My Big Fat Rant
Unless You Want a Sex Change...
After seeing the movie Flow: For the Love of Water I started double checking online to make sure my water filter is sufficient in doing it's job. It was in that pursuit of clean water I stumbled across one of those issues that makes you stop and go, "Why the #@*%! is this going on." I'm talking about BPA in plastics. BPA or Bisphenol A is a xenoestrogen found in several types of plastics. Including many sports drinking bottles, plastic baby bottles and other food containers.
Why is this a big deal? Here's a little quote: Plastic polycarbonate bottles such as Nalgene are still popular as drinking water bottles. However polycarbonate releases a chemical known as bisphenol A also know as BPA. Whereas plastic industry safety studies find no significant health effects from typical daily doses of bisphenol A, a full 90% of government studies found harmful health effects [1] especially to children and expecting moms, [2] but also for male sexuality and reproduction as well. [3]The problem is that bisphenol A acts as a "xenoestrogen," which just means it's like the female hormone estrogen, except for two things: 1) it's foreign to the body, which is what "xeno" means, and 2) it is way more harmful than our natural estrogen for everyone, male and female. Breast cancers are much more of a risk in women who carry a high burden of xenoestrogens, and both sexes are subject to a huge range of other harmful health effects. The most far-reaching effects are birth defects and miscarriages. Another effect is a disruption of beta cell function in the pancreas, which creates a pre-diabetes type condition of high blood insulin and insulin resistance.
And Also: researchers worry that BPA is behind hormone-linked trends in human health such as increased abnormal penis development in males, earlier sexual development in females, increases in neurodevelopmental diseases such as ADHD and autism, increased child obesity, decreased sperm count, and more breast and prostate cancers.
Tests by the CDC has found BPA in 95% of adults it tested. BPA has a short half life in the body (about 6 hours) so according to these results US adults (children too) are constantly ingesting BPA leached from plastics into our food and drink. My rant: WHY IS THIS CRAP IN PLASTICS, ESPECIALLY PRODUCTS WE EAT AND DRINK OUT OF! BABY BOTTLES?!
Why is BPA a xenoestrogen, because that is what it was originally developed for. The plastics industry says not to worry about it, BPA is safe. Bullshit! I say err on the side of caution avoid plastics all together if you can. At a miniumum only use plastics with the number 1, 2, 4 or 5 on the bottom (the number is in the little triangle). If it doesn't have a number chuck it. I threw away 70% of my water bottles after finding this out, along with a plastic coffee travel mug and some food containers. In the long run I plan on just switching to all glass for my tupperware, etc and metal for my drinking bottles. One other disturbing fact, especially with travel mugs and baby bottles, when heated liquid is put into plastics containing BPA it is released at 55 times the rate as cold or room temperature liquids. In short even if a small amount of BPA is safe to ingest, why do it. If I can avoid putting any amount something harmful into my body, well, than I'm going to avoid it.