When my husband travels for business he gets the opportunity to watch HBO in his hotel room. Recently he told me about an interesting scenario in the new HBO series Tell Me You Love Me. Evidently the couple in the throes of raising children has a daughter who gets her period for the first time on her tenth birthday. Concerned, the mom takes her daughter to the pediatrician who explains that widespread early menarche is the result of exposure to hormone mimickers in plastics. While it is controversial whether or not girls are getting periods earlier then they did when we were young, it is true that we are all being exposed to hormone mimickers in plastics.

Phthalates

One of the most controversial family of chemicals found in plastic are phthalates which mimic estrogen. Phthalates make plastics soft in products like shower curtains, rubber duckies, wash-off baby books that can go in the tub, and medical tubing. They are also used to enhance personal care products by making perfume last longer, nail polish more elastic, and lotions more easily absorbed into the skin.

In rodent studies by the EPA, rats exposed to phthalates not only contract liver cancer and develop damaged kidneys, but male rat pups exposed to the chemicals in utero experience dramatic reproductive mutations, including smaller scrotums, undescended testicles, hypospadias (a birth defect where the opening of the urethra is on the base of the penis rather than the tip), and reduced penis size. This cluster of abnormalities frequently results in lower sperm counts, infertility, reduced testosterone, and testicular cancer, a phenomenon scientists now refer to as “phthalate syndrome.”

My Favorite Phthalate Study

“STUDY FINDS GENITAL ABNORMALITIES IN BOYS: Widely used industrial compounds…linked by researchers to changes in the reproductive organs of male infants.”

Los Angeles Times—May 27, 2005

In June of 2005 the first ever-published study on in utero phthalate exposure linked exposure to phthalates to abnormalities in baby boys’ genitalia. Dr. Shanna Swan from the University of Rochester found this connection by measuring phthalate monoester metabolites in the urine of 85 pregnant women in Los Angeles, Minneapolis, and Columbia, Mo, and then examining their sons soon after birth. She and her team found that mothers with the highest level of phthalate metabolites in their urine late in pregnancy had baby boys with smaller penises and scrotums, incomplete descent of the testicles, and a shorter perineum, which scientist call anogenital distance (AGD). (Anogential shortening was also found in EPA rodent studies.)Given that normal males have longer AGDs than females, Dr. Shanna Swan considers a shortened AGD a marker for demasculinization.

§ About 25% of US women have levels of phthalates high enough to impact the genital development of baby boys in the womb.

Although it is not clear to Dr. Swan and her team that long-term repercussions result from these idiosyncrasies, in three to five years she plans to reassess the 85 boys analyzed. In particular, she will be looking at play activity to understand if boys with the highest level of phthalates display typically “feminine behaviors.” She explains, “ For the initial look we will ask moms to report on the toys their children play with, as well as the games they most frequently play.” She goes on to say, “there are some well-validated scales that we can use to rate these responses on a male-typical versus female-typical spectrum.”

I phoned Dr. Swan and asked her if she had any thoughts on how pregnant women should proceed given the information revealed in her study. She told me, “Pregnant women or couples attempting to conceive may want to limit their use of phthalate-containing personal care products.”

So the question remains how do we reduce our children’s exposure to these questionable hormone mimickers? For answers, stay tuned for PLASTICS, Part Two which will appear next week.