HEALTHY TOYS REPORT EXPOSED

The Washington Toxics Coalition (WTC) recently released a new study on the levels of phthalates in common plastic toys. Senator Feinstein (D-CA) has uploaded the report to her website and points to the report findings as support to underscore the need for Congressional approval of her legislation to ban phthalates.

Phthalates ban legislation is perpetuating misinformation to parents and the general public by promoting a report that ignores decades of scientific evidence.

Making unscientifically supported assumptions to support legislation, will unequivocally make our children less safe. Removing safe compounds like DINP from the market will force toy makers to use alternative plasticizers that have not been tested nor approved for use by CPSC, independent evaluators or government scientists.

Read more on the problems with the WTC report:

1) The Washington Toxics Coalition report alleges that phthalates are toxic and that they have the potential for harmful health effects, particularly on reproductive development.

• DINP is the phthalate that is most commonly used in toys.
• The Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) conducted a four year study and concluded that soft vinyl toys made with DINP pose "no demonstrated health risk" to children.
• The European Union spent ten years assessing the risks associated with DINP in all of its end uses and determined, "The end products containing DINP (clothes, building materials, toys and baby equipment) and the sources of exposure are unlikely to pose a risk for consumers (adults, infants and newborns)"
• The U.S. National Toxicology Program reviewed all of the research on DINP and concluded, that DINP poses "minimal concern" for reproductive and developmental health

2) The Washington Toxics Coalition report’s number one reason for banning phthalates in toys is the European Union and California have already done so.

• The European Union and California bans were enacted by political decision.
• The European Union first placed restrictions on use of phthalates in toys in 1999, before the CPSC conducted their evaluations, and made them permanent in 2005, before the European Union published their own risk assessment.
• California politicians were confused over toy recalls in 2007 related to high levels of lead in paint. Many of them thought the toys legislation, that placed a ban on phthalates, would somehow address this problem.

3) The Washington Toxics Coalition report asks that toys be labeled with the chemicals that they contain.

• Why not guide parents with a label that says: "This product contains DINP, the tested plasticizer!"

4) The Washington Toxics Coalition report indicates that some toy manufacturers are able to make toys without phthalates.

• Forcing toy manufacturers to use untested alternatives does not improve product safety. In fact, it increases the risk to children’s health and safety.
• We need to ask ourselves: Do we know what they are using? Do we know whether it has been tested and proven safe? Do we know that all of the alternatives to DINP have been subjected to far fewer tests than DINP, and that none of them have been reviewed by the CPSC or the European Union’s scientists, and none have been approved for use in toys by a governmental agency?

5) The Washington Toxics Coalition report’s authors raise alarm because toys have been shown to contain between 28% and 47% phthalates.

• The CPSC studied toys that contained up to nearly 55 % diisononyl phthalate (DINP) and still concluded that "Consumers may have a high level of assurance that soft plastic products pose no risk to children."

6) The Washington Toxics Coalition report claims that a number of phthalates, including DINP, have been found to reduce testosterone production by the fetus, which can result in off-target reproductive development and abnormal genitals.

• None of the cited studies have found any such effects to be caused by DINP. In fact, DINP was not even studied.

7) Shanna Swan of the University of Rochester found a link between greater exposure to several phthalates and altered genital development.

• None of the baby boys included in the study had defective or malformed genitalia. Swan’s study did not find any effect on genital development for DINP. In fact, Swan herself concedes that the phthalate metabolites that she studied are "chemically and toxicologically different from DINP." [Environmental Health Perspectives, Vol 116, No. 2, Feb'08]

The Washington Toxics Coalition report cites a study that showed that lab animals exposed to DEHP and DPB were more likely to be born with a condition called hypospadias, asthma, rhinits and eczema.

• Neither of these phthalates are appreciably used in toys, as the report’s own testing has shown.