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.
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
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.
BPA
May 20, 2008
Bisphenol A or BPA is it is known to its chums is used in polycarbonate plastics. hard plastic which look like glass but don’t break as dramatically.
It can also be found in the white plastic liners found in many cans these days as well as microwave ovenware, eating utensils bottles (including baby bottles)
Its does not absorb flavours or change the flavour of food.
The chemical was invented in the 1930s during the search for synthetic estrogens.
In March 1998 a study in Environmental Health Perspectives (EHP) found that BPA simulates the action of estrogen when tested in human breast cancer cells.
A more recent study published in EHP shows a significant decrease of testosterone in male rats exposed to low levels of BPA. The study concludes that the new data is significant enough to evaluate the risk of human exposure to BPA.
BPA can leach into food from the epoxy linings in cans or from polycarbonate bottles. The rate increases if the containers are heated ie babies bottle being steralised.
BPA is considered by some to be a hormone disruptor, a chemical that alters the body’s normal hormonal activity. Babies and unborn children are felt to be especially vulnerable.
In the last 10-15 years that concerns have been raised over its safety, particularly during pregnancy and for young babies.
In April 2008, the United States Department of Health and Human Services expressed concerns about it.
The Canadian government have just banned listed it a toxic substance and banned it from being used in baby bottles.
For more on this go to the green guide and the N Y Times
This too is a good site very clear more on BPA
Others say it is completely safe and that the safety levels for BPA in humans are set so hight you would have to eat a mountain of contaminated food before they were even approached
