Toy Causes Illness in Students

A total of seventeen children were brought to their local hospital recently following bouts of vomiting and diarrhea. What makes this situation so unusual is that it was no virus or bacterium causing their illness but something they received after playing with a toy they had recently bought at a school fair.

The children bought the toy, a key ring made from flexible plastic, and after playing with it, they ate their snack at school, ingesting a substance that caused their symptoms. The substance was phthalates, a commonly used part of plastic bottles and toys made from flexible plastic. Phthalates are used to make plastic bottles and other plastic products flexible. The toy had been made in China and contained high amounts of the phthalate substance. The chemical had rubbed off on the children’s hands and they consumed it while eating their snack.

The toy was dangerous for young children in the first place. It was in the shape of a bean and, when the child squeezed it, a small bean came out. It’s unknown whether the students put the beans in their mouths. Nevertheless, there has been an increase in observance of the toys brought in from Singapore due to the risk of illness from phthalates.

Eating phthalates has the potential to cause nausea, vomiting, diarrhea and abdominal pain. Worse yet, if the phthalates are consumed in large quantities or over a long period of time, the result can be infertility and death.

Phthalates are just one type of molecule you can ingest that is bad for your health. Consider the processed food diet most people consume along with their phthalate-containing bottled water. Diets high in fat, cholesterol, sugar and salt may not give you immediate effects but they do have delayed effects, including metabolic syndrome, diabetes, heart disease, high blood pressure and stroke.

Many people believe that if a particular food product doesn’t hurt you right away, you’re okay to eat it. This is just not the case. You eat a diet high in sugar long enough and you’ll put yourself at risk for diabetes, a life threatening illness involved in sugar metabolism. Heart disease and stroke are at higher risk whenever one consumes a high cholesterol, high fat diet.

The food we eat is part of our environment, just as much as phthalates are. Paying attention to one’s diet and one’s surroundings (when it comes to environmental pollutants) is the best thing we can do to maximize our health and prolong our lives.