Kids toys in swimming pool may pose cancer risk
Parents, take note! Inflatable toys and swimming aids, such as beach balls and arm bands, may have potentially hazardous substances that can put your child at the risk of cancer, a new study warns. Researchers from Fraunhofer Institute for Process Engineering and Packaging IVV in Germany conducted tests using an inflatable beach ball, a pair of swimming armbands and two bathing rings. A small piece of material from each sample was analysed and it was concluded that the inflatable objects were all made from polyvinyl chloride (PVC).
Researchers then investigated the molecular make-up of the distinctive smells arising from the pool toys. They extracted detectable odours from each sample and then identified the main odorants. They detected between 32 and 46 odours in each sample, of which up to 13 were quite intense.
The majority of these odorants were identified and among these were several fatty smelling mono-or di-unsaturated carbonyl compounds, but also odouractive organic solvents such as cyclohexanone, isophorone and phenol. Cyclohexanone can be harmful if inhaled, phenol is known to be acutely toxic and isophorone is a category 2 carcinogen, which means that it is a suspect substance in the development of cancer in humans.
