Chemical Concerns

Formaldehyde in Baby Shampoo-Crunch the Numbers, Crunch the Scare

Chemical Institute of Canada — Mon, 14 Nov 2011 02:12:54 GMT

It is a very small molehill. But to the folks at the Campaign for Safe Cosmetics (CSC) it seems more like Mount Everest. This organization’s recently released report features a cute baby smothered in lather, sitting in a bathtub under the headline “Baby’s Tub Is Still Toxic.” What is this all about? Acrylic monomers leaching out of the tub? Lead in the water? Chemicals out gassing from the shower curtain? Reactions to mould on the grout? Nope. The warning is about the trace amounts of formaldehyde or formaldehyde-releasing compounds added to some baby shampoos to prevent bacterial contamination.

Reading this report may send any mother who has used a baby shampoo preserved with formaldehyde into a state of panic, fearing they may have doomed their offspring by exposing them to a “known carcinogen.” Well, let’s throw in a little science before we throw out the baby shampoo. Yes, formaldehyde is a likely carcinogen. But that categorization was made on the basis of inhaling the chemical in significant amounts under occupational exposure. Embalmers and pathologists have indeed experienced a slight increase in cancer rates attributed to formaldehyde, mostly of the nasal cavity. However, data indicate that no tumours have been found when occupational exposure was below 2.4 mg of formaldehyde per cubic meter of air.

Now let’s crunch a few numbers. A shampoo preserved with a formaldehyde-releasing agent such as “quaternium-15” has a formaldehyde yielding potential of 0.4 mg per gram. And let’s say that about 10 grams of shampoo, a rather generous amount, are used to wash baby’s hair. So we have the possibility of releasing 4 mg of formaldehyde into the air. But wait! Formaldehyde is very soluble in water, so very little will evaporate. But let’s really play it safe and assume that half, or 2 mg, will evaporate. Now, assuming that the volume of air in a bathroom is about 10 cubic meters, and that there is zero ventilation, the concentration of formaldehyde will be 0.2 mg per cubic meter, or one tenth the amount that has never caused a tumour even with continuous exposure! Of course, here we are not talking about continuous exposure. Nobody bathes a baby for eight hours a day. Therefore any suggestion that formaldehyde in shampoo presents a cancer risk is unfounded. Actually, mommy’s breath may be a greater risk. Formaldehyde is a product of human metabolism and breath can contain concentrations of formaldehyde at 0.4 mg per cubic meter. Maybe the greatest benefit of fear mongering about formaldehyde in shampoo is to make mommy breathless.

While inhalation of formaldehyde from shampoo is a non-issue, problems due to skin exposure cannot be so readily dismissed. Formaldehyde is a known allergen and can trigger rashes and inflammation, but these effects are also dose dependent. Skin sensitization can occur when the concentration in a solution is above 0.2%. And how much is present in baby shampoo? If all the formaldehyde were instantly released from quaternium 15, the concentration in baby shampoo would be 0.04%. But quaternium-15 is a slow releaser, so the effective concentration is far less than that. There may be some babies that react to these remarkably small amounts, but far fewer than would react to the bacterial contaminants in a poorly preserved product.

As can be seen, once appropriate calculations are made, the clamor to remove formaldehyde as a preservative from baby shampoos amounts to no more than unscientific noise. But as far as marketing goes, the public is right even when it is wrong, and manufacturers are working towards using alternate preservatives such as benzyl alcohol, potassium sorbate, sodium benzoate or methylisothiazolinone. Of course one can dredge the scientific literature and come up with risks for these as well. Dig deep enough and at some dose you can find some sort of risk with any chemical.

Furthermore, if we want to eliminate all risks from formaldehyde, we’ll have to get rid of particleboard, permanent-press fabrics, varnishes, paints, carpeting, curtains, nail polish as well as many types of insulation and paper products, all of which are manufactured with formaldehyde and can out gas the compound. In some cases, as with the notorious trailers that were supplied to victims of the Katarina disaster, out gassing can be enough to cause severe eye irritation and respiratory symptoms. To curb formaldehyde exposure we would also have to forget about fireplaces, gas cookers, driving cars and of course, smoking. Even then we would be ingesting some formaldehyde because it occurs naturally in virtually all foods.

When it comes to the use of products for the hair, there is one area where formaldehyde poses a real concern. Some of the “Brazilian” hair smoothing products contain sufficient formaldehyde to pose an occupational hazard to hair dressers. Here the chemical is not used as a preservative, it is one of the active ingredients needed to form links between protein molecules in hair. And unfortunately the presence of formaldehyde in these products can be hidden by using alternate names for the chemical on the label. Methylene glycol, methanal, oxomethane and formalin are some of these. Often these products declare themselves to be “formaldehyde-free.” You certainly wouldn’t want a baby lying all day in a hair dressing salon where such products are used to “smoothen” hair. But washing baby’s hair with baby shampoo, any kind of baby shampoo, is a completely different story. So let’s get formaldehyde out of Brazilian hair products but let’s not throw out the baby with the bath water. Trace amounts of formaldehyde in shampoos prevent bacterial contamination, a significant problem, at minimal risk.

If you want to worry about a real risk in the tub, consider that about 150 children in North America, the majority under four years old, end up in emergency rooms mostly because of tub falls, many of which could be prevented with the use of a vinyl mat. Now that really matters! But I suspect that the folks behind the Campaign for Safe Cosmetics might then make an issue of the phthalate plasticizers that leach out of the mat.

Polyglycerol polyricinoleate

Chemical Institute of Canada — Thu, 25 Aug 2011 13:15:46 GMT

Don’t get scared just because you can’t pronounce it. If you like chocolate you’ve probably eaten it. Let me fill you in on the story.

I think the first medicine I ever heard of was “Ricinus,” a liquidy concoction that came in a brown bottle. My mother would ply me with it when she suspected I was constipated. Although I can’t imagine why as a child I would have had such a problem since our diet in Hungary back then included generous doses of goose fat. That should have allowed everything to slide through at a pretty regular pace. But why am I telling you about my youthful bowel habits? Because these memories were triggered by a question that has come up about a substance called “polyglycerol polyricinoleate” that has appeared on the labels of chocolate bars.

As one might guess from the name, there is a connection to “Ricinus.” That connection is forged through the castor bean plant, botanically known as Ricinus communis. It is a pretty plant, sometimes grown ornamentally, but mostly cultivated for the seeds found in the plant’s fruit. The seeds can be pressed to produce an oil that has industrial value in paints, glues, brake fluids and various lubricants. And the oil can be used to produce polyglycerol polyricinoleate, an emulsifier that is now used extensively by chocolate manufacturers. Chocolate lovers of course look for taste, but they also seek smoothness. A gritty product just won’t do. And therein lies a challenge. Chocolate is basically a mixture of cocoa butter, cacao particles, sugar, and in the case of milk chocolate, milk. The texture of the final product depends on how well these components can be blended together, which in turn depends on how effectively the friction between the ingredients can be reduced. This is where emulsifiers come in. These chemicals serve as internal lubricants, leading to a smoother consistency and easier flow when the chocolate is melted. That is of great importance when producing chocolate coatings.

The classic emulsifier used in chocolate manufacture has been lecithin, mostly derived from soy oil. But it is increasingly being replaced by polyglycerol polyricinoleate because of its greater effectiveness at reducing the viscosity of the chocolate, and perhaps more importantly, this chemical allows for less cocoa butter to be used and therefore makes for lower fat chocolate. Increasing cocoa butter content increases smoothness, but cocoa butter is expensive. The use of polyglycerol polyricinoleate allows for the production of cheaper chocolate without sacrificing texture.

Of course consumers wonder if anything else is being sacrificed, such as safety. A virtually unpronounceable chemical name raises skepticism in many minds. Especially in this case, when people discover that castor beans contain one of the most toxic natural substances known, a protein called ricin. This chemical is so toxic that prior to World War I the U.S investigated its use as a coating for bullets. When ricin gets into the bloodstream it can kill in incredibly tiny doses. Since ricin can be inhaled, it was investigate During World War II for possible use in cluster bombs. The Soviet KGB put ricin to a practical use, supplying the Bulgarian secret police with the tiny ricin containing pellets that were used to assassinate dissident Georgi Markov in London in 1978 with a modified umbrella using compressed gas to fire the pellet. And today there is concern that terrorist groups are looking to extract ricin from castor seeds. But there is no need to worry about chocolate. Ricin is not soluble in fat at all and does not end up in the oil when the castor beans are pressed. And of course the polyglycerol polyricinoleate produced from the oil has undergone the stringent regulatory process required for a food additive. You may not be able to pronouce the complex term, but you can consume polyglycerol polyricinoleate safely.

Yikes! There Are Hormones in My Bottled Water!

Chemical Institute of Canada — Mon, 14 Mar 2011 03:28:16 GMT

For scientists and physicians, the Internet has been both a blessing and a curse. Journal articles are at our fingertips and information about virtually any subject is just a few keystrokes away. But not all of the available information is reliable. A frightening amount of pseudo-scientific drivel permeates the web and spreads like wildfire when attached to emails. Either we are warned about some nasty chemical that is unraveling the very fabric of society, or we are alerted to the discovery of some miraculous natural healing agent that can cure virtually any disease.

The warnings often begin with the phrase “this is no joke,” and then continue with some ghastly revelation about the dangers of some substance in our daily life. Like plastic water bottles that leach a dangerous hormone called diethylhydroxylamine (DEHA) into their contents to make people feel younger and stimulate them to buy more bottled water. Where does the idea that bottled water is laced with hormones come from? The essence of the message is as follows: “the plastic used to make these bottles contains a potentially carcinogenic element (something called diethylhydroxylamine or DEHA)” which leaches out of the plastic on repeated washing and rinsing.” Consumers are then warned that such water bottles should not be refilled but be discarded after a single use.

The seed from which this story germinated can be traced to a scare circulating on the Internet about the migration of a chemical commonly referred to as DEHA into water from plastic water bottles. Of course, DEHA is not an “element,” it is a compound. And in any case, the author of this epic epistle has the wrong compound. Diethylhydroxylamine is indeed sometimes abbreviated as DEHA, but it has nothing to do with plastic water bottles. The chemical in question is diethylhexyladipate, commonly and perhaps confusingly, also abbreviated as DEHA. This is an approved plasticizer, a substance added to certain plastics to make them soft and pliable. Furthermore, neither of the “DEHAs” is classified as a carcinogen. But there is yet a further problem with the scare. While diethylhexyladipate is commonly used as an additive in certain plastics, it is not an ingredient in the polyester used to make water bottles! Polyester is innately flexible and does not require plasticizers.

So how did a compound that isn’t even present in plastic bottles trigger an alarm? The scare seems to have been spawned by an abstract of a talk given by a Master’s student from the University of Idaho at a scientific conference. Such abstracts are not subjected to peer review and are not considered to be a form of scientific publication. The intent is that the information presented will eventually be submitted as a paper to a journal where it will undergo appropriate peer review by experts in that field of research. This never happened in this case, probably because the study performed did not have the scientific rigor required for publication. The student investigated contaminants in bottled water and found a number of organic compounds, including diethylhexyladipate. Apparently unaware that this is not used in polyester bottles, the author assumed it was leaching out of the plastic. Stimulated by this, the Idaho student examined a variety of other plastic bottles and found DEHA in the water they contained leading to the conclusion that “migration of DEHA was not limited to polyester bottles alone and other bottles may also pose a health hazard.”

But a critical control experiment was never performed. Was there any DEHA in water stored in glass bottles or in water that came from the tap water? The answer is yes. Because DEHA is a ubiquitous plasticizer used in the manufacture of items ranging from toys to shower curtains, it shows up in trace amounts everywhere. You can find it in food, clothing and water. We know this because the Swiss Federal Laboratories for Materials Testing and Research studied this issue extensively. All sorts of water samples that had never been in contact with any plastic bottle showed traces of DEHA! Whether the samples came from plastic bottles or glass bottles they contained the inconsequential amount of about 0.01 to 0.05 parts per billion. The World Health Organization has set a maximum of 80 ppb for DEHA in drinking water so there is simply no issue here with plastic bottles. At least not as far as DEHA goes. There may be reasons not to refill water bottles, but that has to do with possible bacterial contamination, not with the leaching of diethylhexyladipate.

So far, so good. But what about the business of DEHA making people feel younger? That’s a puzzler. But it can probably be traced to someone’s fingers dancing on the keyboard while they were “researching” the DEHA-water bottle connection. A little slip and they typed DHEA instead of DEHA. All of a sudden, claims of the potential rejuvenating properties of dehydroepiandrosterone began to frolic on the screen. A “fountain of youth,” many websites claim, a “superhormone!” And what is this miracle? DHEA is a naturally occurring compound synthesized from cholesterol in the adrenal glands. Production peaks in the 20s and then declines so that by the eight decade the amount of circulating DHEA is only 20% of that found during the vigor of youth.

Reasonably, researchers began to explore the possibility that maintaining the DHEA in the blood at levels found in young people may help avert some of the problems of aging. Animal studies showed some intriguing results in terms of delaying cancer and the hardening of arteries. A widely reported study in humans showed that taking 50 mgs of DHEA for three months resulted in an improved feeling of well-being. And then there is the other side of the coin. Researchers worry that DHEA being a relative of testosterone may increase the risk of prostate cancer in men and cause facial hair growth in women. DHEA is illegal in Canada but can be freely sold as a “dietary supplement” in the US. Curiously, people who would not consider taking prescription hormone replacement therapy, uncritically jump on the DHEA bandwagon.

Obviously, DHEA is not the same as DEHA, but neither substance is present in the polyester used to make water bottles. Manufacturers are certainly not sneaking DHEA into the plastic in order to increase sales by making people feel young. But it is interesting to explore how a collection of scientific smidgens can be blended together into meaningless hodge-podge.

The International Year of Chemistry

Chemical Institute of Canada — Mon, 03 Jan 2011 05:49:31 GMT

It isn’t unusual for someone to come up to me after one of my public presentations and sheepishly whisper in my ear that they had failed chemistry in high school. Or that they couldn’t cope with organic chemistry in university. I’m not sure why they feel the need to unburden their soul to me in this fashion, but I hope it has to do with having just heard a lecture about some application of chemistry that, perhaps to their surprise, they found interesting. Then they often go on to bemoan the fact that their chemical experience in school amounted to a struggle with formulas and equations with nary a mention of the point of the tussle. Had they seen some connection to real life, they tell me, they would likely have come away with a more positive view of the subject.

Frankly, it pains me to hear such grumblings. But I can relate to it. My own high school chemistry classes were about as exciting as watching hair grow on a bald head. Somehow, probably thanks to some outside reading, I managed to maintain my interest. Now, though, I look back on those lifeless classes with annoyance. Actually, that’s not right. It’s more than annoyance. It’s anger. Chemistry is so easy to make interesting that it is virtually a crime not to make the effort. Consider for a minute the basic definition of chemistry: the study of matter and the changes it undergoes. And since matter is anything that has mass and occupies space, essentially everything that we see, touch or feel in the world and beyond, falls into the realm of chemistry.

Whether it’s vitamin supplements, cholesterol, plastics, water filters, space travel, vaccines, smells, tastes, fabrics, cosmetics, cooking, air pollution, trans fats, sweeteners, medicines, genetically modified foods, climate change, the softness of toilet paper or the bouquet of a wine, we’re dealing with chemistry. Even our thoughts and feelings can be traced to chemical activity in the brain. While it is true that electromagnetic radiation doesn’t have mass and doesn’t occupy space, its effects have to do with the way the radiation interacts with matter. So that too is chemistry! Aging, falling in love, and the very process of living is a consequence of the myriad chemical reactions occurring in our body all the time.

If everything in our life somehow connects to chemistry, how can it be that student surveys about their impression of the discipline are peppered with words like “boring,” “dispassionate,” “tedious,” “alarming” and “irrelevant?” Ouch! “Irrelevant?” What class was that student in? Unfortunately it could have been any number of chemistry classes around the world taught by unimaginative teachers who fail to make the link between theory and practical applications. It’s sort of like finding a tribe in the jungle that has been isolated from civilization and teaching them all about tools without ever telling them what the tools are for.

Yes, of course students have to learn about molecular structure and balancing equations and solubilities. Admittedly, not that exciting unless they are made to realize that this is the kind of knowledge needed to evaluate the difference between a synthetic and a natural substance, or the risk of a chemical leaching out of a plastic water bottle, or the potential benefits of antioxidants, or the possibility of treating disease with a “colon cleanser” or a “Zero Point Energy Wand.”

And while there may be a dearth of discussions of the proper application of chemical principles to daily life, there is no shortage of websites, articles or books that demonize chemistry and equate the term “chemical” with “poison” or “toxin.” The number of recent books that deal with the supposed horrors of “chemicals” is astounding. “The Hundred Year Lie” is subtitled “How to Protect Yourself from the Chemicals That Are Destroying Your Health.” What chemicals? For example, the author claims that it is risky to wrap a sandwich in “Saran Wrap which contains vinyl chloride, a carcinogen known to cause liver, brain and lung cancers.” Saran Wrap does not contain vinyl chloride and never did. It is made of polyethylene. At one time it was made of polyvinylidene chloride, but even that did not contain vinyl chloride.

I suppose we shouldn’t be surprised by such errors because the author has no chemical training. He is an “investigative journalist.” The “Body Toxic” is also written by a journalist with no scientific expertise and claims that “we are running a collective chemical fever that we cannot break.” And should we trust the writer of “The Toxic Sandbox” because she is a mother of four, a writer and a documentary filmmaker? The authors of the popular “Slow Death by Rubber Duck” don’t seem to realize that what they are actually talking about is a polyvinylchloride duck, to say nothing of the unfounded claim that this plastic is killing us. Then there’s the Manhattan chef who became enraged when he found that his staff was using truffle oil formulated with synthetic 2,4-dithiapentane and proceeded to smash the bottles with a battle cry of: “It’s full of chemicals!” Yes, like everything else in the world, it is. And in this case the chemical is exactly the same as that is found in natural truffles.

We are desperately in need of a reality check. And the United Nations General Assembly agrees. It has declared 2011 as the International Year of Chemistry, with goals of increasing the public appreciation of chemistry in meeting world needs, and of increasing the interest of young people in the subject. Hopefully educators will take on the challenge of discussing the role of chemistry in daily life. The idea isn’t to become uncritical cheerleaders for chemistry, but rather to impress upon students and the public the importance of understanding molecular behavior when making decisions about therapeutics, environmentalism and toxicity. Such decisions are too important to be swayed by people who lack an adequate scientific background or by those who harbour vested interests. The slogan of the International Year of Chemistry is “Chemistry-Our Life, Our Future.” That says it all in a mix of polyphenols, cellulose, hemicelluloses, lignin, tannins and anacardic acid. In other words, in a nutshell.