Phthalates, Toxic Plastic Additives, Are Everywhere: What's the Acceptable Limit | Hacker News Reader

Phthalates, Toxic Plastic Additives, Are Everywhere: What's the Acceptable Limit

molecularspec.substack.com

43 pointsadomasm316 comments

So - “luxury vinyl flooring” is loaded with this crap in China. Basically if they omit it, the flooring becomes too brittle and breaks, the amount of phthalates they need to add to it so it doesn’t break is so much that it will off-gas 3-5 % of volume of the flooring within a year . This is displayed as gapping between the vinyl planks - or looks like “shrinking” … lots of people walk barefoot in the home or a hotel , and even if you don’t , friction from footwear will make this crap airborne.

We just got scotchguard out of carpet, and now we have an explosion of this plasticizer in our homes. If you have a baby crawling around and you have a vinyl plank floor - take my advice and change it immediately.

I get downvoted A LOT for my comments that are anti-China and that China should be forced to take back and recycle all the plastic waste it dumps on North America. PVC flooring is top of the list in toxic waste they are dumping on us.

Phthalates in food packaging is a problem but it is “chicken feed” compared to the wider pvc industry.

I realize that everyone might think I’m a nut or racist or something when they downvote me. I’m totally accepting of that.

Just take a minute and consider that - perhaps I am part of that same industry and have seen this junk in China and know the ins and outs of distribution. Maybe I do maybe I don’t

But if you have small children crawling on a pvc floor - take action - please.

Maybe you should focus less on China and more on the issue at hand? The PVC flooring would be a problem regardless of where it comes from... I do not quite the framing that they are dumping it on you. Surely there are American companies that are importing this to the US? And American companies that are selling it to builders and consumers? Are those entities free of responsibility?

Whats a good replacement for this? Hardwood floors i imagine are best, but tend to be expensive.

There’s always the possibility of making smaller houses with higher quality materials.

Or idk, tile? Linoleum?

Is linoleum any better? Also, tile has a substantially worse under-foot feel for certain areas than a hardwood or hardwood-like substance. Too hard and too cold.

"Linoleum is a floor covering made from materials such as solidified linseed oil (linoxyn), pine resin, ground cork dust, sawdust, and mineral fillers such as calcium carbonate, most commonly on a burlap or canvas backing."

Not sure if there's anything that's been shown to be a problem in there, but it doesn't seem to involve any pthalates.

But yeah, I'd personally just go with a smaller house with hardwood, rather than a larger one made of crap like vinyl planking (and that's what we did, in practice).

Lino is an example of a great technology that we had to "improve" (make cheaper) and replace with godawful plastic.

Funny, because iirc it already had the reputation as the cheap option.

Yeah. Also, drinking straws. straw > plastic > PFAS coated paper

Bamboo is excellent, they can make it look like other types of wood, it’s pretty affordable, and it’s environmentally friendly.

Another option is cork.

What about vinyl flooring like Duralux that is Greenguard Gold certified for low emissions and free of ortho-phthalate plasticizers?

Not sure what poor quality LVP you’re talking about, but good quality LVP doesn’t have any issues with shrinkage. Plenty of stuff with Greenguard Gold certifications which should mean very minimal off-gassing.

It will still be full of phthalates and seriously harmful to young kids especially.

Sadly the FDA rejected a petition to ban these chemicals in our food supply.

>FDA denied a petition asking the agency to reconsider its previous denial of a citizen petition that originally sought a ban on eight ortho-phthalates and a revocation of prior-sanctioned uses for five ortho-phthalates for food packaging and production equipment

https://www.fda.gov/food/cfsan-constituent-updates/fda-respo...

https://www.packagingdive.com/news/phthalates-plastics-fda-p...

One thing this article does that I don't agree with is presume that there are binary safe/unsafe limits that are objectively correct.

I don't know the exact numbers, but when I looked into once, I realized a huge number of chemicals that are deemed safe are later deemed unsafe or the "safe" dose is lowered by a factor of 10, 100, 1000 or even more.

And that's not too surprising because the FDA/EPA doesn't have any method (nor do they even attempt) to look at long-term (e.g. multi-year) effects of chemicals. They try a very high dose for a short period of time and hope that's a sufficient indicator.

And even if they did try to look, suppose a chemical caused anxiety, depression, and a 5 point IQ reduction... would we even notice this in rats?

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