Category: Chemicals

Walmart discounts science on flame retardants

Walmart has announced that, starting June 1, it will begin testing and rejecting its retail inventory for polybrominated diethyl ethers (PBDEs), heretofore used in flame retardants — even though there’s no evidence of harm, plenty of evidence of effectiveness and no government action against PBDEs. The Washington Post labeled this sort of action “retail regulation.”

Bloomberg: PCBs in schools not so dangerous

Faced with a $700 million remediation effort, Mayor Bloomberg says school kids are exposed to more PCBs from a tuna fish sandwich than the light fixtures in city schools. But when cash-strapped New Yorkers turned to local waterways for food in 2009, the Mayor said “common sense” dictated that anglers shouldn’t eat fish from PCB-contaminated water.

The Wrong Scary Toy Story

By Steve Milloy
December 08, 2008, FoxNews.com

One in three toys was found to have “significant levels of toxic chemicals, including lead, flame retardants and arsenic,” according to a new report from the anti-chemical industry. But don’t let the report’s political agenda distract you from very real toy safety issues.

In what is pitched as its second annual “consumer guide to toxic chemicals in toys,” the Michigan-based Ecology Center reported that, among the 1,500 toys that it tested: 20 percent contained lead, with 3.5 percent exceeding the current recall threshold for lead-based paint; 2.9 percent contained bromine at levels greater than 1,000 parts per million (ppm), indicating the use of brominated flame-retardants; 18.9 percent contained detectable levels of arsenic, with 1.4 percent containing greater than 100 ppm; 2.4 percent contained detectable levels of cadmium; 4.2 percent contained detectable levels of mercury, with 1 percent containing levels greater than 100 ppm; and 27 percent of toys were made with polyvinyl chloride (PVC) plastic.

All these chemicals and ppm-levels may sound scary, but what’s the reality?

First, it’s important to keep in mind that there are no reports of any children being harmed by toys containing brominated flame retardants, arsenic, cadmium, mercury or PVC. Brominated flame retardants, in fact, help keep children safe by slowing the burn rate in case of a fire.

That no documented harm has been caused by these chemicals in toys comes as little surprise since, as the basic principle of toxicology goes, “it is the dose that makes the poison.” All substances even air, water, sugar and salt, are “toxic” at sufficiently high exposures. All of us come into contact with potentially toxic substances every day in our air, water, food, clothes, jewelry, and personal care products, for example, but not at levels that cause harm. The Ecology Center made no effort to explore whether and to what extent children are actually exposed to the chemicals detected — much less did it establish that any such exposure is harmful.

The Ecology Center aims to scare parents merely based on the mere detection of these chemicals in toys, which is nothing less than classic junk science. But what’s more interesting — and revealing about the Ecology Center’s motives in fomenting the toy scare — is that it entirely missed warning parents about a very real and deadly threat posed by some of the toys it tested.

Of the top ten lead-containing toys, six were jewelry (necklaces, charm bracelets and a pin) containing from 0.2 percent to about 41 percent lead, according to the Ecology Center. If you then go to the group’s web page to find out why you should be scared about lead in toys, you first, and foremost, get the old environmentalist myths about how there is no safe exposure to lead and that lead causes lower IQ scores and other development problems. While the Ecology Center does mention some real health effects of lead poisoning, including muscle weakness, anemia, and kidney damage, it omitted the big one, death, and then fails to mention a real death that parents might find instructive.

In February 2006, a 4-year old Minnesota boy was taken to the hospital because of vomiting. He was diagnosed with gastroenteritis and released. Two days later, he returned and was admitted to the hospital. Ten hours later he was placed on a mechanical ventilator. The next day, blood work revealed that the boy had an extraordinarily high blood lead level of 180 micrograms per deciliter, and studies indicated that his brain was receiving no blood flow. He was removed from life support and died.

An autopsy retrieved from his stomach a heart-shaped charmed imprinted with “Reebok.” His mother recognized the object as a charm that came with a pair of shoes belonging to another child whose home her son had visited, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. She was not aware that her son had ingested it, since he had no history of ingesting non-food substances. When tested, the charm was found to consist of 99.1 percent lead. Reebok voluntarily recalled the charms shortly thereafter and instructed parents to “immediately take the charm bracelets away from children and dispose of the entire bracelet.”

Did the Ecology Center spotlight this incident and its outcome on its lead information page? No — even though its “most dangerous” lead-containing toy is a Disney-brand Hannah Montana necklace with heart-shaped charms that are 40 percent lead. Study leader Jeff Gearhart told me that he had heard of the Minnesota poisoning case, but couldn’t explain why mention of it was omitted.

Blinded by its anti-chemical agenda — Gearhart told me that he was glad to see that companies were responding to the unwelcome spotlight of his research by reformulating their toys — the Ecology Center apparently can’t see the true dangers in the forest because it’s focused on the politically incorrect “chemical” trees. If a public interest group, which is what the Ecology Center holds itself out to be, is really concerned about toy safety, how about alerting parents to real and specific dangers — like swallowing small lead trinkets? But that’s not all.

In 2007, there were 232,900 toy-related injuries among all ages, including 18 toy-related deaths among children under age 15, according to the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC). Riding toys, including non-motorized scooters, and small toy balls were associated with most of the deaths. Most of the 232,900 injuries were lacerations, contusions and abrasions, most frequently to the face and head. Notably, there were no reports of injuries from chemicals in toys.

The Ecology Center seems to be worried about toy safety only to the extent that it helps the anti-chemical political agenda. But there are plenty of genuine toy safety concerns for consumers to consider. They ought not to be distracted from those realities by trumped-up, bogus scares.

Steven Milloy publishes JunkScience.com and manages the Free Enterprise Action Fund. He is a junk science expert and an adjunct scholar at the Competitive Enterprise Institute.

'Poisoned Profits': Recycled Junk Science

By Steven Milloy
August 7, 2008, FoxNews.com

Former New York Times environmental reporter Phil Shabecoff is so green he even recycles debunked health scares.

Shabecoff’s new book, “Poisoned Profits: How Corporate America Is Poisoning Our Children With Toxic Chemicals,” claims to “reveal the frightening and expanding dimension of children’s chronic illnesses in the U.S. and link this epidemic to industrial toxins.”

In attacking virtually every sort of industrial chemical, Shabecoff implies that almost all childhood illnesses, failed pregnancies and birth defects are attributable to the “42 billion pounds of chemicals per day” either made in or imported into the U.S.

Shabecoff asserts that industrial chemicals are barely regulated, companies “have knowingly put and kept toxic products on the market,” children are more vulnerable to chemicals, “no one is safe,” the health care costs attributable to chemicals exceed $100 billion annually, and that the solution is to go “chemical free.”

If Shabecoff’s book were turned into a movie, however, it would have to be titled, “The Night of the Living Dead — Chemical Boogeyman Edition.” Scares about all these substances have been debunked over and over during the last few decades.

This column has addressed most of the scares that Shabecoff tries to resurrect, including those about phthalates; bisphenol-A; flame retardants; triclosan; volatile organic compounds; PVC; PCBs; dioxin; pesticides; lead; mercury; rocket fuel; arsenic; antibiotics; and steroids.

Shabecoff’s attempted resurrection of these scares isn’t surprising given the usual suspects he digs up for interviews. They constitute a veritable Who’s Who of Junk Science, many of whom have been featured at one time or another in this column including: Charlotte Brody (Health Care Without Harm); Carol Browner; Richard Clapp; Devra Davis; Lois Gibbs; Lynn Goldman; Tyrone Hayes; Michael Jacobson; Philip Landrigan; Bruce Lanphear; John Peterson Myers; Herbert Needleman; Ellen Silbergeld; Shanna Swan; and Walter Willett.

And if Shabecoff didn’t personally interview a junk scientist, he cited their anti-chemical activism. Some of these individuals include: Erin Brockovich; Rachel Carson; Theo Colburn; Ken Cook (Environmental Working Group); David Michaels; Arnold Schecter; and Neils Skakkebaek.

And if these sources aren’t enough to cast doubt on “Poisoned Profits,” then there’s Shabecoff, himself, whom the uber-liberal New York Times reassigned from environmental reporting in 1991 because he was too green.

Then-Times Washington bureau chief Howell Raines told Shabecoff, “New York is complaining. You’re too pro-environment and they say you’re ignoring the costs of environmental protection. They want you to cover the [Internal Revenue Service],” according to a 1998 report in The Nation.

Shabecoff subsequently quit the Times. “Poisoned Profits,” therefore, is precisely what one might expect from a biased journalist who depends on dubious and discredited sources to breathe life into alleged “problems” that have escaped scientific detection despite more than 40 years and tens of billions of dollars of research.

When you think about it, Shabecoff’s hypothesis is really incredible. He suggests that, because we make or import more chemicals than ever before, emissions, exposures and risks to health are greater than ever before.

“There is abundant evidence that the trillions of pounds of hazardous pollutants that have been poured into the environment are, in all likelihood, responsible for much of the sickness, suffering and, too often, death of America’s children,” he writes.

And in the grand environmentalist tradition of hyperbolic imagery, his media release states, “The effect on children’s health is like a World Trade Center in slow motion.” But the facts don’t match up with Shabecoff’s hysterics.

First, industrial emissions and the public’s exposure to them have declined over the past few decades. Air emissions declined 67 percent between 1993 and 2002, emissions of volatile organic compounds declined by 50 percent from 1980 to 2007, and overall industrial releases to the environment declined 59 percent between 1988 and 2006, according to the Environmental Protection Agency.

Contrary to Shabecoff’s claim of deteriorating public health, life expectancy, the most objective standard for measuring health, is the highest it has ever been across all race, age and gender groups, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Overall cancer incidence and death rates are declining, and childhood cancer rates are stable, according to the National Institutes of Health. Most importantly, there is not a single study that credibly links typical or legal industrial emissions to the environment as a cause of any disease in anyone, including children.

Shabecoff wrestles with this fact early in his book when he writes that “Often … the scientific evidence is cloudy.” But he quickly resolves his dilemma by suggesting a conspiracy among the chemical industry, politicians and government officials to ignore children’s health.

What follows are 200-plus pages of innuendo and half-truths. An example of Shabecoff’s penchant for omitting key facts arises when he praises environmental groups working “for” the children. He laments that “there is no sheriff leading this posse.”

He then nominates Mt. Sinai School of Medicine’s Philip Landrigan, “called by some the father of environmental pediatrics,” to assume the role. Landrigan chaired the National Research Council Committee that produced the 1993 “landmark” report Pesticides in the Diets of Infants and Children, a study that was used by activists to scare politicians into enacting the Food Quality Protection Act in 1996.

But anyone who actually read that report knows that it utterly failed to make any link between pesticides in food and health risk to children. Shabecoff’s hero was forced to publicly acknowledge in the wake of the report that “no disease has ever been documented that stems from legal applications of pesticides.”

The environmental scare movement started in 1962 with Rachel Carson’s anti-chemical screed, “Silent Spring.” It’s comforting to know that 46 years later the alarmist case against industrial chemicals remains evidence-free.

Fishy Mercury Warning

By Steven Milloy
December 25, 2003, FoxNews.com

The Food and Drug Administration just issued a new warning to pregnant women about mercury in seafood (search). You can “protect your baby” from developmental harm by following three rules, claims the FDA. Continue reading Fishy Mercury Warning

Consumer Watchdog: Vinyl Toys Are Just Ducky

By Steven Milloy
February 28, 2003, FoxNews.com

The Consumer Product Safety Commission did the right thing last week in ruling rubber duckies and other vinyl toys pose “no demonstrated health risk” to children. This should end a long-running controversy contrived by environmental extremists.

“Consumers may have a high level of assurance that soft plastic products pose no risk to children,” said Commissioner Mary Sheila Gall following a unanimous vote by CPSC commissioners.

Vinyl toys are made from polyvinyl chloride (PVC), softened by the chemical diisononyl phthalate (DINP). DINP has been used for more than 50 years in applications such as flooring, wall coverings, carpet backing, cable sheathing and toys. There are no reports of harm caused by DINP in commercial products.

Despite this track record of safety, the National Environmental Trust, Greenpeace, Physicians for Social Responsibility and other activist groups petitioned the CPSC in November 1998 to “ban polyvinyl chloride from all toys and products intended for children five years of age and under and to issue a national advisory on the health risks that have been associated with PVC toys and products.”

The ostensible reason for the requested ban — we’ll get to the real reason later — was the alleged risk of liver and kidney damage to children exposed to DINP by mouthing PVC toys.

In December 1998, the CPSC released the results of a preliminary study of DINP concluding, “few, if any, children are at risk of liver or other organ toxicity from mouthing teethers, rattles, and other PVC toys that contain DINP.”

Still, the CPSC said further study was desirable, and convened a special panel to study DINP in toys.

The special panel’s three-year review concluded, “there may be a DINP risk for any young children who routinely mouth DINP-plasticized toys for 75 minutes per day or more. For the majority of children, the exposure to DINP from DINP-containing toys would be expected to pose a minimal to non-existent risk of injury.” The panel also concluded DINP posed no risk of cancer or reproductive and developmental harm.

CPSC staff then conducted a behavioral observation study to better quantify DINP exposure to children.

One hundred sixty-nine children between the ages of 3-36 months were studied by trained observers for two hours on each of two days. The average daily mouthing time of soft plastic toys for children 12-24 months of age (the age group with the highest mouthing time) was 1.9 minutes per day — well below the 75 minutes per day that the special panel indicated might be of concern.

CPSC staff also conducted a hypothetical “worst-case” analysis involving pacifiers, which have the highest mouthing times of any toys. The staff assumed pacifiers contained DINP — they currently do not — and that the pretend-DINP migrated out of the pacifiers at the same extremely low rate as observed in soft plastic toys.

In this worst case analysis, even at the 99th percentile of exposure, the acceptable daily intake of DINP for a child would not be exceeded.

The staff concluded, “Since children mouth other products even less than they mouth toys and dermal penetration is expected to be minimal, [we] do not believe they would pose a risk to children five years of age and under.”

The irony of the controversy is that the Greens aren’t really concerned about DINP or children’s health at all. The attack on DINP is simply a tactical ploy to advance the Greens’ broader war against the element chlorine — a key ingredient in the production of innumerable consumer products, including PVC.

The Greens previously have tried unsuccessfully to scare the public about other PVC ingredients. They try these roundabout attacks because the direct assault on chlorine has failed.

The Greens have wanted to ban the industrial use of chlorine since at least 1994. They nearly convinced the Clinton administration to support a legislative proposal to that effect.

But even the activist-friendly Clintonites realized the foolhardiness of banning chlorine.

About 12 million tons of chlorine are produced in North America annually for use in manufacturing other important chemicals, pharmaceuticals and plastics; pulp and paper bleaching; and drinking water purification and wastewater disinfection.

Chlorinated drinking water is generally acclaimed as one of the greatest advances in public health of the 20th century.

A chlorine ban would risk public health and cost consumers more than $90 billion per year for alternative products and process — with no guarantee of equivalent performance or quality, according to the Chlorine Chemistry Council.

When the Greens filed their November 1998 petition to ban PVC in toys, Newsweek headlined its story, “Vinyl Ducky, Out of Lucky.” An updated headline based on 5 years of review might read, “Vinyl’s ducky, Greenies yucky.”

Steven Milloy is the publisher of JunkScience.com, an adjunct scholar at the Cato Institute and the author of Junk Science Judo: Self-defense Against Health Scares and Scams (Cato Institute, 2001).