Marc Angelo Coppola

In heavily polluted areas, we all know that we should try to avoid inhaling whatever toxins are floating around as much as possible. That’s why when pollution gets especially bad in China, people are advised to stay indoors, and it’s one of the reasons behind the rise in surgical masks being worn in Tokyo, Japan.

But a new study has found that when it comes to certain airborne pollutants, called phthalates, our skin can absorb just as much as we’re breathing in. “We’re big sponges for these chemicals,” lead researcher, John Kissel from the University of Washington in the US, told Science News.

Phthalates are a group of ‘semi-volatile’ chemicals that are used to make plastic soft and flexible, or as dissolving agents for other types of materials, and are found in all kinds of cosmetics, fragrances, and household cleaners. Derived from oil, around 2 million tonnes of phthalates are produced across the world each year, and more than 20 different types are in common use.

Over the past 50 years, they’ve become the most widely used ‘plasticisers’ in the world, but growing concern over what prolonged exposure – through indoor air, dust, and food packaging, for example – is doing to our health has seen some types banned in Europe and the US.

Studies have shown that phthalates can end up in our bloodstream, breast milk, and urine, and they’ve been classified as ‘endocrine disruptors’, because of the way they affect our body’s hormonal systems, such as the oestrogen and androgen hormone systems.

Preliminary research has linked certain phthalates to the incidences of asthma, with a 2008 study suggesting that heated PVC fumes could contribute to development of asthma in adults, while phthalate exposure in the home could put children at a higher risk of asthma and allergies. There are also indications that exposure could lead to a higher risk of breast cancer, but the research has not yet been definitive.

Kissel and his colleagues wanted to investigate the effect of ‘dermal uptake’ – or absorption through the skin – on the levels of phthalates found in human bloodstreams. They recruited six healthy male participants, and exposed them to elevated air concentrations of two types of phthalates: diethyl phthalate (DEP) and di(n-butyl) phthalate (DnBP). According to Tim Sandle at The Latest News, DEP is used as a solvent in personal care products, such as moisturiser, and DnBP is used as a plasticiser in products like nail polish.

The six volunteers were exposed to the chemicals over a 6-hour period in a special chamber, first with specialised breathing hoods on that prevented them from inhaling any of the phthalates, and then without hoods the following week. The only other clothes they were allowed to wear during exposure was shorts, and they were placed on a restricted diet and restricted use of personal care products 12 hours before entering the chamber and until their urine was collected 66 hours later.

“Metabolite concentrations were lower when the participants were exposed to chamber air while wearing a hood, but the levels were still substantially higher than levels measured before the participants entered the chamber, indicating significant uptake of DEP and DnBP while participants were wearing a hood,” the researchers report in the journal Environmental Health Perspective.

The team found that the dermal uptake of DEP was about 10 percent higher than its inhalation intake, and the dermal uptake of DnBP was 82 percent of its inhalation intake. And the older the participant, the higher the dermal uptakes of both DEP and DnBP from the air. They said that based on the very limited sample of six, the impact of age was surprisingly strong. “The uptake of DEP by the 66-year-old is five times greater than that of the 27-year-old, while the uptake of DnBP is seven times greater,” they report.

The researchers are yet to test how wearing more than just shorts would affect phthalate levels, and yep, that sample size is tiny, but the results warrant some follow-up investigations. Skin is the largest organ in the human body, so if it’s really not protecting us against these commonly used chemicals, that’s a problem. Earlier research has shown that semi-volatile chemicals like phthalates tend to pass through the skin relatively slowly, but they could still build up to damaging levels over several years.

“[I]f the whole body is exposed, then even low rates of exposure can deliver what turns out to be nontrivial amounts of these chemicals,” Kissel told Janet Raloff at Science News.

Both parties of Congress are in agreement on diverting billions in Wall Street subsidies to rebuild America’s crumbling infrastructure. If you’re by a window, look outside for flying pigs.

Currently, the Federal Reserve pays out a 6 percent annual dividend to roughly 2,900 banks – JPMorgan Chase, Citigroup, Bank of America, and Wells Fargo net approximately $350 million apiece each year from the dividend. These banks own stock in the Federal Reserve as a means of becoming members of regional Fed branches around the country, and unlike other stocks, the big banks are guaranteed to never lose money on their investment in the Fed. For years, the Congressional Progressive Caucus has proposed reducing that dividend to 3 percent in order to pay for repairing American infrastructure. After lying dormant for over a year, it appears that idea has now caught on with Republicans as well.

According to Bloomberg, Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) recently told a group of Wall Street executives at a Financial Services Roundtable event that he wouldn’t use his power to remove a new rule that allots funding for federal highways by reducing that dividend to 1.5 percent. The House is now weighing whether or not to back the dividend reduction before highway funding runs out at the end of October. Should the proposal go through, America’s highways would benefit from an additional $17 billion in repairs over the next ten years.

Now, Wall Street is in panic mode.

“The idea that going forward that we are going to pay for our nation’s infrastructure on the backs of one industry sector is a really flawed public policy,” said American Bankers Association president Rob Nichols.

While Fed chair Janet Yellen has taken the banks side, saying she believes the policy “could conceivably have unintended consequences,” Washington prognosticators believe the banks will ultimately have to sacrifice their Fed dividend, and possibly more federal handouts further down the road.

“The industry is in a very dangerous spot because it is a pot of gold,” Karen Shaw Petrou, managing partner of Federal Financial Analytics, told Bloomberg. “With the general political climate I don’t know a lot of people on Capitol Hill that like banks.”

The proposal is likely to pass, as past Republican proposals to fund infrastructure repair included a tax repatriation holiday – allowing corporations to bring back some of the $2.1 trillion stashed in overseas tax havens back to the U.S. at a 5 percent rate rather than a 35 percent rate – a proposal that President Obama has promised to veto in the past. As I previously wrote in The Guardian, the only result that came out of past attempts at repatriation was mass layoffs of workers, while corporations used the repatriated cash to buy back their own stock, driving up the value of the options owned by executives.

Bad of an idea as it is, repatriation still attracted the support of Wall street-backed Democrats like Chuck Schumer, and corporations have lobbied Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wisc.), the House Ways and Means chairman, to include repatriation in a tax reform package. However, lawmakers predicting an Obama veto are rejecting the idea of repatriation for now and are gravitating toward a solution for America’s highways they know Obama will sign by the end of the month.

The dividend cut has already been included in the Senate’s compromise bill, which will fund highways over the next 3 years. That bill passed by an almost two-thirds margin in July.

C. Robert Gibson is editor in chief of US Uncut. His past work has been published in The Guardian, Al Jazeera America, NPR, and the Washington Post. Follow him on Twitter: @crgibs

Whole Foods Market co-CEO and co-founder John Mackey has never hidden his disdain for labor unions. “Today most employees feel that unions are not necessary to represent them,” he told my colleague Josh Harkinson in 2013. That same year, Mackey echoed the sentiment in an interview with Yahoo Finance’s the Daily Ticker. “Why would they want to join a union? Whole Foods has been one of [] 100 best companies to work for for the last 16 years. We’re not so much anti-union as beyond unions.”

On September 25, the natural-foods giant gave its workers reason to question their founder’s argument. Whole Foods announced it was eliminating 1,500 jobs-about 1.6 percent of its American workforce-“as part of its ongoing commitment to lower prices for its customers and invest in technology upgrades while improving its cost structure.” The focus on cost-cutting isn’t surprising-Whole Foods stock has lost 40 percent of its value since February, thanks to lower-than-expected earnings and an overcharging scandal in its New York City stores.

Supervisors “in all departments were demoted…and told they were no longer supervisors, but still had to fulfill all of the same duties.”

Sources inside the company told me that the layoffs targeted experienced full-time workers who had moved up the Whole Foods pay ladder. In one store in the chain’s South region, “all supervisors in all departments were demoted to getting paid $11 an hour from $13-16 per hour and were told they were no longer supervisors, but still had to fulfill all of the same duties, effective immediately,” according to an employee who works there.

I ran that claim past a spokesman at the company’s Austin headquarters. “We appreciate you taking the time to reach out and help us to set the record straight,” he responded, pointing to the press release quoted above. When I reminded him that my question was about wage cuts, not the announced job cuts, he declined to comment.

Another source, from one of Whole Foods’ regional offices, told me the corporate headquarters had ordered all 11 regional offices to reduce expenses. “They’ve all done it differently,” the source said. “In some regions, they’ve reduced the number of in-store buyers-people who order products for the shelves.”

I spoke with a buyer from the South region who learned on Saturday that, after more than 20 years with the company, his position had been eliminated. He and other laid-off colleagues received a letter listing their options: They could reapply for an open position or “leave Whole Foods immediately” with a severance package-which will be sweetened if they agree not to reapply for six months. If laid-off employees manage to snag a new position that pays less than the old one did, they are eligible for a temporary pay bump to match the old wage, but only for a limited time.

Whole Foods has “always been an 80/20 company” in its ratio of full- to part-time workers, but managers are now “incentivized to bring down that ratio.”

Those fortunate enough to get rehired at the same pay rate may be signing up for more work and responsibility. At his store, the laid-off buyer told me, ex-workers are now vying for buyer positions that used to be handled by two people-who “can barely get their work done as it is.”

My regional office source told me that the layoffs and downscaling of wages for experienced staffers is part of a deliberate shift toward part-time employees. Whole Foods has “always been an 80/20 company,” the source said, referring to it ratio of full- to part-time workers. Recently, a “mandate came down to go 70/30, and there are regions that are below that: 65/35 or 60/40.” Store managers are “incentivized to bring down that ratio,” the source added.

Employees working more than 20 hours per week are eligible for benefits once they’ve “successfully completed a probationary period of employment,” the Whole Foods website notes. But some key benefits are tied to hours worked. For example, employees get a “personal wellness account” to offset the “cost of deductibles and other qualified out-of-pocket health care expenses not covered by insurance,” but the amount is based on “service hours.”

And part-time employees tend not to stick around. My regional source said that annual turnover rates for part-timers at Whole Foods stores approach 80 percent in some regions. According to an internal document I obtained, the national annualized turnover rate for part-time Whole Foods team members was more than triple that of full-timers-66 percent versus about 18 percent-in the latest quarterly assessment. “Whole Foods has always been a high-touch, high-service model with dedicated, engaged, knowledgeable employees​,”​ the source said. “How do you maintain that, having to [constantly] train a new batch of employees?”

One of Whole Foods’ “core values,” is to support the “happiness and excellence” of its employees. But that may be hard to reconcile with pleasing Wall Street.

Of course, Whole Foods operates in a hypercompetitive industry. Long a dominant player in natural foods, it now has to vie with Walmart, Trader Joe’s, and regional supermarket chains in the organic sector. Lower prices are key to staying competitive, and in order to maintain the same profit margins with lower prices, you have to cut your expenditures. Whole Foods’ labor costs, according to my regional source, are equal to about 20 percent of sales-twice the industry standard.

It’s not unusual for a publicly traded company to respond to a market swoon by pushing down wages and sending workers packing. But Whole Foods presents itself as a different kind of company. As part of its “core values,” Whole Foods claims to “support team member [employee] happiness and excellence.” Yet at a time when the company’s share price is floundering and its largest institutional shareholder is Wall Street behemoth Goldman Sachs-which owns nearly 6 percent of its stock-that value may be harder to uphold.

Workers join unions precisely to protect themselves from employers that see slashing labor costs as a way to please Wall Street. “There’s a fear of unions coming in, because employees are bitter,” the regional-office source said. “People talk about it in hushed tones.”