American Council on Science and Health

Harlem Globetrotters Of ScienceTake On The Environmental Washington Generals

Posted on October 23, 2015 by Josh Bloom

This one had all the suspense of a Harlem Globetrotters – Washington Generals game. (1)
In what can be seen, at the very least, as an appalling lack of creativity, our old friends the EWG —Environmental Washington Generals (oops, I meant Environmental Working Group) —decided that since they had finally hit dry wells with phthalates and BPA, it was time for a “new” chemical to scare people about, get some mainstream Scare Journalism coverage (which worked) and then drum up funding (which will certainly work).

What chemical did they choose and why?

There are 40,000 chemicals in the Sigma-Aldrich catalog, so perhaps they threw a dart because they claim to have hit on a “new“—their words, not mine—terrible toxin called triphenyl phosphate (TPHP), which is used in fingernail polish. How deadly is it? The CDC has plenty of data: It takes 1.4 grams (orally) to kill a rat. That is a whole lot. Extrapolating to humans (an approximation, at best) a lethal dose would be 245 grams, or, about 9 ounces, which is about the weight of 80 packets of sugar.

“Workers exposed to an average air concentration of 3.5 mg/m³ for as long as ten years showed no evidence of adverse clinical effects.” (3.5 mg/m³is equivalent to .26 parts-per-million—a concentration that even industrial workers will never see).....To Read More..

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