Friday, May 22, 2009

Occupying my brain....

I knew that plastic was bad for the environment and potentially bad for our health, but my recent endeavors in researching science journals and magazines are completely freaking me out over the issue. Here are some of the important things I've learned:

a) There are constant discrepancies between the FDA and different boards of scientists over the toxicity of plastic. Everyone's pretty sure Biphenol A (what Nalgenes and baby bottles were pulled off the shelves for) has "potentially" caused birth and behavior problems in rats as well as earlier puberty, elongated uterus', and breast cancer in female rats and prostate cancer in male rats.

b) The canned food we buy from the grocery store as well as juice cartons all contain plastic lining on the inside.

c) Plastic is difficult to recycle due to the fact that there are so many different types of plastic as well as any single object (such as a cell phone or children's toy) being made of many types of plastic. On top of that, recycling plastic causes it to become brittle, thus allowing it to only be used for certain things.

d) "It takes 7 liters of water to manufacture a 1 liter bottle creating 100g of CO2" -New Internationalist

e) "The world uses an estimated one million plastic bags every minute..." -New Internationalist

I have to admit...I'm having a little bit of a freak out about this. Inspired by this woman, I am consciously trying to weed out plastic from my life, but the crazy thing is that unless you want to go all Laura Ingalls Wilder, you can't.
Every bloody thing is made out of plastic! You have to cook everything from scratch and hopefully have an amazing bulk food place by your house (which we don't).
Anyway...some of my posts to come will touch on this subject. I want to share alternatives to plastics that I find, talk about more research on plastic, as well as freak out that I can't by toilet paper that's not wrapped in cellophane.


the end
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2 comments:

Bekah Constance said...

There's this thing called the Pacific Vortex, where all the currents run together and swirl around in the ocean. An island of plastic trash the size of Texas has made its home there. It would take 60 years for a clean up crew of 300 boats working 24 hours a day to clean it up.

May 25, 2009 at 12:07 PM
Root and Leaf said...

I know, i'm writing a paper on it right now. It's also known as the Great Pacific Garbage Patch and it's growing! As of last year it is the size of the United States. And it's all consumer waste!

May 25, 2009 at 2:23 PM

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