New ban on plastic chemical

New consumer safety rules now ban certain children's products that contain a class of chemicals called phthalates.

Commonly used as plastic softeners, phthalates might pose long-term risks to the development of the reproductive system and endocrine functions that regulate metabolism and hormone activity.

The phthalate rule was an important provision of the Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act of 2008, which became law in August 2008.

Phthalates cause concern

Scrutiny of phthalates has been growing over the years, with a focus on products intended for children, and most recently in the manufacture of some drugs.

The use of three phthalates in children's toys and child-care products has been permanently banned by the new consumer safety act: DEHP, or di (2-ethylhexyl) phthalate; DBP (dibutyl phthalate); and BBP (benzyl butyl phthalate).

Three additional phthalates will be banned temporarily, pending a full assessment, from children's toys that can be placed in a child's mouth and from child-care products. Those are items intended to facilitate the sleep or feeding of children age 3 or younger or to help young children with sucking or teething.

The product safety act requires the creation of a Chronic Hazard Advisory Panel to assess the safety of all phthalates and phthalate alternatives used in children's products. If the panel determines that those or other phthalates are sufficiently dangerous to the health of children or pregnant women, they will be permanently banned.

Items manufactured until a Feb. 10 cutoff date can still be sold, the Consumer Product Safety Commission has indicated. But that still leaves parents in a quandary, as it is difficult to tell which toys contain phthalates and which don't. Some of the larger retailers have already cleared their shelves of the offending products.

Phthalates have been found in household and children's items such as soft-plastic toys and baby lotions. Consumers Union's own tests have shown that perfumes commonly contain phthalates.

Research finds link to drugs

New research from Harvard University, Boston University, and the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found phthalate metabolites in people taking certain medications. The study identified 47 drugs that might contain phthalates, which are used to make the coatings for some drugs.

Metabolite levels were significantly higher in people who reported taking at least one of four phthalate-containing medications. They were mesalamine (a colitis treatment), didanosine (for HIV), omeprazole (an ulcer treatment), and theophylline (for asthma and lung disease).