Correspondence to: Prof. Associate R Hauser, Occupational Health Program, Harvard School of Public Health, Building 1, Room 1405, 665 Huntington Avenue, Boston, MA 02115, USA; [email protected]. edu _________________________ T he diesters of 1,2-benzenedicarboxylic acid (phthalic acid), commonly known as phthalates, are a group of man-made chemicals with a wide spectrum of industrial applica...

Diabetes and obesity have reached epidemic rates in most developed and developing countries. Overnutrition and physical inactivity are established risk factors with key roles in the etiology of type 2 diabetes. However, these factors alone cannot fully account for either the rate or the magnitude with which diabetes has increased worldwide. Research on whether exposure to environmental endocrin...

Phthalates are a group of endocrine disrupting chemicals, suspected to influence the immune system. The aim of this study was to investigate the influence of phthalates on cytokine secretion from human peripheral blood mononuclear cells. Escherichia coli lipopolysaccharide and phytohemagglutinin-P were used for stimulation of monocytes/macrophages and T cells, respectively. Cells were exposed f...

Phthalates and bisphenol A are environmental endocrine-disrupting chemicals used widely in common consumer products. There is increasing concern about human exposure to phthalates and bisphenol A due to the potential adverse effects related to the anti-androgenic activity of phthalates and estrogenic activity of bisphenol A. In assessing environmental exposure to phthalates and bisphenol A, it ...

Phthalates provide one of the most documented example evidencing how much we must be cautious when using the traditional paradigm based on extrapolation of experimental data from rodent studies for human health risk assessment of endocrine disruptors (EDs). Since foetal testis is known as one of the most sensitive targets of EDs, phthalate risk assessment is routinely based on the capacity of s...

Oxidative stress has been linked to many obesity-related conditions among children including cardiovascular disease, diabetes mellitus and hypertension. Exposure to environmental chemicals such as phthalates, ubiquitously found in humans, may also generate reactive oxygen species and subsequent oxidative stress. We examined longitudinal changes of 8-isoprostane urinary concentrations, a validat...

As a result of concerns about the toxicity of phthalates to humans, several expert panels were convened toward the end of the 1990s to evaluate the implications of the scientific evidence for the risks of phthalates to humans of all ages. These panels concluded that the risks were low although they had concerns about specific applications of some phthalates, e.g., in medical devices. These grou...

Two articles in the March 2014 issue of EHP were of particular interest to exposure scien tists and phthalate researchers. The news article by Nicole (2014) emphasized the importance of the vaginal epithelium as an exposure route for chemicals in per­ sonal care products and the general lack of research on this exposure route. However, the article did not mention adult toys as a pos­ sible sour...

Exposure to phthalates, substances used as plasticizers in a large number of consumer goods, can occur by ingestion, inhalation, or skin contact. Children—who are uniquely vulnerable to adverse health effects of environmental exposures because of their still-developing neuro logical, immunological, and respiratory systems—can receive particularly high exposures due to more frequent hand-to-mout...