Tag: chemist
Sex Toy Safety
The Smitten Kitten in Minneapolis is one of the adult toy retailers which has stopped selling certain kinds of toys because of questions about the chemicals used to make them. (Photo by Lester Graham)
Co-owner Jennifer Pritchett of the Smitten Kitten holds a jar of adult toys that are leaching phthalates and seem to be melting into each other. Pritchett is concerned about whether the chemicals can have an impact on human health. (Photo by Lester Graham)
The adult toy store Smitten Kitten stopped selling certain toys because the retailers are concerned about the chemicals used to make the toys. (Photo by Lester Graham)
(Listeners should be aware of the adult nature of this report. It includes
sexually explicit descriptions.)
Not everyone uses sex toys. But some people certainly do use them. The American
sex toy industry took-in more than one-and-a-half billion dollars in revenue
last year. But there are growing public health concerns about chemicals used
to manufacture some of the adult toys. No government agency regulates sex
toys because the adult toys are labeled as novelty items. "Novelty" means
these toys are not intended to actually be used. Kyle Norris reports some
retailers want the industry to stop using the potentially harmful materials in
the toys:
https://environmentreport.org/wp-content/uploads/2007/10/feature_norris_102207.mp3
(Readers should be aware of the adult nature of this report. It includes
A couple of years ago, Jennifer Pritchett and Jessica Giordani opened up The
Smitten Kitten, a small sex-toy store. On the day that their first shipment of
adult toys arrived they excitedly gathered around. As they ripped open the
box, a noxious odor permeated the air. It was that new, vinyl shower-curtain
"And we saw these oil spots. That's what it looked like oil seeping through
the cardboard boxes. We were a little concerned, obviously, and we opened
them up and each of the toys, almost down to every single one, was beading
some oil-like substance up on the toys, through the product packaging,
through the styrofoam peanuts, and then through the cardboard."
The entire shipment of adult toys was ruined. Pritchett started asking around
to the folks she knew in the industry. Someone told her that the oils leaching
from the toys are called phthalates.
Cheaper-end sex toys are made with polyvinylchloride, or PVC. PVC is a
synthetic material used in tons of things like building materials, medical
appliances, everyday household items and children's toys. And much like
the children's toys, most of the cheaper adult toys are manufactured in
China. There are no regulations on the manufacture of the adult toys in
China, and no regulations on the imports of toys in the United States.
In order to make PVC softer and more flexible – which is a desired effect in
certain adult toys – plasticizers called phthalates are added. And a lot of
phthalates go into jelly toys to make them more jelly-like. In fact, the
leaching toys Jennifer Pritchett had ordered are actually called jelly toys. But
that very un-technical term did not sit well with Pritchett. She sent a few of
the best-selling toys on the market to an independent chemist. To see what
the adult toys were really made of.
For instance one of the most famous sex toys in the country is called "The
Rabbit." Everybody knows about that. Sex and The City had a big episode
about the rabbit habit. Oprah Winfrey gave away one to every person in her
audience. They're everywhere. And I sent that particular toy to a lab, and it
came back that 60% of the total weight of that toy, so 60% of the total
volume of material is a chemical called dioctyl phthalatem, which is a
known carcinogen and teratogen.
It turned out the rabbit toy was made with materials from a class of
chemicals that's linked to cancer and birth defects. It's not known whether
materials used in some adult toys are dangerous to human health or not.
Because no one is testing them on humans.
In 2006, the Danish Technological Institute did study the health risks of
chemicals in adult toys on lab animals. Researchers found that some
phthalates are harmful to mice and rats in large amounts. Pritchett says that
if the consumer public knew that the materials in their toys might be a risk,
they probably would not use them. She says that the big picture here is about
a lot of things. And one of those things is a culture's discomfort with
"It's about a regulatory system that can't even say the words 'adult toys' let
alone regulate it like they do children's toys. It's about a market structure
where people can make thousands of percent profit on cheaply made toys
and nobody's going to do anything about it."
There's a lot of money in sex toys. Carol Queen is the staff sexologist at
Good Vibrations, a well-established California sex store. She says that
people have worried about phthalates in the toys that children suck on, like
pacifiers. In fact in Europe, children's toys with dioctyl phthalate and other
kinds of phthalates have been banned. Once people started worrying about
children's toys, they soon started to wonder about adult toys.
"In terms of the dildos and the insertable vibrators, at the very least, those
things are going to and on the mucosa, and if somebody's having fun it's
staying there for a little while. There's friction, there's the possibility of
leaching. And all of those things are potentially correct. The problem with
the discourse is that so far no one has had the opportunity to truly understand
what the implications health wise and otherwise might be for these materials
on human body. Because people don't test sex toys."
The big concern here is that sex toys directly touch mucous membranes. And
this contact is not buffered by any layer of skin. So the materials used in an
adult toy can potentially more easily be absorbed into the body.
For this report, I contacted more than twenty medical and health
professionals. They were the heads of research universities that specialize in
sexual studies. Or OB-GYN doctors, or the directors of sexual health clinics.
None of these health professionals were willing to be interviewed about
what can happen to someone's body when they use adult toys made out of
potentially hazardous materials. They just don't have the information about
it. Although when I spoke with them, the majority of those health
professionals were curious to hear this report.
We finally spoke with Dr. Susan Ernst. She's the director of the Gynecology
Clinic at the University of Michigan's student health services. She confirmed
that this topic is not on the radar for many health professionals:
"It hadn't come up as a topic with patients. It hadn't come up in any of the
medical conferences that I had attended. It hadn't come up in the medical
journals that I have read. So I am embarrassed to say it came up through the
lay press bringing it up as an important issue."
Dr. Ernst says that if a patient is using an adult toy that is potentially
dangerous, then health care professionals need to be knowledgeable about
Jennifer Pritchett of Smitten Kitten says friends sometimes mention rashes
or burning they experience when using adult toys. They've been to the
doctor. But physicians often wrongly assume that it's an STD or a toy that's
not been cleaned properly. And the problem doesn't go away.
The doctors don't think about a connection between the chemicals used to
make the toys and how they might affect the body.
Pritchett says when she mentions that possible connection to a friend, she
can see a light-bulb go on over their head. Now that's speculation of course,
but she thinks people need to put all of the pieces of the sex-toy puzzle
together. That's why she stopped selling the jelly toys that were leaching
"We have to say we know the chemicals in these toys are dangerous. We
know they're dangerous in other respects. We know if children put these in
their mouths, it's dangerous. I think we're going to have to extrapolate and
say well if adults put these in mouths or other parts of their body it's also
dangerous. We're just going to have to make a little leap there. But the
industry who is invested in keeping toxic toys on the market hides behind
that. They hide behind the novelty use only. The 'nobody's proven that this
specific toy causes cancer.' I think it's a cheap argument and I hope it doesn't
stand up for too long."
Pritchett says it's not as if people are only buying adult toys as gag gifts. But
because the toys are so controversial, nobody expects the government to test
the safety of them anytime soon. But people are starting to talk about the
issue. A few months ago an adult toy trade magazine did a cover story called
"Attack of the Phthalates." And one of the biggest adult toy retailers recently
announced it was phasing-out products that contain phthalates. Because
more people who use these toys are becoming concerned about whether
they're putting themselves at risk.
For the Environment Report, I'm Kyle Norris.
Coalition Against Toxic Toys
More on pthalates in adult toys
Story on alternatives to toxic toys
Author Kyle NorrisPosted on October 22, 2007 Categories FeaturesTags california, carcinogen, carol, chemist, china, flexible, government, health risks, jelly, jennifer, jessica, phthalates, pvc, queen, regulations, retailers, risks, susan, umich, university of michigan
Colin Horwitz is a researcher at Carnegie Mellon. He's working on a chemical that will break down pollution released by pulp and paper mills. (Photo by Reid Frazier)
Green chemistry looks a lot like the kind of chemistry most of us learned in high school. This is an experiment on a pollution-eating catalyst being conducted by a grad student at Carnegie Mellon's Green Oxidation Lab. (Photo by Reid Frazier)
Modern chemistry is everywhere – the paint on our walls, the ink on the morning newspaper, and the plastics in our computers.
Problem is – the chemicals are also in our air, water, and food. Reid Frazier visited a chemist who is trying to re-think how chemicals are made:
https://environmentreport.org/wp-content/uploads/2007/05/feature_frazier_052807.mp3
Modern chemistry is everywhere: the paint on our walls, the ink on the
morning newspaper, and the plastics in our computers. Problem is – the
chemicals are also in our air, water, and food. The Environment
Report's Reid Frazier visited a chemist who is trying to re-think how
chemicals are made:
This room looks and sounds like a chemical lab anywhere in the world.
Trays full of vials sit atop machines with blinking lights. Notebooks
filled with hand-written numbers sit next to computer screens. But this
isn't a typical chemistry lab.
Evan Beach is a graduate student at Carnegie Mellon University in
Pittsburgh. He works at the Institute for Green Oxidation Chemistry, or
Green Ox. Beach is analyzing wastewater from a pulp and paper mill:
"We try and work with as close to the real pollution as we can. We
actually have the paper mill ship the stuff to us."
Beach is working on a chemical that he hopes will clean up the
wastewater before it hits rivers and streams.
The Green Ox lab is run by Terry Collins. His career as a green chemist
started as a college student in his native New Zealand. He worked
during summers at a plant that made refrigerators. One summer, he
discovered that workers using a cleaning agent were all getting sick.
"Just in lunch with them I'd hear about their headaches and their blood
noses and I realized, my goodness, they're using an awful lot of these
organic solvents, and if there's any benzene there, these are signature
benzene intoxication conditions, early stage."
Collins calculated the workers were getting slowly poisoned by benzene,
a chemical that's known to cause cancer. He told company officials
about it and they promised to replace it.
"So I went a way, nine months later, I felt an obligation I went back
and checked they had made no change so I went and I got every paper I
could and I took it and dropped it on the chief chemist and I can still
remember his jaw hitting the floor when I opened the door and gave it
to him, I then tried to get the institute of chemistry to help and they
told me not to even bother going to the health department, that they
wouldn't help, and they were probably right, and I just felt immensely
frustrated by the situation."
After this experience, Collins decided to focus his research on
reducing the harm caused by modern chemicals. He started designing a
chemical catalyst in the 1980s. When combined with hydrogen peroxide,
the catalyst eats through long chains of harmful chemicals. It could
potentially clean up the paper, textile, and plastics industries. It
could also curb pollution found in almost every home in America: The
water coming out of your tap.
"If you have a glass of water in most American cities you get some
Prozac and you get many other things as well that come from the
The drugs can be found in trace amounts in tapwater. Their effect on
human health is still unknown. But these drugs are being flushed into
the environment and they don't break down easily. Once they enter
rivers and streams, these chemicals can last for decades. Scientists
believe they might be affecting fertility in some animals. Collins and
his colleagues believe the catalyst they're developing could break down
these drugs once they hit the environment.
Some believe all chemists should take a more holistic look at the
compounds they make. Sasha Ryabov is a physical chemist who works in
Collins' lab. He worked as a traditional chemist at Moscow State
University in his native Russia. Ryabov converted to green chemistry
when he came to Green Ox. Since he's made the switch, he thinks that
all chemists should consider themselves green:
"It's not the future field… It's a natural part that cannot be
separated. The green chemistry we are thinking should be part of
chemistry as a whole."
While academics like Collins are forging new grounds in their field,
some big companies have started to follow suit by using more
environmentally-friendly products. One hitch is that the federal
government provides little funding for research in the field. A bill
before congress could boost funding for green chemistry. Regardless of
funding, Collins says all chemists must do their part to address some
of the problems their discipline has helped create:
"If you're a chemist, and you have this information, it's a burden to
carry. But we have to deal with it, we have no choice; we have to look
after the children of future generations."
For the sake of those future generations, Collins hopes more chemists
see the value of taking the long view when they're in the laboratory.
For the Environment Report, this is Reid Frazier.
What the institute is researching
http://www.epa.gov/greenchemistry/
The EPA on green chemistry
Author Reid FrazierPosted on May 28, 2007 Categories FeaturesTags beach, benzene, cancer, chemical, chemist, chemistry, collins, fertility, lab, new zealand, pharmaceutical industry, pittsburgh, pollution, prozac, refrigerators, river, russia, stream, terry, wastewater
Chemicals Leak Into Microwave Popcorn
Scientists have found that microwave popcorn could be a source of a chemical that might cause cancer in humans. The GLRC's Mark Brush has more:
https://environmentreport.org/wp-content/uploads/2006/05/brush_052906.mp3
Scientists have found that microwave popcorn could be a source of a chemical that might
cause cancer in humans. The GLRC's Mark Brush has more:
(sound of microwave popcorn)
Alright, I like microwave popcorn too, and I don't like where this study is going, but the
Food and Drug Administration found that the grease-resistant coating inside microwave
popcorn bags can get into the popcorn oil. The coating is made with chemicals similar to
those found in non-stick pots and pans.
Tim Begley is a research chemist with the FDA. He was the lead author on a study
published in the journal Food Additives and Contaminants:
"A microwave popcorn bag is a very, very, very extreme situation, because of the heat
generated on a microwave popcorn bag."
He's talking about 400 degrees in just a minute or two. The chemicals used to make the
grease resistant coatings can break down into a suspected carcinogen known as PFOA,
but Begley stresses it is not known whether people are exposed to PFOA after eating a
bag of microwave popcorn. He says more study is needed.
For the GLRC, I'm Mark Brush.
Related information from the journal Environmental Science and Technology
Author Mark BrushPosted on May 29, 2006 Categories News SpotsTags bags, cancer, carcinogen, chemical, chemist, coating, food and drug administration, heat, humans, microwave, oil, pfoa, popcorn, tim
STUDY FINDS PDBEs IN HOUSEHOLD DUST
Babies and children are frequently in contact with dust. Some scientists worry that potentially-harmful chemicals found in household dust will result in negative health effects. (Photo by Jason Sellers)
Chemicals that are suspected of being hazardous to human health are being found in household dust. The chemicals are flame retardants used in everything from carpet padding to TV sets. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium's Mark Brush has more:
Chemicals that are suspected of being hazardous to human health
are being found in household dust. The chemicals are flame retardants
used in everything from carpet padding to TV sets. The Great Lakes Radio
Consortium's Mark Brush has more:
The chemicals are known as poly-brominated-diphenyl-ethers, or PBDEs.
Scientists already knew that these flame retardant chemicals where found in
food. Now researchers are finding the chemicals, in household dust.
Heather Stapleton is a research chemist at the National Institute of
Standards and Technology. She authored a study recently published by the
American Chemical Society.
"I went out and collected some house dust samples from areas within the
Washington D.C. metropolitan area, and brought these samples back to the lab
and just did a preliminary measurement looking at PBDE's in the house dust
samples and found surprisingly high levels in the house dust."
Researchers are most concerned about how the chemicals affect developing
babies. Babies have more contact with household dust than the rest of us.
The chemicals have been found to cause developmental and nervous system
damage in rats and mice.
Read the abstract of the study done by Heather Stapleton
Learn more about PBDEs from the EPA
A related story from the GLRC archives
Author Mark BrushPosted on February 21, 2005 Categories News SpotsTags american chemical society, babies, chemical, chemist, damage, developing, developmental, dust, flame retardant, food, household, mice, nervous system, pbde, rats