8 ms·

Phthalates damage babies' brains and must be banned immediately, say experts

120 points by daegloe 6y ago

userbinator 6y ago
By their own admission these chemicals are everywhere, and yet by a lot of measures people are more healthy and living longer than before... I feel just a bit suspicious.
- happytoexplain 6y ago
  >and yet by a lot of measures people are more healthy and living longer than before This argument doesn't make sense to me without something more specific. Just because such high level concepts like "health" and length of life continue to increase, that doesn't invalidate any particular malady.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- wittyreference 6y ago
  There are multiple variables in play at one time. Like, ... every other thing in medical science and public health. It would probably be more helpful if someone went ahead and just looked closer at the activity of the compound of interest, and saw what impact it had in isolation. We could call these people researchers, in honor of their tenacity in scrutinizing and re-scrutinizing their work and the work of others. And when their work impacts the health of the many, maybe we could use mass communications technology to share it. Pie in the sky, I know.
  - userbinator 6y ago
    My main objection is to the "must be banned immediately" part. That's totally alarmist and unnecessarily inflammatory.
    - thefounder 6y ago
      Why should we wait?
    - wittyreference 6y ago
      We've been collecting increasingly reliable data on the harmful effects of pthalates on human development for at least two decades. How much data must accrue, and how harmful must it be, for an immediate ban to not be alarmist?
- JSeymourATL 6y ago
  Tangential: US life expectancy drops a year in pandemic, most since WWII > https://apnews.com/article/us-life-expectancy-huge-decline-f4caaf4555563d09e927f1798136a869 https://apnews.com/article/us-life-expectancy-huge-decline-f...
- wiml 6y ago
  One possibility is that people are healthy because we are increasingly paying attention to widespread low-level pollution (like phthalates, lead, asbestos, etc.)
- pvaldes 6y ago
  > people are more healthy and living longer than before If we talk about US I'm unsure about that. Specially the first part of that statement, it seems that at least one of each three Americans are obese. The best part when _again_ some people studying _put very important thing for the public interest here_ ... is done by volunteers spending their own money.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- tasty_freeze 6y ago
  That would be a great point if health and longevity were controlled by a single variable, and that variable happened to be phthalate intake. But we know health and longevity are controlled by a dizzying number of factors that interact, so your suspicion, right or wrong, isn't justified by your observation. For example, far fewer people smoke today than did 30 years ago; medical treatments are more advanced than they were 30 years ago. And finally, phthalates were in widespread use 30 years ago too. Phthalates may have been harming us all along but those other improvements still result in an overall improvement in health and longevity.
ruined 6y ago
it is continually revealed that modern industry is poisoning us all, over and over again, for little to no reason. in the rare instance the political will is generated to act against one thing or another, the regulation is sidestepped with analogs, and buried a hundredfold with other new profitable inventions. unfortunately there is no reason to believe this destructive process is slowing or stopping. we and our children are all debilitated in both subtle and drastic ways that we absolutely do not understand. the past century of industrial/biological experimentation will be looked back upon as one of the greatest and most senseless crimes ever committed. i fear the consequences we must face.
- alexfromapex 6y ago
  In a lot of cases, it seems the root cause is disregard for others and greed. People wouldn’t knowingly poison babies if they didn’t stand to make money or they felt sympathy. Unfortunately it seems Hollywood for the past decade or so has glorified nihilism and Machiavellianism because they sell, which has trickled into all facets of American life to the extreme detriment of our society. That’s just my take.
  - macromagnon 6y ago
    It seems rather disproportionate to blame such ills on the movie industry.
    - alexfromapex 6y ago
      Why because it’s an uncomfortable truth? It’s certainly not a novel concept https://as.nyu.edu/content/dam/nyu-as/politics/documents/AriasCommonKnowledge.pdf https://as.nyu.edu/content/dam/nyu-as/politics/documents/Ari... https://gap.hks.harvard.edu/how-does-media-influence-social-norms-field-experiment-role-common-knowledge https://gap.hks.harvard.edu/how-does-media-influence-social-... https://live.worldbank.org/should-we-use-entertainment-media-shape-norms-and-behaviors-scale https://live.worldbank.org/should-we-use-entertainment-media...
      - 6y ago
anfilt 6y ago
Uhhh, there are dozens of phthalates. Each with a different chemical structure. They are not all going to follow the same metabolic pathway. This article just calls out all phthalates. Would be better to specify which. Also some phthalates do have alternatives, but not all depending on the properties your plastizer is trying to give the plastic.
- klipt 6y ago
  At this point it seems wiser to avoid plastics entirely for food. With so many chemical compounds, it seems very unlikely that we'll find and eliminate all the harmful ones anytime soon.
LatteLazy 6y ago
This has been suspected since (I think) 2015. They are also serious endocrine disruptors. So they're being phased out. I'm not sure why it takes 6 years (and counting) to do that...
aaron695 6y ago
> Phthalates damage babies' brains and must be banned immediately, say experts The only thing to get from this is CNN is not garbage but dangerous garbage and a concerning organisation called Project TENDR is gaining a foothold. There doesn't seem to any good research on exactly what 'Project TENDR' is yet. Possibly a mutation of the anti-vaxxer movement. They are not anti-vaxxer's but are using autism as a meme. CNN has hidden this bit. They do seem good at astroturfing.
ArkanExplorer 6y ago
We need a whitelist of chemicals endorsed for food, drink, and health/beauty. Packaging ingredients need to be listed as well as food ingredients. As an individual consumer: contact politicians. The only solution to this is regulatory.
- hedora 6y ago
  Also, this whitelist can include exactly one (or two) recyclable plastics.
  - donavanm 6y ago
    Don’t focus on the type of plastic or polymer too much. Virgin plastics themselves arent too reactive/biologically active. It’s the additives, plasticizers, and environmental/industrial chemicals they pick up that react/interfere with organisms. And those are largely unregulated and definitely opaque to any end consumer. Not all PET is equal. Source: casual interest, and a partner who’s a biologist working on a chem PhD specifically around measuring the effect of micro/nano plastics in marine organisms.
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
- tzs 6y ago
  I'd like to also see ingredient lists include the date they were last modified.
- sjg007 6y ago
  Your local politician ain't gonna do shit all. This is a national movement more than anything.
tqi 6y ago
I'm a bit unsure what to think. From the article: > "When you have the same kind of findings repeated ... and you keep coming up with the same finding, I think you can begin to say that the data is pretty clear" But also: > By 2019, more than 30 studies had examined prenatal exposure to different types of phthalates ... Not all of the papers had found consistent results, especially in the area of cognitive development, but the report's authors said that might be due to difference in study designs and children's ages. While this finding certainly seems plausible, and the credentials of the project members are impeccable, I am a bit suspicious that they may simply be evaluating a large number of chemicals across a wide range of outcomes, and reporting on the noise. Is there a theory on what the causal mechanism for these chemicals to cause these neurological conditions are?
- wittyreference 6y ago
  A couple. Some basic neuro papers have found that it's directly neurotoxic. Others have found that it exacerbates the neurotoxicity of certain other compounds (e.g., lead). And other studies have found that pthalate exposure increases urinary output of quinolinic acid, a neurotoxic metabolite of the tryptophan metabolic pathway to which pthalates are structurally similar. This suggests a couple of things: (1) that pthalates are neurotoxic via the excitotoxic pathway that quinolinic acid acts through, and (2) that pthalates induce higher quinolinic acid production (we've confirmed this is true in humans). Essentially, we've confirmed pthalates to be neurologically harmful in a number of animal studies, found a candidate pathway, and confirmed that that pathway is in fact affected in the prediction direction in humans experimentally exposed to higher doses of pthalates. (That last bit slipped by the ethics boards because there are meds that already include pthalates, so patients were randomized to get higher- or lower- pthalate containing formulations of the med, which were otherwise equivalently dosed.) It's a pretty reasonable conclusion at this point, if one isn't already wedded to the idea of the compound's safety.
  - tqi 6y ago
    Very interesting, thanks for the explanation!
airhead969 6y ago
TSCA grandfathered-in thousands of chemicals without safety data. The issue is that dangerous chemicals in America are a game of Whack-a-Mole since they have to be proven unsafe in order to ban them, rather than proven safe to use, and leaving harm, pain, disfigurement, disabilities, and deaths as collateral damage in their wake.

120 points by daegloe 6y ago

By their own admission these chemicals are everywhere, and yet by a lot of measures people are more healthy and living longer than before... I feel just a bit suspicious.

happytoexplain 6y ago
>and yet by a lot of measures people are more healthy and living longer than before This argument doesn't make sense to me without something more specific. Just because such high level concepts like "health" and length of life continue to increase, that doesn't invalidate any particular malady.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
wittyreference 6y ago
There are multiple variables in play at one time. Like, ... every other thing in medical science and public health. It would probably be more helpful if someone went ahead and just looked closer at the activity of the compound of interest, and saw what impact it had in isolation. We could call these people researchers, in honor of their tenacity in scrutinizing and re-scrutinizing their work and the work of others. And when their work impacts the health of the many, maybe we could use mass communications technology to share it. Pie in the sky, I know.
- userbinator 6y ago
  My main objection is to the "must be banned immediately" part. That's totally alarmist and unnecessarily inflammatory.
  - thefounder 6y ago
    Why should we wait?
  - wittyreference 6y ago
    We've been collecting increasingly reliable data on the harmful effects of pthalates on human development for at least two decades. How much data must accrue, and how harmful must it be, for an immediate ban to not be alarmist?
JSeymourATL 6y ago
Tangential: US life expectancy drops a year in pandemic, most since WWII > https://apnews.com/article/us-life-expectancy-huge-decline-f4caaf4555563d09e927f1798136a869 https://apnews.com/article/us-life-expectancy-huge-decline-f...
wiml 6y ago
One possibility is that people are healthy because we are increasingly paying attention to widespread low-level pollution (like phthalates, lead, asbestos, etc.)
pvaldes 6y ago
> people are more healthy and living longer than before If we talk about US I'm unsure about that. Specially the first part of that statement, it seems that at least one of each three Americans are obese. The best part when _again_ some people studying _put very important thing for the public interest here_ ... is done by volunteers spending their own money.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
tasty_freeze 6y ago
That would be a great point if health and longevity were controlled by a single variable, and that variable happened to be phthalate intake. But we know health and longevity are controlled by a dizzying number of factors that interact, so your suspicion, right or wrong, isn't justified by your observation. For example, far fewer people smoke today than did 30 years ago; medical treatments are more advanced than they were 30 years ago. And finally, phthalates were in widespread use 30 years ago too. Phthalates may have been harming us all along but those other improvements still result in an overall improvement in health and longevity.

ruined 6y ago

it is continually revealed that modern industry is poisoning us all, over and over again, for little to no reason. in the rare instance the political will is generated to act against one thing or another, the regulation is sidestepped with analogs, and buried a hundredfold with other new profitable inventions. unfortunately there is no reason to believe this destructive process is slowing or stopping. we and our children are all debilitated in both subtle and drastic ways that we absolutely do not understand. the past century of industrial/biological experimentation will be looked back upon as one of the greatest and most senseless crimes ever committed. i fear the consequences we must face.

alexfromapex 6y ago
In a lot of cases, it seems the root cause is disregard for others and greed. People wouldn’t knowingly poison babies if they didn’t stand to make money or they felt sympathy. Unfortunately it seems Hollywood for the past decade or so has glorified nihilism and Machiavellianism because they sell, which has trickled into all facets of American life to the extreme detriment of our society. That’s just my take.
- macromagnon 6y ago
  It seems rather disproportionate to blame such ills on the movie industry.
  - alexfromapex 6y ago
    Why because it’s an uncomfortable truth? It’s certainly not a novel concept https://as.nyu.edu/content/dam/nyu-as/politics/documents/AriasCommonKnowledge.pdf https://as.nyu.edu/content/dam/nyu-as/politics/documents/Ari... https://gap.hks.harvard.edu/how-does-media-influence-social-norms-field-experiment-role-common-knowledge https://gap.hks.harvard.edu/how-does-media-influence-social-... https://live.worldbank.org/should-we-use-entertainment-media-shape-norms-and-behaviors-scale https://live.worldbank.org/should-we-use-entertainment-media...
    - 6y ago

anfilt 6y ago

Uhhh, there are dozens of phthalates. Each with a different chemical structure. They are not all going to follow the same metabolic pathway. This article just calls out all phthalates. Would be better to specify which. Also some phthalates do have alternatives, but not all depending on the properties your plastizer is trying to give the plastic.

klipt 6y ago
At this point it seems wiser to avoid plastics entirely for food. With so many chemical compounds, it seems very unlikely that we'll find and eliminate all the harmful ones anytime soon.

LatteLazy 6y ago

This has been suspected since (I think) 2015. They are also serious endocrine disruptors. So they're being phased out. I'm not sure why it takes 6 years (and counting) to do that...

aaron695 6y ago

> Phthalates damage babies' brains and must be banned immediately, say experts The only thing to get from this is CNN is not garbage but dangerous garbage and a concerning organisation called Project TENDR is gaining a foothold. There doesn't seem to any good research on exactly what 'Project TENDR' is yet. Possibly a mutation of the anti-vaxxer movement. They are not anti-vaxxer's but are using autism as a meme. CNN has hidden this bit. They do seem good at astroturfing.

ArkanExplorer 6y ago

We need a whitelist of chemicals endorsed for food, drink, and health/beauty. Packaging ingredients need to be listed as well as food ingredients. As an individual consumer: contact politicians. The only solution to this is regulatory.

hedora 6y ago
Also, this whitelist can include exactly one (or two) recyclable plastics.
- donavanm 6y ago
  Don’t focus on the type of plastic or polymer too much. Virgin plastics themselves arent too reactive/biologically active. It’s the additives, plasticizers, and environmental/industrial chemicals they pick up that react/interfere with organisms. And those are largely unregulated and definitely opaque to any end consumer. Not all PET is equal. Source: casual interest, and a partner who’s a biologist working on a chem PhD specifically around measuring the effect of micro/nano plastics in marine organisms.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
tzs 6y ago
I'd like to also see ingredient lists include the date they were last modified.
sjg007 6y ago
Your local politician ain't gonna do shit all. This is a national movement more than anything.

tqi 6y ago

I'm a bit unsure what to think. From the article: > "When you have the same kind of findings repeated ... and you keep coming up with the same finding, I think you can begin to say that the data is pretty clear" But also: > By 2019, more than 30 studies had examined prenatal exposure to different types of phthalates ... Not all of the papers had found consistent results, especially in the area of cognitive development, but the report's authors said that might be due to difference in study designs and children's ages. While this finding certainly seems plausible, and the credentials of the project members are impeccable, I am a bit suspicious that they may simply be evaluating a large number of chemicals across a wide range of outcomes, and reporting on the noise. Is there a theory on what the causal mechanism for these chemicals to cause these neurological conditions are?

wittyreference 6y ago
A couple. Some basic neuro papers have found that it's directly neurotoxic. Others have found that it exacerbates the neurotoxicity of certain other compounds (e.g., lead). And other studies have found that pthalate exposure increases urinary output of quinolinic acid, a neurotoxic metabolite of the tryptophan metabolic pathway to which pthalates are structurally similar. This suggests a couple of things: (1) that pthalates are neurotoxic via the excitotoxic pathway that quinolinic acid acts through, and (2) that pthalates induce higher quinolinic acid production (we've confirmed this is true in humans). Essentially, we've confirmed pthalates to be neurologically harmful in a number of animal studies, found a candidate pathway, and confirmed that that pathway is in fact affected in the prediction direction in humans experimentally exposed to higher doses of pthalates. (That last bit slipped by the ethics boards because there are meds that already include pthalates, so patients were randomized to get higher- or lower- pthalate containing formulations of the med, which were otherwise equivalently dosed.) It's a pretty reasonable conclusion at this point, if one isn't already wedded to the idea of the compound's safety.
- tqi 6y ago
  Very interesting, thanks for the explanation!

airhead969 6y ago

TSCA grandfathered-in thousands of chemicals without safety data. The issue is that dangerous chemicals in America are a game of Whack-a-Mole since they have to be proven unsafe in order to ban them, rather than proven safe to use, and leaving harm, pain, disfigurement, disabilities, and deaths as collateral damage in their wake.