environmental links to autism, cancer, etc.?

I recently posted the article below to Facebook and got a few comments from friends. One called the article pure speculation. Another pointed out the danger of these types of articles to parents desperate to find a "cure" and improve the lives of their children with autism -- his parents tried chelation therapy on his brother, and it made things "10x worse". Here is how I responded to the comments that were posted, and more about my mindset and motives for sharing the article.

O, your family has endured so much. Over the years, I've been sad each time I hear about what's happening with your brother and the toll it takes on all of you. I can't begin to imagine what it has done to each of you.

D, I don't think pure speculation makes sense. I also don't think the tone of Kristof's article is about pure speculation. He's citing mainstream scientific work and makes a point of calling out that we just don't know enough yet to draw a conclusion. He's doing what he believes is his duty as a journalist, asking questions in the interest of the public. Lastly, he's not some fringe crackpot -- he's a responsible journalist who also happens to have won two Pulitzer prizes.

So where does this leave us? I've seen the FDA and other federal agencies fail to acknowledge the growing number of studies proving that phthalates, organic solvents, Bisphenol-A, etc. are hormone disruptors. Do these chemicals cause autism? Who knows? But when I consider that each study is looking at a chemical in isolation, and not evaluating the aggregate effect of all of the chemicals to which we're exposed, I cringe. And every so often, I cheer, as I did when public pressure forced the FDA to pay attention to BPA and other substances that are finally being acknowledged for making epigenetic changes that lead to cancer.

Meanwhile, like Nicholas Kristof, I've adopted the precautionary principle. That's for a few reasons. The biggest is my own health history (kidney cancer at 28 with no genetic factors in play -- as confirmed by recent tests). The others boil down to:

1. My skepticism about whether government interests beholden to lobbyists are really going to be neutral and act in the best interest of the public (DDT, smoking, and Agent Orange come to mind) -- which is why I tend to look at the EU's response to many of these policy questions
2. Luck in having the income level to afford to spend more (because all of this costs more)
3. My own tendency to choose the 'safer' option, rather than the riskier one.

For me, the precautionary principle means that:

• I eat on and drink out of glass/ceramic/ porcelain/ stainless steel, when possible. (And not just because it's phthalate-free, but because it's much greener than plastic or styrofoam.)
• I limit my exposure, when possible, to heavy metals [insert Beavis and Butthead joke here] because mercury and other heavy metals are known neurotoxins and I really don't need the mercury exposure that happens via conventional mascara and certain fish.
• I've eliminated most shampoos, lotions, and cosmetics that are chock-full of the nasties (phthalates, parabens, mercury, lead, fragrances). (The EU has much more stringent labeling requirements and has already banned most of these substances in cosmetics and requires much more stringent labeling than the US does.)
• I eat organic and local, when possible. I know my farmer and his family and trust the produce he delivers via my CSA share. I drink organic milk and eat organic meat whenever it's an option. Part of it is because there might be pesticide residues in the food. Part of it is because organic is much better for the environment and the people growing it than petrochemical-fertilized-and-transported food. And part of it is because I think the taste, quality, and freshness are better.
• I'll choose organic or second-hand clothes for my children (when I eventually have them), because they don't need to be exposed to the hormone disruptors and neurotoxins present in the flame retardants that conventional new baby and kid's clothes sold in the US have on them. (The EU has banned the flame retardants on kid's clothing, in mattresses, etc.)
• I'll vaccinate my kids, but will spread out those vaccinations as much as possible and probably postpone vaccines like Hep B until the children are older (it is given to every infant these days a few days after birth), because the probability of an infant contracting Hep B is so unlikely that it just doesn't make sense.

Op-Ed Columnist: Do Toxins Cause Autism?
By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF
Published: February 24, 2010

Autism was first identified in 1943 in an obscure medical journal. Since then it has become a frighteningly common affliction, with the Centers for Disease Control reporting recently that autism disorders now affect almost 1 percent of children.

Over recent decades, other development disorders also appear to have proliferated, along with certain cancers in children and adults. Why? No one knows for certain. And despite their financial and human cost, they presumably won’t be discussed much at Thursday’s White House summit on health care.

Yet they constitute a huge national health burden, and suspicions are growing that one culprit may be chemicals in the environment. An article in a forthcoming issue of a peer-reviewed medical journal, Current Opinion in Pediatrics, just posted online, makes this explicit.

The article cites “historically important, proof-of-concept studies that specifically link autism to environmental exposures experienced prenatally.” It adds that the “likelihood is high” that many chemicals “have potential to cause injury to the developing brain and to produce neurodevelopmental disorders.”

The author is not a granola-munching crank but Dr. Philip J. Landrigan, professor of pediatrics at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York and chairman of the school’s department of preventive medicine. While his article is full of cautionary language, Dr. Landrigan told me that he is increasingly confident that autism and other ailments are, in part, the result of the impact of environmental chemicals on the brain as it is being formed.

“The crux of this is brain development,” he said. “If babies are exposed in the womb or shortly after birth to chemicals that interfere with brain development, the consequences last a lifetime.”

Concern about toxins in the environment used to be a fringe view. But alarm has moved into the medical mainstream. Toxicologists, endocrinologists and oncologists seem to be the most concerned.

One uncertainty is to what extent the reported increases in autism simply reflect a more common diagnosis of what might previously have been called mental retardation. There are genetic components to autism (identical twins are more likely to share autism than fraternal twins), but genetics explains only about one-quarter of autism cases.

Suspicions of toxins arise partly because studies have found that disproportionate shares of children develop autism after they are exposed in the womb to medications such as thalidomide (a sedative), misoprostol (ulcer medicine) and valproic acid (anticonvulsant). Of children born to women who took valproic acid early in pregnancy, 11 percent were autistic. In each case, fetuses seem most vulnerable to these drugs in the first trimester of pregnancy, sometimes just a few weeks after conception.

So as we try to improve our health care, it’s also prudent to curb the risks from the chemicals that envelop us. Senator Frank Lautenberg of New Jersey is drafting much-needed legislation that would strengthen the Toxic Substances Control Act. It is moving ahead despite his own recent cancer diagnosis, and it can be considered as an element of health reform. Senator Lautenberg says that under existing law, of 80,000 chemicals registered in the U.S., the Environmental Protection Agency has required safety testing of only 200. “Our children have become test subjects,” he noted.

One peer-reviewed study published this year in Environmental Health Perspectives gave a hint of the risks. Researchers measured the levels of suspect chemicals called phthalates in the urine of pregnant women. Among women with higher levels of certain phthalates (those commonly found in fragrances, shampoos, cosmetics and nail polishes), their children years later were more likely to display disruptive behavior.

Frankly, these are difficult issues for journalists to write about. Evidence is technical, fragmentary and conflicting, and there’s a danger of sensationalizing risks. Publicity about fears that vaccinations cause autism — a theory that has now been discredited — perhaps had the catastrophic consequence of lowering vaccination rates in America.

On the other hand, in the case of great health dangers of modern times — mercury, lead, tobacco, asbestos — journalists were too slow to blow the whistle. In public health, we in the press have more often been lap dogs than watchdogs.

At a time when many Americans still use plastic containers to microwave food, in ways that make toxicologists blanch, we need accelerated research, regulation and consumer protection.

“There are diseases that are increasing in the population that we have no known cause for,” said Alan M. Goldberg, a professor of toxicology at the Bloomberg School of Public Health at Johns Hopkins University. “Breast cancer, prostate cancer, autism are three examples. The potential is for these diseases to be on the rise because of chemicals in the environment.”

The precautionary principle suggests that we should be wary of personal products like fragrances unless they are marked phthalate-free. And it makes sense — particularly for children and pregnant women — to avoid most plastics marked at the bottom as 3, 6 and 7 because they are the ones associated with potentially harmful toxins.

lead in your lipstick?

I've been following the beauty industry and its use of phthalates and other ingredients that are known carcinogens and hormone disrupters in cosmetics for awhile now. What floors me is how little mainstream attention is being focused on this issue -- I understand that Vogue and other women's magazines aren't about to kick their advertisers in the teeth by calling their ingredients into question ... it's the silence of the rest of the media that gets me.

Yesterday, a fellow grad student was re-applying her lipgloss, so I asked to see it. After reading the ingredients, I gave it back to her and told her about the campaign for safe cosmetics and the environmental working group's efforts to have manufacturers stop using certain ingredients and to disclose all ingredients used. She'd never heard of either.

Today, I stumbled on this recent article in the Washington Post. It's nice to see a mainstream paper giving ink to this issue.

Can Beauty Be Dangerous?
By Suzanne D'Amato
The Washington Post
January 27, 2008

Lipstick tainted with lead. Mascara that contains mercury. A hair-straightening treatment that slicks your tresses with protein...and formaldehyde? As three recent controversies show, sometimes the world of beauty can be downright ugly.

Take the lipstick debate. Last fall, a study gave women reason to worry about their war paint: The Campaign for Safe Cosmetics tested 33 lipsticks for lead, from Burt's Bees Lip Shimmer to L'Oreal Colour Riche. They found that 61 percent of the lipsticks tested contained a detectable amount of the contaminant. In fact, several lipsticks exceeded the Food and Drug Administration's lead limit for candy. (The study used candy as a benchmark not only because women ingest both candy and lipstick -- albeit in vastly different amounts -- but also because the FDA does not set lead standards for lipstick.)

Even a minuscule amount of lead is a big problem, says Campaign for Safe Cosmetics spokeswoman Stacy Malkan. "What the companies will often say is, 'There's a little toxin in one product and you can't say it causes harm,' " she says. "But none of us uses just one product." Lead is a neurotoxin that accumulates in the body over time, which is why tiny amounts ingested regularly (or in the case of lipstick, multiple times per day) could be hazardous.

Not everyone sees lead in lipstick as quite the issue Malkan does. "Lead is in our environment, even without all the industrial production of chemicals," says John Bailey, chief scientist for the Personal Care Products Council, a D.C.-based trade association. "It's part of the earth...I don't think it really warrants these alarmist conclusions."

Right now, concerned lipstick lovers don't have a lot of options. "The only way to find out if your lipstick has lead is to send it to a lab and pay $150," Malkan says. "I think that's ridiculous, to expect consumers to do that."

It's considerably easier to find out if your mascara contains mercury. Traditionally added as a preservative, the substance is rare in cosmetics these days. When it exists, it's generally in cake mascaras, such as those made by Paula Dorf and La Femme, rather than wand versions. You may see it listed as "thimerosal," a mercury-based compound.

In eye-area cosmetics, the FDA allows mercury if no other effective preservative is available. The concentration can be up to 65 parts per million. That may not sound like much, but the presence of mercury in any amount worries some people. This month, Minnesota imposed a ban on many products containing the substance, including thermostats, medical devices and, yes, mascara.

"It's a potent neurotoxin that can cause brain damage in developing fetuses," Malkan says. "Many women get mercury from fish and other sources. We don't need any more."

Bailey says that the FDA uses a voluntary reporting program for cosmetics ingredients; the program has no current registrations that report mercury being used in the eye area, he says. "We certainly can't count on a voluntary reporting program," Malkan says. "We need a real reporting system." To see whether any products you use contain mercury or other potentially hazardous ingredients, she recommends the Environmental Working Group's Skin Deep Web site (http://www.cosmeticdatabase.com), which lists information on more than 27,000 cosmetics and personal-care products. That may seem like a high number, but it's a small fraction of what's on the market, Malkan says.

The Skin Deep site is a useful resource: It gives each product a 1-to-10 "hazard score" and offers detailed information on its ingredients. But the site analyzes only over-the-counter products. Salon treatments are not examined -- and for controversial ones such as the Brazilian Keratin treatment, that's unfortunate. The BKT, as it's known, is a hair-straightening process that has smitten women in search of silky, frizz-free tresses. It also contains formaldehyde, a carcinogen.

"It is really, truly what I consider the miracle cure for hair," says Dennis Roche, who offers the treatment at his two Roche salons in the District. Roche says his salons use a formulation that contains "under 2 percent" formaldehyde. But he says the percent concentration is irrelevant -- what matters is the amount of formaldehyde that gets released as fumes when heat is applied. Roche says he minimizes that amount by using cool-air hair dryers and flat irons wrapped in heat-protectant tape.

"I'm going to continue doing this because I see the benefits from it, and I don't believe there's any health risk -- nothing more than hair color or fake nails or anything else," Roche says. "I don't think a little hair color is going to hurt anybody."

The issue, of course, is that it's hard to know. Beauty products and treatments don't have to get FDA approval before hitting store shelves; the FDA mandates such approval only for color additives in cosmetics. Sure, most people probably would agree that you shouldn't eat your lipstick or put mascara on a baby. But beyond that, the definition of "dangerous" comes down to different people's ideas about the effects of accumulated toxins. How much is too much? If experts can't agree, consumers can't be confident either.

"I love the way my hair looks. I'm so happy with it," says Roche client Lauren Stempler, who lives in the District and has gotten the Brazilian Keratin treatment twice. "But it's a hard choice....There is that nagging feeling in me that it might not be worth it."

girl, you'll be a woman soon(er)

Puberty is arriving ever younger in American females -- 8 is no longer considered abnormal. Preservatives, pesticides, hormones such Bovine Growth Hormone (rBGH) in milk and other hormones in meat, plastics, cosmetics with phthalates, all of these should make us suspicious. (And, no, I don't feel like I'm a tinfoil hat-wearing conspiracy freak for asking questions.)

But the typical American attitude is to assume that corporations and government are acting in our best interest, instead of pushing for answers. It's negligent not to investigate the environmental factors. Shifting the charts to define the change as "normal" sweeps this under the rug. Why are we burying our collective heads in the sand?

Girl, you'll be a woman sooner than expected
By Susan Brink, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
January 21, 2008
AT 8 or 9 years old, the typical American schoolgirl is perfecting her cursive handwriting style. She's picking out nouns, verbs, adjectives and adverbs in sentences, memorizing multiplication tables and learning to read a thermometer.

She's a little girl with a lot to learn.

And yet, in increasing numbers, when girls this age run across the playground in T-shirts, there is undeniable evidence that their bodies are blossoming. The first visible sign of puberty, breast budding, is arriving ever earlier in American girls.

Some parents and activists suspect environmental chemicals. Most pediatricians and endocrinologists say that, though they have suspicions about the environment, the only scientific evidence points to the obesity epidemic. What's clear, however, is that the elements of female maturity increasingly are spacing themselves out over months, even years -- and no one quite knows why.

While early menstruation is a known risk factor for breast cancer, no one knows what earlier breast development means for the future of girls' health. "We're not backing up all events in puberty," says Sandra Streingraber, biologist and visiting scholar at Ithaca College. "We're backing up the starting point." She has examined the research on female puberty and compiled a summary in an August 2007 report called "The Falling Age of Puberty in U.S. Girls." The report was financed by the Breast Cancer Fund, an advocacy group interested in exploring environmental causes of that disease.

Earlier breast development is now so typical that the Lawson Wilkins Pediatric Endocrine Society urged changing the definition of "normal" development. Until 10 years ago, breast development at age 8 was considered an abnormal event that should be investigated by an endocrinologist. Then a landmark study in the April 1997 journal Pediatrics written by Marcia Herman-Giddens, adjunct professor at the School of Public Health at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, found that among 17,000 girls in North Carolina, almost half of African Americans and 15% of whites had begun breast development by age 8. Two years later, the society suggested changing what it considered medically normal.

The new "8" -- the medically suggested definition for abnormally early breast development -- is, the society says, 7 for white girls and 6 for African American girls.

Through the ages
Puberty involves three stages: breast development, pubic hair growth and, finally, menstruation. Because the final event is typically the most memorable for women, it has been the one most scientifically documented in studies based on self-reported memories. The first 100 years that medical records were kept on the age of onset of menstruation saw continuous drops. Between about 1850 and 1950 in Europe, the average age of a girl's first period dropped from about 17 to about 13. (The U.S. doesn't have good data earlier than the 20th century, though trends were probably similar, says Steingraber, who prepared the August 2007 report after examining hundreds of studies on potential dietary, lifestyle and environmental causes of early puberty.)

Much of that decline probably has to do with better nutrition and public health improvements that reduced the spread of infectious diseases. "Better diet, closed sewer systems, deep burial of the dead," Steingraber says. "By the beginning of the 20th century, those things were in place."

Adequate food and good health signal the brain that it's safe to reproduce, according to theories of evolutionary biology. "We're healthier and we weigh more," says Dr. Francine Kaufman, head of the center for diabetes and endocrinology at Childrens Hospital. "In some ways, puberty is a luxury."

With the brain picking up these signals, the hormonal parade can begin, first with the release from the hypothalamus of gonadotropin-releasing hormone, which sends other hormones from the pituitary gland through the bloodstream to the ovaries. The ovaries gear up production of a form of estrogen called estradiol, which initiates breast development -- the first step in puberty.

A second signaling pathway stimulates the adrenal gland to begin androgen production, which results in pubic hair. The final stage of puberty is the beginning of monthly periods.

But the first two events are happening significantly earlier in the lives of today's girls than they did in the lives of their mothers and grandmothers. The age of first menstruation has dropped too, at a rate of about one month per decade for the last 30 years, according to a January 2003 study in Pediatrics. Today, the U.S. average for first period is 12.5 for white girls, 12.06 for black girls and 12.09 for Latinas.

The gap between the first appearance of breast buds and menstruation grew wider by as much as a year and a half between the 1960s and the 1990s, according to research published in the October 2006 journal Current Opinion in Obstetrics and Gynecology. The time from breast buds to bleeding, according to Herman-Giddens, is now close to three years.

In short, that finely tuned biological process may have reached a tipping point. Since the 1960s, Herman-Giddens says, the decline in the age of maturity has crossed the line from positive reasons, such as better diet, to negative ones, such as eating too much, exercising too little and the vast unknowns of chemical pollution.

The lack of adequate explanation has some experts worried. "Over the course of a few decades, the childhoods of U.S. girls have been significantly shortened," Steingraber says.

Redefining 'average'
The new average age of puberty, some fear, may be like the new average weight -- typical, but terrible.

"My fear," Herman-Giddens says, "is that medical groups could take the data and say 'This is normal. We don't have to worry about it.' My feeling is that it is not normal. It's a response to an abnormal environment."

Dr. Paul Kaplowitz, chief of endocrinology at Children's National Medical Center in Washington, D.C., and lead author of a special article Oct. 4, 1999, in the journal Pediatrics suggesting a redefinition of early puberty, isn't so sure. Too many girls are being labeled abnormal, he contends.

"Maybe we shouldn't be worrying so much about those girls," he says. "The chance of finding a serious condition in a 7-year-old with pubic hair is very, very small."

There have always been rare cases of extremely early puberty, called precocious puberty. One report, going back to 1834 in Butler County, Ky., was of a baby girl whose hips and breasts began to grow soon after she was born. By the age of 1, she was menstruating and at age 10, she gave birth to a 7-pound baby. Such extreme cases today would be examined and treated.

But the beginnings of breasts, and the first pubic hair, at ages 8, 7 or even 6 for African Americans falls at the low end of today's new normal range.

With statisticians proving that "average" is younger than recently thought, environmental activists are asking whether hormones in food, pesticides in produce or phthalates in plastics and cosmetics could be contributing to breast buds in third-graders. Social scientists have lifestyle suspicions. Does the stress of fatherless households, or the stimulating effects of sexually suggestive television shows, have anything to do with earlier signs of puberty? The suspicions remain difficult to prove.

Despite the reassurance of pediatric endocrinologists that younger development is normal, a lot of parents are still nervous, Kaplowitz says.

"If somebody calls in and says, 'I've got an 8-year-old with breast buds,' there's nothing I need to do," he says. "I discourage referrals. But they show up anyway."

Kaplowitz examined evidence for all suspected environmental and lifestyle factors in his book, "Early Puberty in Girls: The Essential Guide to Coping With This Common Problem."

"The explanation for which there's the most evidence is that it's related to the trend in increasing obesity," he says. "There are other factors, such as if your mother matured early. Sometimes we simply don't know. But overall, the biggest single factor is the trend toward obesity." Fatty tissue is a source of estrogen, so chubbier girls are exposed to more estrogen.

"With environmental influences, there has been a lot of speculation, but little hard data. I'm not suggesting there's no connection, but it's very hard to say there's a proven connection. I think it's environmental mainly in the sense that overeating and lack of exercise is environmental," Kaplowitz says. "I've tried to take the view that we shouldn't be alarmed about this."

Herman-Giddens is not so convinced, but concedes that evidence for environmental causes is close to impossible to obtain. "I myself am shocked sometimes to see very thin girls, 8 and 9 years old, with breast development," she says. "But with all the estrogen-like elements in the environment, it's virtually impossible to study. There's no place to find an unexposed population."

The biggest concern, she says, is that earlier puberty means longer lifetime exposure to estrogen, and early puberty, along with late menopause, is known to increase the risk of breast cancer.

But to design a study in which some girls are deliberately exposed to higher doses of such chemicals would be unethical, she says. Some animal studies provide cause for concern about endocrine-disrupting chemicals, but little hard evidence for humans. And a handful of industrial accidents have provided some data. In 1973, for example, estrogenic chemicals were inadvertently mixed in cattle feed in a Michigan community. The daughters of pregnant and nursing women who ate meat and dairy products from the cows were studied and were found to have begun their periods up to a year earlier than girls not exposed to the chemical, according to a 2000 study in the journal Epidemiology.

Time for a talk
What's clear is that physical appearance is getting ahead of other aspects of girls' maturity. They might be perceived as far older than they are, even when they're still rummaging through their mothers' closets to clomp around in oversized high heels.

"My daughter started developing breasts maybe around age 8," says Rhonda Sykes of Inglewood. "She was still into her doll phase and dressing up to play." So Sykes began having frank mother-daughter conversations about curves and changing bodies a bit earlier than she expected.

"Whatever they look like, they know nothing," says Diana Zuckerman, president of the National Research Center for Women and Families. "Eight- and 9-year olds are learning to make change for a dollar. These are children who are learning the most fundamental facts in school. Imagine trying to teach that child the fundamentals of sex. They're not even playing Monopoly yet. They're still playing Candyland."

The medical community calls earlier puberty normal, the trend goes hand in hand with the obesity epidemic, and science has not yet pinpointed the reasons. And yet, when girls who are still children in the minds of their parents start developing breasts, many of their mothers remember that it happened later in their own lives -- and wonder why.

Theorists and advocates continue to search for definitive evidence, and little girls continue to look like young women at earlier ages. "My biologist brain says, 'There's not a lot you can conclude from the [environmental] evidence,' " Steingraber says. "But I've got a 9-year-old girl. And as a mother, I say, 'They've introduced all these chemicals into the environment, and they have no idea what it's doing. What are they, nuts?' I want data demonstrating safety, not data demonstrating ignorance."
Via Dana

things you learn while browsing marthastewart.com

I once talked about Martha on national television. (It was with Alex Trebek during my 1.2 seconds of fame as a Jeopardy! contestant.)

Yesterday, some healthy recipes from Body+Soul were featured in an e-mail I got and before I knew it, I'd spent twenty minutes exploring the site's sustainability-oriented content. Who knew that Martha was cashing in on the enviro/hippie-dippy segment with features like this going green checklist: 101 ways to get started?

Anyhow, I've known for awhile that phosphates are evil. I just didn't realize how crazy all the ingredients are that go into our laundry products. Check it out ... and you'll quit using Tide, fabric softener, and all those other things that make fresh laundry smell so good.

Lighten Your Load
"After ecstasy, the laundry," a Zen philosopher once mused. These days, the weekly wash may hit you with more than the soiled thud of earthly reality due to the chemicals packed into many common detergents. Each of the 35 billion loads washed annually by American households contributes a mounting dose of irritants and pollutants to the environment -- but they don't have to. With a growing selection of eco- and health-friendly alternatives, you can find a gentle, easy, and effective "green" clean. Exact compositions of detergents are protected trade secrets, so product labels often reveal little more than chemical acronyms and cautions to "keep out of reach of children." To help you make optimal selections for your family and home, we've listed the benefits and costs of common laundry products, as well as our picks from the greener alternatives.

Conventional Detergents
Petrochemical-based synthetic detergents replaced flaked soap on supermarket and laundry-room shelves in the 1940s. Heavily marketed and quite effective, they quickly became the standard choice for American households. These detergents remove dirt and oils, rinsing them off so they don't settle back into the fabric, and they leave no mineral residue, even in hard water. Companies offer a wide-ranging palette of scents by using synthetic fragrances. And with powerful chemical preservatives, these products have a shelf-life that's essentially unlimited.

Conventional detergents do have their drawbacks, however, starting with the fact that they use nonrenewable resources -- among them, the petroleum-based optical brighteners found in many products. These potentially toxic "fluorescent whitening agents" make clothes appear whiter by attaching to fabrics and converting UV rays into visible blue-violet light. Some manufacturers will list these as "brighteners," or the trade names ER, KSN, OB, and OB-1. Often not on the labels of these detergents are the dyes, perfumes, softeners, enzymes, or bleaching agents the products may contain. Fragrance, for instance, often helps disguise the chemical smell of a detergent, even if the box says "hypoallergenic" or "fragrance-free"; these claims aren't regulated by any government committee or standards organization.

The extent to which conventional detergents compromise our health remains another cause for concern. These products are formulated to cling to clothes, rather than rinse out, placing harsh ingredients in prolonged contact with the skin, stripping it of moisture. They sometimes include synthetic surfactants, cleaning agents that biodegrade slowly and are associated with chronic health problems. Petrochemical-based surfactants called alkylphenol ethoxylates (APEs) can break down to compounds that the Environmental Protection Agency considers highly toxic to aquatic organisms and potential "endocrine disruptors" for humans. This means they could harm your body's endocrine system, which is responsible for healthy metabolism, reproduction, and growth. Another chemical group, phthalates (indicated by nonspecific "fragrance" on many labels), is readily absorbed by skin, fingernails, and lungs, and they may cause birth defects. Finally, most conventional detergents include parabens, or chemical preservatives that can accumulate in the body with use and have been detected in breast cancer tumors. While early studies on the link between parabens and breast cancer have been inconclusive, some health experts still advise caution.

Vegetable-Based Detergents
For their part, formulators of ecofriendly vegetable-based detergents have made major strides in recent years to achieve the strengths of conventional cleaners, without sacrificing responsibility to the environment and good health. In general, these detergents minimize pollution and residues by using renewable plant resources: Rather than tapping crude oil, their surfactants use vegetable oils, often from coconut. They won't attach to textiles (so you're not in constant contact with chemicals), and they're paraben-free. While risks associated with parabens are still unknown, these manufacturers opt for alternatives that are less questionable.

Of course, not all vegetable-based detergents will please everyone. Some contain strong fragrances that may aggravate allergies. Others can harbor unlisted additives, like their conventional counterparts. When hunting for alternatives, look for labels that state the origin of their scents and surfactants: "coconut-oil-based surfactant," for instance, instead of "cleaning agents," and "fragrance derived from lavender oil" rather than "fragrance." While we've found effective detergents from several brands (see "Detergents Put to the Test"), it's worth conducting your own tests, which will take into account your most common laundry dilemmas, as well as the type of water in which you wash your clothes. Find a detergent you like, and you can give those whites and brights a healthy hint of "green."

Learn more healthy laundry practices in our guide to better bleaches.

What About Softeners?Many textile and cleaning experts advise against using synthetic fabric softeners altogether, especially for those items you want to remain absorbent or nonirritating to sensitive skin. That's because conventional softeners generate their namesake feel with a waxy chemical residue that attaches to your garments and can build up over time. This can inhibit towels and "wicking" athletic wear from serving their functions. The same innovation that allows a softener to enhance comfort and control static cling between washes keeps your body in close, constant contact with its potentially harmful ingredients.

In addition, most softeners contain derivatives of ammonium chloride, a chemical that is deadly to some aquatic life and a common trigger for allergy and asthma symptoms, including difficulty breathing, congestion, and watery eyes. Many softeners also contain tallow, or animal fat, making them undesirable to vegans and other people trying to avoid animal products. Fortunately, you can choose from a variety of gentler alternatives, some of which you may already stock in your kitchen. A quarter to one cup of white vinegar added to a final rinse (after any chlorine products have been washed away to avoid dangerous fumes) can help to fluff, deodorize, and prevent lint, and a quarter cup of baking soda added to the wash cycle can help to reduce static cling.

think before you pink

I've never liked pink.

It's not just the aesthetics, it's the commercialization of breast cancer that leaves me itchy. Barbara Ehrenreich's "Welcome to Cancerland: A mammogram leads to a cult of pink kitsch" essay for Harper's Magazine best summarizes the growing malaise I have about the business of breast cancer. Her article made me stop and question why mainstream cancer advocacy groups aren't doing more research into the environmental causes of cancer. It also made me think more critically about the infantilization of women (from pink clothes to historically limited medical options) around this issue. And it's nearly October (Breast Cancer Awareness month), when marketers go nuts with their pink campaigns.

Marketers Think Pink for Breast Cancer Awareness
by Tanya Irwin, Monday, Sep 24, 2007 5:00 AM ET
DOZENS OF COMPANIES ARE GETTING on the National Breast Cancer Awareness Month (October) bandwagon, creating special pink-themed merchandise and donating a portion of proceeds to breast cancer research.

Companies are increasingly using breast cancer cause marketing to reinforce their brand images and differentiate themselves from their competitors. Many marketers have partnered with Susan G. Komen for the Cure, which hosts the Komen Race for the Cure events.

Komen's corporate partners include those who are on the Komen Million Dollar Council. In addition to a financial contribution of at least $1 million, each commits to spreading educational messages. The companies include American Airlines, BMW of North America, Boston Market, Ford Division, Hallmark Gold Crown Stores, KitchenAid, Lean Cuisine, M&M Brand Chocolate Candies, Pier 1 Imports and Yoplait USA.

Don't get me wrong — I think that many companies do admirable things by connecting consumer altruism with their self-interest (the corporate bottom line). And right now, my former roommate's fighting for her life after her recent breast cancer diagnosis ... so it's very top-of-mind for me as we go into October and I see pink everything, everywhere. It's tempting to buy, buy, buy to help raise funds for this important cause. (Nevermind that there are more effective ways to fight this disease than shopping, for chrissakes.)

Sure, it sounds noble: a cosmetics company promises that if you buy one of its products, a portion of the sale will go toward “the fight against breast cancer.” But what if that cosmetic contains chemicals that might actually increase your risk of developing the disease? It kills me to see companies who are part of the problem (like cosmetics manufacturers who continue to use carcinogens like paraben and phthalates) wrap themselves in pink to make a buck.

Breast Cancer Action is a grassroots organization of breast cancer survivors and their supporters at the forefront of the breast cancer activist movement. It reminds consumers to question the amount of money being donated to breast cancer compared to the amount being spent on marketing, the types of programs the money supports and what a company is doing to ensure its products are not contributing to the breast cancer epidemic. This year, the group is focusing its efforts on what it calls "pinkwashers" —companies that promote a pink-ribbon campaign but manufacture a product that may be contributing to the disease.

In short, it's time to think before you pink. Ask these questions before you run out and buy a product because it "supports the fight against breast cancer."

Companies are increasingly using breast cancer cause marketing to reinforce their brand image and differentiate themselves from their competitors. Navigating the expanding sea of pink ribbon promotions requires consumers to ask a few critical questions:

How much money from each product sold actually goes toward breast cancer?
For example, Yoplait donates ten cents for every pink yogurt lid mailed back to the company—it would take 4 lids just to make up for the price of the stamp. If a company is not giving as much as you think it should, you might choose to give directly to an organization or charity instead.

What percentage of the purchase price does this represent?
Many companies are ambiguous about the amount they donate from each purchase. For example, Ralph Lauren’s Pink Pony Products range in price from $10 to $598, yet the only information given to consumers is that “a portion of the proceeds from Pink Pony products benefits the Pink Pony Fund for Cancer Care and Prevention.” The consumer has no way of knowing how much money from each product is actually being donated.

What is the maximum amount that will be donated?
Some companies place a cap on the amount they will donate, meaning that if you happen to buy the product after the cap is reached, your dollars will not go towards the charity. In 2005, Cartier’s Roadster Watch promised to benefit the Breast Cancer Research Foundation. Although each watch cost $3,900.00, the maximum amount Cartier donated from the total sales was $30,000.00. That’s less than the price of 8 watches.

How much money was spent marketing the product?
In a 2005 PR Week article, 3M touted that its 2004 breast cancer awareness effort, involving a 70-foot-tall ribbon made of Post-it Notes in Times Square, reached more than 3 million people and increased sales 80% over expectations. The article reports that 3M spent $500,000 on the marketing campaign (no actual numbers on profits were released), but only gave a little over half of that amount ($300,000) to the cause.

To what breast cancer organization does the money go, and what types of programs does it support?
If research, what kind? Is it the same type of studies we’ve been doing for decades that already gets enormous financial support, or is it innovative research into the causes of breast cancer that always struggles for funds?

If services, is it reaching the people who need it most? Campaigns that are not locally focused may siphon funds away from the community and give them to larger programs that are already well funded.

If advocacy and education, do the programs make steps towards ending the epidemic? Programs supporting “breast health awareness” ignore that we are already well aware that cancer is a problem and it’s time to move from awareness to action.

What is the company doing to assure that its products are not contributing to the breast cancer epidemic?
Many companies that raise funds for breast cancer also make products that may be contributing to the epidemic. Is the promotion a golf tournament on a golf course sprayed with pesticides? Is $1 being given each time you test-drive a polluting car, as in BMW’s Ultimate Drive Campaign? Are the products being sold cosmetics containing chemicals linked to breast cancer?

Far too many marketing campaigns exist for it to be possible to trace the threads of profit for each, and it’s difficult to verify whether or not a promotion is legitimate while you’re standing in the store. Make the best choice you can with the information you have. If you have trouble getting answers or if you feel that a promotion is questionable, write to the company responsible, consider buying a different product, tell your friends, and/or contact BCA.

the ugly truth

Phthlates are in lotion, shampoo, deodorant, and lots of cosmetics. I stopped buying certain cosmetics after I heard about this last year.

Phthalates have been shown to cause a wide array of health problems, from liver and kidney failure to heart, lung and blood pressure problems. The most worrisome aspect by far is the phthalates' effect on the reproductive development of fetuses and infants, particularly the reproductive tracts of males.

Phthalates are metabolized in humans once ingested or absorbed through the skin. In pregnant women, phthalates pass through the placenta to be absorbed by the fetus. In nursing women, phthalates are found in breast milk, which means infants are ingesting these chemicals as they develop.

Repeat after me: Pthlates are bad. Very, very bad. Find out if the products you use are safe (and safe alternatives).

Are Your Beauty Products Killing You?
By Matthew Wheeland, AlterNet. Posted July 4, 2002.
A new report linking birth defects and health risks with a chemical used in trendy cosmetics, gives a long overdue wake-up call to the FDA, consumers and the beauty industry.

If you got out of the shower this morning, blow-dried your hair and gave your 'do a spritz of VO5 hairspray, you've just poisoned yourself a little bit. If you do this every morning as your regular routine, you are accumulating these poisons by the bucketful.

But it's not just VO5 that could make you sick. Try Secret Sheer Dry deodorant, or the suitably named Poison, a perfume by Christian Dior. In fact, 52 popular cosmetics are now proven to have toxic components in varying concentrations -- and they're all over the place.

A report released jointly July 10 by Coming Clean, the Environmental Working Group and Health Care Without Harm details the extent to which a toxic family of chemicals known as phthalates (THAY-lates) are used in everyday household products, especially beauty products like nail polish, lipstick and perfumes.

The report, titled "Not Too Pretty: Pthalates, Beauty Products and the FDA," has its basis in a 1999 FDA study of toxins in the general population of the U.S. From a sample of 1,029 people, every one of them tested positive for phthalates in their blood or urine. Scientists at the Centers for Disease Control singled out a subgroup of 289 people with a particularly high incidence of phthalates: women of childbearing age. These women were found to have daily exposures of phthalates ranging from 2.5 to 22 times the normal for the rest of the general population, with 5 percent showing levels of 75 percent or higher of the acceptable daily amounts.

Judging from the 5 percent of women with dangerously high test results, it can be assumed that every day, as many as two million women of childbearing age are exposed to toxic levels of phthalates.

Phthalates have been shown to cause a wide array of health problems, from liver and kidney failure to heart, lung and blood pressure problems. The most worrisome aspect by far is the phthalates' effect on the reproductive development of fetuses and infants, particularly the reproductive tracts of males.

Phthalates are metabolized in humans once ingested or absorbed through the skin. In pregnant women, phthalates pass through the placenta to be absorbed by the fetus. In nursing women, phthalates are found in breast milk, which means infants are ingesting these chemicals as they develop. In male fetuses -- and infants especially -- the phthalates have been shown to cause testicular atrophy and a reduced sperm count, among other serious health problems.

Dr. Stephen Safe of Texas A&M University notes that some in the medical community have expressed concerns about phthalate exposure and human health. "It's hard to be specific until more medical data is available," Dr. Safe says, "but if people have concerns, they should limit their use of these products."

The HCWH report is the first to document and link the deleterious effects of phthalates to male reproductive development. Women of childbearing age were shown to be the most at-risk demographic, and it is reasonable to attribute this in large part to one fact: the beauty industry. According to Charlotte Brody, executive director of HCWH, "With all the variables involved, the only one that doesn't apply on a large scale to both men and women is the use of cosmetics."

Global Pollutants
Phthalates are plasticizers. In cosmetics, they are used to add texture and luster to the product. Ninety percent of the world's plasticizers are used to soften PVC (vinyl) and make it pliable. The other 10 percent have been used in many kinds of manufacturing for 30 years, beginning with medical products like IV bags, gloves and blood bags, but also paints, lubricants, adhesives, toys, food containers, and, of course, cosmetics.

The use of phthalates in manufacturing is widespread, and has such a long history that phthalates have wormed their way into every corner of the globe. Traces are present in virtually every person on the planet. The phthalate DEHP has been found in Antarctica and in deep-sea jellyfish 3,000 feet below the ocean's surface.

Different phthalates can be found in consumer products like shower curtains, umbrellas, adhesives, children's toys, and countless other manufactured goods. PVC, being incredibly cheap to produce, is the preferred product for the world's manufacturers. With phthalates, you can easily turn PVC into any number of products.

Turning the Tide
Since the FDA does not regulate the use of pthalates in cosmetics and beauty aids, manufacturers are not required to disclose them as ingredients.

Says the report: "Taken as a whole, the lab results indicate that a substantial fraction of cosmetics companies may be hiding phthalates on store shelves within the containers of their products, with no warning for pregnant women who might want to avoid purchasing products that contain chemicals linked to birth defects."

DEHP, the primary phthalate found in medical supplies, has been found toxic in studies of patients who spend considerable amounts of time in hospitals, mainly newborns and the elderly. But other phthalates, including DEP, DBP, BBP, DCP, DOP and DINP, were last studied nearly 20 years ago.

According to FDA spokesperson Kimberly Rawlings, "Phthalates were shown to be safe for topical use in 1984, and there have been no further studies by the FDA on this subject since then."

In a recent Dallas Morning News story on phthalates and the cosmetics industry, Rod Irvin, a spokesman for the American Chemistry Council's Phthalate Esters Panel, said that "[p]hthalates are among the most-studied products out there. They have a long record of safe use, with no reports or evidence of harm to human health." Additionally, the industry group has spent "millions" studying the compounds and has found no reason for concern.

In November 2000, the Environmental Working Group released a report that stated, "Phthalates are recognized as toxic substances under environmental law, but companies are free to use unlimited amounts in cosmetics."

The FDA in the past has considered each of these phthalates separately when studying their toxicity. If you're a dialysis patient, then you're at risk for poisoning because you're getting twice the amount of DEHP recommended with each visit. That's bad. But if you're a dialysis patient and you wear a lot of makeup and spend a lot of time playing with your grandchildren and their toys, your exposure could be deadly.

Not in the many-faceted eyes of the FDA, though. Its consideration of disparate exposure to phthalates is the main loophole manufacturers use to claim that phthalates are safe. Without recognizing that all members of the phthalate family accumulate to cause the same health problems, phthalate manufacturers are able to claim that each individual chemical is not harmful at the documented levels.

HCWH tested 72 of the following kinds of cosmetics: Nail polish, fragrances (perfumes, body oils, etc.), hairsprays, deodorants and lotions. Fifty-two of these contained phthalates as ingredients, though none were listed on the labels. Most of the pthalate-containing products are household names: Aqua Net Professional Hair Spray; Degree Original Solid Deodorant; Nivea Créme lotion; Elizabeth Arden's Red Door fragrance; Calvin Klein's Eternity perfume.

As Brody of HCWH points out, this is just the beginning: "It's impossible to know without testing which products contain phthalates. Just because some of the lotions we tried tested negative doesn't mean [all lotions are] clean." Until the manufacturers are required to label phthalates, there's no way to know for sure.

Early Warnings
This is only the latest in a long series of warnings about the dangers of phthalates, which have been used extensively since the early 1970s. The biggest commotion over phthalates came in 1998, when the Danish government issued a well-publicized ban on toys containing phthalates because of concern that children were being exposed to toxic chemicals when they put toys in their mouths. Lego, the Danish toymaker, quickly responded by reformulating its toy factories to phase out the use of phthalates in production of its toys.

Since then, there has been steadily growing awareness of the dangers of phthalates. Network news programs have discussed the dangers in toys, cosmetics and beauty products, and even in fish that live in polluted waters. Despite all this, the battle against phthalates has been a stalemate: The EU continues to extend its temporary ban on toys for children aged 3 and under, but European manufacturers are lobbying to institute a voluntary reporting system for all other products similar to what is in place in the U.S.

Stacy Malkan of HCWH is urging people to distribute the lists of phthalate-containing products far and wide, to discuss the topic of phthalates in cosmetics and medical supplies with their health care provider, and to contact the FDA to demand an industry-wide ban on phthalates in cosmetic products. In addition, the groups releasing the report are preparing to launch a national ad campaign.

As the report makes clear, non-toxic alternatives are readily available: "The limited testing done for Not Too Pretty reveals that the same big companies that produce phthalate-laced beauty products, also make similar products without phthalates ... L'Oreal markets Jet Set nail polish without DBP but puts the phthalate in its Maybelline brand."

Without public pressure, however, there will be no incentive for the $20 billion-a-year cosmetics industry to phase out all phthalates. And women who continue to douse themselves in Christian Dior's Poison may be helping the perfume live up to its name.

For more information and the complete list of tested products, go to NotTooPretty.org.

toxic beauty

Health-Conscious Teens Toss Make-Up
Concerns about toxicity in cosmetics have some teens campaigning to change the industry. In the meantime, their message is: wear less makeup, read labels, and toss questionable products.

Young women in California and Montana are taking on the $35 billion cosmetics industry one eyeliner at a time.

Their national campaign to promote safe cosmetics is applying idealism and energy to educate girls – and boys – about phthalates, which health advocates warn are carcinogenic, and other toxins in nail polish, shampoos, hair dyes and facial cleansers.

Find out if the products you use are safe (and safe alternatives) at: http://ewg.org/issues/cosmetics/virtualdrugstore.php

Read more at http://www.safecosmetics.org/

Via AlterNet