Sunday, November 8, 2009

Plastic and Food...and The New York Times

BPA is about to get a lot more attention. BPA isn't in all plastic, but it is in a lot of it, and especially in a lot that touches what we eat. The lining of most cans, for example.

Nicholas Kristof, in today's New York Times:
Your body is probably home to a chemical called bisphenol A, or BPA. It’s a synthetic estrogen that United States factories now use in everything from plastics to epoxies — to the tune of six pounds per American per year. That’s a lot of estrogen.

More than 92 percent of Americans have BPA in their urine, and scientists have linked it — though not conclusively — to everything from breast cancer to obesity, from attention deficit disorder to genital abnormalities in boys and girls alike.

Now it turns out it’s in our food.

I think you will want to read the rest of this article. Here's the link again: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/08/opinion/08kristof.html?hp

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Good day. Thanking you for your insight. What is your feelings toward cell phone use and have you been to YOU TUBE to view popcorn and cellphone?

Beth Terry, aka Fake Plastic Fish said...

Hey Juli. Thanks for the shout out in your comment on the article. Michael showed me the article last night and I've been tweeting and linking to it. It's great to hear someone spell out the issues on BPA in such a clear way.

Juli said...

Anonymous: Cell phone use is a concern of mine primarily because electronic waste is an even bigger environmentl problem than plastic-- and they contain a lot of plastic, too.

The 'popcorn' video is a hoax. You can read about it here: http://www.snopes.com/science/cookegg.asp