Triclosan

There is little chance that you haven't come into contact with triclosan -- while washing your hands, brushing your teeth or applying deodorant or face cream. Now that cold season is in full effect, the "antibacterial" soaps in which triclosan is often found may seem like a great idea. But triclosan is an endocrine disruptor, and exposure to endocrine disruptors can lead to early puberty, serious reproductive issues and breast cancer.

Buy Safe 'n Healthy Products to make sure you're products are natural, or check the Cosmetic's Database for the current product you're using.

Clean food: Washing produce helps stave off health problems

From The Sun Herald


Looking for a vegetable and fruit wash? Try Solay Simple Fruit/Veggie Wash

Environment solutions for your home

From The Standard


Concerned? Use Natural or Organic Cleaning Products!

Pregnant women exposed to household pesticides may increase the risk of ...

Pregnant women exposed to household pesticides may increase the risk of their children developing leukemia, according to a recent study conducted in France. These findings add more weight to the idea that pesticides play a role in childhood blood cancers and may shed light on the actual causes of the diseases.

From: Environmental Health News

Phthalate Assessed

Phthalate Assessed
New report by safety panel reinforces conclusions from five years ago

Cosmetic Preservatives...

Cosmetic preservatives makers offer alternatives as widely used parabens come under scrutiny

Concerned? Use Natural or Organic Body Care Products.

www.HEALTHYTOYS.org

The Consumer Action Guide to Toxic Chemicals in Toys

Press Release about study on Phthalates...

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
February 04, 2008

CONTACT:
Stacy Malkan
202-321-6963
smalkan@hcwh.org

CHEMICAL LINKED TO REPRODUCTIVE HARM IS GETTING INTO BABIES FROM SHAMPOO, LOTION AND POWDER, NEW STUDY SUGGESTS

Researchers recommend parents reduce product use

The use of powder, lotions and shampoo on infants markedly increased the levels of phthalates found in the babies’ urine, according to a new study by University of Washington researchers published today in the journal Pediatrics.

In animal studies, phthalates cause infertility, birth defects and other malformations of the male reproductive tract. Several human studies also indicate that phthalates may adversely affect male reproductive function at levels commonly found in people. Young infants and fetuses are most vulnerable to the potential adverse effects of phthalates.

According to the new study, lotions, powders and shampoos “may contribute significantly to phthalate body burden" in infants. “If parents want to decrease exposures, then we recommend limiting the amount of infant care products used, and not to apply lotions or powders unless indicated for a medical reason,” the researchers wrote.

Previous studies show that a high majority of fragranced personal care products contain phthalates. A 2002 study found phthalates in more than 70 percent of products tested, including shampoo, deodorant and perfume. The chemicals were not listed on labels. http://www.safecosmetics.org/docUploads/NotTooPretty_r51.pdf

The European Union bans some phthalates from cosmetics and toys, and California banned the chemicals from baby toys – but phthalates are legal to use in personal care products sold in the United States, and there are no requirements to label products for phthalate content.

“Parents have enough to worry about. They shouldn’t have to also worry about chemicals linked to infertility getting into their babies from baby products,” said Charlotte Brody, R.N., executive director of Commonweal, an environmental health research and education center. “Companies know how to make products without phthalates and that’s what they need to do.”
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Here's the journal article this press release is about: Baby Care Products: Possible Sources of Infant Phthalate Exposure

Bisphenol A - Is it harmful?

Bisphenol A - Also known as BPA.
What is it? Is it safe or hazardous?
Which baby and toddler products are BPA free?

As with many of the chemicals in products geared toward children, there is controversy over whether the chemical is indeed harmful. My philosophy is to be safe rather than sorry. Sure, I've lived a lifestyle unknowingly ingesting, inhaling, and covered in chemicals and I'm healthy, but with the onslaught of chemicals in our environment and lives, I feel a necessity to limit the chemicals around my family as much as possible. Why not? All it takes is a bit of research and learning on my part, then changing my purchasing habits, and I've reduced the chemicals in our lives. At least I've done as much as I can to keep my family safe and healthy.

So, here's what I've learned about Bisphenol A. The first thing I'll tell you is, the Plastics Industry considers BPA to be harmless, considering stories to the contrary to be myths and scare tactics. There's even a website. created to declare the safety of BPA. Yet, after reading both sides of this issue, I'm working to remove Bisphenol A from our life. Here's why...

According to National Geographic's Green Guide, "Depending on whom you talk to, BPA is either perfectly safe or a dangerous health risk. The plastics industry says it is harmless, but a growing number of scientists are concluding, from some animal tests, that exposure to BPA in the womb raises the risk of certain cancers, hampers fertility and could contribute to childhood behavioral problems such as hyperactivity.

According to its critics, BPA mimics naturally occurring estrogen, a hormone that is part of the endocrine system, the body's finely tuned messaging service. "These hormones control the development of the brain, the reproductive system and many other systems in the developing fetus," says Frederick vom Saal, Ph.D., a developmental biologist at the University of Missouri. Endocrine-disrupting chemicals can duplicate, block or exaggerate hormonal responses. "The most harm is to the unborn or newborn child," vom Saal says.

Plastic water and baby bottles, food and beverage can linings and dental sealants are the most commonly encountered uses of this chemical. Unfortunately, it doesn't stay put. BPA has been found to leach from bottles into babies' milk or formula; it migrates from can liners into foods and soda and from epoxy resin-lined vats into wine; and it is found in the mouths of people who've recently had their teeth sealed. Ninety-five percent of Americans were found to have the chemical in their urine in a 2004 biomonitoring study by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

Plastics manufacturers do not deny that BPA is found widely in canned foods and beverages and is routinely ingested. They part ways with vom Saal and other scientists over the human health risks. The levels that leach into food are well below the safety thresholds set by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), and the plastics industry website, Bisphenol-A.org, says the chemical is completely safe unless you ingest 1,300 pounds of canned and bottled food daily. In other words, even a canned-food addict will likely ingest 500 times less BPA than the danger level set by the EPA and 100 times less than the standard set by the European Commission Scientific Committee on Food. And common sense tells us that if higher doses are safe, then lower doses must be too, right?

Not necessarily, says vom Saal, who notes that these safety levels are based on 1980s toxicity studies in rats. In those studies, conducted at relatively high doses, the only sign of toxicity was reduced body weight. However, when it comes to hormone disruption, different doses can activate or suppress different genes, vom Saal explains. "That's why early toxicity studies found that the high doses were safe. The studies didn't look at the low doses that are now proving to cause a myriad of harmful effects in animals, including chromosomal damage in female egg cells and an increase in embryonic death in mice. A follow-up to this is a study indicating a relationship of BPA blood levels to miscarriages in Japanese women," he says.

But not all scientists think BPA is capable of doing such harm to humans. Some deny that BPA disrupts hormones. A study funded by the Society of the Plastics Industry and published in the July 2002 Toxicological Sciences that explored the effects of low doses on three generations of rats found no effect on reproduction or development. "If you look at all the data together, you don't find a consistent pattern of effects that are characteristic of an estrogenic chemical," says Steven G. Hentges, Ph.D., executive director of the Polycarbonate Business Unit at the American Plastics Council. Others argue that rodent studies such as Hunt's are not relevant to humans. A study published in the October 2002 Chemical Research in Toxicology of human volunteers found that a human body neutralizes and excretes BPA far more rapidly than a rat's body does.

So far, regulatory agencies agree. "Based on all the evidence available at this time, the FDA sees no reason to change its long-held position that current [BPA] uses with food are safe," George Pauli, Ph.D., associate director for science and policy at the FDA's Office of Food Additive Safety, wrote in a November 28, 2005, letter.

Vom Saal counters that the studies showing BPA is safe are "profoundly flawed and in some cases exhibit outright fraud." Last year, he published a paper showing that 100 percent of the industry-funded studies, 11 in all, found no harmful effects from BPA, while 90 percent of government-funded low-dose studies, 104 in number, found harmful effects. "Among people who have actually read this literature there is no debate, just an illusion of controversy," he says.

Meanwhile, new studies continue to reveal the potential for harm. A January 2006 study indicates that BPA may enhance the risk of developing Type II diabetes. Angel Nadal, Ph.D., and his team at the University of Miguel Hernández de Elche in Alicante, Spain, found that BPA altered the function of mouse pancreatic cells, which produce insulin. Unhealthy diet, a lack of exercise and a genetic predisposition are the main factors in triggering diabetes, says Nadal. "However, our feeling is that these factors could be exacerbated by the presence of environmental pollutants such as bisphenol A."

Human studies might settle the controversy over BPA, but so far they have been too limited to prove much. One study linked women with ovarian disfunction to elevated blood levels of BPA, and another found that blood levels of BPA were three times higher in women who'd suffered recurrent miscarriages than in women with successful pregnancies. While intriguing, these studies were from a small sample group. A more definitive result could be gained from a large-scale study to track people's exposures, follow them for years and look for health effects. The National Toxicology Program is planning a future evaulation of BPA.

Some scientists urge that action be taken now, regardless. "Science is not in the business of demonstrating anything beyond a shadow of a doubt," says Ana Soto, M.D., a professor and researcher at Tufts University School of Medicine in Boston, who has found that BPA alters mammary-gland development in mice. "We cannot wait that long to discover whether this chemical is harming human reproduction and development." However, because government agencies remain unconcerned, it is unlikely that BPA will disappear from consumer products anytime soon."

So, which plastic bottles/cups are BPA free?
The following are free of BPA:
Bottles: Adiri | Born Free | MAM | Medela | Mother's Milkmate
Sippys: Born Free | Klean Kanteen | Sassy | SIGG | Thermos
Pacifiers: Playtex | Gerber/NUK | First Years
Pumps and Supplies: Medela | Mother's Milkmate

You should be most concerned if you are using bottles by Avent, Dr. Brown's, Evenflo, the First Years, Munchkin, Nuby, Playskool, or Second Nature, or sippy cups or breast pumps by many of these brands, since these brands are known to contain BPA. You are also likely, but less certain, to be using products containing Bisphenol-A if you are using bottles by Gerber, Playtex, or Tommee Tippee.

Bottles and cups aren't the only concern; if you consume canned soups, beans and soft drinks, organic or not, you also may be swallowing residues of bisphenol A that can leak out of the can linings into your food. Nearly all can liners contain BPA, says Geoff Cullen, director of government relations at the Can Manufacturers Institute. As a result baby formula has also been known to contain BPA. Read the Environmental Workering Group article here.

Other important links:
Bisphenol A Free
Smart Plastics Guide
Plastic Products at a Glance