The dangerous power of lists

There’s no denying the power of lists to grab public attention. The FBI proved it when the bureau created its Ten Most Wanted list in 1950, inspiring legions of spinoffs. TV comedian David Letterman has become famous for his nightly Top Ten lists. We don’t bother to question the source or the accuracy of these lists. For the most part they’re harmless and sometimes even funny.

The same can’t be said of the growing lists of purportedly dangerous chemicals, which some public agencies seem to be accepting without question. These lists are often created by political activists or nongovernment organizations (NGOs) with little or no scientific evidence to support their demands that certain substances should be banned. These groups have the PR savvy to know that issuing an official-sounding list provides an air of legitimacy.

By going along with this list mentality, elected officials and regulators have sometimes ignored stacks of scientific research documenting the safety of a substance. This can lead to unnecessary and costly product bans. It can also endanger the health of the public. The situation surrounding the chemical known as DINP is a prime example.

DINP belongs to a family of chemicals known as phthalates used as softening agents in the manufacture of essential everyday vinyl products including electrical cables, vinyl flooring and vinyl toys. I single it out because it is one of the most widely used phthalates in consumer products and has been manufactured for more than 40 years. It is also one of the world’s most thoroughly scrutinized chemicals.

U.S. agencies ranging from the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) to the Centers for Disease Control have found that children’s exposure to products made with DINP present no health risk.

Despite this mountain of scientific evidence, DINP’s use in mouthing toys has been banned in the European Union, is about to be banned in Canada and has been temporarily banned in the United States. Not only do these bans deny the public the security of a proven safe product, they force manufacturers to use largely untested substitute chemicals with unknown risks. Why? Because DINP has been erroneously included on politically motivated lists of “dangerous chemicals.”

The EU ban is a study in irony. While an officially ordered scientific study on phthalates was under way, EU officials caved in to political pressure and banned a list of six phthalates, including DINP. It makes no distinction between this safe chemical DINP and the others, and doesn’t mention any of the dozens of other chemicals that might be used in place of DINP.

This list of six phthalates was treated as gospel by the activists pushing for a phthalate ban. EU officials did the same. They did not change their position even after their own risk assessment report came back giving DINP a clean bill of health.

Health Canada, the country’s national health care agency, ignored all the research and risk assessments on DINP. Instead, it relied on the artfully named SIN (Substitute It Now) list prepared by the International Chemical Secretariat. Despite its official-sounding name, the secretariat is an NGO with no official standing and with many of its long list of “suspected” chemicals unencumbered with scientific justification.

But DINP is on that list and that appears to be enough for Health Canada. The U.S. Congress considered the same spurious list, but did not entirely choose politics over science. Congress banned three low molecular weight phthalates, but passed only a temporary ban on DINP pending further study.

It’s bad enough when governments put politics ahead of science. It’s even worse when politics are informed by lists with foggy origins.

David Cadogan was director of the European Council for Plasticizers and Intermediates, a trade association of European plastics producers.