Plastic Free Breasts
March 6, 2009
Whats in plastic might cost you your lady lumps. Not a nice subject I know but check out this breast cancer website – it might help you keep your bits.
BPA is back in the news
November 1, 2008
FRIDAY, Oct. 31 (HealthDay News) — A U.S. Food and Drug Administration advisory panel agreed Friday that the agency had erred in August when it said that a chemical widely used in baby bottles and other plastic packaging for foods and beverages posed no health risks.Go HERE to read the rest of the article.
I got this from going crunchy – yet another person trying to stem the tide of plastic trash
BPA update
August 18, 2008
BPA or Bisphenol A has been in the news recently – lots of people are getting worried about the possible effects it has on your hormones. Pregnant women and babies are felt to be especially vulnerable.
Quick identification – plastics containing BPA are labeled with the number “7” identification code, BUT not all plastics labeled with the number “7” contain BPA. The number “7” code is assigned to the “Other” category, which includes all plastics not otherwise assigned to categories #1-6. See softlanding for more on this
BPA is also found in the white plastic linings of some cans though you wont know which ones until you open them….
Thankfully Heinze Beans are plastic free -
Please add to the plastic free tin list
I’m a Barbie Girl…
June 21, 2008
Lifes fantastic when your plastic…. better had be as we’ve all got the plastic in us
The chemicals im plastic appear to be mobile – ie they can leach from the plastic product into your food.
If its not the leaching its the fish and chips. When it finally does finally break down plastic doesn’t actually biodegrade it photo degrades. It falls apart in to smaller and smaller toxic particles. These are then absorbed into the surrounding environment entering the water and earth and so the food chain and so into us.
Some of the chemicals used to make plastic have not actually been passed as fit for human consumption – or are known to affect our hormones. At the moment everyone is worried about BPA which can now be found in nearly everything. So I might not be a barbie girl for much longer
Whats in your plastic?
The chemicals in plastic are added to give plastic a wide range of properties. However some of those chemicals are extremely toxic. Here are some of the baddies – for more details click names.
Dioxins
Dioxins, which are highly toxic even at low doses, and are produced when plastics are manufactured and incinerated.
BPA can leach into food from the epoxy linings in cans or from polycarbonate bottles. Many studies have evaluated BPA as a hormone disruptor. Pregnant women and very young children are considered by some to be especially at risk.
Phthalates
To make clingflim clingy manufacturers add various toxic chemicals known as “plasticizers” during production. Traces of these chemicals can leak out of PVC when it comes in contact with foods. Yikes. Whats more they are “reasonably anticipated” to be carcinogens and are not good for lab rats.
Antimony
#1 PETE plastic water bottles have been shown to leach antimony into water. Small dose of which make you sick large doses can kill you. Ughh.
Follow the link to find out how the plastic gets inside you – go to the plastic in me
yikes
June 3, 2008
Dioxins – 3rd strongest poison known to man according to memoirs of a vagabond
vnounku is also extremely concerned about the cancerous side effects of dioxins and offers dome useful tips on how to reduce the amount leaching into your food. His source? I quote
“Recently, Edward Fujimoto, Wellness Program Manager at Castle Hospital, was on a TV program to explain this health hazard. He talked about dioxins and how bad they are for us.”
For more go to link
Antimony
June 3, 2008
#1 PETE plastic water bottles have been shown to leach antimony into water. A recent study conducted by University of Heidelberg researcher Bill Shotyk, and published in the January 2006 Journal of Environmental Monitoring, found antimony levels in PETE water bottles were higher than levels found where the water was sourced. According to Shotyk, consumers should not be concerned about drinking water bottled in PETE plastic, as the levels found in water are below safe drinking standards. Nonetheless, it’s important to remember that leaving water in any plastic bottle for a prolonged period of time allows for chemical leaching to occur.
Taken from the thegreenguide click here to visit
Dioxins & why you dont want to be burning plastic
June 2, 2008
Can you burn plastic? Well it never burns easily – it melts and bubbles. It will burn eventually but you have to keep heating it – click here if you want to know why.
But if you do try to set fire to plastic it gives off a terrible smell at least in my experiance — as a child playing round the back of the derelict garages I hasten to add.
But is it bad for you?
The smell according to the naked scientist could be anything
It could be just a simple hydrocarbon, or it could contain cyanides, or PCB’s, or lots of other substances. Without knowing what the plastic was (including what additives might have been incorporated), it would be difficult to know what are the likely volatiles it would create…. volatiles given off from plastics in house fires are a major cause of death.
The everyman opinion varies dramatically see the guardian debate
So the answer is a tricky one – aren’t they all. It really depends what plastic you are talking about
Apparently, its ok to burn polythene. In fact it is so cloesly related to oil and if reprocessed as briquettes can make a very efficient fuel and there are plans afoot to use it as such in India. For more details go to ifenergy.
Personally I wont be trying this at home because other kinds of plastic are not so easily burnt. Halogenated plastics, those that are made from chlorine or fluorine are problomatic.
According to Wikipedia
Halogenated plastics include:
Chlorine based plastics:
Chlorinated polyethylene (CPE)
Chlorinated polyvinyl chloride (CPVC)
Chlorosulfonated polyethylene (CSPE)
Polychloroprene (CR or chloroprene rubber, marketed under the brand name of Neoprene)
PVC
Fluorine based plastics:
Fluorinated ethylene propylene (FEP)
Dioxins are unintentionally, but unavoidably produced during the manufacture of materials containing chlorine, including PVC and other chlorinated plastic feedstocks.
Burning these plastics can release dioxins.
Dioxin is a known human carcinogen and the most potent synthetic carcinogen ever tested in laboratory animals. A characterization by the National Institute of Standards and Technology of cancer causing potential evaluated dioxin as over 10,000 times more potent than the next highest chemical (diethanol amine), half a million times more than arsenic and a million or more times greater than all others.
IN CONCLUSION I WONT BE BURNING PLASTIC ON MY BONFIRE
But is it safe to burn in waste disposal units? Incinerators I mean?
Well the debate rages – the following posts illustrate the differences in opinion.
http://wasteplastictechnology.blogspot.com/2005/09/myth-on-burning-plastics.html
Dioxins a little bit more
June 2, 2008
The green guide have this to say about dioxins
Dioxins, which are highly toxic even at low doses, are produced when plastics are manufactured and incinerated. While dioxin levels in the U.S. environment have been declining for the last 30 years, they break down so slowly that some of the dioxins from past releases will still be in the environment many years hence.
In its 2000 final draft reassessment of the health effects of dioxins, the EPA concluded that dioxins have the potential to produce an array of adverse health effects in humans. The agency’s report estimated that the average American’s risk of contracting cancer from dioxin exposure may be as high as one in 1,000–1,000 times higher than the government’s current “acceptable” standard of one in a million.
Dioxins are also endocrine disruptors, substances that can interfere with the body’s natural hormone signals. Dioxin exposure, moreover, can damage the immune system and may affect reproduction and childhood development.
The most common health effect in people exposed to large amounts of dioxin is chloracne, a severe skin disease with acne-like lesions that occur mainly on the face and upper body. Other effects of exposure to large amounts of dioxin include skin rashes, skin discoloration, excessive body hair, and possibly mild liver damage.
Plastic In Us Studies
May 31, 2008
In 1998, Dr. Patricia Hunt of Case Western University in Ohio discovered that damaged or worn or warm plastics made from polycarbonate resin can leach biphenyl.
As I am sure you know – biphenyl is a chemical suspected of causing damage to the reproductive organs. Other studies have confirmed those findings and just recently Canada has banned the use biphenyl in babies bottles
The plastic in you
May 31, 2008
When you eat or drink things stored in plastic, wear plastic, sit on plastic, taste it, smell it, and so on, plastic is incorporated into you.
There is a bi-directional communication between plastic and things that contact it, meaning that plastic gets into the food, and food gets into the plastic, as well as you.
So, when you eat the things that plastic contacts, quite literally, it becomes you. In other words, you are what you eat. . . drink. . . and breathe. . . plastic!
What’s so bad about having plastic in you and on you?
Two things make it hazardous.
First, plastic is made by combining many toxic synthetic man-made chemicals by a process called polymerization. The plastics industry tells us that this process binds the toxic chemicals together so tightly that they are no longer toxic to us. But they don’t tell us that the polymerization process is never 100% perfect. It always leaves some of those toxic chemicals available to migrate out of the plastic product and into whatever contacts it—your food, you, air, water, and so on.
Secondly, many of these chemicals not only cause cancer, but also disrupt the normal functioning of the endocrine system of most animals, including humans. They have been given the name endocrine disruptors. These toxic man-made chemicals have been shown to be accumulating in the bodies of both humans and the animals we eat.
Hormones act in single digit part/per/trillion (PPT) concentrations, and have an effect on virtually every bodily function. The effects of disrupting the normal activities of hormones can be devastating and permanent. The industry answer to the warnings of environmentalists is that the toxic chemicals that make up plastics do not come out.
Once understand that you are aware of the fact that those toxicants always migrate from all plastics, then they change their tune and say that it happens at extremely low levels that cause no harm, and that the migration happens well below the regulatory limits. On that point they are mostly right, but they wrote the regulations and eased them into law through political contributions.
There is more detail on this below, but understand that there are no regulations that protect anyone or thing from the PPT concentrations that do get into our food, water, air, and bodies. One thing to remember when reading this is that a great deal of the harm caused by plastics cannot be repaired. The damage is permanent.
http://www.mindfully.org/Plastic/6th-Basic-Food-Group.
