Renouncing Plastic

There’s that line in The Graduate where the older man gives Benjamin one word of advice: Plastics.

But that was the 1960’s, and here we are forty years later, and it turns out that we’re ingesting the stuff, and that’s most likely not a good thing.

From today’s NYTimes:

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/22/health/22well.html?em&ex=1209096000&en=8a1d4bc01b9099f4&ei=5087%0A

And I quote:

“The 2003-4 National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found detectable levels of BPA in 93 percent of urine samples collected from more than 2,500 adults and children over 6.”

93 percent.  The focus is mostly on water bottles, but it turns out that the stuff is used to line aluminum cans, in which you find the soup, vegetables and other edibles you’ve been consuming since childhood.

And even if you don’t eat that stuff, 93 percent of other people (according to this random sample) are peeing it back into the water supply.

There are some things you can do though, according to the article.  Eat frozen or fresh produce and use glass or aluminum bottles.  I just bought everyone plastic water bottles like two weeks ago, thinking I would help the environment, etc…oh well.  I threw away the labels, so I am not sure whether they are BPA-free.  Guess I’ll go back to the store and check.

Another interesting point in the article is that there are hundreds of kinds of plastic containers that people routinely wash in their dishwashers.  No testing has been done on what effect this has on the plastic.  Hmmm…