“You can either have no risk – by removing the toy – or stop children chewing them continuously. But we are particularly concerned about children who are institutionalised, say in a poorly run day-care centre or hospital, since they tend to chew toys because they have nothing else to do.”After the results were released, six countries, including Austria and Canada, banned the chemicals from children’s toys, while Denmark, Sweden, Norway and Greece are preparing legal grounds to ban them.A spokesman for the British Plastics Federation, representing the industry, said yesterday: “We are not aware of this Dutch research but we do know that the information and experience available to us hasn’t shown any problems at all with plastic products made from products of this type.” But he added: “Manufacturers are moving away from making toys with these plasticisers.”Greenpeace, which first raised questions about the safety of phthalates in 1997, said it will encourage the European Commission to reconsider a ban, based on the new results. Furthermore, many toys are designed to be sucked.The Dutch tests, done with adults, investigated how much DINP would be released into saliva and potentially swallowed when a toy was sucked. “I think Madame Bonino would have pushed harder for action to be taken if she had seen these results at the time,” Professor Bridges said yesterday.Though phthalates are widely used in industry to soften hard plastics such as PVC, their use in toys has become controversial because children’s low weight, developing biology and potentially long exposure makes them relatively more sensitive to chemicals. The move, backed by the EU commissioner Emma Bonino, failed by one vote. Animal tests have found high doses of two common phthalates, DINP and DEHP, can cause liver and kidney cancer, and shrink testicles.The European Commission considered a blanket ban in June, before the Dutch results were published.

James Bridges, a British scientist reviewing the matter for the European Commission, said parents should “take precautions” to stop children chewing toys at length. The data has prompted bans on the chemicals’ use in toys in six countries but not yet in the UK.
Studies in the Netherlands show the softeners, phthalates, found in teething rings and other items that children under three chew on, are easily released into saliva. A GROUP of chemicals commonly used to soften children’s toys are almost 20 times more dangerous than previously thought, research shows. The results, published in the journal Nature, show that the lizards are so similar to each other that they must have developed very recently from a common population.The lizard, sometimes called the moth skink, spends much of its time hiding under the bark of trees, and could have stowed away on the canoes of early seafarers.”All the lizards from the central and eastern Pacific – all the islands east of the Solomon Islands – were nearly genetically identical, demonstrating a close relationship as a result of a very rapid colonisation of the Pacific,” Dr Austin said.”One of the most adventurous and bold episodes in human history was the colonisation of the Pacific islands, and these lizards have provided us with valuable information as to how humans got to these islands.”.

One suggested that it was gradual, over many thousands of years, and involved several groups of colonisers. The other theory, called the “express train to Polynesia”, postulated that it was a rapid affair, taking no more than a few centuries, and involved a single stock of people from South-east Asia.Archaeological, linguistic and genetic research of present-day Polynesians has given a range of dates for when each island was first colonised.However, Christopher Austin, an evolutionary biologist from the South Australian Museum in Adelaide, said a genetic analysis of Lipinia noctua, a “vagabond” lizard on Pacific islands that can stow away on boats, suggests the express train theory is correct.He studied 29 lizards collected from 15 different Pacific islands, spanning Palau in the west to Tuamotu in the east. A TINY lizard less than two inches long may help to solve the mystery of how quickly early human explorers managed to colonise the remote islands of the Pacific Ocean. One of the biggest challenges facing anthropologists has been explaining how the Polynesians managed to navigate across thousand of miles of open ocean in small canoes.
Scientists have two rival theories.

A government official said last night: “I don’t think [Rebound] realised what they were getting into Some of these kids have no fear.”. It is also expected to highlight the failure of the centre to ensure that the child inmates were given the agreed amount of education and physical activity.Rebound, which has seen the report, is understood to have protested to the Government that the children placed in its care were more disruptive and from more damaged backgrounds than they had been led to expect.The jail’s managers are also believed to have told inspectors that Medway was designed exactly to agreed specifications, which would have been sufficient had many of the children not continued to repeat long-held practices of absconding and violence.Offenders at the jail have been convicted of an average of seven offences and have been excluded from school for an average period of three years. Some of the weapons used were pieces of metal and plaster, which had been prised from the building’s structure.The report is understood to criticise the jail’s management for the high turnover of staff, 30 of whom have left since the centre opened. The Home Office minister Paul Boateng will use the report to issue a stinging rebuke to Rebound, the Group 4 subsidiary that runs the jail. The company has been ordered to carry out changes to the jail building and its staff structure.
The Medway Secure Training Centre in Kent has had a troubled history since it opened last April to cater for persistent offenders aged 12 to 14.It was the scene of rioting in June and three months later it was visited by a team from the Department of Health’s Social Security Inspectorate, who were said to be deeply concerned. “For those who are still at large,” he said, “I hope they will continue the jihad against the Crusaders May God strike you all.”.