www.incontinentsupport.org

As I wear some kind of plastic next to my skin almost constantly, I worry a little about what all this plastic really contains.
I know the plastic softeners mimic female hormones, and are absorbed through skin.
They are stored in the fatty tissue.
I live in Europe, and here it is a serious debate. Toys containing softeners are stricktly controlled. Especially what is called phtalates.
If I got pregnant with a male child, there would be an increased risk of different damages to his manhood, and for girls, cancer is mentioned as a risk.
I am also worried what this might do to me.
PUL has also some ingredients that are absorbed, but I do not know enough about them.
I do not function without the protection these products offer, so I have to wear them.
Do anybody else have thoughts on this issue/dilemma?

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I want to join the bowel movement....

You raise an excellent topic for discussion, thank you!

The vast majority of plastic pants as we know them are PVC, which is Poly Vinyl Chloride. A much smaller portion of plastic pants are polyurethane (Urethane) plastic pants.

Whether called plastic pants or pvc pants or vinyl pants, they are all the same; tho "plastic pants" is the least accurate term since "plastic" is such a general term but in most cases when someone talks about "plastic pants" they are talking about pvc pants.

PVC / Vinyl pants are by far the most common and have been around since around the 1950's when they took over the baby pants industry which consisted of rubber pants up to that time, which accounts for why the term "rubber pants" hung on long after the baby pants were actually plastic pants. Many people today still refer to plastic pants as rubber pants.

Urethane pants are stronger, lighter than PVC / vinyl pants and impervious to oils-both natural skin oils and applied oils such as found in lotions and diaper rash ointments-that shorten the life of vinyl pants and causes the stiffening that we find objectionable. That stiffening is the loss of the softeners you refer to ..... that may have some health consequences. Since polyurethane is a plastic just as polyvinylchloride is a plastic, I have to assume softeners are used in the manufacture of polyurethane to produce a sheet or film that is soft and supple for making pants. I have no idea as to any health dangers associated with those particular chemicals.

Urethane is much more commonly used to waterproof fabric...such as nylon and rayon and various polyesters. This gives us waterproof pants such as you get from Babykins and Duratex which are fabric pants that have been waterproofed.

More recently, urethane has been used to produce a "new" fabric termed Poly Urethane Laminate or PUL. It is significantly heavier than the nylon pants. I am not sure what the technical difference is between PUL and the nylon pants treated with urethane. I only know the PUL fabric is heavier. Both seem to be equally water proof.

With PUL being the rage for baby wear, can we assume it is a safer composition than PVC / vinyl pants?

Gerber, a major player in the baby industry in the US, recently stopped using PVC in the manufacture of their baby pants and went to PEVA, poly ethylene vinyl acetate. Apparently the chloride part of PVC is the bad stuff. Now the confusion can begin since PEVA is both a plastic and a vinyl, just as PVC is both a plastic and a vinyl. But I think because PVC has claimed the term "vinyl pants" for so long, that PEVA pants will not be called vinyl pants.

PEVA is touted as being environmentally friendly as it does not give off or leach the bad things that PVC supposedly does. So PEVA is now offered for common household plastic items such as shower curtains and mattress protectors and pillow protectors....all things we come in close contact with.

So.....how to address your "little worry" which may be a very legitimate worry!

My first thought would be rubber pants....which have been around for a long, long time. I would only consider rubber pants made from "medical grade" rubber and certainly avoid the fetish line of rubber pants, which are much more common than the incontinence line of rubber pants.

But I don't feel rubber pants are comfortable. I have them and hardly ever wear them...

I have PUL pants that I just can't quite get used to....

I will wear urethane treated nylon pants and you might consider them to reduce the health risk of PVC / vinyl.

And now that PEVA pants are available, I have started wearing them (oh, yes and I changed out my shower curtain to PEVA) but I don't know if they are available to you in Europe. I would hope they might be, as you say the plastic softeners are a serous debate over there.

PEVA addresses the concerns raised by chloride in the PVC....but I don't know if the softener issue is addressed at all. As far as I know, all plastics which include PVC, PU and PEVA require softeners in the manufacture of the material.

So, we could use some experts to chime in...anyone in the chemicals / plastics industry perhaps?

I think the same worries about disposables, just what is in them that may be "not soo good" for the human body... but not so much now as when I first started using them. Wonder if they have a data sheet on each companies product, and what materials they use in them Puffy

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Puffy
BC, Canada
Fighting the "Bladder Battle" since 1995

Here is the report on what I am concerned about.
Softened plastic contains usually phtalates.
http://www.who.int/ceh/publications/end ... index.html

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I want to join the bowel movement....