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November 27, 2007

What's going on is fear.

In the course of the debate on the California ban bill, Dr. Harry Fisch, director of the Male Reproductive Center at Columbia University, was interviewed by a local TV reporter. I thought you might like to see how an expert in male reproduction and fertility answered the reporter’s questions and analyzed events in California. Here is the interview, as initially posted on YouTube and now on our Web site.

Posted by Marian at 5:25 PM | Comments (0)

November 20, 2007

PIRG's Distortions

USPIRG's annual "Trouble in Toyland" report on toys gives only minor attention to phthalates, yet even this minor attention yields major mistakes. Surely if PIRG is going to publish this annual survey, it can at least take the time to serve the public's interest -- and children's interest -- by doing its research before going to print.

Let's look at just some of what the report says, and then what the record shows:

  1. The report: Claims that EPA studies show the cumulative impact of phthalate exposure shows an "exponential increase in associated harm." The record: There's been one study by an EPA researcher on the subject of additivity. That study makes no claim of "harm." And that one study showed that the cumulative exposures it measured were below EPA safety levels.
  2. The report: Claims that Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data show phthalate levels in humans are "higher than levels shown to cause adverse health effects." The record: CDC data show that both average exposure and exposures at the 95th percentile are far below the levels that have resulted in adverse health effects in some rats. (Only for critically ill neonates getting life saving treatment involving flexible vinyl tubing and other equipment has it been estimated that levels might exceed federal safety levels.)
  3. The report: Claims that phthalates have been linked to "abnormal genital development in baby boys." The record: the author of a statistical study looking for a link between phthalates and health effects in baby boys said there was no such abnormal genital development – stating flatly that she detected "no frank genital malformation or disease."
  4. The report: Claims that phthalates have been linked to premature delivery and early onset puberty. The record: One study claimed to show evidence of babies being born one week early – hardly the definition of premature. Another study, an early puberty study, has long since been demonstrated to have been conducted improperly and is generally considered invalid.
  5. The report: Claims that the Consumer Product Safety Commission said there might be a risk to children who mouth toys for "'75 minutes a day or more'." The record: The CPSC later did its own observational study of mouthing habits of children and found that the norm was a very few minutes at most.

We expect better from PIRG...not another round of the kind of partial reporting and misinformation we see on the Internet and in news reports every day. Parents face tough decisions regarding what toys to give their children, and deserve accurate information.

Posted by Marian at 7:49 PM | Comments (0)

November 6, 2007

BOO! Are you scared yet?

If USA Today's Hallowe'en article, "'Everywhere chemicals' in Plastics Alarm Parents" was meant to scare parents, it may have succeeded. But I don't know what scared me more - the paper's recycling of the same old scare stories about phthalates, or its decision to highlight claims made by Dr. Shanna Swan in the audio clips accompanying the story. Dr. Swan's one small statistical analysis looking to link phthalate exposure to an effect in infant boys has been heavily criticized by the scientific community, and to this date she has steadfastly refused to release her full data set so other scientists can judge the study for themselves (which is the way science advances). What does Dr. Swan actually say in her comments? Well, she doesn't acknowledge that there are "reference doses" -- dose limits designed to be protective of human health- set by the EPA for every major phthalate based on animal data. Those levels are far, far above what humans experience every day. Or that in recently published research on phthalates, mice did not show the same effects on testosterone production that rats do, which raises the question whether the rat effects are even relevant to other species (such as humans). And as for claimed brain effects that "last through life," Dr. Swan is giving weight to one piece of published work that has not been replicated nor seen elsewhere - seeming to suggest that this is a fact.

I would think that a national publication like USA Today would know better than to publish just snippets of a story, especially on a topic of public health, and to focus on the results of just one recent "study," no matter how small, how unreplicated, or how flawed. (In fact, an independent expert panel convened by the Center for the Evaluation of Risks to Human Reproduction (CERHR), of the NIEHS and National Toxicology Program has examined been unable to validate Swan's key finding with respect to a phthalate). And why treat the study author as if she were the sole or leading voice on the topic - when this is far from the case?.

Posted by Marian at 5:23 PM | Comments (0)