Phthalate Scare is Fear-Based, Not Fact-Based, Says Consumer Alert

For Release: November 19, 1998
Contact: Frances B. Smith, 202-467-5809

Parents shopping for soft, flexible, and safe plastic toys for their kids this holiday season may be out of luck. Companies such as Mattel and First Years recently announced that they would discontinue the use of certain plastic-softening chemicals in some or all of their toys. Then, on November 13, 1998, the giant retailer Toys "R" Us said that they were yanking from their stores worldwide all soft plastic toys kids put in their mouths.

The reason? A fear-mongering campaign against phthalates (diisononyl phthalates or DINP), the chemical used as a softener in toys and other products.The companies admitted that the plastic products were safe but were being pulled because of bad PR, mostly stirred up by Greenpeace.

Over the years, soft plastic toys and teething rings have been embraced by parents who wanted products that wouldn't hurt their kids, were easy to clean, and were fun and flexible.

Greenpeace's scary but science-less attack raises the specter that the chemical leaching out from kids' sucking the toys can cause them serious harm. Yet Greenpeace has no scientific basis for its charges. Its "report" released on November 13 on phthalates' harm was nothing more than a press release with footnotes. In fact, the chemical has been tested for about a quarter of a century, with no evidence that phthalates are harmful to humans.

The chemical is toxic when mice and rats are fed massive doses. But, according to the prominent biochemist who invented the primary test for carcenogenic substances, Dr. Bruce Ames, about one-half of all chemicals tested, both natural and man-made, are toxic when tested at high doses in either rats or mice.

Thirteen years ago, probably egged on by Greenpeace, the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) studied another related phthalate elasticizer, DEHP, and found no evidence of its toxicity. Nonetheless, producers discontinued its use and substituted DINP. Currently, the CPSC is researching the toxicity of those phthalates, undoubtedly again spurred on by Greenpeace's public relations campaign. CSPC's research follows on the heels of European studies done by the Dutch and the Spanish governments, which found no significant health hazards from phthalates in children's toys.

Although there is no evidence to show that phthalates in plastic toys cause problems, now the toy companies will either drop the items altogether or switch to something that's second best. That means toys that are more expensive or less durable or have less of the tactile feeling so important to children. More importantly, the companies almost inevitably will be switching to something much less understood than phthalates. Parents also may switch to other toys that don't have the safety or hygienic advantages of soft plastic toys.

And Greenpeace will go on to its next fear-mongering campaign, no doubt better funded because of the publicity it gained from the phthalate scare.

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