This article is more than 5 years old. Information may no longer be current.

Childhood eczema linked to chemical in vinyl flooring

Prenatal exposure to butylbenzyl phthalate, found in common household products including vinyl flooring, may increase the risk for early childhood eczema, according to study results.

Monobenzyl phthalate (MBzP), the main butylbenzl phthalate (BBzP) metabolite in urine, was measured in urine samples of 407 nonsmoking African-American and Dominican women during their third trimester of pregnancy. The study, conducted in New York from 1999 to 2006, revealed MBzP in more than 99% of the women’s urine samples.

To determine if an association to prenatal measures of BBzP was related to indoor allergens or serological evidence of allergies, researchers also analyzed blood samples of children aged 24, 36 and 60 months for total, anti-cockroach, dust mite and mouse immunoglobulin (Ig) E.

The women also responded to at least one questionnaire on eczema, with two-thirds of them answering at least nine questionnaires during the study’s 12 time points. Based on completed questionnaires, 30% percent of the children had developed eczema by 24 months, with African-American mothers more than twice as likely as Dominicans (48% vs. 21%, P<.001) to report the condition in their children.

With larger magnitudes at earlier ages, adjusted RR of children ever having eczema for an interquartile range (IQR) increase in prenatal log MBzP urinary concentrations at each questionnaire time point were consistently positive. At 24 months, the association between eczema and MBzP was significant (RR=1.52; 95% CI, 1.21-1.91). There was no association, however, between MBzP and sensitization to indoor aeroallergens (RR=0.89; 95% CI, 0.68-1.16).

“Clinicians may not have heard of phthalate plasticizer BBzP, and they might be surprised that the women who participated in the study had no unusual exposures to this chemical. It’s ubiquitous in consumer products,” researcher Allan C. Just, PhD, postdoctoral research fellow at the Harvard School of Public Health, told Healio.com. “We found detectable levels in greater than 99% of urine samples, and the levels are only slightly higher than those in a nationally representative sample of pregnant women. Thus, these results are likely to be applicable to a larger population.”