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August 28, 2007
Lead balloon
The latest ploy to try to force a ban on the use of phthalates in toys is to try to run the issue together with the current flap over lead-bearing paint on kid's toys. It works this way: Call a news conference to accuse the U.S. government, and specifically the Consumer Product Safety Commission, of failing to protect American kids from lead. Demand that a federal law be passed banning all lead from toys - or else California will. Add in that it would also be a good idea to ban phthalates from toys, which happens to be the subject of a bill being pushed by the California legislator who called the news conference.
Subtle. CPSC happens to have specifically reviewed the primary phthalate used in soft vinyl toys and found "no justification" for banning it. But the message of the news conference was, "how can one trust an agency that lets all that lead paint get on those toys?" The stunt overlooks a few salient points: the paint was clearly in violation of very tough federal standards and regulations on lead in children's toys; the toys were immediately recalled by the toy companies; even the overseas vendor admitted to the very serious mistake it made, and closed the factory.
To me, it sounds as though the system worked. The heavy-handed ploy should go over like a lead balloon.
Posted by Marian at 11:03 PM | Comments (0)
August 15, 2007
Putting the brakes on the Ecology Center's "new car smell" study
The Ecology Center's study, released in March, on "new car smell," which I have previously blogged about, has received additional scrutiny in the last few days.
In the August 13 edition of HealthNewsDigest.com, Michael Shaw, contributing columnist and the EVP of a company that manufactures toxic gas detection instruments, discusses the study's obvious flaws.
And Trevor Butterworth, a contributing editor for the Statistical Assessment Service at George Mason University - an organization that acts as a watchdog for the use and abuse of science and statistics in the media - in a recent analysis on Stats.org, characterized the Center's methods as "those of the junkyard."
Besides criticizing the study's methodology, both point out other studies – one out of Australia and another from Germany – that came to conclusions quite different from those reached by the Ecology Center.
As I've discussed before, the report by Australia's well-respected Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization named nine different substances found in the new-car interior air that could be a problem in high concentrations. Phthalates were not on the list. And a team of scientists from the Technical University in Munich, Germany, found dozens of organic compounds in the interior-air, but phthalates were not among them.
Posted by Marian at 10:53 PM | Comments (0)
August 1, 2007
Something smells funny, but it’s not the phthalates.
I am seeing an awful lot of stories these days about the "dangers" of phthalates in fragrances. Point One: Whoever is peddling these stories should know better. Point Two: The only phthalate used in fragrances is DEP, a compound of very low toxicity that is used as a solvent. To make my twin points, two documents came across my desk this week.
The first is from an organization called Women's Voices for the Earth, which warns against the phthalates in fragrances used in household cleaning products. Procter & Gamble has already dealt with this myth on its Web site, saying "P&G uses one of the members of the phthalates family, diethyl phthalate (DEP), as a minor ingredient in several cosmetic products, and as perfume fragrances…. Based on very thorough scientific investigations by academic and government scientists, and recent government regulatory assessments, we have concluded that our current uses of DEP are safe for consumers."
The second came from the European Union. It seems that Greenpeace has been honking about phthalates in cosmetics. So the EU's Scientific Committee on Consumer Products took a look. It found only one phthalate, DEP, in cosmetics at significant levels (some others were present at trace levels, usually the unavoidable and approved result of manufacturing processes). "The SCCP does not see any need to update its previous opinions," the report concluded dryly. And what was its previous opinion? That DEP has a margin of safety of 15,000 when used as a fragrance solvent, in which it comprises about two percent of the total product.
Posted by Marian at 11:32 AM | Comments (0)