Phthalates

Phthalates are harming our children’s brains, bodies, and mental health, according to a new study. This is a chemical most often used in plastics but is everywhere in our world – cosmetics, canned food lining, household products, you name it. It’s pretty tough to get away from it.

A group of scientists and health professionals published research from their group called Project TENDR. They found many links between phthalates and childhood brain development, hormone regulation, obesity, asthma, cancer, reproductive problems, and cardiovascular disease. It’s terrifying. They are asking for this chemical to be banned immediately.

“When you have the same kind of findings repeated in multiple populations, done by different investigators using different tools and approaches and you keep coming up with the same finding, I think you can begin to say that the data is pretty clear,” a toxicologist named Linda Birnbaum told CNN.

One study found that mothers with high levels of phthalates in their urine during pregnancy were three times as likely to have a child with ADHD.

The American Chemistry Council is not ready to commit to banning phthalates. A spokesperson for the organization said that they do not think that these studies have proven that the chemical is the actual cause of these terrible things.

So…let’s just keep it in our environment on the unlikely chance that these things are correlation and not causation, keeping our children at risk meanwhile? Shame.