A PHTHALATE SCARE AGAIN

The Greenies are like a dog with a bone when it comes to "chemicals"

A new health alert over chemicals used in make-up, shampoo and soaps is issued today. Experts say products containing the chemicals - called phthalates - could cause women to give birth to boys with female characteristics. Their research found shrunken genitals and less masculine behaviour in babies. Phthalates help to give cosmetics colour and bond perfume molecules. They are also used in pliable plastics such as clingfilm, kidney dialysis tubes, blood bags and even children's toys.

"This is a very big problem," said study leader Professor Shanna Swan, of the University of Rochester. The research, to be published-next month in the journal Environmental Health Perspectives, found 90 per cent of babies exposed to high levels of the chemicals in the womb exhibited "more female physical traits". Professor Swan said: "We need to eradicate these chemicals. But it is rather like taking lead out of petrol - a slow process."

The study of 134 boys found a range of problems including shrunken genitalia and undescended testicles. They believe the effects could be permanent, although this needs to be confirmed over time. Professor Swan urged manufacturers to reveal which of their products contain phthalates - previously supposed not to be harmful - as a matter of urgency. "I would urge people to write and ask for that information," she said. "The problem for consumers is at the moment we just don't know where this chemical will show up."

Andreas Kortenkamp, an expert in environmental pollutants at the London School of Pharmacy, said: "If it's true, it's sensational. This is the first time anyone's shown this effect in humans." He added: "These are mass chemicals. They are used in any plastic that is pliable. Sorting this out is going to be an interesting challenge for industry as well as society."

A spokesman for the European Council for Plasticisers and Intermediates said reproductive effects had been seen in rats and mice only at levels of exposure "many times higher than those experienced by humans".

Source



For perspective, note this report from 1998:

Parents shopping for soft, flexible, and safe plastic toys for their kids this holiday season may be out of luck. Companies such as Mattel and First Years recently announced that they would discontinue the use of certain plastic-softening chemicals in some or all of their toys. Then, on November 13, 1998, the giant retailer Toys "R" Us said that they were yanking from their stores worldwide all soft plastic toys kids put in their mouths.

The reason? A fear-mongering campaign against phthalates (diisononyl phthalates or DINP), the chemical used as a softener in toys and other products.The companies admitted that the plastic products were safe but were being pulled because of bad PR, mostly stirred up by Greenpeace. Over the years, soft plastic toys and teething rings have been embraced by parents who wanted products that wouldn't hurt their kids, were easy to clean, and were fun and flexible.

Greenpeace's scary but science-less attack raises the specter that the chemical leaching out from kids' sucking the toys can cause them serious harm. Yet Greenpeace has no scientific basis for its charges. Its "report" released on November 13 on phthalates' harm was nothing more than a press release with footnotes. In fact, the chemical has been tested for about a quarter of a century, with no evidence that phthalates are harmful to humans.

The chemical is toxic when mice and rats are fed massive doses. But, according to the prominent biochemist who invented the primary test for carcenogenic substances, Dr. Bruce Ames, about one-half of all chemicals tested, both natural and man-made, are toxic when tested at high doses in either rats or mice.

Thirteen years ago, probably egged on by Greenpeace, the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) studied another related phthalate elasticizer, DEHP, and found no evidence of its toxicity. Nonetheless, producers discontinued its use and substituted DINP. Currently, the CPSC is researching the toxicity of those phthalates, undoubtedly again spurred on by Greenpeace's public relations campaign. CSPC's research follows on the heels of European studies done by the Dutch and the Spanish governments, which found no significant health hazards from phthalates in children's toys.



And there was a 1970s scare too:

Finally in this gallery we come to a portrait of a molecule that is present in everything we eat: phthalate. There have been several scares about phthalates over the years: a recent one in the UK concerned their presence in formula feeds for babies. Mothers were alarmed to be told that phthalates were contaminating their baby's feed, and that these molecules were being described, somewhat mischievously, as `gender-bending' chemicals. The panic that resulted echoed an earlier phthalate scare of the 1970s when they were said to leach from plastic wrapping into food, and were then accused of causing cancer. Despite these worrying assertions, there is no need for alarm, because phthalates cause neither cancer nor infertility in humans, as we will discover. Phthalates are derivatives of phthalic acid, which consists of a benzene ring with two acid groups attached. These groups may be next to each other, when the molecule is called simply phthalate, or on opposite sides of the ring, when it is called terephthalate. (There is a third form in which the groups are one atom apart, but these have little commercial significance.) Phthalates were first made in the 1850s and called naphthalates, from naphtha, the ancient Greek name for natural petroleum, but this was soon shortened to phthalate.

Phthalates are entirely manufactured and worryingly widespread; even in remote regions of the planet analysts have recorded 0.5 ppm of phthalates in rainwater, so even the peoples of the high Himalayas and the remote Pacific islands get a daily dose. The alarm over baby foods came from a report by the UK's Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food, which released surveys entitled Phthalates in Paper & Board Packaging (1995) and Total Diet Survey (1996) which reported them to be present in almost all food analysed, not just in baby milk. Levels in milk and milk products were reported to be around 1 ppm, and for a time it looked as though this might be coming from the PVC tubing used in milking machines, but investigation showed that this source accounted for only a tenth of what was present.

Because of earlier fears about their safety, plasticizer phthalates are now among the most investigated of all chemicals. The leading plasticizer is DEHP, short for di(ethylhexyl) phthalate, but according to David Cadogan, of the European Union's Council for Plasticizers and Intermediates in Brussels, this poses little risk: `As far as humans are concerned it causes neither cancer nor reproductive effects. Nor are phthalates accumulating in the environment because they are biodegradable, and levels are falling. In Rhine sediment, for example, there has been a reduction of 85% since the 1970s. Phthalates are very insoluble in water--about a millionth of a gram per litre--so leakage from plastics in old landfill sites is tiny.'

In 1990 the EU Commission said that DEHP should not be classified as a carcinogen, because no carcinogenic or oestrogenic activity was found with fish, hamsters, guinea-pigs, dogs or monkeys. However, rats did show increased risks of liver tumours and smaller testes, but these animals, unlike humans, are known to be particularly prone to respond this way because they have been specially bred to be sensitive to cancer-forming chemicals. Humans are not at risk. The Danish Institute of Toxicology concluded that an intake of 500 mg a day was without effect. Our average daily intake is around 0.35 mg, which over a lifetime would amount to less than 10 g (a dessert spoonful). For babies, the tolerable daily intake is 0.05 mg per kilogram of body weight, but no formula feed would provide anything like this amount of DEHP. In any case the 0.05 guideline has a large inbuilt factor and is based on the tests on rats. The danger from phthalates is negligible, even to babies. If all the phthalates in a year's supply of milk were to be consumed at one feeding, it would still not be enough to make a baby sick, let alone anything more serious.




THE GREATEST CONSPIRACY IN HUMAN HISTORY?

Prof. Brignell thinks Global Warming is

If anything is more shocking than that secret letter from the Royal Society to the media it is the lack of reaction to it. If the equivalent had happened in any other field of human activity, such as the Chief Rabbi advocating anti-Semitism, there would have been uproar.

There are by tradition two theories of history, the conspiracy and the cock-up. Conspiracy theories are a dime a dozen. Any notable statesman or film star meeting an untimely death will spawn dozens of books, all with different but incompatible conspiracy theories. We all, when visiting Dallas, for example, peer through the Depository window, stand on the grassy knoll and conjecture on the myriad explanations of what actually happened, but the truth is lost in the cloud of unknowing and invention.

Battles from Bosworth to Arnhem were decided by cock-ups rather than any human planning, which goes for most of the events that caused a fork in human history. Of course, there have always been the likes of the lean and hungry, daggers drawn, senators, but the great majority of significant events were the product of randomness or negligence. For want of a nail the battle was lost.

It is therefore not only a dangerous step to nominate something as the greatest conspiracy ever, but it invites accusations of pretentiousness or worse. Just look, however, at the ingredients. Some of those involved are organisations of size and power never before seen in human affairs - The Murdoch Empire, the BBC, political parties (particularly the Greens, but also those overtly or covertly affiliated to them), demonstrably corrupt international bodies, such as the United Nations and the EU etc. In addition there are huge industries raking off obscene profits, such as the wind turbine manufacturer who is a major donor to the party of Government that diverted substantial tax revenues into his pocket (not unique, as a minister for the other lot , Gummer, launched the whole thing and then set up a couple of companies to exploit it).

Above all there is that large proportion of the populace that is seduced by the idealistic preachments of the eco-theologues. They acquiesce to the destruction of the environment (and people) in the name of the environment, simply because they never hear the alternative argument. They are cold-bloodedly manipulated by a new priesthood, to whom science and its methods are at best an irrelevance.

Any doubt that it is a conspiracy if finally removed by the fact that we were not supposed to know about that letter. It was issued just to the media. But for the accident that one member was not so pliable, we would still not know. It is not that the proponents are simply mistaken - that would be forgivable. They know that they are lying: otherwise there would be no need for all the manufactured and selective evidence, the appeal to a claimed consensus (the like of which has never had a place within the scientific method), the gross attempts to censor any contrary argument, the abandonment of the essential scepticism of science, the vilification of doubters, the direction of huge quantities of taxpayers money into acquiescent "research" groups, the barrage of angled news-stories, the drama documentaries, irrelevant interpolations into editorial commentaries and on and on.

The evidence for the global warming disaster theory does not stand up to the most cursory examination, like the global cooling disaster theory that preceded it. Yet, a majority of simple souls accept that it is true, because it has been drummed into their brains by incessant repetition. Now the appeal is based on the "scientific consensus". From Galileo, through Darwin to Einstein, there is a clear law of scientific consensus; The law of scientific consensus: At times of scientific contention the consensus is always wrong. Alas, poor science.




Infant formula ambush: "Self-styled public-health activists often pursue issues that are surrogates for their real agenda. One example is the continuing attack on infant formula. Activists' underlying agenda is not the well-being of mothers or babies, but disparaging discrediting and disadvantaging multinational food producers. The U.N.'s World Health Organization soon will vote on whether to require prominent warnings that pathogenic microorganisms are present in infant formula."


***************************************

Many people would like to be kind to others so Leftists exploit that with their nonsense about equality. Most people want a clean, green environment so Greenies exploit that by inventing all sorts of far-fetched threats to the environment. But for both, the real motive is to promote themselves as wiser and better than everyone else, truth regardless.

Global warming has taken the place of Communism as an absurdity that "liberals" will defend to the death regardless of the evidence showing its folly. Evidence never has mattered to real Leftists

Comments? Email me here. My Home Page is here or here. For times when blogger.com is playing up, there are mirrors of this site here and here.

*****************************************