Is it time to kick the toxins out of the sack?

So you’re an Enlightened Green Consumer. You buy organic food and carry it home from the local market in string bags. Your coffee is shade-grown and fair-trade, your water’s solar-heated, and your car is a hybrid. But what about the playthings you’re using for grown-up fun between those organic cotton sheets — how healthy and environmentally sensitive are they?

Few eco-conscious shoppers consider the chemicals used to create their intimate devices. Yes, those things –from vibrators resembling long-eared bunny rabbits to sleeves and rings in shapes ranging from faux female to flower power. If these seem like unmentionables, that’s part of the problem: while some are made with unsafe materials, it’s tough to talk about that like, well, adults.

But it’s necessary. Unlike other plastic items that humans put to biologically intimate use — like medical devices or chew-friendly children’s toys — sex toys go largely unregulated and untested. And some in the industry say it’s time for that to change.

Love Stinks

Many popular erotic toys are made of polyvinyl chlorides (PVC) — plastics long decried by eco-activists for the toxins released during their manufacture and disposal — and softened with phthalates, a controversial family of chemicals. These include invitingly soft “jelly” or “cyberskin” items, which have grown popular in the last decade or so, says Carol Queen, Ph.D., “staff sexologist” for the San Francisco-based adult toy boutique Good Vibrations. “It’s actually difficult for a store today to carry plenty of items and yet avoid PVC,” Queen says. “Its use has gotten pretty ubiquitous among the large purveyors, because it’s cheap and easy to work with.”

In recent years, testing has revealed the potentially serious health impacts of phthalates. Studies on rats and mice suggest that exposure could cause cancer and damage the reproductive system. Minute levels of some phthalates have been linked to sperm damage in men, and this year, two published studies linked phthalate exposure in the womb and through breast milk to male reproductive issues.

A study in 2000 by German chemist Hans Ulrich Krieg found that 10 dangerous chemicals gassed out of some sex toys available in Europe, including diethylhexyl phthalates. Some had phthalate concentrations as high as 243,000 parts per million — a number characterized as “off the charts” by Davis Baltz of the health advocacy group Commonweal. “We were really shocked,” Krieg told the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation’s Marketplace in a 2001 report on the sex-toy industry. “I have been doing this analysis of consumer goods for more than 10 years, and I’ve never seen such high results.”

The danger, says Baltz, is that heat, agitation, and extended shelf life can accelerate the leaching of phthalates. “In addition, [phthalates are] lipophilic, meaning they are drawn to fat,” he says. “If they come into contact with solutions or substances that have lipid content, the fat could actually help draw the phthalates out of the plastic.” Janice Cripe, a former buyer for Blowfish — a Bay Area-based online company whose motto is “Good Products for Great Sex” –confirms the instability of jelly toys: “They would leak,” she says. “They’d leach this sort of oily stuff. They would turn milky” and had a “kind of plasticky, rubbery odor.” She stopped ordering many jelly toys during her time at Blowfish, even though their lower prices made them popular.

So what’s being done to protect consumers? Well, nothing. While the U.S., Japan, Canada, and the European Union have undertaken various restrictions regarding phthalates in children’s toys, no such rules exist for adult toys. In order to be regulated in the U.S. under current law, sex toys would have to present what the federal government’s Consumer Product Safety Commission calls a “substantial product hazard” –essentially, a danger from materials or design that, in the course of using the product as it’s made to be used, could cause major injury or death. But if you look at the packaging of your average mock penis or ersatz vagina, it’s probably been labeled as a “novelty,” a gag gift not intended for actual use. That’s an important semantic dodge that allows less scrupulous manufacturers to elude responsibility for potentially harmful materials, and to evade government regulation. If you stick it somewhere it wasn’t meant to go, well — caveat emptor, baby!

It’s a striking lack of oversight for a major globalized industry. The Guardian recently estimated that 70 percent of the world’s sex toys are manufactured in China, and the CBC’s 2001 report suggested the North American market might be worth $400 million to $500 million.

More detailed figures can be hard to come by. “In the U.S., all of the companies that manufacture adult novelties, whether they’re mom-and-pop or large corporations, are privately held,” explains Philip Pearl, publisher and editor in chief of AVN Adult Novelty Business, a trade magazine. “None are required to publish financial information, and none do.”

Queen thinks the lack of agreed-upon standards is a major problem. She and the staff at Good Vibrations have often had to fall back on marginally relevant regulations. “I remember trying in the early ’90s to track down information on an oil used on beautiful hand-carved wooden dildos — was it safe to put into the body?” she says. “The closest comparison we could find was the regulation governing wooden salad utensils!”

Taking Things Into Their Own Hands

Metis Black, president of U.S.-based erotic-toy manufacturer Tantus Silicone, has written on the health risks of materials for Adult Novelty Business. “Self-regulation — eventually we’ve got to do it,” says Black, who adds that creating safe toys is what got her into the business about seven years ago. “Just like children’s teething toys, we’re going to have to start doing the dialogue” within the industry, Black says, to “discuss what’s in toys and how it affects customers.” Otherwise, she feels, government regulators will step in.

While the industry wrestles with such issues, some manufacturers and suppliers aren’t waiting for regulations. Tony Levine, founder of Big Teaze Toys, says he’s made his products — including the cutely discreet, soft-plastic vibrator I Rub My Duckie –phthalate-free from the start. “While working at Mattel as a toy designer, I was made very aware of the concerns of using only safe materials for children’s products,” he says. “This training has stuck with me… We take great pride in using only the materials which meet strict toxicity safety standards for both the U.S. and the E.U.”

Meanwhile, if customers select jelly playthings at Babeland, a retailer with stores in Los Angeles, New York City, and Seattle, the staff gives them a tip sheet on phthalates, and recommends using a condom with the toy. “Our goal is to help people make an educated choice, and give out as much information as we can find — without alarming people,” says Abby Weintraub, an associate manager at the company’s Soho store.

Babeland staff also steer willing customers toward phthalate-free alternatives, such as hard plastic, or the silicone substitute VixSkin. Some manufacturers are also using thermoplastic elastomers instead of PVC. Vibratex recently reformulated the popular Rabbit Habit dual-action vibrator — made famous on Sex and the City — with this material. Vibratex co-owner Daniel Martin says the company has always used “superior grade,” stable PVC formulations, and still considers the products safe, but acknowledges that customers are eager for phthalate-free tools. While alternative materials can be more expensive, Weintraub says when people have the option of choosing them, many do.

The owners of the Smitten Kitten, a Minneapolis-based retailer, opted not to carry jellies, cyberskins, or other potentially toxic toys at all when they opened about two years ago. “They’re dangerous to human health, to the environment,” says co-owner Jennifer Pritchett. “It’s part of our philosophy to put good things in the world, and it’s counter to that to sell things that are toxic.”

No Sex Please, We’re Skittish

So what are the other alternatives for eco-conscious pleasure-seekers? The most ecologically correct choices may be metal or hardened glass dildos — which, with their elegant, streamlined shapes (and sometimes hefty price tags) can double as modernist sculptures if you grow weary of their sensual charms. “The glass is going to be more lasting, possibly safer, and less toxic than something that’s plastic,” confirms Babeland marketing manager Rebecca Suzanne.

And the eco-choices don’t stop there. If you want to do your part for conservation while getting a buzz, go for the Solar Vibe, a bullet vibrator that comes wired to a small solar panel. Some vibrators come with rechargeable power packs, says Suzanne, “which is a little bit better alternative to the typical battery-run toy, where you just toss the batteries … into the landfill.”

What about accessories? The Smitten Kitten takes pride in its “animal-friendly” inventory of bondage and fetish gear. “We have some floggers that are made of nylon rope … natural rope, and rubber,” says Pritchett. “The same with the paddles, collars, cuffs, and whatnot. Totally leather-free, animal-product-free.”

A few manufacturers are bringing green values directly to the adult-toy market via products that might not be out of place in the cosmetics aisle of a natural-foods mega-retailer. Offerings include Body Wax’s candles made from soy and essential oils, and Sensua Organic’s fruit-flavored or unflavored lubes — one of a few lubricant lines touting either organic or all-natural formulations. “People enjoy having the option,” says Weintraub. “It’s like, ‘I use organic face wash. Maybe I want to use organic lube, too.’”

Pritchett feels health and eco-conscious retailers are a shopper’s best ally for staying safe and healthy. “So many of us are used to shopping for organic food, or ecologically safe building products, or cosmetics,” she says. When people realize it’s possible to shop for sex toys the same way, “you can see a light bulb go off –they realize it’s a consumer relationship and they can and should demand better products.”

Choosing the most eco-correct erotic toy can seem fraught with compromises — more akin to picking the most fuel-efficient automobile than buying a bunch of organic kale. With no government assessment or regulation on the immediate horizon, it’s up to you, the consumer, to shop carefully and select a tool that’s health-safe, fits your budget, and gets your rocks off. Meanwhile, pack up that old mystery-material toy and send it back to the manufacturer with a note that they can stick it where the sun don’t shine.

Officials at the Food and Drug Administration and AIDS advocates long worried that people who got an AIDS diagnosis would panic and even consider suicide. So for years, the federal drug officials have insisted that counseling and professional support accompany AIDS tests. This requirement has complicated proposals for at-home tests.

But improved medicines now mean that AIDS is a chronic disease that can often be managed for years, so the fear that a diagnosis might lead to thoughts of suicide have subsided. Just as important, 40,000 people each year continue to be infected by HIV, the virus that causes AIDS. This rate has remained stubbornly high for years. Having tried many other strategies, federal health officials are now increasingly open to the idea that an at-home AIDS test could finally lead thousands to change their behaviors and stop infecting others.

“If we’re going to win the war against AIDS, we need to make HIV testing as easy as pregnancy testing,” said Dr. Freya Spielberg, a researcher in the Center for AIDS Research at the University of Washington.

A federal advisory board will discuss the proposal for an at-home AIDS test on Nov. 3. After that, the test’s maker, OraSure Techologies, based in Bethlehem, Pa., said that it would likely apply formally to sell the device over-the-counter.

The test, called OraQuick Advance Rapid HIV-? Antibody Test, is presently sold only to doctors and clinics. It has already proven to be effective, safe and easy to use. So the remaining hurdles are decisions by the F.D.A. about whether approving such a device is a good idea and whether people can understand the product’s label well enough to administer it to themselves.

A 1987 application for an at-home AIDS test kit led to years of controversy. At the time, AIDS advocates and public health officials predicted that such a test would cause widespread suicides, panic and a rush to public health clinics.

At hearings, AIDS advocates handed out copies of an obituary of a San Francisco man who jumped off the Golden Gate Bridge after discovering that he was infected with HIV. An official for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention told the F.D.A. that such tests could lead to “a sudden increase in referrals to already overburdened health clinics,” according to an F.D.A. document.

Federal regulators stalled the application for nine years, and at-home AIDS testing never caught on.

Some AIDS advocates are now warily supportive of at-home testing.

“For people who don’t have access to a clinic or make a decision not to go to a clinic, this is better than nothing,” said Gregg Gonsalves of Gay Men’s Health Crisis in New York City, which opposed at-home AIDS testing 18 years ago and offers testing and counseling itself. “But it’s not a magic bullet.”

The switch by advocates is important. Politics have long played a crucial role in many F.D.A. decisions, according to longtime agency observers and previous agency officials. Recently, the agency decided to delay a decision on whether to allow over-the-counter sales of an emergency contraceptive. The decision was seen by some inside and outside of the agency as politically driven, and it led a top agency official to resign in protest.

Dr. Spielberg said that about a quarter of the nearly million people in the United States who have the HIV virus in their blood do not know that they are infected. And somewhere between 40 percent and 45 percent of those who test positive for HIV do so less than a year before they are diagnosed with AIDS.

Since an HIV infection often takes a decade to develop into full-blown AIDS, “this suggests that people are living with HIV, and spreading HIV for many years before they are aware of their infection,” she said.

Many of these people avoid getting tested in clinics for a variety of reasons, including fear of discovery and convenience, studies show. And many hate having to wait more than a week for a lab result, surveys show.

Dr. Spielberg said that she surveyed 240 people infected with HIV and found that more than half said that they would have preferred to have found out about their infection with a rapid at-home test.

Having a rapid, over-the-counter test widely available, Dr. Spielberg said, “is the most powerful strategy we have to bring down HIV infections.” People who find out that they are infected with HIV often change their sexual behavior to reduce further infections, she said.

By contrast, OraQuick requires a person to simply swab their gums and then place the swab in a holder. Twenty minutes later, a strip displays one line for a negative result and two lines for a positive one.

The argument against at-home tests has long been that they failed to ensure that patients would get adequate counseling. Activists now acknowledge that many people who get HIV tests in doctors’ offices get little or no counseling anyway.

“The counseling that now occurs is very short or abrupt in many settings,” said Gene Copello, executive director of The AIDS Institute, a Washington-based policy group.

Doug Michels, president and chief executive of OraSure, said he plans to include advice about counseling on OraQuick’s label. “It could be a hotline number, a 24-hour manned counseling center, Web support or printed material that is included in the product,” he said.

The company said it would include whatever the advisory committee and the F.D.A. deems is necessary, he said. The company now sells the device for between $12 and $17, although the price of an over-the-counter version has yet to be decided, Mr. Michels said.

Risk of accidental pregnancy

Per Year (assuming 100 sex acts)
No protection : 8 in 10
Condoms: 1 in 50
Birth Control: 1 in 200
Condoms & Birth Control: 1 in 10,000

Per Act
No protection : 1 in 125
Condoms: 1 in 5,000
Birth Control: 1 in 20,000
Condoms & Birth Control: 1 in 1,000,000

Consider that if you have sex on a regular basis for 10, 20, or more years, you can multiply the risk by the number of years, thus the risk of getting pregnant over 20 years, if you only use Condoms, is 20 in
50, or 40%. Not a very good risk if you don’t want to have an abortion. If you only use the pill, the risk of getting pregnant over 20 years is 20 in 200, or 1 in 10. This assumes perfect use, and does not consider the possibility of misuse or accident.

Both condoms and birth control pills can be bought online.

Whether you have sex with one person or sixty, the risk of impregnation is still the same. The only thing that really makes a difference is how much sex you have.

Diseases, on the other hand, can sometimes be an argument against promiscuity,

There are 5 main diseases which may be tested for when you go to an STD clinic:
- HIV
- Gonorrhea
- Chlamydia
- Syphilis
- Herpes (blood test)
- There is currently no test for HPV(warts).

Many clinics do not give a Herpes blood test, and, as Gonorrhea, Chlamydia, and Syphilis are all curable, and as the risk of HIV is very slim, your only responsibility is to keep your self healthy by periodically testing for G, C, & S which might not have symptoms, and use condoms.

So, Gonorrhea, Chlamydia, and Syphilis are not an argument against promiscuity, if you can test yourself regularly. How regularly? I don’t know, but if you are sexually active, I would assume at least once every 4 months to protect yourself against these diseases, which if left untreated could cause irreparable harm.

The only obstacles to this are 1) cost of tests, which at selected clinics are free, and 2)lack of desire of going to the clinic every four months. Cheap and simple at home tests for these three diseases could 1) reduce the incidence of these disease; which for Gonorrhea and Chlamydia is high *** (how high), and 2) stem the tide of Pelvic Inflamatory Disease which can cause infertility and effects 1 million women a year. I did find cheap at home tests for gonorrhea and chlamydia for 5.95, but I have no idea how effective they are. Such tests should be sold next to condoms in the drugstore.

HIV is also not an argument against promiscuity, because the risk of contraction is slim, and then, if you use condoms the risk is at least 90% slimmer.

An all in one at home test which tested for Gonorrhea, Chlamydia, Syphilis, Herpes, and HIV would be ideal.

While the main worry with G, C, & S is making sure the disease is cured before it causes permanent damage, testing a partner to make sure they are clean ensures that you do not even need to receive treatment for these diseases. The point of testing for Herpes and HIV is to prevent these diseases. If you can test your partners for Herpes, then you should be able to exclude everyone except those who got the disease within the last six weeks. If you can test your partners for HIV, then you should be able to exclude everyone except those who got the disease within the last 6 months – that is, in the case of HIV, in the USA all except about 20,000 people, many of them homosexuals and intravenous drug users.

But given the high probable risk of Herpes and HPV(Warts), especially in the absence of a test result for Herpes, either of these diseases could be an argument against promiscuity.

Herpes

Results of a nationally representative study show that genital herpes infection is common in the United States. Nationwide, at least 45 million people ages 12 and older, or one out of five adolescents and
adults, have had genital HSV infection. Between the late 1970s and the early 1990s, the number of Americans with genital herpes infection increased 30 percent.

Genital HSV-2 infection is more common in women (approximately one out of four women) than in men (almost one out of five). This may be due to male-to-female transmissions being more likely than female-to-male transmission. Since more women have it, but the risk of getting it is less, I suppose it balances out. Less men have it, but the risk of transmission to the female is higher.

It is also possible, but less likely, to get herpes from someone who does not have sores. Over the course of one year, the chance of getting genital herpes from an infected partner who has no symptoms is between

four and 10 percent. So, if the risk of transmission if they have the virus with no symptoms
is 4%-10%, or 1 in 25 to 1 in 10 per year, then it’s 1 in 2500 to 1 in 1000 per incident, if they have the virus, (assuming 100 sex acts per year). If you figure a 50% chance that someone has HSV, then those numbers fall in half. At best a 25% chance that they have it, so at best the risk is 1%-2.5% or 1 in 100 to 1 in 40 per year, or 1 in 10,000 to 1 in 4,000 per incident. Unless I can find another study which says that the risk of Herpes transmission is less. Since someone did say it was 1 in 50, or 2%.

There is a Herpes blood test, but it cannot be taken for at least 3-6 weeks after possible exposure, and it is possible that Herpes anti-bodies might not show up in the blood for 12-16 weeks after infection. (3-4 months).

HPV (warts)

Approximately 20 million people are currently infected with HPV. At least 50 percent of sexually active men and women acquire genital HPV infection at some point in their lives. By age 50, at least 80 percent of women will have acquired genital HPV infection. About 6.2 million Americans get a new genital HPV infection each year.

Question: How can 20 million people infected with HPV result in 80 percent of women and 50 percent of sexually active men and women being infected at some point in their lives, when 45 million people infected with Herpes does not result the same.

There are over one hundred varieties of HPV. About thirty of these viruses are associated with genital warts but not all types of HPV cause growths you can see. Strains 6 and 11 are responsible for 90% of
the cases of genital warts. Strains 16, and 18 are responsible for 70% of the cases of cervical cancer.

There are about 10,520 new cases of invasive cervical cancer in the United States per year, which result in about 3,900 deaths. Pap tests can detect very early precancerous changes in the cervix.

Sexually active women should get a Pap test each year. Pap smears have cut the incidence of cervical cancer by a whole bunch, I’m not sure by how much but I think I heard like 50%. You can look up the exact figure on your own. Your own immune system may eventually clear HPV from your body within
2-5 years.

Question for guys: What percentage of Americans are infected with an hpv strain that causes warts, and how many new cases of hpv warts are there each year? An answer to this question would allow us to asses the ACTUAL risk of genital warts rather than just the risk of HPV in general.

Question: Is the skin under removed warts still symptomatic – able to transmit the virus?? It’s possible…..

Question for girls: In addition to the above questions, what percentage of Americans are infected with an hpv strain that causes cervical cancer, and how many new cases of cervical cancer causing hpv are there each year? An answer to this question would allow us to asses the actual risk of wart and cancer causing HPV rather than just the risk of hpv in general.

Luckily they are developing vaccines against Herpes & Warts which hopefully shall be available soon. Condoms provide partial protection, but not much against Herpes and HPV(Warts). Condoms which covered the entire groin area might solve this.

But what is the risk that someone has Herpes or HPV(Warts), and what is the risk that someone will transmit Herpes or HPV(Warts) if there are no visible symptoms. I don’t know. For information on the risk that someone has and/or will transmit HIV see my other message. And how big is your pool of promiscuous people? Who knows, this requires more analysis.

HIV

Condoms reduce the risk of HIV transmission by 90%. So on the one hand, although the personal risk of HIV is low, and one might conclude that one only needs worry about one’s own personal risk, on the other hand, HIV is a biological Holocaust, and 21.8 million people have died from AIDS worldwide (though only 438,795 US). In the macro, an argument against promiscuity would be that we don’t want this disease to spread before we can find a cure. Yet why? It could be months or it could be centuries before we find a cure. If the disease spread to far because of promiscuity, then in the future being promiscuous would put you at a high risk, and would thus kill promiscuity. While currently, your own personal risk is probably no greater than that of getting in a fatal car accident. Because there are 40,000 new cases of HIV every year, and 40,000 fatal car accidents every year, and while the pool of promiscuous sex having people may be smaller than that of car drivers, many of the new HIV cases are homosexuals and intravenous drug users. So why put off sex and why worry about anything except your own personal risk? Which for now, is very low.

However, we don’t want HIV, and we don’t want car accidents, so while it behooves us to attempt to lower the risks for both, we do want to drive, and we do want to have promiscuous sexual intercourse.

As for the “government campaign” to stop HIV. It seems what we can do is 1) Develop a vaccine or a complete cure (as opposed to mere treatments), 2) Develop cheap at home tests, 3) promote condom and test use, 4) promote asex (abstinence and monogamy, and androgyny) – at the expense of our sex lives.

Another good argument against promiscuity is that if you have a disease and do not know, you may pass it on to more people, however it does not increase your own personal risk, it only increases the possibility of future risk for everyone.