Plastics Chemical Harms Brain Function in Monkeys

I don't understand how 3 copies ended up page but well there it is.

The EPA considered safe dose completely abolished the formation of some nerve connections in two key regions of the brain - the hippocampus and prefrontal cortex.

Why is the EPA the only one with authority here?

If it is in food the FDA should havbe the final say I think.

Of course we will have to wait for someone compentent to actually be in charge at either department of the EPA or the FDA. These political appointees are worthless.

Probably because the EPA sets and enforces much stricter standards than the FDA. Because of the FDA and USDAs roles in working with food production industries to protect and advance the industries, it is likely that these agencies would strongly oppose any changes in EPA standards for such plastics used in containers on behalf of the industries utilizing such containers. Plus it is the EPAs role to set standards for the chemical products used for such things as containers, FDA is one of the agencies in part responsible for the safety of the food itself. This does not mean any standard for the container in manufacuring, but rather standards for what can be found in the food. Thus they can set standards for the quality of the container based on what they can show leaches into food during periods of containment (probably industry standard accepted periods of food containment). So the EPA can limit what materials are allowed in the containers based on the use of the container, and the FDA and USDA can limit container use based on what they project would contaminate food. Consider, pretreatment of the containers though, the EPA can stop all containers that are a risk from being used unless the user can demonstrate adequate treatment, FDA/USDA would only limit usage after a treatment was used for the containers if the FDA/USDA can demonstrate the treated container would impact food. Additionally, the FDA and USDA use lower standards for accepted health risk to the public than the EPA, as they mostly deal with food safety/quality from the perspective of biological contaminations during processing and such in order to protect the industries more so than the public.

when you get (3) organization such as FDA, EPA, USDA along with 3A. these organizations to make rule changes require years to accomplish after study.

EPA I do not think the criteria is as stringent. But as far as these organization such as USDA, its a matter of interpretation of the inspector. Because the requirements within a single organization can be rather contradictory

Of course you are correct and endocrine disruption was evidenced only seventy or so years ago

So did all that alcohol I drank back in college, but that's a different story...

Or is it? If the government is supposed to protect us from everything surely that includes protecting us from ourselves?

It would seem that the there is some risk, but informed risk is better than overprotection from assumed risk. Might be good to ban BPA from baby bottles and things associated with children as Canada is (has?) doing (done). But I'm not going to give up my Nalgene bottle out of my backpack.

The whole question is going to revolve around what alternate material sets are available. If there are alternates that are proven safe to the same levels being set for BPA then it is reasonable. If not then what?

You know you could be right.

I could create a processed food using Liquid Nicotine and DOPE the food just like they do cigarittes.

I could make a fourtune I bet and sell it to kids.

This may have already been said: Slightly heat baby's milk in a glass container in the microwave, then pour into cool plastic bottle (if you choose to use a plastic bottle), that hopefully contains a minimal amount of nasty additives like BPA.

We used "Avent" brand (U.K. company) baby bottles a few years back for our daughter, and fear of nasty chemicals that would harm her brain was definitely a concern for us, as BPA was being hotly debated in the news. I had worked in the plastics industry in the 90's, and so I was very aware of the risks.

I personally contacted Avent via their web site, but got very unclear advice on how to handle this. We eventually kept the plastic bottles but were careful in heating their contents and kept them out of the microwave.

It's easy to judge parents as being bad for not taking the extra step of using glass (like my own parents did in the 60's when they had no choice), but sometimes plastics have their role in a busy family, and safety is a factor, so I would tend to cut parents some slack on this one.

- Larry

It's easy to judge parents as being bad for not taking the extra step of using glass (like my own parents did in the 60's when they had no choice), but sometimes plastics have their role in a busy family, and safety is a factor, so I would tend to cut parents some slack on this one.

Larry, While I agree with your case in point I disagree your labeling parents good or bad depending how busy they be. Plastics in general should not be in the micro nor should siliconized products.

Your previous plastics knowledge is screaming in your conscious mind STOP!

We all have our personal decisions to make but let us make decisions from plausible information.

Hi bwire - I take responsibility for the choices I made for her, and in future, if there are any problems, I will be there to help her. My wife and I make sure she sees the doctor on a regular basis, and no problems so far (she's had multiple blood tests as part of a regular screening process kids are suggested to have). I was (and am) always careful about which plastics went into the microwave, especially for her. Putting things into perspective, the amount of toxins she's gotten from plastic exposure from her milk bottle pales in comparison to those she injested from the simple act of breathing during her 1st year of life in heavily polluted, industrial China. She had breathing problems when we got her, that she's nicely recovered from, while living in clean-air Saratoga, and so I feel pretty good about that. And considering the milk scandal going on now in China (it's Melamine raising its ugly head again, this time in baby's milk), I also feel good about all the extra expense my wife and I paid for giving her brain-friendly Enfamil w/ Lipil (expensive stuff!) for healthy brain development. Thanks for letting me rant a little. - Larry

Siliconized products? like what? I am unfamiliar with the toxicity of silicon and silicates. Or, are you talking about degrading siloxanes? of course those degrade into silicates, so...

Below is an e-mail that I received from a friend few months back:

Don't use plastic bottles, and avoid canned food.

All the latest plastics hullabaloo is over bisphenol A, a component of many plastic products. Serious Gristoholic Readers have known for years now that BPA, in its role as an endocrine disruptor, probably poses threats to public health. The properties of BPA lend a hardness and durability to plastic products, and it is (or was) in many now infamous consumer items, including baby bottles and clear Nalgene bottles. (Nalgene has now forsworn BPA, as have Camelbak, Toys R Us, Playtex, and others.) It also lines food cans, such as might hold soup or beans. It leaches from all of these places into our food and then into our bodies; tests have found it lurking in our bodily fluids. In laboratory animals, low-dose exposure to BPA has been linked to cancer, diabetes, fertility problems, and behavior disorders.

Over the past decade, scientists have brought increasing pressure on the U.S. government to revisit its BPA-exposure standards, because said scientists keep finding probable harm at lower doses than the EPA safety level. The topic has been a continuing drama, especially over the past year. Some highlights: the U.S. government hired a firm to assess BPA toxicity, the firm ignored all the anti-BPA scientists and was later found to have links to the plastic industry, the FDA was
forced to show its hand and found wanting in scientific rigor (shock!), and the National Toxicology Program came out with a tentatively anti-BPA draft. Then Health Canada opened a comment period on banning BPA, and major retailers and producers starting abandoning the BPA -- all within the last few months. The Environmental Working Group has a detailed timeline of BPA studies and political developments, which you may enjoy reading.

Listen to Grist's Sarah Kraybill Burkhalter discuss BPA. Let me summarize a few of those resources and tips here, once again, so that we can all sleep easier at night. (Unless you have young babies -- even switching to glass bottles may not convince your child to sleep through the night.) Avoid using plastic bottles, plastic food containers, and canned food.
Find your own way to mitigate the loss of convenience this causes you. Glass, stainless steel, frozen foods, and fresh foods are all useful resources for a plastics- and BPA-free diet.

BPA is not in every plastic, but each plastic has its own problems -- at least avoid vinyl, and any "Lexan" or No. 7 plastic that does not explicitly lack BPA. You would find such explicit lack of BPA via news from the manufacturer or, increasingly, on the packaging. If you must use plastic, choose No. 1 PETE, No. 2 HDPE, No. 4 LDPE, or No. 5 PP, and eschew the rest. Tips on avoiding the nastiest plastics are found in handy guides such as those put out by Environment California, the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy, and the Environmental Working Group.

Scientists are still debating the toxicity of BPA. I advocate making a change in your plastics use now, if you haven't already -- not because the science is definitive, but because it looks like it will become so, because it's not often that a potential toxin turns out to be safe, and because there are additional reasons to reduce plastic consumption and eat fresh foods over canned foods.

Consumer demand bottled up Moira Welsh 2008/04/19 Consumers are already shunning plastic drinking bottles containing bisphenol A, sending companies that make alternatives into overdrive to meet the surging demand.

Major stores pull plastic bottles off shelves Brenda Bouw 2008/04/15 Three of Canada's major retailers said today they are pulling plastic water and baby bottles that contain the controversial chemical bisphenol A, in anticipation of Health Canada labelling it a dangerous substance.

Another source for toxic exposure is PVC pipe that is used in our new homes. There is a push to eliminate PVC because of it's toxicity from the type of plastic.

What got my interest was years ago they did a show that showed how they made plastic. Docotrs had discovered changes in cancer cells between those placed in plastic and those in glass. That where they discovered the estrogen leaching.

But after contracting the industry none would help woth the shows claiming trade secrets.

So they went to work in lab to make plastice themselves and found they needed many toxic chemicals and cancer causing chemicals to make that exact type of plastic.

That show has never been on T.V. again! Not even in reruns.

A few weeks laster the Plastic Industry started running to advertizments about how we depended on plastics in our lives and how good it was.

I don't know that "toxicity" is the right word to use. As I noted in a similar previous thread, bisphenol-A is an estrogen mimic. It has been recently detected in water supplies all over the globe, so poses a threat to wildlife as well as people. How much threat I cannot say, but if it functions like estrogen, it can't be helpful.

It seems to me that the increased use of microwave ovens with plastic might well compound this BPA problem.

Has anyone ever done any research on microwave ovens apart from the manufacturers !

This is another introduction that came on the market without any though of any health implications.

The pace of introduction of new products means that there is a great hurry to get them on the market. Yet everyone, with the probable exception the Amish, uses microwave ovens.

BPA and microwave ovens looks like an example of sorry dont know the word, cross fertilisation, which multiplies the first problem.

As someone said, use glass. But the enormous amounts of cheap plastic storage materials are used often in ignorance in fast food stores, and especially in developing countries, where price is often the ONLY criterion.

Actually it's been around since before WWII, and way back then it was known to be a synthetic estrogen, not used as a plasticizer. So the potential problem should have been easily recognizable. Why it was not was just sloppy procedures I guess. But look at other examples - PCB's, Freons, thalidomide, heck, even mercury, asbestos, and lead in paint pigment. Used for decades, even centuries without seeing the hazards clearly. We sometimes act like we have a collective death wish!

And probably the most lethal toxic compound we still use in huge quantities in the general publics everyday life with only very limited consideration for the risk, H₂O. More people have died from exposure to lethal doses of H₂O throughout history than all those other compounds combined, and humans have known about the dangers for probably as long as we have existed, but still many people die from exposures to lethal doses.

Issues like public health and environmental protection were only a distraction until social responsibility became chic because the negative effects could no longer be ignored.

BPA was isolated in 1891, endocrine disruption recorded in the 1930's.

Realise coal tar was still the base ingredient of 90% of food coloring until about 1978

If one doesn't look for something accidents can happen that throw it in your face.

The real threat is to newborn babies being fed through bisphenol A contaminated plastic bottles.

Canada has banned their use.

Well that is one way to Externalize Cost !

Well I guess before we switch to glass we should consider what every entry level chemist already knows, Glass leaches heavy metals into acid solutions and organic chelate/ligands, and diffusion and leaching are accelerated by heat. Thus depending on the contaminant limits set, we could exceed food quality standards with glass usage also. So maybe we end up weighing a estrogen mimic compounds against chelated lead compounds. Hmm this is a quandry, can not use glass because it makes children stupid, can not use plastic because it may make children stupid. Guess we must use paper. Oh wait...

Which process pollutes the environment more - manufacturing plastic products or producing glass vessels?

Quite frankly, I'm not sure. Please advise.

Well from the landfill side, having experience with old burn dumps back through the 1920s, I can confidently state that Glass was a major component occupying landfill space before the transition to plastics. Glass that is not subsidized through programs like redemption value fees is not worth recovering as a recyclable, and many manufacturers who process CRV glass won't even take non-CRV glass to recycle because of the risk of contaminants in the glass (apparently even a little ceramics or pottery contaminates all the glass for recycling). So, even if you have a few thousand tons of glass separated through a 3/4" screen and by hand, no one wants it unless you pay for delivery and then they would take those portions they deem suitable enough for recycling for free, the rest you must then pay for landfill disposal of the glass. Glass is containers are less conpressible than plastic, so it tends to occupy greater volume in-place in landfills. Additionally, glass is not generally a friendly product to break down and utilize in construction materials like fill materials, as it is extremely sharp and presents a H&S risk to usage.

From an energy stand point glassware takes a great deal of heat to process and manufacture, and orders of magnitude more materials than plastics (glassware must be much thicker to provide the same function as a container). The thing is that people do not realize the energy expended in the manufacturing of glassware as when glass was utilized for common containers 40 years ago or more, recycling was not practiced.

We must also consider the cost of transportation of glass containers, to product manufacturers, to distributors, retailers and as waste. It weigh a great deal more for the a volume of product conveyed through glass containers.

As far as toxicity, well that depends on the plastic manufacturing process and type of plastic, as compared to the glass manufacturing process and the type of glassware.

Thank you ... I hear you, price and environmental pollution would decide which would be more cost effective ... where I live, we put all the plastic and glass containers [if not broken] for recycling ... wonder what gets thrown out and what is in line of being green.

I guess that one way to minimize an exposure to the toxins is to store food in any container as little as possibly possible ... led cut glass should be used only for decoration ... Jaan

Glass and plastic only actually get recycled because the manufacturers are subsidized by government with a tax of product purchases. In the US this is in the for of state redemption value taxes on the product purchases from retailers. Since i have worked with glass that is pre-1970s, I have discovered that there is no value in recycling glass where the recycler can not recover the subsidy redemption value, they just don't want it. I am sure to some degree plastic is similar, though sorting and re-processing might be easier with plastic. (Glass breaks and is separated in part by flotation process, which means ceramics and pottery having similar densities and characteristics move through with the glass.) It actually doesn't matter if the recycling is done in the household or at a sorting facility at the landfill. If the material recycled has no market it will then have to be stored somewhere (landfilled).

Something else to consider is that unless you use organic grown food, current pesticides need sufficient time to hydrolyze (this is a chemical decay process). So if you use food that is to fresh with minimal handling and processing, you increase your risk of exposure to chemicals and biologicals from the fields. however, organically grown foods can in many areas have substanially higher levels of toxic agents such as heavy metals derived from the organic fertilizers chelating metal oxides and sulfide natural to the soils. Much of California soil is naturally high in arsenic, and a large swath of cental california is naturally high in mercury. (Phyto-remediation is actually the process of bioaccumulating such contaminants to remove them from soil.) The process of bioaccumulation of such compunds can occur in the palnts you eat, and the organic wastes used as fertilizer make really good chelating agents to mobilize the metals for plant uptake.

Since it is not the plastic that is the issue but the BPA used in the plastic, the best bet is just to modify the process/manufacture of the plastic, utilize better quality control, and enforce stricter regulations/standards. Maybe the plastic won't provide as attractive of a container for marketing, marketing is all a BS con game anyways. Better ugly and living with full faculties than pretty and dead or dumb (or this should be the case, not so sure after watching that TV series about Hugh Hefners three girlfriends).

Does this imply we should packge in stell or aluminum or tinplated cans?

not a win-win situation - dam if you do, dam if you don't ... since we use both lets hope that our body can cope ... I did not know about the organic produce, all I have read was that the nutritional content was significantly higher ... nobody ever told me about the toxic levels of heavy metals ... how sad that so little is truly safe to use or eat nowadays

I'd definately rethink keeping alcohol in crystal bottles.

Actually, Distilled alcohols are probably much safer than Wine. However, it still depends on the glassware itself. Plus there is th question of chronic exposures and dose. It is unlikely you consume as much of one specific alcoholic beverage, as you consume of say water or even specifically packaged foods. FYI, Tomato juice or Orange juice would be far worse than wine.

Thanks for the heads up. This is valuable info.

I was referring to highly leaded glass crystal being used as decanters.

How about on the landfill side the there is a large quanity of this material in a small area so any run off in to streams would have high levels of the BPA.

Modern landfills are dry cells, so seepage is captured onsite (there are far worse things that will generate in a landfill that you do not want released to groundwater). Also, there is a cover over the top of the filled material, so surface run-off has no direct contact.

Point taken.

My reservations are to err on the side of caution given my own lack of knowledge this regard. Perhaps that is a measure of stupidity but it nevertheless accounts for that which I must be made aware of. If I have to take things on faith then I would prefer the counsel of science as opposed to self serving industrial interests. This doesn't necessarily mean that science itself is without fault but rather the onus is on those scientists with an ethical viewpoint to make good. It's not just a job....it's a responsibility. Unfortunately the profession also has its share of bad actors.

Awareness comes with a price albeit one paid for by the "terrorized stupid".

A different study, but interesting stuff all the same:

http://junkscience.com/ByTheJunkman/20080918.html - sorry, link no longer available.

I think protecting children from the hazards of the world may not be such a good idea. Sometimes the people that are protected the most at an early age, are the ones with no tolerance to anything, and become sickly when they grow up.

What doesn't kill you makes you stronger.

I've known people who worked in bacteria free sterile environments who were forever coming down with some bug or another.

This being a biological resistance to disease as opposed to a chemical one the latest wisdom is to expose youngsters to as much as is safe. It starts with breast feeding.

I don't know if there is yet a study documenting human chemical resistance eg lead/arsenic poisoning or mercury contamination. These are toxins.

I don't think we can count on building up a resistance to arsenic or mercury, doesn't seem likely to happen since we haven't done so yet, and we've had all these many generations to select for that.

I kind of figured that.

An example is Bangladesh which has high concentrations of arsenic in the soils which is leached into the water table. Generations of people have lived in this area. They are quite ill from ingesting the water and vegetables from this land. The UN has drilled for clean water allowing the levels of arsenic to have gone down but it still remains in the food chain.