Warnings over children"s health as recycled e-waste comes back as plastic toys

Flame retardants used in plastics in a wide range of electronic products is putting the health of children exposed to them at risk, according to a new report (pdf).

Brominated flame-retarding chemicals have been associated with lower mental, psychomotor and IQ development, poorer attention spans and decreases in memory and processing speed, according to the peer-reviewed study by the campaign group CHEM Trust.

“The brain development of future generations is at stake,” says Dr Michael Warhurst, CHEM Trust’s director. “We need EU regulators to phase out groups of chemicals of concern, rather than slowly restricting one chemical at a time. We cannot continue to gamble with our children’s health.”

The issue poses questions about recycled products that have been imported from countries with less robust recycling rules, such as China.

In 2014 China generated 3.2bn tonnes of industrial solid waste, of which 2bn tonnes was recycled, recovered, incinerated or reused, according to a study in Nature. But concerns about its waste treatment standards were heightened by the discovery of some of the highest concentrations of PBDE chemicals (a group of brominated flame retardants) ever recorded in the food chain near the country’s e-waste recycling plants in the same year.

A trend towards using plastic parts instead of metals in electrical and electronic goods is also causing a headache for the circular economy because so many plastics use toxic flame retardants.

One 2015 study (pdf) found significant traces of two potentially hormone-altering brominated flame retardants in 43% of 21 children’s toys surveyed, including toy robots, hockey sticks and finger skateboards. The substances are often found in the recycled plastics first used in electronic products.

Last month the European commission moved to restrict the use of one such substance, DecaBDE, but also allowed exemptions for spare car parts and aviation, and longer deferral periods for recycled materials containing the substance.

A subsequent European Environmental Bureau report called on the commission to limit the amount of hazardous materials in circulation and ensure the appropriate decontamination of hazardous waste before recovery.

At high doses persistent organic pollutants (POPs) such as DecaBDE may have carcinogenic (pdf) effects and environmentalists have protested to the commission (pdf) about their potential reuse. POPs can accumulate in living bodies and be transported far from their places of origin by atmospheric circulation and ocean currents.

The Arctic, for example, has experienced a huge build up of POPs even though they are not produced there, with Innuit peoples in Nunavut recording extraordinarily high chemical concentrations in their bloodstreams.

That poses concerns for health professionals but also for European businesses. Under EU law companies must remove and send listed POPs to high-temperature incineration plants where they can be turned into salts and waters. However, this removes a plastic waste stream from revenue-generating recycling materials, making it more costly and difficult to meet recycling obligations.

Plastics in electrical goods may be safely incinerated en masse when disposed of by responsible hazardous-waste disposal centres.

But environmentalists argue that EU regulations allow the collection and recycling of material containing dangerously high levels of POPs, while information about chemical toxicity is not properly passed along the whole product lifecycle.

The substances may still be found in imported products that have been recycled in countries like China, according to Professor Olaf Wirth of the Okopol Institute, who has advised the German federal environment agency.

“Many big name toy-makers produce in China and don’t have a problem as they tell the producers what to do and what is forbidden in the EU,” says Wirth. “If you just buy something on the market because you like the design then you may bring products into the EU that contain substances that are not allowed.”

Wirth is sympathetic to environmentalists and firefighters who question the need for flame retardants in most electrical products, although national regulations often require them.

Philip Morton, the outgoing CEO of Repic, the UK’s largest e-waste producer compliance scheme, told the Guardian that handling POPs is “the next big thing” for manufacturers.

“Whereas steel is just steel, plastic is not just plastic,” says Morton. “There are a number of different grades and additives that should be on everyone’s radar. More things will soon start appearing on the ‘POP list’ and that has the potential to become very difficult [for industry].”

The commission is expected to bring forward an amendment of its POP regulation later this year, to update producer obligations. Meanwhile designers are in an ongoing race to turn out product models that are well labelled, easily dissembled and simple to recycle.

“Going forward there will have to be stronger connections between manufacturers and the designers of their products as it’s a closed loop and producers putting these products on the market will ultimately pay for recycling at the end of a product’s life,” says Morton.

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Warnings over children"s health as recycled e-waste comes back as plastic toys

Good vibes: selling sex toys online to fund sexual health programs

As an engineer, Jak Haines never expected to find herself in the sex business – she was just looking for an opportunity to practise conscious capitalism.

“I looked at different sectors … but I decided the sex industry was ripe for change,” she says.

Haines launched her website, Vävven, in November to sell sex toys and accessories that are “body safe”, ethically sourced and are marketed without objectification.

As a social enterprise, Vävven will donate 30% of its profits to causes for sexual and reproductive health and rights.

Haines had a 20-year career in heavy industry (turnaround management) before she closed down her business last year and decided to put her ideals to work. Conscious capitalism aims to use ethical business practices to elevate humanity. “Business can change society,” she says.

Launching a business in the sex industry appealed to her because of its challenges of managing standards (sex toys are required to meet lower safety standards because they are usually sold as novelty items), stigma and objectification in marketing. “There are a whole lot of things you could change within the industry without even linking it to a cause,” she says.

But she enjoys the irony of using the sex industry to fund the cause of sexual and reproductive health and rights. “It is also a bit of ‘stuff you’ to society,” she laughs.

Once it turns a profit, the organisations Vävven will support include Marie Stopes International (family planning, sexual health and abortion) and Oxfam and its gender justice program.

The founder of Vävven, Jak Haines, aims to use the profits of the sex industry to fund reproductive health and rights. Photograph: Sarah Candlin

Vävven will also donate to Women on Waves – the Dutch non-profit that offers a floating sexual health and abortion clinic to women in countries where abortions are illegal. Last year Women on Waves used a drone to deliver abortion pills to two women in Northern Ireland.

There are few social enterprises that operate in this area but two are the UK Family Planning Association’s “pleasure shop” and the Denver-based online sex toy shop Vibrant, which donates all profits to Planned Parenthood.

Haines says the taboo nature of the sex industry means she has faced difficulties in getting her new business going. Firstly, it has been hard to find products that are safe to use and made by people who work in fair conditions. “If you are purchasing something for love, you shouldn’t be causing harm to others,” she says.

Although she sources her products from all over the world, most sex toys are made in China, where manufacturers are not accustomed to being asked to provide products at a higher safety standard. As a very small business, her requests are often swept to one side.

Haines has managed to find ethical manufacturers who “tick all boxes”, except for the stipulation that they must have freedom of association (the ability to join independent unions, for instance), which is not available in China.

Advertising her website also presents some trials. For a start, consumers are used to seeing sex products advertised with objectifying images of women and men, so catching their eyes without those images can be difficult, says Haines.

“You are attempting to change the way society thinks at the same time as you are marketing to them – and that is a ludicrously hard line to walk,” she says. “A woman can still look sensual, that is fine, but if they are just there just as a sexual object, that is not fine.”

She quotes feminist erotic filmmaker, Erika Lust: “Sex can stay dirty but the values have to be clean”.

Haines has also come up against what she describes as an unwritten moral code, which means that some businesses and banks are unwilling to deal with her because she is considered part of the sex industry.

Facebook, for instance, will allow Vävven to have a page,but will not allow it to “boost” its posts as paid advertising. “Selling of an intimacy product is considered immoral,” she says.

Dealing with a bank or getting access to PayPal can also take an “extraordinarily” long time. “There are a number of the big four [banks] that won’t even touch you because you sell sex toys. They say there is high risk with them – what that actually means, I am not sure.”

Building mutually beneficial relationships with other businesses is also a very slow process. “One of the things I discovered about the industry is that it is cagey, they are not necessarily interested in collaboration, which is a big problem. They need to learn how to collaborate”.

The Australian condom manufacturer Glyde Health is an exception with the managing director, Clive Woodworth, keen to join forces around the issue of sexual health.

Glyde Health supplies condoms and lubricants in bulk to brothels, male sex premises, the Aids councils and clinics for sexual health and family planning.

Woodworth started the business 27 years ago when he saw an opportunity to supply higher quality condoms than those that were being imported into Australia.

The company sells between 8m to 10m Malaysian-made condoms per year (Australia imports close to 60m per year).

Woodworth says it is still rare to find businesses in the sex industry that are mindful of objectification and operate under ethical lines.

He would like to see uniform legislation across all the states and territories to protect sex workers and says the stigma around the industry means that issues such as this are not properly dealt with.

He says there is room in the sex industry for businesses such as Vävven: “an operation that allows people to enjoy their sex life but not objectifying women as sex objects”.

Glyde Health also does not use objectifying images, marketing itself as a supplier of “sexual health products”. Like Haines, Woodworth’s entry into the sex industry was a business decision, rather than a personal interest. Before starting Glyde Health, he imported perfume.

“I went from French perfume to French letters in one fell swoop,” he says.

Good vibes: selling sex toys online to fund sexual health programs

Sex toys "safer" than children"s toys, Swedish chemicals study finds

Fewer sex toys than children’s toys contain dangerous chemicals, according to a new report by a Swedish inspection authority.

In its study conducted in 2016, 2% of the 44 surveyed sex toys that had been imported to Sweden contained banned chemicals, the Swedish Chemicals Agency (SCA) said. In a separate study the year before, the agency tested 112 children’s toys in Sweden and found 15% contained banned chemical substances, including lead.

“This was a bit surprising,” Frida Ramstrom, an inspector for the agency, told AFP. “This was the first time we did such a study.”

Of the 44 sex toys examined, only one plastic dildo was found to contain a banned substance: chlorinated paraffins, which is suspected of causing cancer, the SCA said. It said it was difficult to determine why more children’s toys contained dangerous chemicals.

But one contributing factor was that sex toys were often imported by larger companies, which could exert more pressure on manufacturers to avoid harmful chemicals, whereas children’s toys were more often imported by smaller companies which had less power to make such demands, according to Björn Malmström, a spokesman for the SCA.

Swedish law stipulates that chemicals in children’s toys “must never pose a risk to human health”.

Three of the 44 examined sex toys, made of artificial leather and bondage tape, contained a type of phthalates used as a plasticiser at levels above a 0.1% threshold, the agency said.

That specific type of phthalates is not banned in sex toys but is on the EU list of chemicals of “very high concern” as it can affect the body’s hormonal balance and cause infertility. Companies are therefore required to inform consumers if a product contains more than 0.1%.

The global market for sex products is estimated at about $ 20bn (£16bn) a year, according to British market research group Technavio. It is expected to grow by nearly 7% a year between 2016 and 2020.

People in the US and China are among the biggest consumers of sex toys, according to Technavio.

Sex toys "safer" than children"s toys, Swedish chemicals study finds

A marriage in recovery | Bins, sex toys and treatment

‘After our first session, it is clear that the therapist will not carry away all our crap.’

There are couple of issues more pleasing to me than bins – not aesthetically, but for their practicality and function. I have a bin in every single space of my residence and after I have carried all of the rubbish on to the street, I really feel lighter. To me, a wheelie bin is a superb thing.

I believe 1 of my placentas ended up in a wheelie bin, along with all of the ruined towels that a homebirth essential – stains so indelible that not even a boil wash, doused with material-bleach, would suffice.

And then there had been the intercourse toys that once seemed humorous, or exciting, that sat at the bottom of my chest of drawers for a decade gathering fluff. Before I binned them, I became terrified about dying prematurely – not for the clear reasons, but simply because I envisaged my mother browsing for spare bed-linen right after my death, only to discover my collection of stiff rubber devices lying unhappy and dormant below sheets, so previous that the batteries had leaked all in excess of the perform buttons. Absolutely nothing is a lot more depressing than a broken vibrator.

I would not even be alive to defend myself, to say, “Mum, these were when eye-catching – actually. I know I must have binned them as quickly as they began to shed their colour!”

So the intercourse toys ended up in the wheelie bin, with me cowering behind the curtains on bin day, hoping the dustmen would not detect any odd vibrations as they tipped my rubbish into the truck.

If something looks poor, smells funny, or the memory of it helps make me squirm, then I usually want to throw it away. I by no means believe about it once again. Nonetheless un-ecologically minded this might make me seem, stuff that is out of sight is conveniently out of mind.

I would really feel panicked if wheelie bins have been banned and I was forced to separate every single last bit of rubbish. I know my need to chuck away things I locate tough to deal with paints me as a person who does not cope properly with unpleasant emotions.

In my romantic relationship with R, we both, fortunately, realize that pain exists, but it is nevertheless challenging to know what to do with it. Sometimes my adverse feelings ignite so wildly that I feel I’d rather destroy R than be in a connection with him once again. I want to chuck almost everything away and start off yet again, with no R – or with a person else.

Alternatively of reaching for the poison, nevertheless, we have commenced to see a therapist. Not too long ago, when R said he wished to be with me, I replied that I needed to be with him as well. But I also desired to see if, before we made a choice, a therapist could aid us. Not just by hunting at the addiction and alcohol, or the trust problems, but also the a lot more tedious connection problems that most couples face.

Even after our 1st session, it is clear that the therapist will not carry away all of our crap. Instead, she throws it back at us, which may sound messy and unkind but is actually very beneficial. She asks us to see why some things that have been once great have now been turned, in our eyes, into anything rotten.

If she had been a bin guy, she’d be sifting through our rubbish bags, saying items like, “Oi, lazy! Why are you throwing out all of your rubbish with each other? Kind it out.” She is asking us to break down our connection into the components that existed prior to we have been a couple, prior to time produced some factors muddled, sullied or unfit for objective.

It feels amazing to be in a position to talk to each and every other in front of one more grownup. When we are asked a query by the therapist, R and I consider it in turns to reply without having interruption, which in itself is a novelty. Crosstalk had turn into the unhealthy way in which we communicated and it typically distracted us from listening.

Some of the things is agonizing most of it is unpleasant. Last week, R explained that he thinks I would get him back in whatever state he is in. I am certain this is not real, but I can see that I can be flighty with my selections, fast to modify my mind.

Soon after 1 session a particular, slow re-assembly of our romantic relationship has begun, generating it clear that a future with each other is not, as it so not too long ago appeared, destined for the scrapheap.

A marriage in recovery | Bins, sex toys and treatment