Cooped Up? Get Uncooped.

If you Google "phthalates" (if you can spell phthalates), wanting more information about the notion you've heard that many plastic products contain potentially harmful chemicals, two of the first websites that pop up are www.phthalates.com ("Phthalates Information Centre Europe") and www.phthalates.org ("Phthalate Information Center"). Both these reliable-sounding websites feature friendly reassurance that the media is getting it wrong and that, in fact, phthalates, a family of chemical plasticizers used in a boggling variety of everyday products, are perfectly safe.

Only if you scour these websites for the tiny print do you discover that they are initiatives of, respectively, the European Council for Plasticisers and Intermediates and the American Chemistry Council.

Let's try that one again, this time looking for a reputable, non-industry-funded source. How about the website associated with the fascinating, frightening and ultra-accessible book Our Stolen Future, written by a trio of respected scientists? (Full disclosure: the organization I work for works with these scientists on a fairly regular basis. Nobody is telling me to write this though - it's all me, baby. :)

Here's what these world-renowned scientists have to say about phthalates, which, emerging science shows, can negatively impact fetal development in extremely low doses, as well as have a variety of other health effects.

"Phthalates crept into widespread use over the last several decades because of their many beneficial chemical properties....About a billion pounds per year are produced worldwide.

Intentional uses of phthalates include softeners of plastics, oily substances in perfumes, additives to hairsprays, lubricants and wood finishers. That new car smell, which becomes especially pungent after the car has been sitting in the sun for a few hours, is partly the pungent odor of phthalates volatilizing from a hot plastic dashboard. In the evening's cool they then condense out of the inside air of the car to form an oily coating on the inside of the windshield."

Yikes. Read more...

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