By PETER HECHT
SACRAMENTO, Calif. -- For most any toddler and doting mother, Elmo's Tub-Time Rhyme Bath Book is just a squishy plastic page-turner that is as delightfully chewable as it is readable.
But according to environmental advocates and scientists brought in by a state Assembly panel on Tuesday, Elmo's Tub-Time is but one of scores of toddler toys and baby products, including play mats, soft rattles and teethers, that may contain allegedly dangerous plastic softening compounds called phthalates.
"These products are linked to a number of adverse health defects, reproductive and genital defects and behavioral problems," said Rachel Gibson, an attorney for the San Francisco-based Environment California Research & Policy Center. "The list goes on and on."
On Tuesday, that was only one side of the argument as a joint Assembly health and toxics committee held an informational hearing on legislation to ban the manufacture and sale in California of toys or child-care products containing phthalates and a plastics hardening compound known as bisphenol-A.
The other side came from chemical and toy industry representatives _ and their own researchers. They charged that the legislation, Assembly Bill 319 by Assemblywoman Wilma Chan, D-Alameda, is both anti-business and an unfair assault on children's products that have been consistently proven safe for 50 years.
"This is a political fund-raising campaign, not a human health campaign," charged Patrick Moore, a doctor of ecology and former Greenpeace activist who is now working alongside the American Chemistry Council and the Toy Industry Association to defeat the California legislation. "California is very chemophobic and they're basically whipping up this scare campaign against phthalates, even though all the regulatory agencies say they are safe."
Chan, in introducing the legislation, pointed out that the European Union and 14 nations have banned the chemical compounds. So far, no U.S. state has banned their use, she said.
In a morning press conferences, Chan was flanked by two scientists, Shanna Swan, an environmental exposure researcher from the University of Rochester's Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology, and Fred vom Saal, a biologist from the University of Missouri.
The two researchers argued that extensive animal testing has revealed that the chemical products used to alter plastics for toys and baby products _ along with thousands of adult products from plastic goods to cosmetics _ pose a particular peril to infants and toddlers.
Swan recently published a government-funded study in Environmental Health Perspectives that claimed "a significant relationship" between human exposure to phthalates and "adverse changes in the genitals of baby boys."
Swan and vom Saal argued that babies that chew on plastics containing the compounds may suffer health effects including genital shrinkage in boys, obesity, hyperactivity, diabetes and early puberty.
In backing the legislation, which would ban the chemicals in the manufacture of products targeting children under 3 years old, vom Saal said: "The logical place to start is with the most vulnerable people out there _ our children."
But Jim Lamb, senior vice president of the Weinberg Group, a Washington, research organization representing industries from pharmaceutical companies to consumer product manufacturers, attacked the methodologies of scientists backing AB 319.
Lamb claimed research indicating toxic dangers from plastic softening and hardening compounds has been based primarily on tests on rats and other rodents using much higher concentrations of chemicals than is found in most consumer products. He said such tests revealed health effects that constitute "a rat syndrome _ but not a human syndrome."
But Chan praised some manufacturers, including the baby products company Evenflo, that have phased out the use of phthalates in baby bottles and other products in favor of polypropylene compounds that are considered less toxic. She said some of the new products are labeled as "PVC free, meaning that they don't include flexible polyvinyl chloride plastics that contain phthalates.
"There must be some danger," Chan said. "No company would phase them out if they weren't dangerous."
But Lamb, asserting that the chemical compounds have been consistently proved safe, attacked Chan's bill for requiring that manufacturers remake products with the compounds considered the "least toxic alternative." He said alternate products may not have been thoroughly tested.
"When manufacturers find the 'least toxic alternative,' the reality is that they are going to use the least tested alternative," Lamb said. "You don't replace something that is safe and then ban it with something else that may be dangerous."
(Distributed by Scripps-McClatchy Western Service, http://www.shns.com.)
