The arrival of a new baby means plenty of changes at home, some of which can sneak up on parents. Seemingly overnight, couples who had proudly built a home with wood furnishings and grown-up ceramic and glass dishes, may find even the smallest corner of the home overtaken by plastic baby products, from toys and bottles to sippy cups and teething rings.
In the past few years, scientists have also woken up to the pervasiveness of plastic in the lives of parents, and what they’ve found is surprising. According to 140 U.S. government reports and a bevy of research, some of the same plastics that make up the ever-present baby products around the house also quietly leach dangerous chemicals into babies, causing a range of problems including brain damage, hormone disruption, genital deformities, reproductive damage, and learning disabilities. Politicians are also recognizing the dangers in plastics: every country in the European Union, along with 14 other nations, bans certain dangerous plastics from being used in products for children. Closer to home, a bill before the Minnesota Legislature last spring proposed banning the sale of children’s products made from certain plastics.
Fred vom Saal, a professor of biology at the University of Missouri at Columbia, studies the effects of these plastics on humans and says the government is moving too slowly, considering the evidence available, but that parents can do more. “Governments in other countries are banning these plastics, so parents should be asking ‘What do they know that we don’t?’ and educate themselves about their choices.”
Everyday dangers
The plastics of most concern to scientists are those that include bisphenol A (BPA), which is used in hard, clear polycarbonate plastic, or phthalates, chemical compounds that makes plastics more flexible. BPA is typically found in baby bottles, sippy cups, and a variety of food-storage products – and therein lies the danger. The chemical bond holding BPA together is extremely unstable under heat and releases chemicals under such stress. “It’s basic undergraduate chemistry that the ester bond in polycarbonate breaks down under heat,” explains vom Saal. “Parents are told to sterilize baby bottles, when there’s huge scientific literature showing this isn’t safe with that kind of plastic. And heating them in the microwave is just as bad; there’s no such thing as microwaveable polycarbonate.”
Phthalates are found in hundreds of products, including soft vinyl plastic toys, rubber ducks, and teething rings – all items babies instinctively put in their mouths and suck on – all items that scientists say also leach chemicals. Researchers believe that even at low levels, both phthalates and BPA chemicals act like estrogen in the body. “Using these plastics is essentially like giving your baby a birth control pill,” says vom Saal. “We have 140 government-funded, published, and peer-reviewed major journal articles showing brain damage, behavioral changes, hyperactivity, interference in the reproductive development in males – it’s horrific literature.”
Expectant mothers can pass along the chemical in utero as well. Dr. Shanna Swan, director of the Center for Reproductive Epidemiology at the University of Rochester’s School of Medicine and Dentistry, conducted a study that sampled the urine of women pregnant with boys in Los Angeles; Columbia, Mo.; and Minneapolis that found the higher the level of phthalates in the mother, the more likely it was that the babies had smaller genitals and incomplete testicular descent. Swan stresses phthalates have only been measurable in humans since 2000, so the field is very new, but the results of the studies on hand have been grim. “In these studies, one or more phthalates” – there are 10 metabolites of phthalates, the small molecules produced when the chemicals are broken down in the body, now being measured – “have been linked to low sperm count, sperm DNA damage, asthma and other respiratory disease, and prematurity in humans in addition to our study.”
Government inaction
All of this information has been brought to the attention of the plastics industry, which has conducted 12 of their own studies showing, unsurprisingly, the plastics to have no harmful effects. But with billions of pounds of BPA and plastics containing phthalates produced each year, that’s the response scientists like vom Saal expect. “There is no argument in the scientific community among scientists who do research on this subject. There is only an illusion of an argument by people who are not accurately identifying their paid association with the plastics industry,” he says.
Vom Saal’s claims are supported by the government, which convened a scientific panel to perform an independent review of the industry-sponsored studies. The panel subsequently established that at least one of the papers had actually found that the plastics do effect humans, while other studies were compromised by factors like the use of a lab rat known to be insensitive to estrogen.
Despite the government’s willingness to fund studies on the dangers of BPA and phthalates, no moves have been made on a federal level to even consider banning either. This year, California, Maryland, and Minnesota each had bills before their respective legislatures that would have prohibited the manufacture, sale, or distribution of any toys or childcare articles aimed at children ages 3 or younger that contained BPA or phthalates. Minnesota’s bill, proposed by Senator Sandy Pappas, died in March when no action was taken after the bill was sent to committee. The proposals in Maryland and California met similar fates. The lone success story came on the local level: San Francisco passed an ordinance last spring that, effective Dec. 1, bans the sale of all toys and products intended for use by children under age 3 that contain BPA.
The beginnings of a similar grassroots approach are underway in Minneapolis, where resident Julie Mellum created the organization Take Back the Air earlier this year. Mellum, who developed chemical sensitivity after years in the renovation business, decided to spread the word about the dangers of phthalates by conducting regular meetings, leafleting around her neighborhood, and running an ad in a community newspaper last June that included support from Minneapolis Mayor R.T. Rybak. “I don’t want to shock people with discouraging news,” she says, “but on the other hand, at this point, people need to be hit over the head more than once to realize this is a serious problem, and we can do something [about it] in our own backyards and our homes.”
Parent power
The federal government may not be doing anything about dangerous plastics, but parents don’t have to feel powerless. “The right place for these issues to be vetted to safeguard the public is the government, but we’ve disinvested in the government, and the logical result when you don’t have watchdogs for the public’s health is that people’s health suffers, and that’s what we’re seeing,” explains Dr. David Wallinga, director of the Food and Health Program with the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy in Minneapolis. That said, Wallinga says adopting a personal policy of being a conscientious consumer when it comes to plastic can make a difference. “Personally, I avoid buying plastic products period. I have a 9-month-old baby, and we use glass baby bottles. I had to look for them, but they’re out there. Start with yourself and the decisions you make as a consumer.”
Duluth resident Ellen Sandbeck, author of Organic Housekeeping, adds that consumers can speak volumes with what they will and won’t spend money on. “What you want to do is buy products with labels you can understand completely. If the label isn’t clear and you can’t tell what kind of plastic a product is made of or what cleaners or detergents contain phthalates, don’t buy them. You control what you buy, and businesses will listen.” Many businesses already make phthalates- and BPA-free toys to accommodate the European market – it just takes work to find them. “When Europe banned phthalates, manufacturers didn’t just give up on the European market; they took the phthalates out of their products but continued selling the old products in the U.S. We should demand access to the same products they get in Europe.”
Mothers-to-be can also make different personal care choices when it comes to purging phthalates. Makeup, perfume, shampoos, and nail polish are serious offenders, and it takes legwork to find less-toxic replacements. Local company Aveda makes phthalate-free makeup and hair products, and Sandbeck says if mothers are unsure of an ingredient list, it’s best to pass.
While scientists like vom Saal and Wallinga encourage parents to do their best to purge plastics, they also acknowledge that the task isn’t easy. Alternatives can be hard to find and at times impractical – glass baby bottles might not make sense for active children – and sorting the bad plastics from the good plastics when labels aren’t readily available is nearly impossible. Which brings vom Saal to another point: “An important message to get across is that not all plastics are dangerous. But none of them does well under high heat.”
