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June 26, 2007
Sex toys and phthalates – what’s the real deal?
About three months ago I blogged about Greenpeace’s campaign to rid the world of vinyl sex toys. The issue has popped up once again – moving from the likes of sleazy talk radio to mainstream MSNBC. I think it deserves some additional attention.
We’ve grown used to reporters calling out Europe’s take on phthalates in their stories. So I found it interesting that the MSNBC reporter failed to mention that the European Union concluded, "there’s no evidence that people using sex toys are at risk.” And that the EU has no plan to ban the chemicals from the products. He also left out that a German study looked at this very issue and did not find that phthalates were leaking from sex toys.
The study the reporter did cite was a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention study that tested people (and not just sex toy users) for a large number of chemicals, including phthalates. Lucky for us, phthalates are one of families of chemicals for which it is possible to take those biomonitoring results and calculate exposure levels. While Phthalate metabolites were present in the majority of the test subjects, the exposure levels of the subjects were far below the EPA’s established safe exposure limits.
And remember folks, exposure is what it’s all about. Don’t forget that rodents only show health effects when they ingest very high doses of certain phthalates, every day, for months or even years.
Read the MSNBC story at http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/19333870/
Posted by Marian at 5:29 PM | Comments (0)