Industry's logic is flawed . The sample of people studied by Blount et al. included no children and is unlikely to have included recent users of IV tubes or other medical equipment with phthalate contamination. These results therefore say nothing about those controversies. Moreover, the concurrent publication of a study documenting 7x greater concentrations of DEHP in Puerto Rican girls suffering from premature thelarche demonstrates that the DEHP controversy is far from resolved by the results of the current research. American exposure to phthalates is significant.
Animal studies demonstrate reproductive toxicity at levels to which some people are clearly exposed.
Phthalates are used widely in many unregulated products that fall through the regulatory cracks. These failures in regulation have created many untoward exposures whose health consequences we do not understand but could be quite important. The exposure of women of child-bearing age is especially troubling, as these compounds are particularly known for their ability to interfere with fetal development, especially in males. There may be a tragic irony in the fact that one of the pathways of exposure, cosmetics, is targeted especially toward women of reproductive age. By using phthalate-containing compounds in the battle of the sexes, they could be undermining the future sexuality of their male offspring.