Chemicals Common In Everyday Items May Be Linked To Increased Diabetes Risk In Women

How can people's exposure to the chemicals in the objects they use every day affect their health? In women, it may contribute to one particular metabolic disorder — diabetes.

In a new study, published Wednesday in the Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism, researchers followed 1,308 women for six years. The women were part of the Study of Women's Health Across the Nation (SWAN).

The idea, they said, was to see whether exposure to phthalates was "associated with a higher incidence of diabetes in a racially/ethnically diverse cohort of midlife women."

Phthalates are chemicals that are used in plastics to make them more durable or sometimes to help other materials to dissolve, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

Dubbed by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) as "The Everywhere Chemical," phthalates are in "hundreds" of products that people use and are exposed to every day, from vinyl (PVC) products to personal care items like soaps, nail polish, perfumes and shampoos.

These chemicals are endocrine disruptors. This means that once they are absorbed in the body, they can, in females, "mimic or block" the female hormones. In males, they can "suppress the hormones involved in male sexual development."

Though more research is needed to fully assess the impacts of phthalates on human health, exposure to the chemicals has been linked to certain health and developmental problems, such as early puberty onset and lower sperm count in males. They have also been suspected to be associated with diabetes.

"Phthalates are hypothesized to contribute to diabetes, but longitudinal evidence in humans is limited," the researchers wrote.

In their study, the women were not diagnosed with diabetes at the beginning of the six years. But 61 of them ended up being diagnosed with the disease throughout the study period.

The researchers found that White women, in particular, who were exposed to high levels of some phthalates had a 30 to 63% incidence of diabetes.

"Our research found phthalates may contribute to a higher incidence of diabetes in women, especially White women, over a six-year period," one of the study authors, Sung Kyun Park of the University of Michigan School of Public Health in Ann Arbor, said in the news release from the Endocrine Society.

Interestingly, however, phthalates were not associated with diabetes in Black or Asian women.

Given the difference in the results in White, Black and Asian women, the researchers stressed the need for further investigation on the impact of phthalates and their potential relationship with diabetes.

That said, the study does shed further light on how these widely used chemicals may actually be affecting people's bodies.

"People are exposed to phthalates daily increasing their risk of several metabolic diseases," Park said in the release. "It's important that we address EDCs (endocrine disrupting chemicals) now as they are harmful to human health."