Phthalates: You’re being exposed to them and so is your baby.
Phthalates. The name sounds so harmless, yet how harmless is it really?
According to the CDC, “phthalates are a group of chemicals used to make plastics more flexible and harder to break” (CDC, 2017). Phthalates are found in “cosmetics, shampoos, medical bags and tubing, food and beverage packaging, construction products, children’s toys, clothing, and car products” (Zong et al., 2015). Basically, everywhere! Phthalates are found almost everywhere because society is so dependent on them. The American Chemistry Council states that “the phthalates widely selected to soften plastics are used because of their strong performance, durability and stability. Because these phthalates plasticizers are bound into the material in which they are added, they do not easily migrate out of the product or evaporate” (American Chemistry Council, 2018). The reason why we are so dependent on phthalates is because of their benefits. This is part of the reason why studying phthalates is important; humans are being exposed to these chemicals on an everyday basis. The good news is that the body is able to convert phthalates into metabolites, which is released through urine (CDC, 2017). The bad news is that phthalates can still have a negative effect on human health.
Not only should the average consumer be aware of the omnipresence of phthalates, but pregnant women should be especially concerned. Reason being, phthalate exposures in pregnant women have been linked to pregnancy loss (Mu et al., 2015) and shorter pregnancy (Latini et al., 2003). Infants are being exposed to phthalates through their mother’s exposure. The exposure infants have to phthalates has also been linked to shorter anogenital distance (AGD) (Swan et al., 2014), and vulnerability to testicular development (Lottrup et al., 2005). Infants are already so defenseless because their tiny bodies are just starting to develop so why is it that we’re pumping another chemical into the environment that lessens the infant’s chance of living a normal life? Pregnant women and infants aren’t the only vulnerable group that are being negatively affected by phthalates; young children are too.
Even though I don’t have any children of my own, as someone who has worked in childcare, I know how important the first few years of a child’s life is to the rest of their childhood development and adult life. Unfortunately, for children between the ages of 0 and 12 years of age, prenatal exposure to phthalates has been associated with poorer cognitive and behavioral outcomes (Ejaredar et al., 2015). Once again, another reason why we should be questioning whether the costs of phthalates are really worth the benefits.
How are children supposed to be the future if there’s chemicals like phthalates that are hindering their development?
Some would argue that we need to ban every type of phthalate right away. But some would argue that unfortunately, this isn’t realistic in the society that we live in and that any ban towards harmful chemicals may be a very small step but a small step towards the right direction, nevertheless. For example, in 2017, CNN reported that “the US Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) voted Wednesday to ban five kinds of phthalate chemicals from these products (toys and child care products)” (Christensen, 2017). This wasn’t the first ban of its kind against phthalates in child-used materials. “In 2013 the Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act limited some use of these chemicals in toys and other children’s articles. This latest vote puts eight phthalates off limits for children’s product makers” (Christensen, 2017). Even though there are more than eight types of phthalates, it takes a lot of research to prove that even just any one chemical is unsafe. Therefore, a ban on eight chemicals is definitely a step towards the right direction, especially given the fact that this ban will benefit those most vulnerable to phthalates: infants and children.
Besides toys, there are other ways that infants, children, and adults can still be exposed to phthalates. This includes “plastic bags, garden hoses, inflatable recreational toys, blood-storage containers, intravenous tubing, and some pharmaceutical and pesticide products” among household and personal-care items such as “vinyl flooring, adhesives, detergents, lubricating oils, automotive plastics, plastic clothing, raincoats, soap, shampoo, hair spray, and nail polish” (Masterson and Hamilton, 2009). Even though toys and children’s items are on the front line of what a child will be exposed to first, there is still a lot of other ways that children can still be exposed to phthalates. Dust being one of them. A meta-analysis done on indoor dust concluded that “phthalates were measured in the highest concentrations in indoor dust, several orders of magnitude above the other chemical classes” (Mitro et al., 2016).
Since phthalates are so prominent in many household items as well as indoor dust, it’s no wonder why pregnant women inadvertently expose their fetuses to these chemicals.
One of the biggest challenges of motherhood is trying to have a normal, healthy pregnancy in order to give birth to a normal, healthy baby. It was once believed that the placenta was able to filter out harmful chemicals so that they wouldn’t reach the fetus. The production of new chemicals in such a quick amount of time has unfortunately created a challenge for the placenta. In 2016, a PBS News Hour article stated that “there are more than 80,000 chemicals registered for use today, many of which haven’t been studied for safety by any government agency” (Scialla, 2016). The Toxic Substances Control Act of 1976 was supposed to protect us from such chemicals but “public health and environmental advocates protested for decades that TSCA was too old and too weak to shield Americans from toxic chemicals” (Scialla, 2016). Fortunately, in 2016 President Obama signed the Frank R. Lautenberg Chemical Safety for the 21st Century Act which “requires EPA to test tens of thousands of unregulated chemicals currently on the market, and the roughly 2,000 new chemicals introduced each year, but quite slowly. The EPA will review a minimum of 20 chemicals at a time, and each has a seven-year deadline. Industry may then have five years to comply after a new rule is made” (Scialla, 2016). Critics of this law argue that “at that pace it could take centuries for the agency to finish its review” (Scialla, 2016). The placenta isn’t able to keep up with all the new chemicals that we have created, which is why “these chemicals are able to cross the placental barrier, and that fetal exposure is closely related to maternal exposure” (Latini et al., 2003). Man has always had an obsession with being able to conquer nature. Now nature is showing us that our obsession has gone so over the top that we are ruining the biological functions that our bodies provide us in order to protect us.
We have all heard the saying, “you are what you eat”. But we should also consider saying “you are what your food is packaged in”.
Phthalates are present in food packaging and so a published 2011 study wanted “to evaluate the contribution of food packaging to exposure” in which they “measured urinary BPA and phthalate metabolites before, during, and after a ‘fresh foods’ dietary intervention” (Rudel et al., 2011). Their findings were that “urine levels of BPA and DEHP metabolites decreased significantly during the fresh foods intervention” with “reduced GM (geometric mean) concentrations of BPA by 66% and DEHP metabolites by 53–56%” (Rudel et al., 2011). Therefore, the less packaging our food comes in, the less exposed to phthalates we will be. If a pregnant woman wants to reduce the amount of phthalates that she could expose her fetus to, she should choose to eat fresher foods that have little to no packaging. This finding is important because our environment greatly benefits from minimal packaging for the goods we buy. The less packaging something comes in, the less waste we generate. Otherwise, our waste might end up in either landfills, watersheds, or our oceans. Part of the ever-increasing issues we are globally facing is how to divert waste from going into our landfills and how to clean up all the trash and plastic in our oceans. Therefore, avoiding packaged foods can not only reduce the amount of exposure we get to phthalates, but it can also help out the environment.
The Columbia Center for Children’s Environmental Health recommends using plastics numbered 2, 4, and 5 “which are less likely to contain phthalates” and avoid plastics numbered 3 because they are “made with polyvinyl chloride (PVC) which is often softened with phthalates and should be avoided” (CCEH, 2018). They also recommend checking labels on products and avoid phthalate containing products that are sometimes in plastic toys, food containers, cosmetics, air fresheners, and perfumes (CCEH, 2018). These tips are really useful in helping us reduce exposures to phthalates but unfortunately are only a small part of the solution.
Adam Voiland, a writer for the U.S. News & World Report states that “studies show indoor air tends to have higher loads (of phthalates) than outdoor, most likely because countless household items and building materials contain phthalates that can end up in dust and air” (Voiland, 2018). Once we have to start looking for alternatives in items such as building materials, that’s when it may start to get expensive to live a phthalate-free life. For homeowners who either get to choose what their house is made out of or are able to browse for homes with materials that are phthalate-free, this isn’t as big of an inconvenience. On the other hand, there’s people like myself. I can barely afford my apartment, and I probably pay one of the lowest rent prices there is in Austin. I know I’m not the only person who is in the same boat as I am. Even if I knew that my building’s material was made out phthalate containing items, it would be very hard for me to economically be able to move out of my apartment just because I have very little options due to income. Fortunately, income is only a buffer for me until I am able to graduate and hopefully receive an income that allows me to not have to compromise my health. Yet, not everyone has the opportunity to raise their income significantly during their lifetime and so some people are stuck having to live in an environment that is detrimental to their health.
If a person’s income allows, building materials, food packaging, and items such as plastic toys have one thing in common: these are things that are under our control if we are homeowners that do the household shopping. Unfortunately, there is one place where people may not have the chance to have a say in alternatives to phthalates, and that is a hospital. A website post on Tox Town, a project of the U.S. National Library of Medicine, states that “people at the highest risk of exposure to phthalates are dialysis patients, hemophiliacs, or people who received blood transfusions from sources that use tubing or containers made with phthalates” (Tox Town, 2017). There are mothers who have maybe done everything they could during pregnancy to not expose their fetus to phthalates, but if their baby has the misfortune of needing medical attention that requires phthalate-containing medical equipment once born, then this can be disempowering. The same goes for children and adults. People in need of medical attention very rarely have the choice to be treated with toxic chemical-free equipment. We live in a society where we have to compromise one necessary thing in exchange for another.
It would take many years and much regulation to rid ourselves of phthalates because of their use in so many of our everyday products. Some people can reduce their exposure to phthalates by doing simple steps like changing the way they shop, but unfortunately, not everyone has the luxury to change what type of materials their house is built with or with what type of materials their necessary medical equipment is made out of. The empowering thing is that we are human beings that are capable of coming up with solutions to our problems and so hopefully there will be a point in our future where toxic chemicals will be a thing of the past.
