The Hypocrisy of Bombing Syria for Chemical Weapon Use When the FDA Allows Corporate AG to Poison US Citizens

I have no doubt that the Syrian administration used chemical weapons against the rebels in its ongoing battle to suppress the insurrection against their totalitarian regime. Apparently, nearly 1500 people died from what has been identified as a nerve gas attack.

It is absolutely abhorrent that a government would do this to its own people. I do not, however, think that we create change by use of weapons. Bombing Syria for killing their own citizens is not going to change things, but it will more than likely bring Iran into the conflict, which then brings Russia into the situation. This is a no-win for the US.

More than that, attacking anyone for using chemical weapons is complete hypocrisy. Our own government consistently allows corporations to poison Americans on a regular basis with chemicals known to be toxic, to cause cancers, and to disrupt the endocrine system.

Among the persistent organic pollutants (POPs) that contaminate our food supply are the following (Schafer and Kegley, 2002):

This class of chemical agents includes many organochlorine pesticides such as chlordane, dieldrin, DDT (and its main metabolite, DDE), aldrin, endrin, heptachlor, hexachlorobenzene, mirex, and toxaphene. POP chemicals targeted for international phase out also include industrial chemicals and byproducts of certain manufacturing processes and waste incineration such as polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), dioxins, and furans. 

The characteristics that make POPs chemicals unique also make them an urgent global environmental health problem. Because of their physical properties, these chemicals:

• persist in the environment for many years;
• concentrate in fatty tissues and bioaccumulate as they move up the food chain;
• travel long distances in global air and water currents, generally moving from tropical and temperate regions to concentrate in the northern latitudes; and
• have been linked with serious health effects in humans and other living organisms, even at very low exposures.

In just a few decades, POPs have spread throughout the global environment to threaten human health and damage land and water ecosystems.All living organisms on Earth now carry measurable levels of POPs in their tissues. POPs have been found in sea mammals at levels high enough to qualify their bodies as hazardous waste under US law [1], and evidence of POPs contamination in human blood and breast milk has been documented worldwide [2, 3].

The health risks from these chemicals are well-known (cancer, birth defects, endocrine disruption, and so on), yet the government (the Food and Drug Administration and the Environmental Protection Agency) allows their presence on the foods we consume. As one example, here are the allowable levels of DDT on the foods we might consume believing that we are eating healthily:

The smallest amount of DDT known to pose a risk to adults is 35 micrograms (10 mcg for children), yet an average American diet, not even including junk foods, can contain as much as 3,154 mcg of DDT, more than 90 times the amount known to present health risks.

Another class of toxic chemicals in the environment is engineered nanomaterials (NM), which "are already being used in sporting goods, tires, stain-resistant clothing, sunscreens, cosmetics, and electronics and will also be increasingly utilized in medicine for purposes of diagnosis, imaging, and drug delivery" (Nel, Xia,Madler, and Li, 2006). Further,

The main characteristic of NM is their size, which falls in the transitional zone between individual atoms or molecules and the corresponding bulk materials. This can modify the physicochemical properties of the material as well as create the opportunity for increased uptake and interaction with biological tissues. This combination of effects can generate adverse biological effects in living cells that would not otherwise be possible with the same material in larger form. 

And . . .

The biological impacts of NM and the biokinetics of nanoparticles are dependent on size, chemical composition, surface structure, solubility, shape, and aggregation. These parameters can modify cellular uptake, protein binding, translocation from portal of entry to the target site, and the possibility of causing tissue injury (4). At the target site, NM may trigger tissue injury by one or more mechanisms (Table 2). Potential routes of NM exposure include gastrointestinal tract (GIT), skin, lung, and systemic administration for diagnostic and therapeutic purposes. NM interactions with cells, body fluids, and proteins play a role in their biological effects and ability to distribute throughout the body. NM binding to proteins may generate complexes that are more mobile and can enter tissue sites that are normally inaccessible. Accelerated protein denaturation or degradation on the nanoparticle surface may lead to functional and structural changes, including interference in enzyme function (24). This damage could result from splitting of intramolecular or intramolecular bonds by catalytic chemistry on the material surface (Fig. 2).

 

Fig. 2. Possible mechanisms by which nanomaterials interact with biological tissue. Examples illustrate the importance of material composition, electronic structure, bonded surface species (e.g., metal-containing), surface coatings (active or passive), and solubility, including the contribution of surface species and coatings and interactions with other environmental factors (e.g., UV activation).

The real issue with these substances is that we know so very little about how they interact in the body and the ways they might disrupt our health (although we do know that most of them cause the formation of reactive oxygen species [ROS] that are associated with oxidative stress in cells). Yet there is no regulation on these substances.

The best known and most researched toxins in our food, water, and air are endocrine disruptors (EDs), such as estrogenic, antiandrogenic, or thyroid-disrupting agents. Combinations of EDs are known to produce synergistic effects even if the quantity if each chemical is low enough that they usually would not, by themselves, produce observable effects (Kortenkamp, 2007). Once again, however, very little is known about how mixtures of chemicals from different classes of EDs might affect our health.

While men seem to be more susceptible to the EDs (especially the xenoestrogens), women's cosmetics are filled with potentially and known to be harmful chemicals.

 

While there are many here that have potential toxicity, UV filters (sunscreen), found in many facial creams, are known endocrine disruptors, which can cause weight gain, birth defects, infertility, and cancer, among other things (see Schlumpf, et al, 2004; Heneweer, Muusse, van den Berg, and Sanderson, 2005).

A few months ago, a new study by Researchers from the School of Public Health at U.C. Berkeley (Liu, Hammond, and Rojas-Cheatham, 2013), published in Environmental Health Perspectives, gained a lot of media attention. Two previous studies had found high levels of lead and/or cadmium in lipsticks:

[T]wo other studies evaluated lead in eye shadows and lipsticks including a U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) study that detected lead in all tested lipsticks (Hepp et al. 2009) and a study (Al-Saleh et al. 2009) that identified several cosmetic products containing lead above 20 ppm, the FDA limit of lead as an impurity in color additives for cosmetics (U.S. FDA 2011). Studies conducted in other countries have also detected lead and cadmium in some lipstick samples (Adepoju-Bello et al. 2012; Brandao et al. 2012; Gondal et al. 2010; Solidum and Peji 2011).

In the present study, the researchers tested 32 drugstore and designer lipsticks and glosses for nine metals, including lead, aluminum, cadmium, chromium, and manganese - all of which may have cancer-causing or neurotoxic effects with exposure. The study found manganese, titanium, chromium, nickel, and aluminum in nearly every product, lead in 75 percent of the lipsticks, and cadmium in nearly half.

It's unclear what the health risks are here, although these substances are known to be toxic.

Perhaps the most pernicious substances (also EDs) are the phthalates, which research has linked to type 2 diabetes and childhood obesity, among other things. From US News and World Report (2012):

Found in everything from toys to perfume, phthalates belong to a class of chemicals called "endocrine disruptors," because they interfere with the body's hormone systems. Other chemicals in this category are Bisphenol A (BPA), which is used in plastic and canned foods, and was recently banned in baby bottles by the FDA, and parabens, commonly used to preserve personal care products. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has proposed adding eight types of phthalates and BPA to its list of chemicals that "may present an unreasonable risk of injury to human health or the environment" and has requested further study of these chemicals from the U.S. Office of Management and Budget's Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs. Like BPA, phthalates aren't always listed in a product's ingredients. In fact, phthalates are often grouped under the catch-all ingredient, "fragrance," rather than separately identified on cosmetic labeling.

A study presented at the Endocrine Society's annual meeting in Houston this summer showed a correlation between phthalates and childhood obesity. That study along with "hundreds of others in the last few years," according to the group, caused it to issue a forceful statement, calling for further federal regulation of endocrine-disrupting chemicals, which research suggests may interfere with healthy human development. Congress banned several phthalates in children's toys in 2008.

Strangely, there is considerable disconnect in the medical community about the FDA and regulation of these chemicals. Michael Roizen, an internist, anesthesiologist, and chair of the Cleveland Clinic's Wellness Institute (and co-author with Dr. Oz of the YOU series of health books), is quoted in the US News article saying, "If it was definitive, the FDA would have done something about it already." Yeah, sure, you betcha.

Taken together, all of these exposures to toxic substances likely is contributing to the increases in diabetes, obesity, cancers, and other potentially deadly illnesses.

With the failure of the FDA and the EPA to impose restrictions on these chemicals, our government is complicit in poisoning the US population, and since some of these chemicals have become ubiquitous environmental toxins, we are also poisoning the rest of the world. 

There is considerable hypocrisy in our government condemning other governments for poisoning their citizens when ours is doing the same, just more subtly, to its own citizens.

U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Lets Chemical Companies Decide If Their Chemicals Are Safe

One might be excused for thinking the Environmental Protection Agency, not unlike the FDA, is in the business of, you know, protecting. You'd be wrong. The EPA (again, not unlike the FDA) allows the chemical companies to tell us if their chemicals are safe (just as the FDA allows the pharmaceutical industry to tell them if their drugs are safe and effective).

This is NOT how it's supposed to work.

Is Weed Killer in Drinking Water Dangerous? Govt. Is Letting the Chemical Industry Come Up with the Answer

EPA officials claim chemical industry's own evidence is 'scientifically more robust' than independent research.

The Huffington Post Investigative Fund / By Danielle Ivory

Companies with a financial interest in a weed-killer sometimes found in drinking water paid for thousands of studies federal regulators are using to assess the herbicide’s health risks, records of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency show. Many of these industry-funded studies, which largely support atrazine’s safety, have never been published or subjected to an independent scientific peer review.

Meanwhile, some independent studies documenting potentially harmful effects on animals and humans are not included in the body of research the EPA deems relevant to its safety review, the Huffington Post Investigative Fund has found. These studies include many that have been published in respected scientific journals.

Even so, the EPA says that it would be “very difficult for someone to put a thumb on the scale” to slant the outcome.

Atrazine is one of the most widely used herbicides in the U.S. An estimated 76 million pounds of the chemical are sprayed on corn and other fields in the U.S. each year, sometimes ending up in rivers, streams, and drinking water supplies. It has been the focus of intense scientific debate over its potential to cause cancer, birth defects, and hormonal and reproductive problems. As the Huffington Post Investigative Fund reported in a series of articles last fall, the EPA failed to warn the public that the weed-killer had been found at levels above federal safety limits in drinking water in at least four states. Some water utilities are suing Syngenta to have it pay their costs of filtering the chemical.

Now the EPA is re-evaluating the health risks of atrazine, which was banned in the European Union in 2004 due to a lack of evidence to support its safe use. That ban includes Switzerland, where atrazine’s manufacturer, Syngenta, is headquartered. The EPA expects to announce results of its re-examination of the herbicide in September 2010. It could take action ranging from restrictions on its use on crops to an outright ban. Or it could permit continued use without additional restrictions.

The company, one of the world’s largest agribusinesses, says the chemical has been used safely for decades and restrictions could prove devastating to farmers who are heavily dependent on the inexpensive herbicide. Atrazine poses “no harm” to the general population or to drinking water supplies, said company spokesman Steven Goldsmith.

EPA records obtained by The Huffington Post Investigative Fund show that at least half of the 6,611 studies the agency is reviewing to help make its decision were conducted by scientists and organizations with a financial stake in atrazine, including Syngenta or its affiliated companies and research contractors.

More than 80 percent of studies on which the EPA are relying have never been published. This means that they have not undergone rigorous “peer review” by independent scientists, a customary method to ensure studies are credible and scientifically sound before they can be published in major journals.

At the same time several prominent studies by independent academic scientists in well-respected scientific journals -– showing negative reproductive effects of atrazine in animals and humans – are absent from the EPA’s list.

That finding may raise concerns about how the agency is doing its work. Rep. Henry Waxman, chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, which oversees environmental regulators, told the Investigative Fund, “it’s critically important that EPA use all of the information at its disposal.”

Agency scientists may review studies not on the list, but EPA senior policy analyst William Jordan said that the 6,611 studies are those considered “relevant to the assessment of atrazine.”

‘Not Just Atrazine’

EPA spokeswoman Betsaida Alcantara said the list was not exhaustive and that some studies may not be on the list because they were not given an eight-digit “master record identification number,” which the agency uses to keep track of studies. There is “no uniform practice” for assigning numbers to studies submitted by people other than those working for herbicide, fungicide or pesticide manufacturers, she added.

EPA officials said that with a limited budget the agency must rely heavily on research sponsored by parties with a stake in the outcome. The agency’s “test guidelines” governing how experiments are conducted -– the types and number of lab animals to be used, for instance. These provide sufficient safeguards against skewed results, officials said.

“Companies have a very strong incentive to follow the guidelines,” said EPA senior analyst Jordan. “We hope and think that we have written the guidelines with enough detail that it would be very difficult for someone to put a thumb on the scale, as it were, to slant the outcome, [or] to make something look safer than it is.

Jennifer Sass, a senior scientist specializing in health issues at the Natural Resources Defense Council, argues that relying on a company to test the safety of its own product – an “inherent conflict” of interest – is part of a larger pattern at the EPA. “It’s not just happening with atrazine,” she said.

Hundreds of herbicides, pesticides, and other chemicals are regulated by the EPA, whose decisions can have significant implications for public health and on the abilities of an array of multinational companies to earn billions of dollars in the U.S.

By law, industry influence often is built into the regulatory process of the federal government. At the Food and Drug Administration, for instance, clinical trials conducted by pharmaceutical companies are used to determine whether pills and devices work and are safe. Makers of pesticides, herbicides, and fungicides also must pay for studies on their products. If they meet agency rules for conducting the testing, the EPA must accept them.

The ‘Funding Effect’

But is industry-funded research always reliable? A pair of scientists funded by the National Science Foundation, the U.S. Department of Agriculture, and the EPA scrutinized a Syngenta-funded Canadian study –- one that is not on the EPA’s list. The scientists said they found numerous inaccuracies and misleading statements.

The scientists who questioned the study, University of South Florida biologists Jason Rohr and Krista McCoy, published their critique in the March 2010 issue of the journal Conservation Letters. In all, they tallied what they said were 122 inaccurate and 22 misleading statements, of which 96.5 percent appeared to support atrazine’s safety. The widely cited study focused on the herbicide’s effects on fish and other aquatic creatures.

Rohr and McCoy also asserted that the Canadian study, which was done in 2008, misrepresented more than 50 other studies. For example, it incorrectly suggested that only one scientist had demonstrated the chemical’s gender-altering effects on frogs. In fact, several other scientists demonstrated such effects.

The study dismissed one of Rohr’s papers as invalid, noting wrongly that the researcher had filtered atrazine out of a water tank while trying to assess the chemical’s effect on the aquatic organisms in the tank.

The Canadian study also misrepresented results, figures, and conclusions of other studies, according to the University of South Florida biologists.

Rohr, who served on an EPA advisory panel examining atrazine last year, told the Investigative Fund that he felt compelled “to set the record straight given the potential policy and environmental implications of these misconceptions and inaccuracies.”

The author of the Canadian study, University of Guelph (Ontario) biologist Keith Solomon, declined to respond to questions from the Investigative Fund about his financial ties to Syngenta, the company’s influence, or the inaccuracies and mischaracterizations the South Florida biologists said they had uncovered. Solomon noted that other scientists had come to similar conclusions, and that governments in the U.S. and Australia had not found any significant risk to creatures living in water.

While the critiqued study is not on the EPA’s list, several other studies by Solomon are.

Wendy Wagner, an expert in environmental policy at the University of Texas law school, said that the criticism of the Canadian study demonstrates a phenomenon sometimes referred to as “the funding effect.”

“It is next to impossible to squeeze all of the discretion out of a researcher, and when he has a strong incentive to find a particular result, the result can be unreliable and badly biased research,” said Wagner, an authority on the influence of politics and special interests on science. “There is compelling evidence that bias still pervades sponsored pesticide research – research that presumably is done in accord with EPA’s guidelines.”

Meanwhile, some independently funded academic research published in major scientific journals is missing from the list of papers the EPA is using to make its decisions on atrazine. Absent are studies published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Environmental Health Perspectives, and Nature. Many works by independent academic scientists such as Tyrone Hayes and Rohr – who have demonstrated a range of potential reproductive and hormonal effects of the chemical – are not on the list.

Some peer-reviewed studies from prestigious journals fail to meet the agency’s standards, said EPA analyst Jordan, citing as an example work by scientists such as Hayes, who recently found that low doses of atrazine could turn male frogs into female frogs.

Jordan explained that the agency couldn’t rely on Hayes’ and the other scientists’ research in part because the government lacked protocols for testing chemicals on frogs. So the EPA developed those guidelines and asked Syngenta to study the issue. The company’s researchers reported that they were unable to replicate Hayes’ findings. Jordan said the Syngenta study “superceded” Hayes’ and the other scientists’ studies. The EPA, on its Website, currently states that atrazine causes no such adverse effects on frogs and that “no additional testing is warranted” to address the issue.

Environmental groups have in the past criticized the EPA for allowing chemical companies to wield disproportionate influence over regulatory decisions. While evaluating the safety of atrazine in 2003, the EPA allowed representatives from Syngenta to participate in closed-door negotiations with the agency, according to documents obtained by the NRDC in 2004.

Read the rest of this article.

Tags: Environment, xenoestrogens, Science, research, government, Huffington Post, Investigative Fund, Danielle Ivory, endocrine disruptors, weed-killer, atrazine, herbicide, EPA, Environmental Protection Agency, drinking water, chemical industry

60 Minutes - Phthalates: Are They Safe?

The answer is NO - endocrine disruptors are trashing birds, fish, and animals - including humans, and especially boys. These things need to be banned, and knowing that will never happen, we need to avoid them as much as possible.

Watch the video, or read the transcript below.

Phthalates: Are They Safe?

Chemicals Are Found in Soft Plastic Products We Use Every Day

(CBS) More than ever, people are worried about how all the chemicals we're exposed to are affecting our health: among them a family of chemicals known as phthalates, which are used in everyday plastics.

Not plastic bottles of water or soda, but soft and flexible things like shower curtains. They're also in shampoos and carpeting.

Phthalates are so ubiquitous, we all have traces in our bodies.

Recently the Environmental Protection Agency, EPA, put phthalates on a list of chemicals that "may present a risk" to the environment or human health. That's because they disrupt hormone activity and some preliminary studies show that they may be causing a slow and steady demasculinizing of men.

But if phthalates were on trial, a jury might find the evidence against them conflicting and inconclusive. And yet last year Congress took action, doing what Europe had already done: it banned certain phthalates in children's toys.

Full Segment: Phthalates - Are They Safe?
Web Extra: Benefits of Phthalates
Web Extra: How Much is Too Much?
Web Extra: Other Phthalates
Web Extra: Danger Ahead?

Congress came under pressure to act because of a study by Dr. Shanna Swan, an epidemiologist at the University of Rochester Medical School. Dr. Swan compared the levels of phthalates in a group of pregnant women with the health of the baby boys they gave birth to.

Swan told "60 Minutes" correspondent Lesley Stahl she found that the higher the level of phthalates in the mother's urine during pregnancy, the greater the problems occurred in young boys.

Asked what she found in babies, Swan said, "We found that the baby boys were in several subtle ways less completely masculine."

Dr. Howard Snyder, a pediatric urologist at Children's Hospital in Philadelphia, says Swan's findings line up with what he's seeing in newborn baby boys: an alarming increase in deformed sex organs.

Dr. Snyder operated on one-year-old Griffin to correct something called "hypospadias," a birth defect that causes problems in urination.

"He's a healthy little guy who's, I think, going to get through the rest of life aiming without any difficulty at all," Snyder told Stahl.

"We hear that there are more and more and more cases of hypospadias. Are you seeing a lot?" Stahl asked.

"Thirty, 40 years ago, the best data we had then was that hypospadias occurred in about one in every 300 live male births. It's up to now about one in 100. So there's been a threefold increase," Snyder explained.

There's also been a two-fold increase in another abnormality: un-descended testicles. Snyder says something seems to be interfering in the womb with the production of testosterone, causing the male organs to form improperly. And he suspects it may be phthalates.

"You're moving in on these chemicals," Stahl remarked. "You don't think whatever we're seeing is smoking or diet or something else?"

"I think it's the chemical exposure that are most telling," Snyder replied.

He points to studies beyond Shanna Swan's that seem to link phthalates to low sperm counts and low testosterone levels in adult males.

"There's just too much incremental data that has built up to be ignored. I think it's a real phenomenon. I really, honestly do," Snyder said.

Look around Dr. Snyder's hospital and you see how phthalates can make their way into our bodies. They're in the IV bags and the tubing for instance. When premature babies - hooked up like this - were studied, researchers found that their phthalate levels soared.

Who would've thought chemicals embedded in plastic leach out. Well they do, in small amounts. But studies are beginning to suggest that even small amounts can have an effect. If it is shown definitively that phthalates are dangerous, it won't be easy to get rid of them.

To show us just how pervasive phthalates are in our lives, Dr. Swan took us through a suburban house, sniffing, squirting and squeezing our way around, looking for flexible plastic: things that typically contain phthalates, like vinyl raincoats, the bathroom shower curtain and the rubber duckies.

It turns out they're also in things like car dashboards, steering wheels, gearshifts and even that "new car" smell.

Phthalates make fragrances linger longer - whether in cars, or in air fresheners.

Phthalates get inside us in a variety of ways, for instance, from products we put on our skin: they help lotions spread and women's make-up retain its color.

Swan says cosmetics alone could explain why women have higher levels of phthalates than men.

Swan told Stahl phthalates can also be found in lipstick, hairspray, nail polish and nail polish remover.

If you want to know if something you're using has phthalates, it's hard to find out: there's no requirement they be listed on labels. There are so many products with phthalates in the average home, Dr. Swan says they leak out in measurable amounts.

"We've measured indoor air and it does contain phthalates, as does the dust in your vacuum cleaner bag." And, Swan says, we're breathing it.

We also eat phthalates which have been found in meat. In fact, food could be our biggest source of them: milk, possibly from the plastic tubing at dairy farms. And according to government regulators, they're in tap water, tainted by industrial waste.

But before you start throwing out everything in your house, listen to Cal Dooley, president of the American Chemistry Council, an industry lobbying group.

Asked if phthalates are safe, Dooley told Stahl, "We believe they are absolutely safe. And if you look at every regulatory agency that evaluated the safety of phthalates, they have all determined that they are, in fact, safe for their intended use, the way they're being used in consumer products today."

But then came the headlines that read like a parent's worst nightmare: "Chemicals Feminizing Males" and "More Birth Defects Seen in Boys." Congress reacted, passing that law on phthalates in toys.

Rick Woldenberg is feeling the impact. He runs a toy manufacturing company called Learning Resources outside Chicago.

"We threw away perfectly good merchandise," he told Stahl.

He's had to throw away 3,000 toys and he has remade the rubber duckies and plastic ice cream without the offending phthalates. But what about a child's telescope in his inventory?

"It doesn't have phthalates in it," Woldenberg said. "Or, if it does, it would be on a small part on the inside. No one's gonna eat the telescope."

And yet under the law he's obliged to spend tens of thousands of dollars to test every single product in his inventory for the phthalates. Testing the telescope alone will cost him $8,600.

"So, even if it's not pliable, even if you just know intuitively that phthalates are not in this thing, you still have to have it tested?" Stahl asked.

"Not only that, we have to test even the components that are inside the toy. Even the stuff that no human will ever see," he replied.

Woldenberg says the law is good intentions run amok, and he points out that Congress overruled the findings of the CPSC, the Consumer Product Safety Commission, and the Food and Drug Administration, which say the levels we're exposed to every day are safe.

The CPSC, which studied phthalates in toys twice, even had volunteers chew on them to see if phthalates oozed out. So why all the alarm bells? It all started with experiments on rats.

Dr. Richard Sharpe in Edinburgh Scotland, one of the leading phthalate researchers in the world, exposed pregnant rats to phthalates and produced a string of abnormalities in their male offspring.

"We see un-descended testes. We see this penis abnormality, hypospadias. We see smaller testes in adulthood, which means lower sperm counts," he told Stahl.

"So by giving pregnant rats phthalates you're inducing some of the same problems that human males are having and that you're seeing?" she asked.

"Yes," Dr. Sharpe replied.

There have been hundreds of studies on rats with similar findings.

But when Sharpe tried the same experiment on animals much closer to humans than rats - monkeys - he got an entirely different response. He tested phthalates on pregnant marmoset monkeys. And their offspring? Completely normal.

According to Sharpe, the monkeys had none of the effects found in humans or rats.

"If someone were to tell me there was a rat study that showed one thing, and monkey study that showed another thing, as a human, I would think that I'm closer to the monkey. I would lean toward that study, right?" Stahl remarked.

"Yeah. I would say take the species that's closest to man, and place more emphasis on that," Sharpe said.

So here's where we stand: a rat study on one hand, contradicted by a monkey study on the other. Then there's a string of new human studies that link phthalates to problems with masculinity, but each one of them is described as "small and preliminary." Even Dr. Swan, whose study led to Congress banning the phthalates in toys, speaks with uncertainty.

Asked if she's convinced phthalates are harmful to humans," Swan told Stahl, "I'm convinced that they pose a substantial possibility of harm. I cannot conclude they are harmful without confirmation of my study and additional data."

She says she needs more data to be sure, and yet she supports the congressional action on toys.

"The Consumer Product Safety Commission said that these toys have minimal to non-existent risk for these children," Stahl remarked.

"I don't think we have the data to conclude that," Swan replied.

"But they're saying you don't have the data to say the other thing, either: that they're harmful," Stahl pointed out.

"We have data of harm for the fetus; we have data of harm to a nursing infant - one study," Swan said.

Asked if the CPSC knows everything she does regarding the research, Swan replied, "I assume so."

"So, how can you look at the same data and come out with such different conclusions?" Stahl asked.

"I think that the interpretation of data is difficult and changing. And at each point in time we have to decide 'What is the action we as a society want to take. Do we want to be more cautious? Do we want to be less cautious?'" Swan said.

Some manufacturers have chosen "more cautious." Cosmetics maker Avon, Johnson & Johnson and S.C. Johnson - on their own initiative - are taking all phthalates out of their products.

Asked if he thinks there's a panic over phthalates, Cal Dooley of the American Chemistry Council, said, "No, I don't think there's a panic."

What would he call it?

"Well, there are some consumers out there that have some concerns about our products. And we respect that," Dooley replied.

"I guess what I'm asking is, is the word 'phthalate,' does it have such a stigma that companies are going to demand you find alternatives 'cause they're too afraid the people won't buy their products?" Stahl asked.

"No, we're not concerned about that," Dooley replied. "We understand that consumers really value the products that contain phthalates; the market is still strong there. We're going to continue to produce 'em."

So while scientists and the EPA search for a definitive answer on whether phthalates are harmful or not, the question for the rest of us is: should we take precautions now?

"If I said to you, 'Are phthalates harmful to humans?' what would you say?" Stahl asked Dr. Sharpe.

"I don't know. It's as simple as that," he replied.

But he has advised women to take precautions.

Sharpe said, "Well, I think that the public understandably get a bit fed up with people, like myself or other people saying, 'Well, look, you know, these chemicals might cause effects. But, on the other hand, they might not.' And they say, 'Well, look, what can I do for my baby in case they do?'"

"So don't use body creams. Don't go out and spray insecticide in your garden. Don't even do painting in the house. Get your husband to do it," he added.

"Phthalates are in all those things?" Stahl asked.

"I'm not saying it's phthalates," he replied. "I'm saying that what you want to do is avoid environmental chemicals in total as much as you can."

Tags: 60 Minutes, Phthalates, Are They Safe?, Chemicals Are Found in Soft Plastic Products We Use Every Day, endocrine disruptors, xenoestrogens, plastics, Health, Environment, toxic, Environmental Protection Agency, Dr. Shanna Swan

Bispehnol-A Leaches from 'Microwave Safe' Products

I'm posting this everywhere I can -- I've been saying that microwave plastics are not safe for years, based on common sense about how plastics work, but now there seems to be some proof. PLEASE spread this info as much as possible.

Hat tip to revere at Effect Measure for posting this first.

Tests find chemical after normal heating of 'microwave safe' plastics

By Susanne Rust and Meg Kissinger of the Journal Sentinel

Posted: Nov. 15, 2008

Products marketed for infants or billed as "microwave safe" release toxic doses of the chemical bisphenol A when heated, an analysis by the Journal Sentinel has found.

The newspaper had the containers of 10 items tested in a lab - products that were heated in a microwave or conventional oven. Bisphenol A, or BPA, was found to be leaching from all of them.

The amounts detected were at levels that scientists have found cause neurological and developmental damage in laboratory animals. The problems include genital defects, behavioral changes and abnormal development of mammary glands. The changes to the mammary glands were identical to those observed in women at higher risk for breast cancer.

The newspaper's test results raise new questions about the chemical and the safety of an entire inventory of plastic products labeled as "microwave safe." BPA is a key ingredient in common household plastics, including baby bottles and storage containers. It has been found in 93% of Americans tested.

The newspaper tests also revealed that BPA, commonly thought to be found only in hard, clear plastic and in the lining of metal food cans, is present in frozen food trays, microwaveable soup containers and plastic baby food packaging.

Food companies advise parents worried about BPA to avoid microwaving food in plastic containers, especially those with the recycling No. 7 stamped on the bottom.

But the Journal Sentinel's testing found BPA leaching from containers with different recycling numbers, including Nos. 1, 2 and 5. (Susanne Rust, Meg Kissinger, Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel)

Read the whole article, including the denial of risk by the Campbell Soup Co.

Tags: Bispehnol-A, Leaches, Microwave Safe, Products, BPA, food, Health, toxic, breast cancer, xenoestrogens, Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel