Comment by whatshisface

The story of phthalates really highlights the drinking from the fume hood aspects of our commercial norms. Phthalates are designed to squeeze between hydrophobic polymers such that their bulk mechanical properties are changed, while remaining chemically inert and not subject to breakdown. The question of what this would do in the human body, which is full of polymers with very sensitively evolved mechanical properties, was obvious - yet it was not asked in a funded capacity until we had been letting it accumulate in our kids for decades. The position of our institutions on this is a clear case of preferring not to know.