Environment committee  If we're talking about just phthalates, by the virtue that we have excretion data through the CDC, we know what the exposure to a fairly wide array of phthalates is. And that exposure, if you took it and you added it all up, you would still be below what's considered a safe daily

Environment committee  I think if you're talking about phthalates, we know, at least in the U.S. from the CDC data—and I'll get to the other thing that I think you're talking about—that for the array of phthalates from the CDC data, the exposures are very low. So if you layer these on top of each other

Environment committee  It's difficult for me to speak to the plastics industry because I represent the manufacturers of the additive--and only of one particular additive. I know there are concerns that old technology is used in places like Russia, China, and that they're not meeting the same standard

Environment committee  For the last eight years we've been conducting research at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver. We've been looking at the fate of phthalate esters in the environment. We know they biodilute. They do not bioaccumulate. They don't stay in the environment. We've been looking at a

Environment committee  The other thing the Consumer Product Safety Commission did was a worst-case analysis. They said, okay, we know that what children keep the longest in their mouths is the silicone pacifier. Let's make the assumption that it is vinyl and that it is plasticized, and then let's back-

Environment committee  I think you referred to bottle nipples and other nipples. I don't believe they were ever phthalate plasticized vinyl. Silicone is more like mom, and that's why they're used.

Environment committee  I know that what the Consumer Product Safety Commission said was that a child would have to keep a vinyl article in his or her mouth for greater than, I think, 95 minutes a day to approach any harm. What they then found in their mouthing study with children is that what children

Environment committee  What you have with phthalates are remarkably well-characterized materials. The International Agency for Research on Cancer, for DEHP particularly, looked at all of the data. And the cancer that was caused was in rodents and in tumours, specifically liver tumours, by a mechanism

Environment committee  The substitutes. When the Consumer Product Safety Commission did its very extensive study, it said to be very careful about using substitutes. They may not be as well studied and they may not perform as well. Products may be more brittle, and in toys may cause a choking hazard fo

Environment committee  Well, I certainly can speak for the U.S. What the CPSC showed was that while children are constantly putting things into their mouths, when they have an array of items, they don't always go for the vinyl toy.

Environment committee  So you're getting an array of things there. The study was done both with parents observing and professional observers. They determined that the amount of time vinyl toys actually went into mouths was very short, and because of that there wasn't a concern. Would I have a concern

Environment committee  We use those words because I can't give you an absolute. I haven't gone out and tested every single product on every single shelf, from every single reputable manufacturer, from every single importer. We know from the Toy Industry Association, certainly in the U.S., that it's n

Environment committee  It started in 1998. We know that any plasticizer from a vinyl will migrate. There was a program to determine the migration of phthalates from vinyl toys and the level of that migration. In conjunction with that, there was a debate on test methods and a debate on the level that

Environment committee  Sure. What I'd like to comment on is that what we do know is that from the very extensive Centers for Disease Control biomonitoring program, they have now analyzed well over 100 compounds in both human blood and urine. The preamble to their report states that the presence of a co

Environment committee  No, my experience as a chemist has been in the chemical industry as an analytical chemist looking primarily at organic compounds. My experience as a chemist has also been within the pharmaceutical industry, working in a laboratory and looking at quality control of pharmaceutical