Clipping Board » Medical Harm ─ Unnecessary or inappropriate medical procedures can also cause harm.
Text / Cai Liangxuan
Did you know that medical consumables such as IV bags, blood bags, and catheters contain 30% to 80% plasticizers? The amount of plasticizers entering the human body through dialysis, blood transfusions, and IV drips is even greater than accidental oral ingestion! While public attention is focused on whether beverages, health foods, and even bread products are contaminated with plasticizers, the issue of plasticizer leaching from medical devices deserves even more attention.
Just as people across Taiwan worry about ingesting plasticizers through food, they may not realize that even larger quantities of plasticizers are being unknowingly injected into their bodies through medical procedures.
According to data compiled by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) from years of medical research, small amounts of plasticizers are released from standard saline IV bags, though not enough to affect health. However, when the bags contain liquids with higher fat content—such as chemotherapy drugs or blood—the leaching levels become significant.
Blood Bags, Tubing, and Syringes All Contain Them
On May 23 of this year, the same day Taiwan’s Food and Drug Administration held a press conference announcing the contamination of emulsifiers with plasticizers, all domestic medical device manufacturers received an official notice. They were instructed that any products containing DEHP (di(2-ethylhexyl) phthalate) must be labeled accordingly, with improvements to be completed within a year. This gave the impression of scrambling to address the plasticizer crisis after the fact.
PVC (polyvinyl chloride) is widely used in clinical medicine due to its durability and low cost. To maintain PVC’s high flexibility, DEHP is the most commonly added plasticizer during production.
In November of last year, Professor Ling Yongjian from the Department of Chemistry at National Tsing Hua University published a research report investigating nine common plastic medical consumables in Taiwan, including blood bags and IV drips. Six of these products tested positive for phthalate esters, a type of environmental hormone. One product contained DEHP at 48.9% of its total weight, while another had DINP (diisononyl phthalate) making up 29% of its composition.
In fact, these numbers are not surprising. Industry analysis shows that plasticizers typically account for 30% to 40% of the total composition in plastic medical consumables, with some tubing containing plasticizers at levels as high as 80%.
(For more exciting content, see Issue 374 of *Wealth Magazine Biweekly*.)
Source: http://mag. chinatimes. com/ mag- cnt. aspx? artid=8429
Drip, Dialysis, Transfusion: You're Injecting Plasticizers!
Did you know that medical consumables such as IV bags, blood bags, and catheters contain 30% to 80% plasticizers? The amount of plasticizers entering the human body through dialysis, blood transfusions, and IV drips is even greater than accidental oral ingestion! While public attention is focused on whether beverages, health foods, and even bread products are contaminated with plasticizers, the issue of plasticizer leaching from medical devices deserves even more attention.
Just as people across Taiwan worry about ingesting plasticizers through food, they may not realize that even larger quantities of plasticizers are being unknowingly injected into their bodies through medical procedures.
According to data compiled by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) from years of medical research, small amounts of plasticizers are released from standard saline IV bags, though not enough to affect health. However, when the bags contain liquids with higher fat content—such as chemotherapy drugs or blood—the leaching levels become significant.
Blood Bags, Tubing, and Syringes All Contain Them
On May 23 of this year, the same day Taiwan’s Food and Drug Administration held a press conference announcing the contamination of emulsifiers with plasticizers, all domestic medical device manufacturers received an official notice. They were instructed that any products containing DEHP (di(2-ethylhexyl) phthalate) must be labeled accordingly, with improvements to be completed within a year. This gave the impression of scrambling to address the plasticizer crisis after the fact.
PVC (polyvinyl chloride) is widely used in clinical medicine due to its durability and low cost. To maintain PVC’s high flexibility, DEHP is the most commonly added plasticizer during production.
In November of last year, Professor Ling Yongjian from the Department of Chemistry at National Tsing Hua University published a research report investigating nine common plastic medical consumables in Taiwan, including blood bags and IV drips. Six of these products tested positive for phthalate esters, a type of environmental hormone. One product contained DEHP at 48.9% of its total weight, while another had DINP (diisononyl phthalate) making up 29% of its composition.
In fact, these numbers are not surprising. Industry analysis shows that plasticizers typically account for 30% to 40% of the total composition in plastic medical consumables, with some tubing containing plasticizers at levels as high as 80%.
(For more exciting content, see Issue 374 of *Wealth Magazine Biweekly*.)
Source: http://mag. chinatimes. com/ mag- cnt. aspx? artid=8429