Silent Spring

Chemicals in Sofas Causes Serious Burns to Customers

More than 2000 people in the United Kingdom suffered serious burns from chemicals that were put into sofas made in China. More than 100,000 of the sofas are thought to have been sold on the High Streets in the UK. The chemical in question Dimethyl Fumarate (DMF) were put into satchets, which were then ...

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Gulf of Mexico Oil Disaster Worse than Predicted

The Oil spill is now thought to be much worse than previously predicted. Initially the oil spill was thought to be gushing out at a rate of 5,000 barrels a day. But after experts looked at a video released by British Petroleum, they’ve come to the conclusion that the oil could be gushing out at ...

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Oil Spills and the Dangers of Chemical Dispersants

The problem about some of these methods is that they take time to execute and none is guaranteed to work. Every method is just one of many in a list of possible ways to contain the oil spill. While each method is applied and only partially works the oil continues to spill into the surrounding ...

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How do you contain a Deep Sea oil Spill?

As we have witnessed over the last few weeks, there is not easy way to contain a deep sea spill. Fortunately, it’s not the worst oil spill ever (that honour goes to the oil spill in Iraq during the first Gulf War where more than 520 million gallons of oil was deliberately released into the ...

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The Environmental cost of the Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill

Again the environment is paying the cost of the reckless activities of Man. More than 5,000 barrels a day is gushing into the Ocean from the embers of the Deepwater Horizon oil rig Already environmentalists have stated that dolphins, turtles and bird populations will be affected due to the spill. It is also likely that the ...

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Study of the Effects of Phthalates on the Behaviour of Young Boys

The study was published in the International Journal of Andrology was led by Dr. Shanna Swan at the University of Rochester in New York. The basis of the study was quite simple. Samples of urine were taken from a group of women that were in their 28th week of pregnancy and was tested for phthalates. The ...

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The Phthalates Problem

The chemical that was focused on in the study was phthalates. Phthalates are a group of chemicals that can mimic the action of the female sex hormone oestrogen. Other studies have connected phthalates and a number of other endocrine-disrupting chemicals with the worrying increase of genital defects in boys and the lowering of sperm counts ...

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Chemicals in Plastics are Feminising Boys

A disturbing study has shown that chemicals used in some types of plastic are feminising the brains of baby boys. It has been shown that boys exposed to high doses of certain chemicals commonly found in everyday plastics are less likely to play with traditionally ‘male’ toys such as cars. The boys are also less willing ...

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A Different way is Needed to Test Toxic Chemicals

But how should new testing methods go? How can you test for chemicals that could affect foetal development at concentrations at one part per trillion? The current approach is the complete opposite of that required to deal with endocrine disruption. Industry is allowed to use a new synthetic chemical unless a danger has been proved with ...

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What Dose of Toxic Chemicals Causes Harm?

Endocrine disruptors have turned classical toxicology on its head. For decades toxicologists have focused on acute toxicity; the more chemical added the more marked the effect. The thinking been that at low enough doses there is a point you reach where there is no observable adverse effect of the contaminant in question. It has always ...

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