Love Them Artificial Hormones

[Dr_Evil_Mouse]

"Inherently Toxic" Chemical Faces Its Future

MARTIN MITTELSTAEDT

From Saturday's Globe and Mail

Bisphenol A is ingested by practically everyone in Canada who eats canned foods or drinks from a can or hard plastic water bottles.

Now a controversy is raging over the safety of widespread public exposure to the chemical, which is known to act like a synthetic female sex hormone.

At the heart of the intense debate over bisphenol A is that it challenges the main tenet of modern toxicology, the idea that the dose makes the poison, a principle credited to the 15th-century Swiss alchemist Theophrastus Paracelsus.

Under this principle, a two-pack-a-day smoker is more at risk of cancer than a one-pack-a-day user, and the belief that rising doses make a substance more dangerous is the basis of all government regulations that seek to set safe exposures for harmful chemicals.

It seems obvious that a high dose of a poison would be more dangerous than a lower one, but bisphenol A is creating a stir because it doesn't follow this seemingly common-sense rule. Researchers say this oddity results from the fact that bisphenol A isn't a conventional harmful agent, such as cigarette smoke, but behaves in the unconventional way typical of hormones, where even vanishingly small exposures can be harmful.

This is why some environmentalists and scientists contend that bisphenol A, which leaches in trace amounts from food and beverage packaging, is among the scariest manufactured substances in use, an eerie modern version of the vaunted lead water pipes by which ancient Romans were unknowingly poisoned.

Extrapolating from the results of animal experiments, they suspect bisphenol A has its fingerprints all over the unexplained human health trends emerging in recent decades hinting at something going haywire with sex hormones, including the early onset of puberty, declining sperm counts, and the huge increase in breast and prostate cancer, among other ailments.

But manufacturers — which include some of the world's biggest chemical companies — insist bisphenol A is harmless and say those claiming otherwise have it wrong.

Welcome to the heated controversy over bisphenol A.

Derived from petroleum, bisphenol A is the chief ingredient in polycarbonate, the rigid, translucent hard plastic used in water bottles and many baby bottles. It's also used to make the resins that line most tin cans, dental sealants, car parts, microwaveable plastics, sports helmets and CDs.

Environment Canada and Health Canada last year selected it as one of 200 substances that a preliminary review deemed possibly dangerous and in need of thorough safety assessments. The 200 were culled as the most worrisome chemicals from among about 23,000 substances in use in the 1980s and grandfathered from detailed safety studies when Canada adopted its first modern pollution laws.

Government scientists classified bisphenol A as "inherently toxic," and companies making it will be challenged by the assessment to prove that continued use is safe.

The assessment is expected to begin next month and provide a glimpse into one of the biggest public-health and scientific controversies in the world.

Some researchers with close-up views of bisphenol A are so shocked by its ability to skew development in their laboratory animals, even at among the lowest doses ever used in experiments, they aren't waiting for the government to ban it. In their personal lives, they can't run away from products containing it fast enough. "I would love to see it banished off the face of the Earth," Dr. Patricia Hunt, a Washington State University geneticist, said.

She began ditching her bisphenol-A-containing products after discovering that mere traces of the chemical were able to scramble the eggs of her lab mice. In humans, similar damage would lead to miscarriages and birth defects, such as Down syndrome. "I thought, 'Oh my God,'Æ’|" she said. "I'm going to throw out every piece of plastic in my kitchen."

Although it has been known, since a search for estrogenic drugs in the 1930s, to act like a sex hormone, bisphenol A has recently emerged as one extremely odd compound, perhaps the most unusual in widespread use. Research has found that it seems to turn modern toxicology on its head by being more dangerous at very low exposures than at high ones, a finding that is focusing attention on the possible health repercussions of the relatively small amounts leaching from consumer products.

Bisphenol A also has a bizarre pattern of research results, with the funding source of a study the best predictor of whether scientists find it harmful or safe. All major industry studies into bisphenol A's safety, and they number about a dozen, haven't found anything worrisome in low-dose exposures.

However, about 90 per cent of studies by independent researchers over the past decade, numbering about 150, have found adverse effects, ranging from enlarged prostates to abnormal breast tissue growth.

Bisphenol A has been used in increasing amounts since the 1950s in food and beverage containers because it doesn't impart a plastic-like taste, although traces leach out. Plastics that use it are often identified by an industry triangle symbol and the number seven.

Because it is one of the highest-volume manufactured chemicals in the world and used in so many consumer products, bisphenol A exposure in Canadians is likely to be pervasive.

Urine testing in the United States suggests that about 95 per cent of the population have been exposed, and Ottawa began a survey in March to see if a similar figure applies to Canadians, a reasonable prospect given that the same products are used in both countries. Testing elsewhere in the world has also found it present in human blood, as well as in placentas and fetal cord blood.

Manufacturers say that exposures are nothing to worry about, contending that the amounts getting into people from what they eat and drink aren't of any consequence.

"We know that human exposure to BPA is extraordinarily low, well below levels that have been shown to be safe," said Steven Hentges, spokesman for bisphenol A at the American Plastics Council, which comments on the health controversy over the chemical for four of the five North American manufacturers, GE Plastics, Sunoco Inc., Bayer AG, and Dow Chemical Co. The other producer is Hexion Specialty Chemicals.

He dismisses disease trends showing increasing numbers of hormonally linked ailments rising in tandem with bisphenol A use as "only a statistical association at best" that in no way implicates the industry's product. "You could co-relate those same disease trends with TV watching or coffee drinking or anything you want," he said.

While some companies insist that bisphenol A is harmless, others are just as adamant that it's among the biggest health hazards to which Canadians are unwittingly and routinely exposed.

For Rick Smith, executive director of Environmental Defence, a Toronto group that tracks the exposure of Canadians to pollutants, bisphenol A is the worst substance among the 200 Ottawa suspects may be dangerous. "I think bisphenol A is top of my list, even though there are others that I hate a lot," he said.

The group is so convinced the evidence already shows bisphenol A is a health hazard, it doesn't want Ottawa to wait until the assessment is finished, which could take years, to ban it, particularly in food contact uses. In March, after U.S. environmental groups found the chemical leaching from plastic baby bottles and into canned food, Environmental Defence asked the federal government to end its use, a step that if taken would make Canada the first country in the world to do so.

"If getting this chemical out of those products isn't priority No.Æ’|1, I don't know what is," says Mr. Smith, who in his personal life isn't waiting for Ottawa to act. With his five-month-old son's health in mind, he rid his home of bisphenol-A-containing baby bottles as a safety precaution.

...

Continued...

[Im going home Donny]

oh man I just read this earlier today!

After I threw out my baby bottles and pump and tupperware and a bunch of other stuff.

I knew plastic was evil..I fucking knew it.

I just tried ordering glass bottles from a company and due to the release of this information they sold out after sales jumped 1000% now its a waiting list.

So I had to find another company from Florida and managed to get 2 glass bottles.

Anyone looking for a buisness venture I'd reccomend getting into distribution/sales/manufacturing glass baby bottles. I know now some companies are offering BisphenalA free plastic baby bottles but I bet lots of folks are like me and saying fuck that give me glass.

[kung]

Look I don't want to sound any more conspiratorial than I already do but this is something I've been aware of for a while.

I am in the midst of devoting my new life to my life partner and to the nation of Hip Hop. I believe that Hip Hop is the New Rome and that if the nation of Hip Hop fails the entire civilized world will fail.

This is not some random conjecture. This comes from a detailed understanding of the history of Egypt, the Greek polis (city state), Plato's Republic and the greek Tragedians and social commentators, Roman civil life and developments throughout the Middle Ages, Renaissance (the resurgence of Neo-Platonism) and up into the modern age.

Rome collapsed after the assassination of Caesar. Rome needed a tyrant like Caesar to try to bring equanimity between the nobles and the people of Rome: the senate and the people. It is no surprise that our Canadian and American system both emulate the Roman Senate although the Congress is more significant. In the American Congress even John McCain will tell you Washington is run by Soft Money.

In Canada we are so incredibly corrupt, media conglomerates like BellGlobeMedia literally suppress information that does not suit their stockholders whims, that we have soft money flowing vigorously through our economy. Cocaine and Marijuana is the spine of our economy not the fat and it feeds into property, government kickbacks, police kickbacks, and all levels of the economy. The police catch %1-2 of the drugs and that is what organized crime tips them to.

There are far more powerful drug cartels with a much heavier presence than the representatives that for instance the Hell's Angels have at Queen's Park and Parliament.

These drug dealers can poison and pollute our nations youth, create birth defects, cause suicides, corrupt food and distribution chains, pull as much fresh water out of the province as they can bottle and poison the existing water supply with chemical and agricultural runoffs. We can do nothing to stop these Drug Dealers and Corporate Polluter because our govenment is but a figurehead.

In any case the illicit drug economy is far more substantial than the agricultural, automotive or manufacturing bases. Which is to say nothing of how employees of all those economies, particularly Queen's Park and Bay Street, pay substantial parts of their own incomes into the Drug and Sex trade. I'm glad they do this because I know many resourceful exotic dancers and hustlers who own several condos as a result and put their young boys through Montessori schools. Don't feel bad for these women. A drug dealer can only turn so many custies on and custies can only earn so much, borrow so much, steal so much. A young hustler like a dancer can get a man to give her a car or a house. Now that's a hustle!

[YearsAlongTheSea]

I knew Hip-Hop was behind this...

I'm suing 50 Cent...

[Dr_Evil_Mouse]

I knew that somehow this synthetic hormone business was tied into the sex trade.

[nibbler]

Nearly all clear plastic is unhealthy to eat/drink from/store food in. This includes Tupperware, bottled water and soft drink bottles, and other rigid, clear or colored plastic; including baby bottles, Nalgene, likely your Britta water jug etc.

All modern plastic containers are (supposed to be) stamped with a number representing its chemical composition. You can generally find a number stamped into the bottom, from # one through # seven.

Avoiding 1, 3, 6 and 7 is wise as they are proven to be bad for our health. [color:red]1 and 7 are TERRIBLE for us.

[color:green]Numbers 2, 4, and 5 are considered the safest (well, safer) types of plastic to use, they do not contain BPA; though as howler points out, GLASS is the safest, readily available option.

Keep in mind with glass; that a lot of glass bottles today are paper thin, and coated with a thin layer of plastic or wax. Avoid this type of glass for re-use, there are other options.

A Solution:

Good wineries spare no expense in sourcing the highest quality, non-toxic, glass bottles. Treat yourself to some good french wine- the wine will last five glasses, the bottle will last you years.

Edited April 10, 2007 by Guest
turn turn turn

[Im going home Donny]

[quote=

Keep in mind with glass; that a lot of glass bottles today are paper thin, and coated with a thin layer of plastic or wax. Avoid this type of glass for re-use, there are other options.

oh geesus...is there a way to reccognise this glass?

Thanks for the other info...saved me some time. This plastic crap has my brain spinning. I want as far away from it as I can get...which is probably a foot.

[paisley]

TOXIC TOYS - San Francisco prepares to ban certain chemicals in products for kids

the European Union has already done so

another thing to watch for is products that have been fire-proofed (contain PBDEs)

PBDEs: They are everywhere, they accumulate and they spread - Chemical flame retardants pose threat to humans, environment

the most commonly used form -- deca-BDE -- can cause developmental and neurological defects in lab animals.

"We know enough now to ban deca," said Deborah Rice, a toxicologist with the Maine Center for Disease Control and Prevention and author of published research on the chemical's neurological effects.

[Im going home Donny]

Thats absurd that manufactures aren't required to disclose the chemical make up of their products!

Thanks for the link Pais'.

[paisley]

a pleasure to be of service

a couple of months ago George Stroumboulopoulos off The Hour had a list of 5 toxic chemicals used in everyday products that scientists were petitioning the Canadian government to ban, or at least strictly regulate... having some trouble finding the list (2 or 3 of the 5 are already listed in this thread)

did find this on The Hour's blog though:

[paisley]

Chemical Romance: The Hour's List of the Top Five household chemicals that could kill you.

(click on the video window on the page)

[Im going home Donny]

again...thanks.

[nibbler]

Here is an excerpt from the Wikipedia page on the Glass Container Industry, under the 'Coatings' heading:

Glass containers typically receive two surface coatings, one at the hot end, just before annealing and one at the cold end just after annealing. At the hot end a very thin layer of tin oxide is applied either from a safe organtin compound or inorganic stannic chloride. Tin based systems are not the only ones used, although the most popular. Titanium tetrachloride or organo titanates can also be used. In all cases the coating renders the surface of the glass more adhesive to the cold end coating. At the cold end a layer of typically, polyethylene wax, is applied via a water based emulsion. This makes the glass slippery, protecting it from scratching and stopping containers from sticking together when they are moved on a conveyor. The resultant invisible combined coating gives a virtually unscratchable surface to the glass. It is by reducing in service surface damage that the coatings often are described as strengtheners, however a more correct definition might be strength retaining coatings

oh geesus...is there a way to reccognise this glass?

DONT PANIC

I am still researching the depths of this issue myself.

Here's some good news for now:

The cheap and easy way to avoid modern polyethylene wax coated glass is to go with older glass.

Thrift shops, antique markets, ebay etc. Its out there, and it isn't too expensive; yet...

Get plastic out of your diet: A thorough, well referenced article, interesting reading for most, a must read for parents!

Author of above article demonstrates how he eliminated plastic from his kitchen; complete with photos, instructions on making drinking glasses out of old glass bottles and more.

[Im going home Donny]

haha...okay remaining calm...hahaha...

thanks so much for all the information!

Thats super awesome.

[Im going home Donny]

Nibbler-are you Bears buddy and we've talked coffee before?

[Calamity Jane]

Nibbler...huge ginormous thanks for posting the above links. I have been avoiding this depressing-scary, yet necessary, reading all week until I have the time this weekend. However, with only a cursory glance, I already pitched my nalgene and re-filled H20 bottles, and intend to tackle the kitchen over this weekend.

I'm a little saddened though that we can no longer safely use plastic cups (and I checked...all of ours are "7") -- as I'm really such a disaster around glass.

here's a quandry....knowing how toxic this stuff is, should I just pitch it (thereby adding to landfill mass) or recycle it by throwing it in a Sally-Ann household/clothing collection bin?

Final question to you Ottawegians (oh geez...there's a meandering thought....Dave & I were just last night pondering over the correct term for 'people from Ottawa') anyone know where I can get stainless steel Indian kitchen stuff like thali plates and tiffins?

[nibbler]

Calamity Jane,

If you put your cups in the recycle bin, they will likely be reprocessed into a park bench or a road pylon or something. Drop 'em at Sally Ann and they will get recycled too.

Broken glass:

Cheaper glass tends to break easily and shatter into a bigger mess when it breaks.

Pyrex (borosilicate) glass on the other hand is tough, if and when it breaks, is generally easy to clean up.

Real Pyrex glass is also temperature and stress resistant. (which is why it is the same kind of glass used to blow most heady glass pipes)

Corning, who invented the Pyrex recepie, stopped making Pyrex glass in 1988, and began licensing the name to other makers. These other makers use a cheaper form of glass but sell product under the Pyrex name. Total scam. It is NOT temperature and stress resistant. Don't bother buying the new, save your cash, and go for older used Corning Pyrex stuff when you can find it. (or get your heady glassblowing buddy to make you some custom kitchenware using Borosilicate glass)

You can get coffe mugs, glasses, plates, mixing bowls, measuring cups, roasting pans, coffe percolators, pots, all made from Corning Pyrex, often find them at garaj sales, second hand stores, and of course, online.

[Calamity Jane]

Pyrex (borosilicate) glass on the other hand is tough, if and when it breaks, is generally easy to clean up.

Real Pyrex glass is also temperature and stress resistant. (which is why it is the same kind of glass used to blow most heady glass pipes)

over Easter, I managed to completely obliterate a pyrex lid of a cassarole dish my mother had for over 20 years!!

And not to exaggerate my calamitous nature, but when my daughter understood why we're tossing all the plastic cups, she said something to the effect of "Oh great! I wonder how many accidents you'll have!" LOL!

Still....I LOVE garage sales, and they're even better with a mission in mind![color:yellow]

You can get coffe mugs, glasses, plates, mixing bowls, measuring cups, roasting pans, coffe percolators, pots, all made from Corning Pyrex, often find them at garaj sales, second hand stores, and of course, online.

so as long as it says CORNING pyrex, it's the real deal, right?

[nibbler]

If its Corning Pyrex, then you are home free. Examples of the official mark:

[Im going home Donny]

Heres another site of use for those interested.

http://www.ecologycenter.org/

Also Klean Kanteen makes stainless steel kanteens with number 5 lids or sipping thingys or you can order stailless steel screw on lids seperately.

They also sell a 'sippy' kanten for kids but weirdly its just a small managable kanteen sold with an avent bad plastic sippy lid...tottally odd but the kanteen is small and managable for little ones. But beware I had to take my lid and put it on the kids one since the lid on the kids one has a hole for inserting the avent sippy thing. So you'd need to order another lid seperatly which I think you can do.

These folks can be found through purica.com I'm pretty sure.

yup they can... www.purica.com under 'products' then scroll to 'holistic lifestyle products' for your water containers.

Edited May 29, 2007 by Guest

[Im going home Donny]

I think this is kinda cool though I question the big picture.

I just bought bio-degradable dog poop bags. Also available are other bags.

www.biobag.ca

I do wonder if its wasting land and energy to produce. This is along the lines of what made me conclude that bio-gas is a terribly short sighted bad idea....so mabey this isn' so good either?

Thoughts? I'm looking at you nibbler?