Ah. What’s more refreshing than a morning shower? If you don’t slip and kill yourself or get eaten by bathroom mold, “new shower curtain smell” will kill you. Well, maybe not right away, but that smell can cause headaches, nausea, and damage to the liver, central nervous, respiratory and reproductive systems.
The culprit, says the Center for Health, Environment and Justice (CHEJ), is Polyvinylchloride (PVC). PVC is rigid, so “plasticizers” are added to the curtains so they will flex, and these contribute more problems.
PVC shower curtains contain phthalates, organotins, toluene, ethylbenzene, phenol, methyl isobutyl ketone, xylene, acetophenone and cumene — 108 volatile organic compounds in all. Some of these, identified by the EPA as hazardous air pollutants, persist for up to a month in your little tile room.
You can download the CHEJ report, Volitile Vinyl, here.
And maybe you can fish your old mildew-covered shower curtain out of the trash can.
Top image by Alfred Hitcock and Janet Leigh. Eeep. Eeep. Eeep.
NotionsCapital 
June 19, 2008 at 10:55 am
[…] much-publiczed report on the danger of shower curtains failed to show that shower curtains released harmful phthalates, […]