ANNOUNCER: From ABC News in New York, Hugh Downs and Barbara Walters.
HUGH DOWNS, ABC News: Good evening, and welcome to 20/20 Friday.
If there is a baby or a toddler in your home, or if you plan to buy a toy for one this holiday season, you should know there is a controversy brewing about the way certain toys are manufactured. A few years ago, we were warned about small toy parts that could pose a choking hazard. Now, there may be something else to worry about. BARBARA WALTERS, ABC News: There sure may. This is a major 20/20 investigation, not just here but abroad. Babies love to put almost everything in their mouths. But some European countries are trying to ban certain baby toys because of what they're made of. Yet these same toys are widely available in any toy store in America.
Chief investigative correspondent Brian Ross takes a close look at what goes into some soft plastic toys before they go into your child's mouth.
BRIAN ROSS, ABC News: (voice-over) This is the home of the Brett family in Westchester County, New York. Night or day here, at playtime or bath time, 9 1/2-month-old Elizabeth Brett almost always has something in her mouth.
LAURA BRETT, Elizabeth's Mother: Elizabeth is teething all the time.
BRIAN ROSS: (voice-over) A careful parent, Elizabeth's mother Laura says she's always assumed that any toy sold in this country was tested and safe.
LAURA BRETT: If it's big enough that she's not going to choke on it, I let her put it in her mouth as long as it's not dirty.
BRIAN ROSS: (voice-over) But what Elizabeth's mother did not know, until we told her and, in fact, could not know because toy companies don't have to put it on the label, is that most soft plastic toys, like this ducky, are made with a possibly harmful chemical that has been found to slowly seep out as children chew on them, unseen, in amounts only now being measured.
LAURA BRETT: I'm scared. I'm scared that these chemicals are coming out into my baby's mouth. She's tiny.
BRIAN ROSS: (voice-over) The chemical is what's known as a phthalate. It's what makes hard plastic soft. And while the science on phthalates in toys is still evolving, and at times at odds, studies at high doses in laboratory animals have shown that phthalates are toxic to the liver and kidney and cause cancer.
Dr. FREDERICK VOM SAAL (ph), University of Missouri: Baby is going to put this in his mouth, and he is going to be literally sucking the phthalates out of this.
BRIAN ROSS: (voice-over) Dr. Frederick vom Saal, a professor of reproductive and neurobiology at the University of Missouri, is a member of a group of American scientists urging more caution about chemicals such as phthalates, because there is so little research information on long-term effects in humans.
Dr. FREDERICK VOM SAAL: Essentially your child is the laboratory animal that is going to provide that information. I don't want my child being used in that way.
BRIAN ROSS: (voice-over) And as we found in the laboratory tests conducted for 20/20, every one of 12 soft plastic toys we examined contained phthalates. The rubber ducky isn't rubber, but plastic made soft by phthalates -- around 15 percent phthalates. Squeeze 'ems Ernie, 16 percent phthalates. This teether, 22 percent. This one, around 38 percent phthalates.
But what's most important and still being researched is just how much leaks out into the mouths of children and how much it takes to be a risk. Even so, parents we gathered at this New York City play center were astounded to learn that a chemical like that comes out in the first place.
MOTHER AT PLAY CENTER: If it comes out that the toys she has at home contain this chemical, no, they're going in the garbage.
BRIAN ROSS: (voice-over) The fact is, the federal government is only now doing its own tests on the phthalates in these widely sold toys and for years has relied on the toy and chemical industry to make sure such toys and teethers were safe.
JIM SANTORY (ph), Chemical Manufacturers Association: The levels that would require any type of toxic effect are so high that a child would have to literally eat toys in order to reach those particular levels.
BRIAN ROSS: (voice-over) Jim Santory, a spokesman for the Chemical Manufacturer's Association, which represents the companies that make phthalates -- including the biggest, Exxon -- says, from what the industry knows, parents have no need for any concern.
JIM SANTORY: I would tell parents a small portion of it does come out. That small portion that comes out, that minute amount, is not harmful to the child.
BRIAN ROSS: (on camera) As best you know?
JIM SANTORY: As best we know.
BRIAN ROSS: But you don't know with certainty is what you're saying.
JIM SANTORY: I can say based on our 25 years of studies, we strongly believe they're safe.
BRIAN ROSS: (voice-over) Nevertheless, the possible risk from phthalates is now provoking political fireworks because of what's happening overseas in Europe, particularly in Denmark, a tiny country steeped in storybook tradition that has taken a much different approach than the United States when it comes to risk to children and the chemical industry.
SVEND AUKEN, Danish Minister of the Environment: They reflect, you know, enormous economic interests. I try to reflect the environmental concerns of the people.
BRIAN ROSS: (voice-over) Svend Auken is the minister of the environment in Denmark. And he has now moved to legally ban in Danish stores all soft plastic toys containing phthalates intended for children under the age of 3, even though there is no hard scientific proof of any harm to humans.
SVEND AUKEN: Which parent in the whole world would say that I will safely put my child at risk until there is conclusive scientific proof that it is harmful or hazardous?
BRIAN ROSS: (voice-over) Auken, who led Denmark to become the first country in the world to ban asbestos, says history will prove him right again with phthalates. Recent tests by government scientists in Denmark found phthalates coming out of certain toys in much greater amounts than American and Dutch scientists have found.
SVEND AUKEN: And if scientists tell me that there is this risk, I say it's not my children going to be subjected to it.
BRIAN ROSS: (on camera) So just the risk?
SVEND AUKEN: Yeah.
BRIAN ROSS: Let me ask you about some toys that we bought in some American stores.
SVEND AUKEN: That's a teething ring.
BRIAN ROSS: That's banned?
SVEND AUKEN: That would be banned. And then this surely would be banned.
BRIAN ROSS: Surely would be banned.
SVEND AUKEN: Yeah. It's not the dog that's dangerous. It's the chemicals in the dog.
DAVID MILLER, President, Toy Manufacturers of America: I think that it is politically motivated. It's done for their self-aggrandizement, and it has nothing to do with good science.
BRIAN ROSS: (voice-over) David Miller is the president of the Toy Manufacturers of America, which is now actively fighting the toy ban in Denmark. Miller says phthalates have been safely used in toys for 40 years.
DAVID MILLER: We are experts in evaluating whether children are put at risk.
BRIAN ROSS: (on camera) You wouldn't call this a risk?
DAVID MILLER: No, not at all.
BRIAN ROSS: But no parent wants a toy that leaks chemicals that could be dangerous in the hands or the mouths of their babies. You agree with that, right?
DAVID MILLER: No. Leaking chemicals in and of itself is not a hazard.
BRIAN ROSS: That chemical coming out?
DAVID MILLER: Is not a risk.
BRIAN ROSS: Whatsoever?
DAVID MILLER: Whatsoever.
BRIAN ROSS: (voice-over) What the toy industry says this is all about is Greenpeace, the activist environmental group, which first raised the issue of phthalates in children's toys two years ago...
GREENPEACE SPOKESMAN: Greenpeace is here today.
BRIAN ROSS: (voice-over) ...and earlier this year, barged into a meeting of toy executives in Toronto being run by David Miller.
DAVID MILLER: Now leave here because you're breaking the law.
BRIAN ROSS: (voice-over) Miller says it is the pressure tactics of Greenpeace, not science, which have caused officials in Denmark to act.
(on camera) It's all based on Greenpeace, do you think?
DAVID MILLER: Well, our friends in Scandinavia are hypersensitive, if you will, to environmental issues.
SVEND AUKEN: It's not a risk put forward by some environmental fanatic. It's a risk put forward by the scientific community saying we are concerned, we are investigating, we are studying. But we believe, from our preliminary findings, that there is a very real risk here, a very real danger.
BRIAN ROSS: (voice-over) The ban appears to have broad public support in Denmark. The huge Danish toy maker Lego has now reformulated its toy factories, at a cost of over $1 million, to phase out the use of phthalates in its soft plastic parts.
AAGE HILLERSBORD (ph), Lego's Corporate Environmental Manager: It's better to get rid of the risk before anything occurs.
BRIAN ROSS: (voice-over) Aage Hillersbord is Lego's corporate environmental manager.
(on camera) Could other toy companies do the same thing you've done?
AAGE HILLERSBORD: If we can do it, I think others can do it as well.
BRIAN ROSS: (voice-over) And now, the concern has spread beyond Denmark, across Europe, with officials in Austria, Sweden, and Norway ready to join the ban. And Germany, Belgium, The Netherlands and Spain asking for a voluntary withdrawal of certain toys made with phthalates. But not in the United States, where 20/20 found that the toy and chemical industry have powerful allies in the Clinton administration.
(on camera) These diplomatic cables from the State and Commerce Departments, obtained by the environmental group Greenpeace and provided to 20/20, lay out, in a kind of detail rarely seen, how Exxon, which makes phthalates, and Mattel, the country's biggest toy maker, were able to get American diplomats across Europe to go to work against the proposed ban.
(voice-over) One cable sent from Washington says it clearly. "The ban could result in an enormous loss of trade in toy sales for Mattel and others and should be blocked in time for the Christmas purchasing season."
JEFF WISE, National Environmental Trust: There are a lot more interests at stake here than selling toys over the Christmas season. We're talking about the health and safety of children. And on that score, Mattel and Exxon shouldn't be calling the shots.
BRIAN ROSS: (voice-over) Jeff Wise is the policy director of the National Environmental Trust, a nonprofit organization funded by major foundations.
JEFF WISE: There's a lot we know about phthalates, but there's still some uncertainty. Now, for whatever reason, the administration decided to give the benefit of the doubt here not to kids, but to toy manufacturers and chemical companies.
BRIAN ROSS: (voice-over) Some 18 American embassies across Europe were involved in trying to protect U.S. toys made with phthalates -- much of the campaign run out of this building in Brussels, the United States Mission to the European Union, headed by this man, Donald Koursch (ph), the charge d'affairs at the mission.
DONALD KOURSCH, U.S. Mission to the EU: Companies came to us, and they came to Washington agencies to say they had concerns. That's correct.
BRIAN ROSS: (on camera) Is it troubling to you the extent to which the lobbyists for Mattel and Exxon seemed to be calling some of the shots here?
DONALD KOURSCH: I am not particularly troubled by that at all. No. I think it is...
BRIAN ROSS: You're not?
DONALD KOURSCH: I think it is -- what we are doing is what U.S. embassies abroad do for American interests.
BRIAN ROSS: (voice-over) But environmental groups say the cables show American diplomats were spreading false and misleading information, including one letter to a top European official flatly asserting that...
(on camera) "A substantial body of research leaves few if any answered questions about risk from phthalate." Do you think that's accurate?
DONALD KOURSCH: That is our -- that is our presumption, that is from we have been told, that's right.
JEFF WISE: That's simply not true. There are many questions about the risks of phthalates.
BRIAN ROSS: And who told you that?
DONALD KOURSCH: Our own -- our own people. Our government agencies.
BRIAN ROSS: (voice-over) A number of agencies were consulted, but it turns out no one in Washington ever asked the officials at the Centers for Disease Control, where Dr. Richard Jackson heads the only group of government scientists currently studying the effects of phthalates in humans.
Dr. RICHARD JACKSON, Centers for Disease Control: The Centers for Disease Control was not consulted about the hazards of phthalates.
BRIAN ROSS: (voice-over) Dr. Jackson says phthalates may not be a big risk. But until there is more research, it may be an unnecessary risk.
Dr. RICHARD JACKSON: If products can be provided to children that don't contain some of these chemicals, that's to the good.
BRIAN ROSS: (voice-over) Dr. Jackson's view is not reflected anywhere in the position being put forward by the United States government in its efforts to protect American toy sales.
DONALD KOURSCH: The U.S. government position is that until there is scientific evidence that would suggest that it is proper, it would be unjustified to ban them.
TOY STORE EMPLOYEE: Line three.
BRIAN ROSS: (voice-over) So while the federal agency in charge of toy safety is studying phthalates, toys which are being taken off shelves across Europe continue to be sold to American parents, who have no way to know which toys do and do not contain this possibly harmful chemical.
JEFF WISE: Well, I would advise parents to simply stay away from toys made of soft plastic vinyl. The general rule of thumb is the stiffer, the better. The fewer phthalates it's likely to have.
BRIAN ROSS: (on camera) Should parents throw these toys out?
DAVID MILLER: Absolutely not. There is someone with a political motive shouting, if you will, your children are at risk. We believe that's not the case.
BRIAN ROSS: The American toy industry says that you and others are just trying to scare people.
SVEND AUKEN: I'm not trying to scare people. I'm trying to protect children
BRIAN ROSS: You are acting far too hastily, prematurely.
SVEND AUKEN: What is premature reaction? Is that to wait and see the scientists fight it out, wait until the damage has been done? That I think is not wisdom. That is irresponsibility.
BARBARA WALTERS: Well, it's hard to know which toys contain this chemical because there are no labeling requirements. But you should know that most pacifiers and bottle nipples are made of silicon or latex and do not contain phthalates.
HUGH DOWNS: As for toys, during the last few weeks, as our investigation unfolded, a number of major companies, while maintaining their toys are safe, said they'll begin phasing out the chemical in certain toys. Hasbro, Mattel, which owns Tyco and Fisher Price, along with Safety First and Disney, our corporate parent, say that they will stop using phthalates in toys intended for baby's mouths.
Little Tikes, Gerber, and the First Years say that they will phase out the use of phthalates in all their toys. And Chicco says it stopped using phthalates in teething toys a year ago. But remember, these toys have not been recalled. And most are still on store shelves across the country.
ANNOUNCER: Can you imagine sweating like this when you're not working out? For some people, it's an embarrassing problem, but one with a startling solution. Dr. Timothy Johnson has the surprising news, when 20/20 Friday continues.
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