Five Before Chaos

Yeah, I know it’s not sexy but y’all probably know by now how I’m convinced that our higher cancer rates are in part tied into the fact that we’re just continuously exposed to so much friggin’ plastic, in particular, bisphenol A, which is in just about everything. Now, of course, the chemical industry will deny and fight this right to the end, a British study does not bode well for the chemical(or for us, for that matter, as 95% of the population has this in their bodies now):

But British researchers, who published their findings on Tuesday in the Journal of the American Medical Association, analyzed urine and blood samples from 1,455 U.S. adults aged 18 to 74 who were representative of the general population.

Using government health data, they found that the 25 percent of people with the highest levels of bisphenol A in their bodies were more than twice as likely to have heart disease and, or diabetes compared to the 25 percent of with the lowest levels.

“Most of these findings are in keeping with what has been found in animal models,” Iain Lang, a researcher at the University of Exeter in Britain who worked on the study, told a news conference.

“This is the first ever study (of this kind) that has been in the general population,” Lang said.

As always, i’ll keep you posted on any new developments. I’m hoping that there’s going to be an outright ban of BPA (as there is in the EU now). It’s gonna be an uphill battle, due to the sheer amount of pols in the pocket of the chemical industry, as well as the prevalence of it everywhere (not that those are valid excuses, of course).

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I’ve always believed that part of our ridiculously high cancer rates in modern society are in part due to not only all the shit in our food that we shouldn’t be eating, but due to the fact that we’re drowning in plastic: our clothes, the things we sit on, what we eat and drink from, we can’t really get away from it. The EU has banned certain kinds of plastics, including those that contain pthalates, a known endocrine disruptor (it acts like a hormone). Pthalates are in a lot of children’s toys here in the US. Due to the ownership of a large part of the gov’t by the chemical industry here, unlike overseas, it’s hard to get harmful substances out of our products, or to even get them listed, because what you don’t know won’t hurt you, right?

In a rare case of actually doing the right thing for once, congress has finally passed a pthalate ban:

Congressional negotiators agreed Monday to a ban on a family of toxins found in children’s products, handing a major victory to parents and health experts who have been clamoring for the government to remove harmful chemicals from toys.

The ban, which would take effect in six months, would have significant implications for U.S. consumers, whose homes are filled with hundreds of plastic products designed for children that may be causing dangerous health effects.

The rare action by Congress reflects a growing body of scientific research showing that children ingest the toxins by acts as simple as chewing on a rubber duck. Used for decades in plastic production, the chemicals are now thought to act as hormones and cause reproductive problems, especially in boys.

You’d think the wingers would be all for this, considering how so many of ‘em are so scared of their boys growing up to be sissies with ‘teh gay”. Predicatably, the chemical industry does the same ‘ol same ‘ol: piss, moan, and try to cast doubt on the science, which appears to be pretty solid. What’s really whacked, is their threat: if we ban pthalates, kids will be at an even higher risk, because we might have to use even more toxic stuff!  Nobody ever seems to think that maybe we shouldn’t make so many plastic shit pieces to begin with. But more importantly, Sen. Diane Feinstein brings light to the real problem in this country (and it goes way further than just plastics - it’s food, drugs, everything):

Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), who sponsored the measure, said yesterday that the action is a first step toward moving the United States closer to the European model, where industry must prove the safety of a chemical before it is allowed on the market.

“Chemical additives should not be placed in products that can impact health adversely until they are tested and found to be benign,” she said.

Basically, the burden of proof needs to be shifted to the manufacturer - they need to prove something is safe, not the other way around, where the gov’t has to prove it isn’t. Let’s hope that this is actually a change in thinking that we’re seeing the beginnings of here. I’m highly skeptical, but this is undoubtedly a good sign. Bush, of course, is threatening toveto, because he apparently thinks the kids of the country should be as brain-damaged as he is.

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I’ve always been somewhat disturbed at the inability to get away from plastics (yes, it’s somewhat possible but extraordinarily difficult). Our clothing has polyester. The coatings on our walls. The insides of our cars, our upholstery, our food containers, health and beauty containers, you name it… much of the world is saturated with plastic. There’s even a Texas-sized patch of plastic floating in the Pacific Ocean now. And non-plastic alternatives are often much more expensive.

I think there’s this great unsaid assumption by many Americans that if the use of something is widespread and generally available, it must be safe. I mean, corporations would never knowingly produce something harmful, right? And so we go on with plastic everything and most of us don’t give it a moment’s thought, right?

So plastic brings us a multitude of problems; its safety/toxicity, the problem of its disposal, and the fact that it uses a lot of petroleum. I’ve done a lot in the past few years to minimize my plastic consumption/exposure, but it hasn’t been easy. Europe seems to take the lead on a lot of these types of things, such as the EU Packaging Directive, which sets strict guidelines regarding packaging and recycling, much more stringent than the U.S. And the EU has banned the use of pthalates, a common component in plastics that can leach out, and have been known to cause birth defects. They are considered endocrine disruptors, which can mess with the body’s hormone production. Many believe that endocrine disruptors are why children are staring puberty much earlier than they did decades ago.

Well, it seems that there’ll be yet another thing for the free-market fundamentalists to whine and crap their pants over. The Washington Independent is reporting that the US Senate is considering a ban on pthalates (which are used in many, many children’s toys as well as drinking bottles):

On Thursday, with at least eight states contemplating a phthalate ban similar to one California passed last year, the U.S. Senate, while overhauling the Consumer Products Safety Commission, included an amendment to ban phthalates from all children’s toys and products. Hundreds of thousands of tons of phthalates are produced each year and put in plastics used for everything from shower curtains to baby bottle nipples, to make them soft and pliable.

If the amendment, added by Sen. Diane Feinstein (D-Calif.), survives conference committee and is signed by President George W. Bush, Americans will have the same protection that citizens of the European Union have had since 1999, when the EU parliament responded to studies that suggested phthalates might cause harm to baby boys. Since Europe banned the substances from toys, they’ve been joined by countries like China, Romania and Mexico—not usually regarded as ground breakers in public health. How is it that the United States, which used to set the gold standard for public health regulation, has fallen so far behind?

How? Well, when you have former industry hacks running the departments regulating the industries, these things tend to happen quite often. Of course, the industry is just outraged, and does their typical foot-stomping mixed with accusations of junk science and the like (wow- they even quote a scientist from the Hoover Institute- how mind-numbingly predictable). No surprises, there. But there’s a golden egg n all of this, in how it could actually gain support from the crybaby right wing:

Research done in the 1990s showed that female rats fed phthalates gave birth to male pups with defective genitals. It was such a reproducible effect in the laboratory that scientists started calling it “phthalate syndrome.” Babies and toddlers suck on plastic toys all the time, so there was concern that ingesting too many phthalates could affect testosterone or other male hormones.

Now, you know the one thing that wingers fear as much, if not more than the terrorist brown menace, is ‘the gay’. With a bit of message tweaking (such as leaving out big, scientific sounding words), we just might be able to convince them that the plastics industry is working in part with the ‘radical homosexual agenda’, and that they need to stop ‘em dead in their tracks. Might work considering how much other bullshit they believe on a consistent basis. More on Feinstein’s amendment here.

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