Reports of styrene as health risk are false – US trade group

21 August 2009 17:41  [Source: ICIS news]

HOUSTON (ICIS news)--A recent rash of rumours about styrene has falsely represented the packaging feedstock as a threat to human health, a trade group said on Friday.

The Virginia-based Styrene Information and Research Center (SIRC) said styrene is not a known human carcinogen, and that polystyrene plastic neither contains nor breaks down into bisphenol A (BPA).

Media reports following the presentation of an unpublished Japanese study at the American Chemical Society's national meeting in Washington DC incorrectly concluded that styrene posed such health risks, said SIRC executive director Jack Snyder.

The unpublished research, led by Katsuhiko Saido of Nihon University in Chiba, Japan, suggested that plastics - notably polystyrene - break down in the oceans, leaving products of their decomposition that include styrene monomer, dimers and trimers, Snyder said.

During the press conference, no mention was made of styrene’s potential carcinogenicity, nor was there any discussion of a relationship between polystyrene and BPA.

The confusion regarding styrene’s properties, which was repeated in various media outlets, comes only a week after a California superior court judge ordered the California Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment (OEHHA) not to proceed with its plan to list styrene as a cancer-causing agent under Proposition 65.

No authoritative body anywhere in the world considers styrene to be a known human carcinogen, said Snyder, who urged members of the media to consider this fact in their reports on the issue.

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By: Landon Feller
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