US phthalates ban in children's toys looms

The vinyl countdown

01 October 2008 17:53  [Source: ICB]

The US government has issued temporary and permanent bans on certain plasticizers in children's toys. But will the temporary bans also become permanent?

MORE THAN 40 years ago, a young Dustin Hoffman was advised that plastics were the future, in the movie The Graduate. Today, he might have been advised to enter a different field as a new US law prepares to ban phthalates in children's toys by February 2009.

Phthalates are liquids added to plastic products such as vinyl to make them soft and flexible. But Congress, concerned by a rash of safety recalls for children's toys in 2007, has passed the Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act of 2008 to keep excessive amounts of certain substances out of children's products.

The law, signed by President George W. Bush on August 14, strengthens the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) and enacts a permanent ban on three phthalates and a temporary ban on three others from comprising more than 0.1% of any children's product for ages 12 and under. The CPSC will review the phthalates under the interim ban to determine if a permanent blocking is necessary.

ACC FIGHTS BACK

The American Chemistry Council (ACC), which campaigned against banning any phthalates from children's products, set up a website to inform consumers about the utility of phthalates and to assure the public that they pose no health risks. The ACC was disappointed with the legislation once Congress passed it, although the chemical trade association was pleased with some of the reforms for the CPSC.

"ACC supports a strong and robust CPSC that is well funded and well staffed and can address questions about consumer and toy safety," says Sharon Kneiss, ACC vice president of products. "We all certainly share a mutual interest in the need to protect the health of children. Our children's health and safety is too important to rush through product restrictions without understanding their full consequences, and the ACC believes that restricting phthalates from children's products, when they have been deemed safe for use in those products by the CPSC, will do nothing to protect children's health."

Congress had no scientific evidence to ban phthalates from children's toys and products, Kneiss added, and US and European regulatory agencies have cleared the use of phthalates in such cases in the past.

CALIFORNIA LEADS THE BAN

The ban on phthalates came from the Senate, which included the provision in its version of the Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act. Senator Dianne Feinstein (Democrat, California) had championed the phthalates ban, arguing that the chemicals have been linked to health problems, particularly in reproductive organs. The state of California banned phthalates in children's toys in 2007.

"I believe this legislation is important as the first national effort to begin to exercise a precautionary principle in the use of chemicals as additives to products that affect human health. It is my belief that chemical additives should not be placed in products that can impact health adversely until they are tested and found to be benign," Feinstein said in the debate over the bill.

"We've already seen evidence that phthalates can interfere with the natural functioning of the hormone system, and that they can cause reproductive abnormalities and result in the early onset of puberty," she added. "I'm confident that when more science comes in, it will prove that all phthalates are harmful to children and should be permanently banned."

The House of Representatives did not raise the issue of phthalates in its version of the bill, but the final version banned content of more than 0.1% of di-(2 ethylhexyl) phthalate (DEHP), dibutyl phthalate (DBP), or benzyl butyl phthalate (BBP) in children's products.

The bill further imposed a temporary ban on concentrations of more than 0.1% of di-isononyl phthalate (DINP), di-isodecyl phthalate, or di-n-octyl phthalate until further review by the CPSC.

Representative Joe Barton (Republican, Texas), the ranking member of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, fought against the inclusion of the phthalates ban in the final bill but ultimately agreed to it.

Barton pointed out that strengthening the CPSC set a national baseline for reviewing children's products, instead of leaving parents to sort through a hodgepodge of state and local laws on the matter.

"We also reached a sensible compromise on the use of phthalates that every member of the conference committee can support," Barton said. "Nobody wants our kids to be the guinea pigs in a quest for better living through chemistry, but it's also imperative that we use unbiased, confirmable science to sort out the real dangers from the mythical ones."

EXXONMOBIL FIGHTS

ExxonMobil Chemical, headquartered in Houston, Texas, led the campaign against a ban on phthalates. ExxonMobil is a major manufacturer of DINP, the phthalate most prevalent in toys.

The final law ended up with a temporary ban on DINP, which the chemical industry argues is not harmful to humans in the concentrations that are found in items such as plastic squeaky toys.

The company did not respond to requests for comment, but the White House urged Congress to include a ban on phthalates during debate on the bill. Keith Hennessey, director of the National Economic Council, wrote to Congress to argue against a ban.

"Banning a product before a conclusive, scientific determination is reached is short-sighted and may result in the introduction of unregulated substitute chemicals that harm children's health," Hennessey wrote.

In published statements, ExxonMobil has pointed out that the CPSC has found no reason to ban phthalates in toys in the past.

The company quotes CPSC statements in 2003 that soft plastic toys pose no threat to children's health, as well as staff findings in 2004 that caution against the risk of removing DINP from children's toys. Weaker or brittle plastics without DINP may pose a choking hazard to children, according to a CPSC statement.

The federal government backed recalls of children's products in 2007 largely as a result of high concentrations of lead in toys and not due to any phthalates present in the products.

The Breast Cancer Fund, a nonprofit organization based in San Francisco, California, had lobbied heavily in favor of the ban on phthalates, arguing that exposure to the chemicals disrupts hormones in humans.

"Phthalates are considered to be endocrine disruptors because of their complex effects on several hormonal systems, including the estrogen and androgen hormone systems," the organization reported in its 2008 State of Evidence report.

"The endocrine-disrupting properties of this class of chemicals have been well established in the male offspring of mother rats who had been treated with phthalates while pregnant," stated the Breast Cancer Fund in its report. "Abnormalities reported included nipple retention, shortened ano-genital distance and increased cryptorchidism (undescended testes)."

However, the report pointed largely to studies on DEHP, DDP and BBP - the three phthalates banned by the new consumer product safety law - and did not mention DINP at all.

The EU enacted a temporary ban on the six phthalates in 1999, which it made permanent in 2005. In line with current US guidelines, the EU banned the three restricted phthalates from inclusion in any children's products but banned the other three from any product that children would intentionally put in their mouths.

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By: Mickey McCarter
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