Oh, yes! I wish that we had planned this pregnancy because I would have been careful to rid my house of phthalates for at least 6 months before getting pregnant, but I've been doing my best to keep my boy safe. I've had so many friends bear children who have autism, that it's one of the things that I'm very paranoid about. We have seen him on the ultrasound appearing to smile a few times. I even have a photo, but there's that doubt that maybe he was just making a face.
Our Stolen Future: CDC finds extensive phthalate contamination in Americans
"They found widespread exposure at troubling levels. Most problematic, the subgroup with the highest level of exposure was women of child-bearing age, just the people public health efforts should keep out of the path of reproductive toxicants."
Phthalates: Are They Safe? - 60 Minutes - CBS News
"Swan told "60 Minutes" correspondent Lesley Stahl she found that the higher the level of phthalates in the mother's urine during pregnancy, the greater the problems occurred in young boys.
Asked what she found in babies, Swan said, "We found that the baby boys were in several subtle ways less completely masculine."
Dr. Howard Snyder, a pediatric urologist at Children's Hospital in Philadelphia, says Swan's findings line up with what he's seeing in newborn baby boys: an alarming increase in deformed sex organs. "
phthalates | Healthy Child Healthy World
"Birth defects, including cleft palate and in male reproductive organs, due to prenatal exposure. In laboratory animals, exposure to some phthalates prior to or after birth caused damaged, shrunken, undescended, or atrophied testicles; reduced sperm production; destruction of Sertoli cells, which produce sperm; and lowered testosterone levels in offspring. In humans, some studies have found decreased sperm counts and damaged sperm in men with higher levels of some phthalates. There is also evidence phthalate exposure may be linked to preterm births.
DEHP causes liver cancer in laboratory animals and is considered a probable human carcinogen by the U.S. EPA and the National Toxicology Program of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. The EPA also considers butyl benzyl phthalate a possible human carcinogen. However, the World Health Organization considers the two phthalates to be “not classifiable” as to their carcinogenicity to humans.
Harm to normal development. An expert panel has expressed �serious concern� for the possibility of harm to the developing reproductive system in infant boys exposed to high levels of DEHP that may occur with intensive medical procedures, such as those used for critically ill infants. The panel also expressed �concern� about exposure of pregnant women and the possibility of harm to the development of their children.
At high doses, some phthalates have damaged the liver and kidneys of laboratory animals.
Respiratory difficulties in children with bronchial obstruction (such as asthma).
In a September 2000 study, Puerto Rican researchers reported that phthalates had been detected in baby girls, aged 6 months to eight years, with premature breast development. The average levels of DEHP was six times greater in the early developers than in babies who had not experienced premature breast development."