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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 November 6, 2007 5:23 PM