The hunger to turn plants such as corn and soybeans into biofuels is growing. But some
experts say using food for fuel is unwise. Kyle Norris reports:
Transcript
The hunger to turn plants such as corn and soybeans into biofuels is growing. But some
experts say using food for fuel is unwise. Kyle Norris reports:
More and more of the country’s food crops are being used to make biofuels. Last year
twenty-seven percent of the country’s corn crop was used to make ethanol. And seventeen
percent of soybean oil production was used for bio-diesel. The demand for more corn and
soybeans for biofuels has in part driven up the price of grain.
Marion Nestle is a Professor of Nutrition, Food Studies and Public Health at New York
University:
“The idea that you would grow something that animals or people can eat and use it for
fuel for automobiles seems just crazy to me.”
She says when crops are used for fuel there’s less food for people and animals. And that
contributes to rising food costs. Higher grain prices affect meat, dairy, bread, and many
processed foods.
Some experts say water will be the “oil” of the next generation. As it become
more scarce, prices are going to go up. For farmers, that’s serious business.
Kyle Norris recently spent time with several farmers who say they think
about water constantly:
Transcript
Some experts say water will be the “oil” of the next generation. As it become
more scarce, prices are going to go up. For farmers, that’s serious business.
Kyle Norris recently spent time with several farmers who say they think
about water constantly:
Anne Elder and Paul Bantle are farmers, and they’re pretty hard-core about
water. They keep a hollowed-out rock — it’s like a natural bowl — next to
the barn, and every morning they fill it with fresh water for the farm’s
smaller animals:
“And this amazing thing the cat comes and drinks, the chipmunks come and
drink, the birds come and drink and the bees all drink from the same stone.”
These folks consider water to be a valuable resource. They use it to grow a
variety of fruits and vegetables on their eleven and a half acres. The farm is
a biodynamic farm. Which means it’s organic, but it kind of goes a few steps
further. Anne Elder says biodynamic farming emphasizes healthy soil, and
how to make soil benefit the most from water:
“Healthy soil means it’s alive, it’s active, it’s not compressed but fluffy. It
will have a lot organic matter which will make it more sponge-like rather
than compacted hard tight soil. So when it does rain or when moisture does come,
fluffy soil can take that in and it can just drain through and the roots can
absorb it.”
They till an organic compost into the soil. It’s made of manure, vegetable
matter, hay, and straw. And as biodynamic farmers, they spread herbal teas
on their fields. They do this to feed the plants, and to fight-off problems like
fungus. Their farm is in southeastern Michigan and they get plenty of rain
storms. Paul Bantle says they try to take as much advantage from the rain as
possible:
“Rainwater is way better than any kind of water you’re going to pull from
earth. Irrigation water is cold when it comes from 65 feet down, it’s cold.
Whereas rainwater is warm, in the summer, obviously. And in the late spring
and early fall.”
The thing about cold water is that it shocks plants that have been sitting in
the warm sun all day. And that’s no good. When they need to water the
fields, they pump water from a 65-foot well.
Bantle says he thinks long and hard before using this water for irrigation. He
doesn’t want to dig down further to tap deeper aquifers, even if that means
that the crops will go through a hard time:
“It’s an issue. I mean it’s a huge problem. So definitely I try to be very
conservative about pulling water for irrigation.”
Basically, there are two main irrigation techniques typically used in farming. The first is
drip or trickle irrigation, and this is what Bantle and Elder use. It’s a slow,
easy method that takes time for the water to soak deep into the soil. It’s kind
of like a light, slow rain.
The other technique is overhead irrigation. Picture your garden hose on
spray, with overhead irrigation the water sprays all over. The downside is
that it wastes water because it evaporates and runs-off from the fields.
Lyndon Kelley is an irrigation educator with Michigan State University and
Perdue Extensions. He says drip irrigation is like a mini-van and overhead
irrigation is like a school bus:
“It’s sort of like are you going to take three or four kids to the baseball game
after school each day, well then you’re going to take the mini-van. But if
you’re going to take fifty kids to the baseball game after school every day
then you’re going to want a school bus.”
So, drip is typically used on smaller operations and overhead is usually
used on the larger ones. But Kelley says drip irrigation can be used on larger
farms. It depends on how the roots of the plant take-in water. Grape
vineyards, tomato plants, and some other vegetables respond well to drip
irrigation.
The farm that Anne Elder and Paul Bantle run is a relatively small operation.
They pay a lot of attention to their crops and they water them accordingly,
and all that effort takes a thought and labor:
“It’s almost like a holding-back mentality. How can I let these plants do
what they need to do, until which time the rains will come.”
Farmers are going to have to reevaluate the ways in which they use
water. Some scientists believe climate change will make some places much
drier, and a growing population is already putting heavier demands on the
existing water sources.
Environmentalists have found a new way to get people thinking about endangered
species… through their cell phones. Kyle Norris has more:
Transcript
Environmentalists have found a new way to get people thinking about endangered
species… through their cell phones. Kyle Norris has more:
(Sound of wolf howling)
That’s Mother Nature calling on the other line. It’s the howl of a Mexican Wolf. And it’s part of a collection of endangered species ring tones:
The sounds of frogs, birds, and other animals can be downloaded online. The Center for Biological Diversity provides the ring tones free of charge.
Peter Galvin is with the Center. He came up with the idea because he wanted to connect with a younger, more tech-savvy audience. And to get them talking about endangered species:
“You’re riding in a subway and all of a sudden you hear this sound and a conversation starts. Someone asks you a question: what the heck is that?”
He says people should care about endangered species, because the health of the animal world is connected to the health of human world.
The price of crude oil has reached a record high. Some people are expected
to feel this blow harder than others. Kyle Norris has more:
Transcript
The price of crude oil has reached a record high. Some people are expected
to feel this blow harder than others. Kyle Norris has more:
A barrel of crude oil costs a record one hundred dollars. Everyone is feeling
the results of this rise at the gas pump. But researchers say it’s hitting some
people especially hard.
Nancy Cain is a spokesperson with AAA:
“Who it really hurts is really the quote-unquote working poor. The people that
really are working jobs just making it, getting by, week to week. They’re
spending more and more of their money and they have less available cash
than some other people do.”
She says that rising gas prices link to rising grocery costs. Which also have
serious consequences for the working poor.
Faith learned about the use of many herbs for home remedies from her father in Louisiana when she was a small girl. (Photo by Kyle Norris)
Hot pepper tea is one of the herbal remedies handed down generation to generation. Some scholars are worried knowledge of the use of many herbs is being lost. (Photo by Kyle Norris)
Nature’s Products is one of the few stores where people can buy the herbs they need for traditional home remedies. The owner says his customers are his best teachers. (Photo by Kyle Norris)
When most of us get sick we go to the doctor and get medicine. But
some people are holding onto the old ways of healing. And many
people think we could learn a lot from the old ways. Kyle Norris has
this story:
Transcript
When most of us get sick we go to the doctor and get medicine. But
some people are holding onto the old ways of healing. And many
people think we could learn a lot from the old ways. Kyle Norris has
this story:
The small store is called Nature’s Products. It’s in a neighborhood with
a lot of abandoned buildings and store-front churches. When you walk
inside the store, the smell of incense clings to your clothes.
Green plants hang in the windows, and there are jars and jars of bulk herbs lining
the shelves.
Gary Wanttaga opened the store thirty years ago. He’s always been
interested in natural healing techniques and herbal medicine. That all
might sound new-agey, but this place is not new-agey at all. The
reason Wanttaga opened the store in his hometown of Detroit was
because he wanted to help the people who lived here:
“In lot of urban areas people are very limited on resources. They’re limited
with money. They’re limited with shopping resources. And this is one way
that I try to give back to the community”
Wanttaga says one of the main reasons he’s stayed in Detroit is because of
his customers. They’re some of his biggest teachers. Many of his
customers are older African-Americans. They came from the South to work
in the factories during World War II. When they came they brought with
them a cultural knowledge of herbs and natural healing techniques.
One of his customers is 72-year-old Faith. That’s her legal name – just
“Faith.” She grew up in a segregated farming community in Louisiana. Her
father was a farmer, and he taught her all about the herbs:
“I’m the youngest child of all, so I’m the baby. And he would often let me
ride on his shoulder. And sometime I’d be saying ‘Papa, what is this?’ and he
would tell me what that was, we’d be walking through the fields and he
would tell me what was, and he would tell me different things, what you use this for
what you use that for. I had 100 questions. Boy, I was a kid I had a 100
questions.”
She says back then, everyone knew about the herbs, and everyone used
them. At that time, people who were poor or black or who lived in rural
areas did not often have the option of going to a doctor. And so they turned
to the plants and trees around them for medicine, and they developed a great
knowledge about what did and didn’t work to keep people healthy:
“The pine tree was used for many things. Because it’s one of things where
you get turpentine from. It was definitely used for healing. And we used
turpentine for sores. And it works today! If you get a cut and you put
turpentine on it immediately as soon after you hit it, it will never be sore.”
Herbs were out first form of medicine. That’s what Suzanna Zick says.
She’s a naturopathic physician who teaches at the University of
Michigan. She says we have a collective knowledge about herbs that’s
thousands of years old. She says when you compare that to what
modern-day science knows about herbs, it’s not much of a comparison:
“In a sense we have just a tiny little window that science shows us, as
compared to the long use.”
Zick says we could learn a lot from these folks and the knowledge they
have, but not many researchers are studying people like the customers
here in Detroit:
“I think that we can actually learn what herbs they’re using a lot of and
what for. Because I think those are probably the ones that would be of
most interest. In particular, it’s a good question too if they’re using
them with conventional medications, it’s for safety issues. But also if
this is their primary health care for some of them, if it’s working, then
this is a very inexpensive way of providing health care for people who
might otherwise get none.”
Everyone we heard from in this story said the same thing. For us to
have good health, the old-school ways of healing can work hand-in-
hand with modern-day doctors and science. But the people who know
about the herbs are growing older and dying, and their knowledge is dying with them.
A river is polluted with one of the highest
concentrations of dioxins in the nation. The area is
downstream from a Dow Chemical plant. Kyle Norris has
more:
Transcript
A river is polluted with one of the highest concentrations of dioxins in the
nation. The area is downstream from a Dow Chemical plant. Kyle Norris has
more:
Scientists found an amount of dioxins 20 times higher than anything
previously found in the river. The hot-spot is 23 miles from a Dow Chemical
plant.
The EPA has required Dow Chemical to clean up sections of the Saginaw
and Tittabawassee Rivers in mid-Michigan. Dioxins have been linked to
cancer, reproductive problems, and heart and liver diseases, among other
things.
Milton Clark is with the Environmental Protection Agency. He says dioxins
do not break down in the environment:
“It’s very long-lived, it doesn’t readily biodegrade. And so if it’s present in
the sediments it can work itself up into the food chain, get into the fish, and
those fish then can be consumed by people, putting them at increased risk.”
The hope is that the dioxins will be cleaned from the rivers in the next
several years.
Joe Reilly and poetry writer Nora sing at a CD release party for Joe's album. (Photo by Chris Reilly)
A group shot of all involved with the CD project. (Photo by Chris Reilly)
Singer-songwriter Joe Reilly recently made an album with kids. The songs on the album are all about nature. Reilly discovered that when it comes to writing and singing about nature, some of these kids are wise beyond their years. Kyle Norris has this story:
Transcript
Singer-songwriter Joe Reilly recently made an album with kids. The songs on the album are all about nature. Reilly discovered that when it comes to writing and singing about nature, some of these kids are wise beyond their years. Kyle Norris has this story:
It’s hard to get kids to think outside their own little world. Let alone get them to think about the entire planet. But Joe Reilly seems to have a knack for getting kids to think big. And to talk about something pretty big, nature. He does it with music:
“Realizing the way that music can reach a place in any person, but especially in a kid that is a place of excitement and inspiration, there’s really like a magic there.”
Joe Reilly recently wrote an entire album with kids. He’d ask the kids open-ended questions, like “why is it important to protect the river?” And then he’d weave their answers into lyrics. He had one song with music, but no words. And then he heard a poem written by one of his ten-year old students. The poem by Nora Sinnett blew him out of the water. Reilly asked Nora if she was willing to read the poem over the song’s music.
(Song lyrics): “I am important. I may be only a whisper in a sea of voices. I may be only a blade of grass on a lawn. I may be one flower in a garden, a minnow in an ocean, a grain of sand on a beach, one star in the sky. But I am important. I matter. I stand tall. I am proud.”
She says she wrote the poem one day while she was hanging out in her grandpa’s library and she was just feeling kind of blue:
“I just like, saw a little ray of sunshine in window and I thought wow, that little ray of sunshine is really small but without that little ray of sunshine there wouldn’t be any other bits of sunshine. Then the room would just be dark. It just made me feel like I’m important because like, there’s only one leaf on a tree but without leaves the tree would be really bare. So little things make up big things.”
At a benefit show for the CD, Nora and Joe performed the song together. Afterwards, a mob of children and adults surrounded Nora. Kim Hunter is a poet and writer-in-residence in the Detroit schools. He was one of the people congratulating her.
“She has some really great metaphors in there. She’s a small person but she still, as says in poem, stands tall. And that’s, for a ten-year-old, a pretty sophisticated metaphor, and she employed it in a lot of different situations. It was a good poem.”
Hunter wasn’t the only person who thought it was a good poem. Songwriter Joe Reilly jokes that he’s been writing longer than Nora has been alive. He says he wishes he could write things as profound as Nora’s poem:
“I think there’s a real power in giving kids a voice and they can speak to adults and other kids, in a way we grown folks can’t always do.”
When Joe Reilly was a kid the adults in his life taught him about music and nature. He spent a lot of time exploring both of these things. He says they helped him to feel safe and good. These days, music and nature give him hope, which he says is a welcome change. To the hopelessness he feels about the environment and the future:
“When I can sit and make music with kids about how the beautiful earth is and how we want to celebrate our connections and inter-connections with all living beings. That just takes me beyond that despair, and it anchors me in some kind of hope.”
Reilly says that if he had sat down alone and tried to write a bunch of songs about nature, the songs would have been more serious. And not as fun. And silly. And lighthearted as it was with the kids. Like in this song. Where Joe and the kids invented a word to rhyme with river:
(Song): “Shibby dibby dibby dibby dibby dibby diver/We got a song about the Huron River/Water is such an important life-giver/We will protect it we will deliver”
The Buddhist dumpster divers hold up one of their finds. (Photo by Geoff Kroepel)
One person's trash is another person's treasure. (Photo by Geoff Kroepel)
A usable chair is salvaged from the trash. (Photo by Geoff Kroepel)
Every fall, a group of Buddhists go dumpster diving. They’re looking for things to sell at
their benefit yard sale. But sifting through the trash is also a way for these Buddhists to
practice their spiritual beliefs. Kyle Norris recently accompanied several Buddhists on a
dumpster diving excursion:
Transcript
Every fall, a group of Buddhists go dumpster diving. They’re looking for things to sell at
their benefit yard sale. But sifting through the trash is also a way for these Buddhists to
practice their spiritual beliefs. Kyle Norris recently accompanied several Buddhists on a
dumpster diving excursion:
Geoff Kroepel is standing inside a dark-green industrial dumpster. On top of a mound of
trash. He pulls out a Bible. And a set of matching placemats. And a tablecloth:
“…It’s a desk lamp…here are some ping-pong balls, ping pong anyone?”
Kroepel hands these things to Christian Hameman. Hameman showed up at the
temple today to volunteer a few hours of his time. He thought he’d be pulling weeds in
the garden. Instead the guy found himself inside a dumpster:
“Stuff I have at home isn’t as good as some of these things people are throwing in the
trash.”
You could hear the glass crunch when Geoff Kroepel jumped down from the dumpster.
The dumpster is located in a University of Michigan student neighborhood. The basic
drill is that the Buddhists take things from the trash. And then they clean and fix the
things for their annual yard sale. The stuff they find is really nice. We’re talking North
Face jackets and brand new coffee makers.
Before he leaves, Kroepel pulls out a stick of incense from a tiny container in his shirt.
And he lights it. Then he softly recites a few lines of dedication, makes a bow, and tucks
the incense into the corner of the dumpster, to give thanks:
“It’s kind of strange how there’s so much waste and even within the waste we get plenty,
we get all that we need and it’s good. So burning the incense is an offering to reminding
you that even in the waste, even in the trash there’s good stuff.”
Kroepel is a member of the Ann Arbor Zen Buddhist Temple. Haju Sunim is the temple’s
priest. She says dumpster diving is actually a modern day version of a Buddhist tradition.
In the time of the Buddha, monks and nuns would make their clothes from the scraps they
found on corpses, or from what they salvaged from garbage piles. Even today, some
modern-day Buddhists make and wear their own patched robes:
“In the whole tradition of the patched robe monk there is this whole thing about making
things last a long time-patching them, patching them, patching them. And taking care
with soap to make it last as long as can. Actually just taking care of a set of clothing to
make it last for long time has whole kind of spiritual aspect to it, if you do it!”
If you take care of your things instead of just throwing them out when they’re still usable.
Lenny Bass has organized the sale for the past twelve years. He’s memorized all the
major dumpster locations within several miles of campus. And he knows the best stuff
comes from the dumpsters surrounding the fraternities and sororities.
Bass says when he stands inside a dumpster overflowing with perfectly usable things, he
really understands what people mean when they talk about a consumer, throw-away
society.
Right now Bass is popping his head inside different dumpsters. To figure out if they’re
worth going through. He loves dumpster diving. But says it’s also challenging:
“I think when I was growing up I had this idea that people who jumped into garbage cans
and dumpsters had to be really in dire straits, really messed up people. Not much in that
one. That perception that I used to have flies against what I’m doing now. I have to
combat that perception of myself and know that other people have that perception of me
as well.”
Not everyone loves the dumpster divers. Sometimes people yell at them to get out of their
trash. Or they threaten to call the cops. But looking through the trash in this town is
perfectly legal.
Bass says when he was in college he was one of those kids who would chuck all of his
things in the trash at the end of the year. But he’s changed. He now thinks dumpster
diving actually has its own spiritual qualities:
“I don’t come home from dumpster diving feeling like oh my god, I’ve become
enlightened. I come home and I’m filthy, and it’s disgusting. And yet there’s some part of
it, that deeper part that has undergone just slightly more of a transformation about how I
see the world. And I think the more experiences you can have putting your self out there
in these situations the more you grow into a real person. Whether you want to call that
godly or whatever.”
About half of the things the temple sold this year came from private donations. The other
half, straight from the trash. They were things people thought had no value. The temple
raised 12,000 dollars this year from their sale.
The government will be taking steps to help protect migratory birds. Five
billion birds migrate from North America to the tropics every year. Land
development is threatening the birds’ stopover habitats. Kyle Norris has this
story:
Transcript
The government will be taking steps to help protect migratory birds. Five
billion birds migrate from North America to the tropics every year. Land
development is threatening the birds’ stopover habitats. Kyle Norris has this
story:
The new policy announced by President George Bush will include habitat
improvements for migratory birds. The improvements will happen on national wildlife refuges and in some
urban areas. The US government will collaborate with Mexican officials to
create habitat programs in Mexico.
Greg Butcher is the Director of Bird Conservation for National Audubon
Society. He says birds are an excellent indicator of the environment:
“Birds have many of the very same needs that people have. So they need
clean air, they need clean water. They need good healthy habitats that are
productive. And so when good things happen to birds, good things are happening
for humans at the same time.”
The government will also offer financial incentives to private landowners in
the US. Who either make their property more habitable to migrating birds, or
who agree to not build on their land.
The Smitten Kitten in Minneapolis is one of the adult toy retailers which has stopped selling certain kinds of toys because of questions about the chemicals used to make them. (Photo by Lester Graham)
Co-owner Jennifer Pritchett of the Smitten Kitten holds a jar of adult toys that are leaching phthalates and seem to be melting into each other. Pritchett is concerned about whether the chemicals can have an impact on human health. (Photo by Lester Graham)
The adult toy store Smitten Kitten stopped selling certain toys because the retailers are concerned about the chemicals used to make the toys. (Photo by Lester Graham)
(Listeners should be aware of the adult nature of this report. It includes
sexually explicit descriptions.)
Not everyone uses sex toys. But some people certainly do use them. The American
sex toy industry took-in more than one-and-a-half billion dollars in revenue
last year. But there are growing public health concerns about chemicals used
to manufacture some of the adult toys. No government agency regulates sex
toys because the adult toys are labeled as novelty items. “Novelty” means
these toys are not intended to actually be used. Kyle Norris reports some
retailers want the industry to stop using the potentially harmful materials in
the toys:
Transcript
(Readers should be aware of the adult nature of this report. It includes
sexually explicit descriptions.)
Not everyone uses sex toys. But some people certainly do use them. The American
sex toy industry took-in more than one-and-a-half billion dollars in revenue
last year. But there are growing public health concerns about chemicals used
to manufacture some of the adult toys. No government agency regulates sex
toys because the adult toys are labeled as novelty items. “Novelty” means
these toys are not intended to actually be used. Kyle Norris reports some
retailers want the industry to stop using the potentially harmful materials in
the toys:
(Readers should be aware of the adult nature of this report. It includes
sexually explicit descriptions.)
A couple of years ago, Jennifer Pritchett and Jessica Giordani opened up The
Smitten Kitten, a small sex-toy store. On the day that their first shipment of
adult toys arrived they excitedly gathered around. As they ripped open the
box, a noxious odor permeated the air. It was that new, vinyl shower-curtain
smell:
“And we saw these oil spots. That’s what it looked like oil seeping through
the cardboard boxes. We were a little concerned, obviously, and we opened
them up and each of the toys, almost down to every single one, was beading
some oil-like substance up on the toys, through the product packaging,
through the styrofoam peanuts, and then through the cardboard.”
The entire shipment of adult toys was ruined. Pritchett started asking around
to the folks she knew in the industry. Someone told her that the oils leaching
from the toys are called phthalates.
Cheaper-end sex toys are made with polyvinylchloride, or PVC. PVC is a
synthetic material used in tons of things like building materials, medical
appliances, everyday household items and children’s toys. And much like
the children’s toys, most of the cheaper adult toys are manufactured in
China. There are no regulations on the manufacture of the adult toys in
China, and no regulations on the imports of toys in the United States.
In order to make PVC softer and more flexible – which is a desired effect in
certain adult toys – plasticizers called phthalates are added. And a lot of
phthalates go into jelly toys to make them more jelly-like. In fact, the
leaching toys Jennifer Pritchett had ordered are actually called jelly toys. But
that very un-technical term did not sit well with Pritchett. She sent a few of
the best-selling toys on the market to an independent chemist. To see what
the adult toys were really made of.
For instance one of the most famous sex toys in the country is called “The
Rabbit.” Everybody knows about that. Sex and The City had a big episode
about the rabbit habit. Oprah Winfrey gave away one to every person in her
audience. They’re everywhere. And I sent that particular toy to a lab, and it
came back that 60% of the total weight of that toy, so 60% of the total
volume of material is a chemical called dioctyl phthalatem, which is a
known carcinogen and teratogen.
It turned out the rabbit toy was made with materials from a class of
chemicals that’s linked to cancer and birth defects. It’s not known whether
materials used in some adult toys are dangerous to human health or not.
Because no one is testing them on humans.
In 2006, the Danish Technological Institute did study the health risks of
chemicals in adult toys on lab animals. Researchers found that some
phthalates are harmful to mice and rats in large amounts. Pritchett says that
if the consumer public knew that the materials in their toys might be a risk,
they probably would not use them. She says that the big picture here is about
a lot of things. And one of those things is a culture’s discomfort with
sexuality:
“It’s about a regulatory system that can’t even say the words ‘adult toys’ let
alone regulate it like they do children’s toys. It’s about a market structure
where people can make thousands of percent profit on cheaply made toys
and nobody’s going to do anything about it.”
There’s a lot of money in sex toys. Carol Queen is the staff sexologist at
Good Vibrations, a well-established California sex store. She says that
people have worried about phthalates in the toys that children suck on, like
pacifiers. In fact in Europe, children’s toys with dioctyl phthalate and other
kinds of phthalates have been banned. Once people started worrying about
children’s toys, they soon started to wonder about adult toys.
“In terms of the dildos and the insertable vibrators, at the very least, those
things are going to and on the mucosa, and if somebody’s having fun it’s
staying there for a little while. There’s friction, there’s the possibility of
leaching. And all of those things are potentially correct. The problem with
the discourse is that so far no one has had the opportunity to truly understand
what the implications health wise and otherwise might be for these materials
on human body. Because people don’t test sex toys.”
The big concern here is that sex toys directly touch mucous membranes. And
this contact is not buffered by any layer of skin. So the materials used in an
adult toy can potentially more easily be absorbed into the body.
For this report, I contacted more than twenty medical and health
professionals. They were the heads of research universities that specialize in
sexual studies. Or OB-GYN doctors, or the directors of sexual health clinics.
None of these health professionals were willing to be interviewed about
what can happen to someone’s body when they use adult toys made out of
potentially hazardous materials. They just don’t have the information about
it. Although when I spoke with them, the majority of those health
professionals were curious to hear this report.
We finally spoke with Dr. Susan Ernst. She’s the director of the Gynecology
Clinic at the University of Michigan’s student health services. She confirmed
that this topic is not on the radar for many health professionals:
“It hadn’t come up as a topic with patients. It hadn’t come up in any of the
medical conferences that I had attended. It hadn’t come up in the medical
journals that I have read. So I am embarrassed to say it came up through the
lay press bringing it up as an important issue.”
Dr. Ernst says that if a patient is using an adult toy that is potentially
dangerous, then health care professionals need to be knowledgeable about
this topic.
Jennifer Pritchett of Smitten Kitten says friends sometimes mention rashes
or burning they experience when using adult toys. They’ve been to the
doctor. But physicians often wrongly assume that it’s an STD or a toy that’s
not been cleaned properly. And the problem doesn’t go away.
The doctors don’t think about a connection between the chemicals used to
make the toys and how they might affect the body.
Pritchett says when she mentions that possible connection to a friend, she
can see a light-bulb go on over their head. Now that’s speculation of course,
but she thinks people need to put all of the pieces of the sex-toy puzzle
together. That’s why she stopped selling the jelly toys that were leaching
phthalates:
“We have to say we know the chemicals in these toys are dangerous. We
know they’re dangerous in other respects. We know if children put these in
their mouths, it’s dangerous. I think we’re going to have to extrapolate and
say well if adults put these in mouths or other parts of their body it’s also
dangerous. We’re just going to have to make a little leap there. But the
industry who is invested in keeping toxic toys on the market hides behind
that. They hide behind the novelty use only. The ‘nobody’s proven that this
specific toy causes cancer.’ I think it’s a cheap argument and I hope it doesn’t
stand up for too long.”
Pritchett says it’s not as if people are only buying adult toys as gag gifts. But
because the toys are so controversial, nobody expects the government to test
the safety of them anytime soon. But people are starting to talk about the
issue. A few months ago an adult toy trade magazine did a cover story called
“Attack of the Phthalates.” And one of the biggest adult toy retailers recently
announced it was phasing-out products that contain phthalates. Because
more people who use these toys are becoming concerned about whether
they’re putting themselves at risk.
