the problem with phthalates

THE PROBLEM WITH
PHTHALATES
Scientists believe a group of chemicals found in everything from
erasers to shoes may be to blame for a decline in male fertility
and other changes to boys. In Europe, finding out what products
contain them is not easy
OCTOBER 2010
SPECIAL REPORT - PHTHALATES
Have you eaten a phthalate today?
By Pete Harrison
BRUSSELS, October 18
I
MAGINE A CHILD SITTING IN HIS CLASSROOM, GAZING
through the window at the rain. He picks up his pencil and
chews distractedly on the eraser at its top. Chemicals,
classed in Europe as “toxic to reproduction”, dissolve in his
saliva and enter his body.
It’s a scenario that may not be unusual. A report published
last week by a consortium of 140 environment groups shows
that potentially risky chemicals are present in dozens of everyday plastic items for sale by European retailers -- from shoes to
erasers, from pencil cases to sex toys.
The study focused on a group of chemicals known as
phthalates, six of which have been virtually banned in toys in
the European Union since 1999 over fears they can damage the
sexual development of children. But as the European
Environmental Bureau (EEB) found in its study, phthalates are
present in items routinely used by children and on sale in big
supermarkets such as Carrefour and Tesco.
The study, based on a chemical analysis by PiCA, an
independent chemical laboratory in Berlin, found one pink
pencil case with levels three times those which the EU says
should be the maximum in toys and “childcare articles”. A
phthalate that scientists suspect may be particularly harmful
to humans was found in an eraser at a level close to that which
would be banned in a toy.
Concerns about phthalates are not new, and retailers selling
products containing them are not breaking the law, because the
regulations do not cover objects such as pencil cases and erasers.
But the EEB study also found that retailers appear to be
ignoring a legal obligation to provide information about the
presence of phthalates to shoppers. Less than a quarter of
retailers in its survey provided satisfactory answers to requests
for information about chemicals in their products.
“All citizens ought to be given full information about properties
of chemicals in the products they buy,” said Christian Schaible,
EEB Chemicals Policy Officer. “A parent, for instance, should
automatically be informed whether a pencil case for their child
contains phthalates which can impair sexual development.
“Unfortunately…suppliers are only obliged to give
information under specific conditions. We have shown that not
even this legal right is guaranteed in practice.”
Carrefour told Reuters that it does adequately address requests for information on risky chemicals and said it deals
with such requests within 45 days. Tesco said it was aware of
its duties and has its own code of practice in place to keep worrying chemicals out of clothes and shoes. “We have worked closely
with our suppliers to identify these substances and have replaced
them with suitable alternatives,” it said in a statement.
TEST A technician at the PiCA laboratory in Berlin prepares
goods bought from retailers around Europe. The lab was testing
for the presence of phthalates. REUTERS/Thomas Peter
LINK TO SEXUAL DEVELOPMENT
Phthalates are a range of chemicals regularly used to make
plastics more flexible. There are about 25 of them, and in
recent decades they have permeated the very fabric of our
society, right down to the shoes on our feet. They are in the
air we breathe and the paint on our office walls, they soften
the vinyl floors of kitchens and bathrooms, they put the flex in
our shower curtains and electric cables.
In your car, phthalates coat the chassis against rust and
soften the plastics of its doors, dashboard and the steering
wheel in your hands.
They are in our food, some scientists think, after leaching
out of the pipes and plastics used in food processing machinery. They are in our bodies.
The global chemicals industry produces nearly six million
tonnes of phthalates every year. Some scientists, and an
increasing number of governments, have begun to suspect that
phthalates might be connected to a massive drop in male
fertility globally over the past few decades -- in the developed
world, repeated studies have shown sperm counts have decreased by about 50 percent in the past half century -- as well as
to problems with the sexual development of boys in the womb.
The most volatile of the chemicals disperse easily from plastics
and have been shown to interfere with the sexual development of
foetal rats, by interrupting the production of testosterone. Some
studies have suggested similar effects in humans.
As well as the toy ban, the EU controls or bans certain
phthalates from things like cosmetics and paints. It has also
begun to examine restricting the use of some phthalates in
other products, a process that is likely to take years. The United
States has limited the use of certain phthalates in toys since
2008, and says it is investigating the safety of others.
Australia bans the sale of items containing more than one
percent of a single phthalate.
NOT FULLY MASCULINISED
If there is a connection between phthalates and impaired
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SPECIAL REPORT - PHTHALATES
fertility in people, they would not be the first chemicals to
have had this impact. In July 10, 1976, an explosion tore
through a pesticide factory in the small Italian town of Seveso,
releasing a dense vapour cloud laced with the chemical dioxin.
Nobody died, and the accident went largely unnoticed, at
least initially. But what followed gave scientists the first insight
that tiny concentrations of chemicals could have a disproportionate effect on human fertility.
A few hours after the explosion, burn-like lesions began
appearing on local children. In the weeks that followed many
developed chloracne, a severe skin disorder typified by acne-like
blackheads, cysts and pustules. In the years after the accident, an
unusually high proportion of boys were born to parents exposed
to the chemical cloud. Those same boys grew up to have abnormally low sperm counts, medical studies later showed.
Just as Seveso taught us a lot about dioxins, we’re now
learning more and more about phthalates -- not because of
one single incident, but because scientists are putting them
under increasing scrutiny in the quest to understand trends
such as decreased male fertility.
In pregnant rats, numerous studies have proven that exposure to some phthalates reduces testosterone levels in the male
foetus, interfering with normal development of the penis and
descent of their testicles. But it was not until 2005 that scientists
made a link between the chemicals and changes in humans.
A group of researchers at Rochester University, New York,
studied the masculinity of newborn boys. As an indicator, they
measured the distance between anus and the base of the penis
-- the anogenital distance -- which is typically twice as long in
males as in females, and is often used by scientists as a marker
of masculinity. Low anogenital distances are associated with
problems of reproductive health, such as undescended testes
or deformed penises.
The researchers then compared that measurement with the
phthalate levels in the urine of the infants’ mothers.
“We found that in human male infants, as predicted by
animal studies, when the mother
was exposed to some phthalates,
the boys had changes in their
reproductive development, which
was not fully masculinised,” says
Shanna Swan, who led the study.
Respected journal Environmental Health Perspectives
named Swan’s team’s study
“paper of the year” in 2009 for
its massive impact on current
thinking about phthalates. The
study was not perfect -- at just
134 infants, the sample size was
very small -- but Swan is working
on a new, bigger and more rigorous study that could help settle
the science.
GETTING CLOSER
Other scientists are also trying
to pin down the link between
phthalates and changes in humans. In an Edinburgh laboratory,
a mouse wanders through its cage to sip at some water tainted
with plastic softeners. Under the skin on its back are grafted
tiny pieces of tissue from the testicles of a human foetus. The
objective is to directly ascertain if those softeners could be
confusing our hormones and mutating the genitalia of unborn
infants.
Professor Richard Sharpe, an expert in male reproductive
health at Edinburgh University and the leader of the study,
believes people will find a link between our environment and
lifestyles and male reproductive health. “We have solid evidence
testicular cancer has increased progressively across Europe in the
past 50 to 70 years,” he says, “and it has happened in a space of
“WE SUSPECT PHTHALATES ARE
GETTING INTO FOOD VIA THE PLASTICS
USED IN VARIOUS STEPS OF FOOD
PROCESSING”
‑-DR HOLGER KOCH, PHTHALATE RESEARCHER
time that coincides with lifestyle and environmental changes.”
Sharpe believes that “understanding whether or not
phthalates play any role in human male reproductive disorders
is pivotal.” Animal studies, he says “point clearly towards
effects, but human studies are very mixed. We’ll have a much
clearer idea in the next 12 months. If we don’t find any effects
of phthalates on the foetal human testis, they really drop down
the list of suspects. If we find a positive effect, I think it
could be the end of phthalates.”
THE SLOW WHEELS OF REGULATION
In Europe, the group tasked with evaluating and restricting
potentially risky chemicals such as phthalates is the European
Chemicals Agency (ECHA), based in Helsinki. Its main role is to
implement a 2007 law aimed at improving understanding of and
control over 30,000 chemicals
regularly used around Europe that
currently face few regulations.
Known as REACH -- Registration, Evaluation, Authorisation and
Restriction of Chemicals -- the law
was one of the most intensively
lobbied in European history. European chemical firms opposed it, as
did the administration of George
W. Bush, which argued it would
choke off transatlantic trade.
The law now forces companies
to register the chemicals they
want to sell; the Agency is combing through data given to it by
the industry to decide which
should be phased out fastest.
From an original broad list of
around 1,500 chemicals of concern, 38 have so far been classified as “substances of very high
concern” including four phthalates
-- DEHP, BBP, DBP and DIBP.
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SPECIAL REPORT - PHTHALATES
Many activists are unhappy with the pace of progress and
feel the Agency should look beyond the 38 substances it is
tackling. Environmentalists and health campaigners, including
Greenpeace and the Health and Environment Alliance, have
compiled a list of 356 chemicals they want curbed immediately. The European Trade Union Confederation has a list of 334 it
wants banned from the workplace.
But the task of evaluating the evidence is so huge, and the
resources of the agency so limited, that even the initial 38
chemicals will take years to phase out or approve. Geert
Dancet, ECHA’s executive director, says it may take until 2014
to decide how these first few chemicals should be dealt with.
“Then there are those chemicals we don’t even know about yet,
and in that case 2020 is the target date.”
FROM SEX TO FOOD
It’s not just children who are at risk.
As well as testing children’s shoes, make up bags and pencil
cases, the Berlin laboratory tested samples from the shaft of
E09-039/10, a smooth blue vibrator. It was one of five sex toys
tested, four of which showed high concentrations of DEHP. The
blue vibrator had 55 percent DEHP by weight, while another
sold as “Prince Charming” had 63 percent. Many experts feel
uncomfortable discussing the issue in public, but all agree sex
toys are likely to add to the overall phthalate level present in
adults, and in the case of pregnant women, might affect an
unborn child.
Scientists are beginning to better understand how phthalates enter our bodies. One of the main channels may be the
food we eat. In one 2006 German study, three volunteers abstained from eating for 48 hours, drinking only mineral water,
while the levels of phthalates were measured in their urine.
Within the first 18 hours, levels of DEHP plummeted and
remained low for the remaining 30 hours, suggesting that food
was the main source.
“I am certain that food is the main exposure route for
DEHP, but spikes in phthalate levels seen in the study show
there are other exposure routes too,” said Dr Holger Koch, who
led the study. “We suspect phthalates are getting into food via
the plastics used in the various steps of food processing.”
TARRED WITH THE SAME BRUSH
Despite the emerging evidence, some in the chemicals
industry deny there is a problem. “The European Union has
confirmed that DEHP poses no general risk to human health,”
says industry website DEHP Information Centre, which is managed by the European Council for Plasticisers and Intermediates (ECPI), and represents the interests of producers including
Germany’s Oxea and Arkema of France.
But ECPI manager Maggie Saykali takes a more nuanced
approach, stressing a shift in Europe towards the safer
phthalates, such as DINP. “Scientific evidence repeatedly
shows that they are safe to use,” says Saykali. “The danger is
that all phthalates are being tarred with the same brush.”
Some producers have begun substituting higher risk
phthalates with those scientists think may pose less of a risk.
According to the Helsinki-based registration agency, DEHP
today makes up around 18 percent of phthalates in western
Europe, down from 42 percent in 1999. The use of DINP, which
has a longer chemical chain, is growing.
But even DINP -- manufactured by companies such as Germany’s BASF and U.S.-based ExxonMobil Chemical -- is not
beyond suspicion. “Scientific information regarding DINP ...
is either lacking or conflictual, but it cannot be excluded that
they pose a potential risk if used in toys and childcare
articles,” says the EU’s 2005 toys directive.
And even if phthalates such as DEHP are phased out by European manufacturers, it can still enter Europe in imported products
-- nearly two-thirds of which originate in Asia, mainly China.
“If a non-toy product is manufactured outside the EU and
imported, there’s very little protection -- a notification to
the authorities and not much more,” says Schaible of the EEB.
SNIP Scientists believe
phthalates could be
responsible for the drop in
male fertility over the past
few decades. REUTERS/
Thomas Peter
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SPECIAL REPORT - PHTHALATES
“The process to remove only a few very high-concern chemicals will take several decades at this pace... Decision-makers
proposed back in October 2008 a dozen substances to be
phased out, but measures will only be in place for some of
these by 2016.”
RIGHT TO KNOW
To protect European consumers in the meantime -- or help
people protect themselves if they are concerned about chemicals in their products -- the EU has instituted transparency
provisions, laws to make information about the chemical
composition of products available to any consumer who asks.
But Vito Buonsante of activist lawyers group ClientEarth
says these “right to know” laws were largely gutted of their
powers from the outset, due to pressure from industry lobbyists. And as the European Environmental Bureau’s study
shows, virtually nobody in the EU has even heard about that
right -- not the shoppers who are supposed to ask the questions, nor the retailers who are supposed to give the answers.
As well as sponsoring the lab testing, the EEB sent out 158
“right to know” requests to 60 European retailers between
April and August this year. More than half did not answer at
all, and only 22 percent gave a response that met the minimum standards laid down by the laws.
“In practice it is extremely complicated, even for companies
that want to comply, to find out about the presence of dangerous chemicals in the products we buy,” says Buonsante. “There
are fines foreseen for not providing the information, but so far
these provisions have been ignored.”
(Additional reporting by Michelle Martin in Berlin and
Dominique Vidalon in Paris)
Edited by Simon Robinson and Sara Ledwith
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Comments, queries and tips:
Simon Robinson
Sara Ledwith
Enterprise Editor, Europe, Middle East, Africa
Top News team, Europe, Middle East, Africa simon.robinson@thomsonreuters.com
sara.ledwith@thomsonreuters.com
Pete Harrison
EU Environment and Energy Correspondent
pete.harrison@thomsonreuters.com
COVER PHOTO: Items selected for phthalate level testing by the PiCA laboratory in Berlin, October 8, 2010. REUTERS/Thomas Peter
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