US chemical chief slams California phthalates ban

15 October 2007 20:14  [Source: ICIS news]

WASHINGTON (ICIS news)--US chemical industry officials charged on Monday that California’s enactment of a phthalates ban in children’s toys is an unsound result of fear politics, but California legislators said they will press for a nationwide ban.

 

California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger on Sunday signed into law a bill that bans the use of certain phthalates in toys, feeding and care products for infants. The law takes effect on 1 January.

 

American Chemistry Council President Jack Gerard expressed “deep regret” over Schwarzenegger’s action, saying the California phthalates ban “is the product of the politics of fear”.

 

“It is not good science and it is not good government,” Gerard said of the ban law.

 

“Thorough scientific reviews in this country and in Europe have found these toys safe for children to use,” Gerard said. “California businesses will now be obliged to take products off the shelves that their customers need and want.”

 

Sponsored by Assemblywoman Fiona Ma (Democrat-San Francisco), the law bars the manufacture, sale and distribution of child-care products containing di-(2-ethylhexyl) phthalate (DEHP), dibutyl phthalate (DBP), benzyl butyl phthalate (BBP), diisononyl phthalate (DINP), diisodecyl phthalate (DIDP) or di-n-octyl phthalate (DnOP) in concentrations exceeding 0.1%.

 

The statute applies to all products “designed or intended by the manufacturer to facilitate sleep, relaxation, or the feeding of children, or to help children with sucking or teething.”

 

Ma championed the bill in the California legislature, arguing that the targeted phthalates interfere with the human hormone system and have been linked to reproductive defects, premature births and breast cancer.

 

Noting that other countries already have banned or are phasing out the use of phthalates in child-care items, Ma said on Monday that she is launching a campaign for a US national ban on the substances.

 

Nick Hardeman, a spokesman for Ma, said the assemblywoman will work with environmental advocacy groups and other state legislators in hopes of getting other states to enact similar bans.

 

“Ideally, we would like to see the US Consumer Product Safety Commission [CPSC] take action against these phthalates,” Hardeman said.  “If Assemblywoman Ma’s campaign with other states can jump-start the CPSC to act, then everyone would be better off.”

 

Hardeman said state legislators in Oregon, New York and Maryland are considering phthalates prohibitions.

 

Gerard warned that the California ban on phthalates puts at risk the state’s long-term plans to “address chemical health and safety issues in a rational and science-based way”.

By: Joe Kamalick
+1 713 525 2653

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