between 2003 and 2010 analysing data from 9,000 individuals, found that those who reported that they had eaten at a fast food restaurant had much higher levels of two separate phthalates—DEHP and DiNP—in their urine samples. Even small consumption of fast food caused higher presence of phthalates. "People who reported eating only a little fast food had DEHP levels that were 15.5 percent higher and DiNP levels that were 25 percent higher than those who said they had eaten none. For people who reported eating a sizable amount, the increase was 24 percent and 39 percent, respectively."[20]

In a 2008 Bulgarian study, higher dust concentrations of DEHP were found in homes of children with asthma and allergies, compared with healthy children's homes.[21] The author of the study stated, "The concentration of DEHP was found to be significantly associated with wheezing in the last 12 months as reported by the parents."[21] Phthalates were found in almost every sampled home in Bulgaria. The same study found that DEHP, BBzP, and DnOP were in significantly higher concentrations in dust samples collected in homes where polishing agents were used. Data on flooring materials was collected, but there was not a significant difference in concentrations between homes where no polish was used that have balatum (PVC or linoleum) flooring and homes with wood. High frequency of dusting did decrease the concentration.[21]

In general, children's exposure to phthalates is greater than that of adults. In a 1990s Canadian study that modeled ambient exposures, it was estimated that daily exposure to DEHP was 9 μg/kg bodyweight/day in infants, 19 μg/kg bodyweight/day in toddlers, 14 μg/kg bodyweight/day in children, and 6 μg/kg bodyweight/day in adults.[19] Infants and toddlers are at the greatest risk of exposure, because of their mouthing behavior. Body-care products containing phthalates are a source of exposure for infants. The authors of a 2008 study "observed that reported use of infant lotion, infant powder, and infant shampoo were associated with increased infant urine concentrations of [phthalate metabolites], and this association is strongest in younger infants. These findings suggest that dermal exposures may contribute significantly to phthalate body burden in this population." Though they did not examine health outcomes, they noted that "Young infants are more vulnerable to the potential adverse effects of phthalates given their increased dosage per unit body surface area, metabolic capabilities, and developing endocrine and reproductive systems."[22]

Infants and hospitalized children are particularly susceptible to phthalate exposure. Medical devices and tubing may contain 20-40% Di(2-ethylhexyl) phthalate (DEHP) by weight, which "easily leach out of tubing when heated (as with warm saline/blood) ".[23] Several medical devices contain phthalates including, but not limited to, IV tubing, gloves, nasogastric tubes and respiratory tubing. The Food and Drug Administration did an extensive risk assessment of phthalates in the medical setting and found that neonates may be exposed to five times greater than the allowed daily tolerable intake. This finding led to the conclusion by the FDA that, "Children undergoing certain medical procedures may represent a population at increased risk for the effects of DEHP." [23]

In 2008, the Danish Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) found a variety of phthalates in erasers and warned of health risks when children regularly suck and chew on them. The European Commission Scientific Committee on Health and Environmental Risks (SCHER), however, considers that, even in the case when children bite off pieces from erasers and swallow them, it is unlikely that this exposure leads to health consequences.[24]

Phthalates are also found in medications, where they are used as inactive ingredients in producing enteric coatings. It is not known how many medications are made using phthalates, but some include omeprazole, didanosine, mesalamine, and theophylline. A recent study found that urinary concentrations of monobutyl phthalate, the DBP metabolite, of Asacol (a particular formulation of mesalamine) users was 50 times higher than the mean of nonusers.[25] The study showed that exposures from phthalate-containing medications can far exceed population levels from other sources.[25] DBP in medications raises concern about health risks due to the high level of exposures associated with taking these medications, especially in vulnerable segments of the population, including pregnant women and children.[25]

In 2008, the United States National Research Council recommended that the cumulative effects of phthalates and other antiandrogens be investigated. It criticized US EPA guidances, which stipulate that, when examining cumulative effects, the chemicals examined should have similar mechanisms of action or similar structures, as too restrictive. It recommended instead that the effects of chemicals that cause similar adverse outcomes should be examined cumulatively.[26] Thus, the effect of phthalates should be examined together with other antiandrogens, which otherwise may have been excluded because their mechanisms or structure are different.

Health effects

This section needs more medical references for verification or relies too heavily on primary sources. Please review the contents of the section and add the appropriate references if you can. Unsourced or poorly sourced material may be challenged and removed.

Find sources: "Phthalate" – news · newspapers · books · scholar · JSTOR (July 2017)

Toy dolls manufactured in China and seized byU.S. Customs and Border Protection in 2013 due to high phthalate levels.

Endocrine disruption

An endocrine disruptor is a substance that interferes with the normal hormonal mechanisms that allow a biological organism to interact with its environment.[27] In the scientific community, phthalates are broadly classified as endocrine disruptors.[27][28][29]

Endocrine disruptors exhibit numerous behaviors that can make studying them a challenge. There can be a lag between when someone is exposed to an endocrine disruptor and any symptoms manifesting themselves–in particular fetal and early childhood exposure may have consequences later in adulthood.[27][30]

Many studies refer to this period of fetal and postnatal development as particularly important to development, but studying this is difficult; it is obviously a huge challenge to measure endocrine disruptor exposure during fetal development and then decades later diagnosing any health problems. Additionally, endocrine disruptor exposure can transmit epigenetically to one’s offspring without them being directly exposed to the endocrine disruptors.[31]

Finally, particularly low levels of exposure may still have significant effects, and exposure to multiple endocrine disruptors across a variety of compounds (not just phthalates) may synergistically combine to cause a greater effect.[27][30] Evaluating the actual effects of a specific compound such as a particular phthalate requires examining cumulative exposure across multiple compounds, rather than evaluating one compound in isolation.[30]

A widespread concern about phthalate exposure is the possibility that it is the cause of a drop in male fertility.[32][33][34] Studies have shown that phthalates cause abnormalities in the reproductive systems of animals,[35] with the greatest effects when the animal is exposed during gestation and immediately thereafter.[36] Numerous studies on adult male humans show the similar result that phthalate exposure correlates with worsening metrics of male fertility, such as semen quality, the quantity of damaged DNA in sperm, decreased sperm motility, decreased semen volume and other metrics.[28][36][37] Phthalates causing harm to the male reproductive system is plausible,[38] and continues to be researched.

Early research also shows phthalate exposure may be associated with diabetes and insulin resistance, breast cancer, obesity,[39] metabolic disorders, and immune function.[29] There are possible (though not conclusive) associations between phthalate exposure and adverse child neurodevelopment, including the development of ADHD and autistic behaviors and lower cognitive and motor development.[40][41] In many cases, there are studies that show connections between phthalates and these negative outcomes, as well as studies that show no connection; this is likely due to the research challenges outlined above, and when resolved, could show that phthalate exposure does not cause health effects, or even that they have a much greater effect than currently predicted.[30] In all cases, larger studies are needed to demonstrate incontrovertibly what effect phthalate exposure has on human health.

A recent Nature Reviews Endocrinology review paper[30] gives some advice for avoiding exposure to phthalates for concerned people; while they make pains to state that there is no evidence that shows this advice will positively affect one’s health, they suggest (1) eating a balanced diet to avoid ingesting too many endocrine disruptors from a single source, (2) eliminating canned or packaged food in order to limit ingestion of DEHP phthalates leached from plastics, and (3) eliminating use of any personal product such as moisturizer, perfume, cosmetics that contain phthalates.[30] Eliminating personal products containing phthalates can be particularly difficult or impossible due to some countries such as the United States not requiring them to be disclosed in a list of ingredients.[42]

Endocannabinoid system disruption

Phthalates block CB~1 as allosteric antagonists.[43]

Other effects

There may be a link between the obesity epidemic and endocrine disruption and metabolic interference. Studies conducted on mice exposed to phthalates in utero did not result in metabolic disorder in adults.[44] However, "in a national cross-section of U.S. men, concentrations of several prevalent phthalate metabolites showed statistically significant correlations with abnormal obesity and insulin resistance."[44] Mono-ethylhexyl-phthalate (MEHP), a metabolite of DEHP, has been found to interact with all three peroxisome proliferator-activated receptors (PPARs).[44] PPARs are members of the nuclear receptor superfamily. The author of the study stated "The roles of PPARs in lipid and carbohydrate metabolism raise the question of their activation by a sub-class of pollutants, tentatively named metabolic disrupters."[44] Phthalates belong to this class of metabolic disruptors. It is a possibility that, over many years of exposure to these metabolic disruptors, they are able to deregulate complex metabolic pathways in a subtle manner.[44]

Large amounts of specific phthalates fed to rodents have been shown to damage their liver and testes,[10] and initial rodent studies also indicated hepatocarcinogenicity. Following this result, di(2-ethylhexyl) phthalate was listed as a possible carcinogen by IARC, EC, and WHO. Later studies on primates showed that the mechanism is specific to rodents; humans are resistant to the effect.[45] The carcinogen classification was subsequently withdrawn.

Legal status

Canada

In 1994, a Health Canada assessment found that DEHP and another phthalate product, B79P, were harmful to human health. The Canadian federal government responded by banning their use in cosmetics and restricting their use in other applications.[46]

A more recent assessment in 2017 found that B79P and DEHP may cause environmental damage. As of 2019, regulations to protect the environment against DEHP and B79P have not yet been put into place.[47]

European Union

[](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:European_Plasticisers_-_Classified_and_Non_Classified.jpg)

Update on Non-Classified plasticisers and the European REACH Candidate Classification including pending authorisation

The **use of some phthalates has been restricted in the European Union for use in children's toys since 1999**.[48] DEHP, BBP, and DBP are restricted for all toys; DINP, DIDP, and DNOP are restricted only in toys that can be taken into the mouth. The restriction states that the amount of these phthalates may not be greater than 0.1% mass percent of the plasticized part of the toy. Generally the high molecular weight phthalates DINP, DIDP and DPHP have been registered under REACH and have demonstrated their safety for use in current applications. They are not classified for any health or environmental effects.

The low molecular weight products BBP, DEHP, DIBP, and DBP were added to the Candidate list of Substances for Authorisation under REACH in 2008-9, and added to the Authorisation list, Annex XIV, in 2012.[3] This means that from February 2015 they are not allowed to be produced in the EU unless authorisation has been granted for a specific use, however they may still be imported in consumer products.[49] The creation of an Annex XV dossier, which could ban the import of products containing these chemicals, is being jointly prepared by the ECHA and Danish authorities and is expected to be submitted by April 2016.[50]

The Dutch office of Greenpeace UK sought to encourage the European Union to ban sex toys that contained phthalates.[51]

United States

During August 2008, the United States Congress passed and President George W. Bush signed the Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act (CPSIA), which became public law 110-314.[52] Section 108 of that law specified that as of February 10, 2009, "it shall be unlawful for any person to manufacture for sale, offer for sale, distribute in commerce, or import into the United States any children's toy or child care article that contains concentrations of more than 0.1 percent of" DEHP, DBP, or BBP and "it shall be unlawful for any person to manufacture for sale, offer for sale, distribute in commerce, or import into the United States any children's toy that can be placed in a child's mouth or child care article that contains concentrations of more than 0.1 percent of" DINP, DIDP, DnOP. Furthermore, the law requires the establishment of a permanent review board to determine the safety of other phthalates.Prior to this legislation, the Consumer Product Safety Commission had determined that voluntary withdrawalsof DEHP and DINP from teethers, pacifiers, and rattles had eliminated the risk to children, and advised against enacting a phthalate ban.[53]

In another development in 1986, California voters approved an initiative to address their growing concerns about exposure to toxic chemicals. That initiative became the Safe Drinking Water and Toxic Enforcement Act of 1986, better known by its original name of Proposition 65.[54] In December 2013 DINP was listed as a chemical "known to the State of California to cause cancer"[55] This means that, starting December 2014, companies with 10 or more employees manufacturing, distributing or selling the product(s) containing diisononyl phthalate (DINP) are required to provide a clear and reasonable warning for that product. The California Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment, charged with maintaining the Proposition 65 list and enforcing its provisions, has implemented a "No Significant Risk Level" of 146 ug/day for DINP, as of 1 April 2016.

Identification in plastics

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