The poison in plasticPlastic... Heralded as the modern miracle material and now used lavishly in just about every manufacturing industry, plastic has found its way into just about every part of our life. We are told by scientists and goverment officials that it's completely safe and harmless, whether it's user to wrap out food with, or used to repair parts of our bodies. Just look around your home or workplace and spot something that has NOT got plastic material in it, difficult ...eh?. Carpet, clothes, dentures, funiture, paint, cars, food wrappings, well, the list would fill this page and beyond. We all know how prolific, cheap and "popular" plastic is, but how "safe" is it? Just consider this for a moment; If a group of reputed scientists suddenly descovered that plastic was dangerous to our health, do you really think we would ever know about it? I mean, would we really recall and destroy 90% of the world's industrial production because it was potentially dangerous to health or the environment? Of course not, you may as well invent a car that can run on water!.
So, what's the big deal? Plastic is here to stay and that's a fact. However, to answer the important question, not all plastic is safe and some of that plastic is used to make things for those closest to our hearts, that's right ... toys for our children! How could they do that? As usual big political and financial factors lean heavily on those who would stand up and shout about it, so it all gets fudged with glossy tape. In fact there are several unsafe practices concerning plastic. Food wrapping is one, bottled water and carpet manufacture ... but hold on, this is another long list, we need to be focussed here or we would close down the whole petrochemical industry!
Fact: not all plastic is safe. Fact: some of that plastic is used to manufacture popular products for babies and children. The big concern is PVC or poly vinylchloride, sometimes called vinyl. Here's why: PVC is a hard material. That's fine for rigid, robust items, but what if you want a softer material? It was descovered that a group of chemicals called Phthalates make PVC into a soft pliable material. Phthalates look like vegetable oil. They have little or no smell, but when added to plastics like PVC they act as a lubricant between the long vinyl molecules, permitting them to slip and slide against one another.This is what makes plastic soft and pliable, flexible and durable. About 80 percent of all the phthalates manufactured are used as"plasticizers." and are incorporated into products that we use every day. Phthalates are used throughout the plastics industry, from construction to toy-making to medical care, baby teethers, soothers, feeding bottles, etc. flexible vinyl has helped make products that are more durable, cleaner, clearer, and economical. Not all phthalates are used as plasticizers for PVC. Different phthalates keep nail polish from chipping, make perfume linger longer, or make tool handles strong and more resistant to breaking. Others help adhesives, caulking, paint pigments and many other materials perform their jobs better.
The commercial scientific world would have you believe that phthalates are completly safe, tha phthalates do not persist in the environment; they biodegrade readily. If they make their way into the body, they do not accumulate in animals or humans. Once inside the body, they break down quickly and are excreted. Most important, in their long history of beneficial service to consumers, there has never been any scientifically validated evidence that they have ever caused anyone any harm. Sounds a familiar story doesn't it? Remember Thalidamide? BSE, CJD, ? Another list could go on ...
Plastics seem like a pretty good material don't they? Not quite. As with many many marvelous magical tricks, there's usually a devious "slight of hand" in the background that we don't see. Let's have a closer look at the properties of phthalates and in particular how they affect living organisms.
The plasticiser most commonly used in flexible vinyl products is DINP, diisononyl phthalate, and here's the "slight of hand" that the big plastics manufacturers don't want you to see ... Studies have shown that rats and mice fed very high doses of DINP developed liver and/or kidney tumors after exposure over a lifetime. Concerns have been expressed about the leaching effect of DINP in soft pastic products and the possible developmental effects as well as chronic liver and kidney toxicity. Plasticisers are not bound to the plastic and can leach out over time; for instance plasticisers in vinyl flooring, will evaporate into the room. Another common plasticiser, the phthalate DEHP, is a suspected carcinogen. These effects have been associated only with very high doses in laboratory studies and the reports tell us the results are not relevant to humans. Nevertheless, a number of groups have aggressively lobbied governments in the United States, Canada, Japan and Europe to have DINP banned from toys. Recently many governments across the world have banned soft vinyl baby toys and teethers because of the hazards of plasticizers leaking into their infants' mouths when sucked or chewed. This is a significant response against a large commercial market. Certain responsible goverments must know there is enough risk from these chemicals to warrant the ban. Now look around your home and see what your child has access to; teethers, soothers, drinking cups, soft toys. Are you happy to let them go on chewing and sucking on them?
Of all the plastics, PVC plastic or vinyl is the most environmentally damaging. Throughout its lifecycle it requires hazardous chemicals in production that release harmful additives and creates toxic wastes. If burned, either in open fires, landfills, or incinerators, PVC will release an acidic gas along with dioxins - because of its chlorine content. PVC is a major source of dioxins globally. If PVC is disposed of in landfills, it eventually releases additives which can then threaten groundwater supplies and the surrounding biocycle. Dioxins are now present throughout the environment and the food chain; everyone is exposed to them in their diets, particularly through fatty foods such as dairy, meat, fish and eggs. TCDD, the most lethal form of the dioxin family is a known human carcinogen and hormone disrupter and is recognized as the most toxic synthetic compound ever produced. All humans and animals now carry body burdens of TCDD and other dioxins.
So, even if you decide to burn or throw away your plastic, just think, eventually it may come back to you and your children, just as poisonous, but this time in the food they eat and the air they breath!
Plastic: Its oily roots ...
Crude oil is more than a base for petrol and fuel. Industrial Fractionation is a process for splitting oil into several constituents chemicals that are later used for a vast range of other materials and ... yes, you got it, plastics is one of them. Ok, so oil is a natural product, extracted from the ground. Yes, but plastic is a heavily processed material and the most synthetic of all man made products. The oil industry is dominated by wealthy institutes of power and greed that are sustained by an insatiable appitite for more and more production. If oil was the blood of this planet, then our desire for fuel and fractionation products are literally bleeding it dry. And like any living creature, the supply is limited and will eventually run out. What has that got to do with our children? Do we really need to ask that? What are we preparing for their future then? What legacy of greed and pollution will we leave for our children and their generations? What kind of environmental and health hazzards will we bequeth to them?.....
Full article:
http://houseofstrauss.co.uk/modules/wfsection/article.php?articleid=439------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Get Plastic Out Of Your DietYou Are What You Eat
Get Plastic Out Of Your Diet PAUL GOETTLICH 16nov03
When you eat or drink things that are stored in plastic, taste it, smell it, wear it, sit on it, and so on, plastic is incorporated into you. In fact, the plastic gets into the food and food gets into the plastic and you. So, quite literally, you are what you eat[1]. . . drink. . . and breathe — plastic! These plastics are called "Food Contact Substances" by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA), but until April 2002, they were called "Indirect Food Additives."[2] The new name is cleansed of the implication that plastic gets into your food. In spite of this semantic deception, migration is a key assumption of the FDA.
According to Dr. George Pauli, Associate Director of Science Policy, FDA Office of Food Additive Safety, the regulations mandated in 1958 assume that all plastics migrate toxins into the food they contact. Migration is the movement of free toxins from plastic into the substances they contact — in this case it’s your food. The manufacturer must "prove" that the migrations fall within an acceptable range.[3] I agree with the assumption of migration from all plastics, but I find a critical disparity between the level of science employed by the regulations and the current scientific knowledge regarding the levels at which they migrate and the effects they can have. In particular, I am more concerned with extremely low concentrations. There is also a conflict of interest in allowing the manufacturer to submit its own testing to the FDA as proof of anything. We invite the fox into the henhouse and are surprised when there’s nothing left but eggshells and feathers.
The amount of migration and corresponding toxicological effects are highly disputed topics, even within the FDA, which has commonly acquiesced to industry in its regulation of technologies that are used in the production of our foods — plastics, pesticides, growth hormones, irradiation, and microwave. This is clear from the mass of expert and citizen testimony against such technologies that regulatory agencies bend over backwards and jump through flaming hoops to please their corporate clients, as they are called.
There is a worst plastic for any purpose — polyvinylchloride (vinyl or PVC). However, there is no best plastic to contain food or drink. It is my hope that this article will clarify this viewpoint. By the time you’ve finished reading, you should be closer to forming your own evaluation of plastics.
Its Uses
Plastic is used in contact with nearly all packaged foods. Most cardboard milk containers are now coated with plastic[4] rather than wax. It is sprayed on both commercial and organic produce to preserve its freshness. Plastic is even used to irrigate, mulch, wrap, and transport organic food. Organic bananas now come from wholesalers with a sticky plastic wrapping the cut stem to protect the bananas from a black mold.[5] The mold is controlled on non-organic bananas by dipping the cut ends in a fungicide. Chiquita would only reveal that it’s a "food grade plastic," which means that it meets minimum regulatory standards. But since it has a sticky feel to it, I suspect it either carries a fungicide or its physical characteristics act as a fungicide. Either way, if it is or acts as a fungicide, the EPA regulates it as a pesticide, which fungicides are considered a subset of. [6] In a way, this is similar to the regulation of corn that is genetically engineered to carry the toxic bacterium bacillus thuringiensis (Bt) in every cell. Rather than the FDA regulating it as a food, the EPA regulates it as a pesticide. Incredible as it may seem, they see our food as a pesticide.
According to the FDA scientist I spoke with, it’s a proprietary formula that he doesn’t know about and would offer nothing beyond that. Disclosure of proprietary information is a criminal offense.[7] All plastic manufacturers hide behind trade secrets. This is true with nearly all consumer products. It is quite impossible to know the chemical makeup of any plastic without paying a substantial amount of money for an independent lab analysis.
How is it made?
In a nutshell, plastic is made by combining monomers into polymers under great heat and pressure in a process called polymerization. Each manufacturer has its own proprietary formula for each plastic. And each uses a variety of additives such as plasticizers for flexibility, UV filters for protection from sunlight, antistatic agents, flame-retardants, colorants, antioxidants, and more. Heavy metals such as cadmium, mercury, and lead are common additives. There are also chemicals used to facilitate production such as mold releases, and countless other toxic chemicals regularly added to plastic consumer goods without our knowledge or approval. Many of the products and byproducts of the intermediary steps of plastics production are used in other plastics or industrial processes and products such as pesticides or fertilizer. For holistic thinkers, the mention of plastics and pesticides in the same sentence should begin an informative thought process, while keeping in mind that they all have complete regulatory approval....
Full article
http://www.mindfully.org/Plastic/Plasticizers/Out-Of-Diet-PG5nov03.htm
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