Environment Minister Karen Ellemann (Liberal) says she wants to do something about reducing the amount of potentially harmful chemicals in sex toys.
Ellemann’s proposal comes in the wake of a 2006 National Board of Health report that some forms of sex toys can contain hormone disruptive phthalates. Phthalates are suspected of reducing male fertility, giving young boys deformed genitals and advancing puberty in young girls.
Although the Board said at the time that there was no health risk ‘in normal use’, Ellemann says that recent years have focused on so-called cocktail effects of hormone disruptive substances, and in particular phthalates.
“So the Environmental Protection Agency will be including phthalates in sex toys in the documentation that will form the basis of a proposal for the EU regulation of phthalates in a list of products,” Ellemann writes in a ministerial response to Social Democratic Consumer Spokesman Benny Engelbrecht.
Edited by Julian Isherwood
