>https://www.sciencenews.org/article/chemicals-vinyl-floors-fire-resistant-couches-kids-health-risk
>>Children living in homes with all vinyl flooring had concentrations of a by-product of the plasticizer benzyl butyl phthalate in their urine of about 240 nanograms per milliliter on average. Meanwhile, kids living in homes with no vinyl flooring had only about 12 nanograms per milliliter on average. Children with the highest exposure showed 20 to 40 percent of the “reference dose” for benzyl butyl phthalate — that is, the highest daily dose that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency considers safe to ingest without negative consequences over a person’s lifetime.
The benzyl butyl phthalate exposures that Stapleton’s team found were lower than the EPA’s safety threshold. But it’s unclear how the levels of this chemical in children’s bodies would change over the course of several more years, Stapleton says. Contact with benzyl butyl phthalate has been linked to respiratory and reproductive disorders.
Children from homes with living room sofas that contain flame-retardant polybrominated diphenyl ethers, or PBDEs, had concentrations of these compounds in their blood serum of about 108 parts per billion on average — about seven times higher than other kids. Stapleton’s team still needs to assess how these concentrations compare with the EPA’s reference dose. Exposure to PBDEs has been linked to several cognitive problems, such as lower IQ and hyperactivity, as well as cancer and other diseases.
WOW