Phthalates in Plastics
A lot more than ever, folks are worried about how all the chemicals we’re exposed to are affecting our well being: among them a family of chemicals identified as phthalates, which are employed 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 chemical compounds that “may present a risk” to the environment or human wellness. That’s simply 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 may come across the evidence against them conflicting and inconclusive. And yet last year Congress took action, doing what Europe had already done: it banned particular phthalates in children’s toys.
Congress came under pressure to act due to the fact 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 wellness from the baby boys they gave birth to.
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