Plastic Problems

Recently I did a two-part podcast with KMO at C-Realm on backyard poultry and toxic burden. During the interview I mentioned some of the potential health issues associated with plastic water bottles. I particularly mentioned bisphenol A (BPA), a chemical found in hard plastics, such as the polycarbonate water bottles that so many people carry today.

BPA is an endocrine disrupting chemical, implicated in a variety of things that are troubling us. The evidence is especially strong that it causes fetal toxicity, which can result in either miscarriage or still birth. It's also connected with reduced conception, usually caused by low sperm counts or abnormal sperm production in men and/or menstrual disorders in women, and several developmental disorders and birth defects. Two that I heard a lot about while attending a conference* this year are chryptorchism (undescended testicles), and hypospadia, a condition in which the opening in the penis is along the shaft, rather than at the tip. Hypospadia, the now the second most common congenital birth defect, having increased in frequency 300% in just the last 30 years.



After hearing the podcast, one of KMO's listeners sent an email asking, "So does this go for all plastic water bottles (like the kind used for mountain bikes too?) I also send my kids to school with water bottles, so I wonder what a good substitute for those would be. I guess metal since glass could get broken."

I decided to answer the listener's question here:

First, as far as BPA goes, it is in polycarbonate plastics (which has a number 7 in the recycle mark). That includes most of the plastic water bottles like bikers use. The other common plastic bottles (that soda, juice, and water usually come in) are a softer plastic than polycarbonate. Known as PETE (for polyethylene terephthalate, and recognized by number 1 in the recycle mark), these plastics don't contain BPA, but do contain phthalates, another plasticisizing chemical that is associated with many of the same problems as BPA.

What can you do? Reduce your exposures to these chemicals (and especially your children's exposures). How? Start by choosing glass and steel when those options are available. For example, for hot or cold drinks that you carry with you, try stainless steel containers that aren't resin coated on the inside. Check Kleen Kanteen.

Some years ago, I also consciously switched from using plastic for most food storage, to using lots more glass for food storage. Ball jars (the canning jars of yore) are great for storing left overs of all kinds in the fridge — you can see what's in them, and they really do seal well. The tops can be reused hundreds of times when the food is in the fridge (unlike when they are actually used for canning purposes). I use them for storing almost every kind of food imaginable, including cheese, meat, and raw veggies. If you look in my fridge, about the only plastic you normally see is bread in its plastic bag.

Coming tomorrow: Part 2 of what you can do to reduce exposures!

* The conference was co-sponsored by the Collaborative on Health and Environment and the School of Medicine at the University of California-San Francisco. The Summit on Environmental Challenges to Reproductive Health, was held in January, 2007 at UCSF.

Endocrine Disruptors Part 2--Theo Colborn, Grandmother of a Movement

In 1987, absolutely no one was talking about endocrine disrupting chemicals. You could say they were under the radar, but in that year, Theo Colborn, one of the authors of Our Stolen Future, began work for the Conservation Foundation, a Washington D.C.-based environmental think tank. As a newly minted (and grandmotherly) Ph. D., having just received her doctorate in zoology at the age of 58, Theo was tasked with reviewing all the studies she could lay her hands on related to the environmental health of the Great Lakes, and there were plenty of them.

Over the next couple of years, Theo accumulated two thousand papers and five hundred government reports, and it was clear something was very, very wrong, yet she couldn't quite put her finger on it. Forty-three boxes lined her office wall, each home to reports relating to a specific species, and each hinting at problems: there were vanishing mink, proliferating tumors in fish, large numbers of unhatched eggs in bird colonies, and bizarre mating behavior and birth defects across multiple species. She came across repeated references to the hormone estrogen, and to chemicals, like PCBs, that appeared to be mimicking estrogen in wildlife studies.

One particular piece of the puzzle involved "gay gulls," or female gulls that were nesting together. This was odd behavior for gulls, and she thought it might have some thing to do with the endocrine system, so she began studying endocrinology texts. Once Theo began thinking in terms of hormones, the pieces of her many puzzles seemed to fall into place.

In July of 1991, Colborn organized a meeting at the Wingspread Conference Center, in Racine. She invited dozens of the world’s leading scientists who were looking at hormone mimics and their impacts on reproduction and health in both wildlife and humans. By the end of the three-day meeting, the participants coined the term “endocrine disruptor,” and those attending felt like they had found their voice: they published a consensus document, known as the Wingspread Statement, which said, in part, “A large number of man-made chemicals that have been released into the environment, as well as a few natural ones, have the potential to disrupt the endocrine system of animals, including humans.”

In her 80s now, Theo is still one of the world's leading experts on endocrine disruptors. Her groundbreaking work laid the foundation for thousands of others researchers who are helping us understand how chemicals such as phthalates and bisphenol A, both used in various types of plastics, are acting as endocrine disruptors.