Study Suggests BPA-Free Plastics Are Just As Harmful To Health (gizmodo.com) 84
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Gizmodo: Plastic products that boast of being "BPA-free" aren't necessarily any safer for us, suggests a new mouse study published Thursday in Current Biology. The chemicals used to replace BPA in these plastics can still leak out and affect the sperm and eggs of both male and female mice, it found. And these same effects could be happening in people. Bisphenol A, or BPA, is a chemical commonly used to create polycarbonate plastics and epoxy resins. These clear white plastics are themselves used in food and drink packaging, as well as consumer products and medical devices, while resins are used to coat metal products like canned foods. When these products degrade or are otherwise damaged (from being repeatedly heated in a microwave, for example), they can leach out BPA, exposing us to it. As a result, it's estimated that 93 percent of Americans have some level of BPA in their system.
While working on another project, the authors began seeing some but not all of their control mice, both male and female, develop reproductive problems. Though the mice had kept in cages made of polysulfone, not polycarbonate, the researchers noticed a whitish residue in some of the cages, indicating they had been damaged and were leaching chemicals. When Patricia Hunt, a researcher at the Center for Reproductive Biology at Washington State University, and her team analyzed the chemical signature of the damaged cages, they found both BPA and BPS, a bisphenol that is widely replacing BPA. The cases were polysulfone plastic, which is partly made from BPA, but it's advertised to be more heat and chemical resistant than polycarbonate and thus less likely to break down. Polysulfone isn't thought to degrade into BPS, but Hunt's team found that if certain chemical bonds in the plastic were broken in the right way, BPS could form. Following in the vein of their original experiments with BPA, Hunt's team exposed more mice to low doses of BPS, and compared their reproductive health to mice exposed to BPA and mice raised in fresh new cages, presumably free of any BPA/BPS contamination. The BPS mice had more defects in their egg and sperm cells than did the control mice, but the level of damage was similar to that seen in mice they exposed to the same dose of BPA alone. "Though manufacturers have shied away from making explicit claims about BPA replacements being safer, Hunt noted, customers have certainly assumed that they are safer," the report notes.
While working on another project, the authors began seeing some but not all of their control mice, both male and female, develop reproductive problems. Though the mice had kept in cages made of polysulfone, not polycarbonate, the researchers noticed a whitish residue in some of the cages, indicating they had been damaged and were leaching chemicals. When Patricia Hunt, a researcher at the Center for Reproductive Biology at Washington State University, and her team analyzed the chemical signature of the damaged cages, they found both BPA and BPS, a bisphenol that is widely replacing BPA. The cases were polysulfone plastic, which is partly made from BPA, but it's advertised to be more heat and chemical resistant than polycarbonate and thus less likely to break down. Polysulfone isn't thought to degrade into BPS, but Hunt's team found that if certain chemical bonds in the plastic were broken in the right way, BPS could form. Following in the vein of their original experiments with BPA, Hunt's team exposed more mice to low doses of BPS, and compared their reproductive health to mice exposed to BPA and mice raised in fresh new cages, presumably free of any BPA/BPS contamination. The BPS mice had more defects in their egg and sperm cells than did the control mice, but the level of damage was similar to that seen in mice they exposed to the same dose of BPA alone. "Though manufacturers have shied away from making explicit claims about BPA replacements being safer, Hunt noted, customers have certainly assumed that they are safer," the report notes.
Newsflash: plastic is toxic (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Newsflash: plastic is toxic (Score:5, Insightful)
Plastic is toxic. Always has been.
The problem with that statement is that what's considered a plastic is chemical diverse. We do know some plastics do not have the kind of negative heath effects that BPA has because they are far more chemically stable. If you read the actual study, [cell.com] you'll see this is only in relation to "structurally similar bisphenols", not plastics in general.
The real problem we have here is that companies have been allowed to use any old molecular structure in their products they wish without proving anything about the health impacts it may or may not impart.
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Indeed. An FDA safety study comparable to those done on pharmaceuticals should be required for food/beverage containers and their interior coatings. Banning an individual chemical years after someone gets around to doing a study on its effects is just whac-a-mole; it shouldn't be used unless it's already proven safe.
Re:Newsflash: plastic is toxic (Score:5, Insightful)
Unfortunately, that's the only logical way you can do it. You cannot prove a negative - that's a fundamental tenet of the scientific method. If you push a hundred reindeer off a cliff and they fall to their deaths, you have not proven that reindeer cannot fly. All you've done is demonstrated that those hundred reindeer either could not or chose not to fly. OTOH, if you produce a single example of a flying reindeer, then you have unequivocally proven that reindeer can fly.
So you cannot prove that a newly developed chemical is not harmful. You can only prove if it is harmful. Consequently, the scientific way to handle newly developed chemicals is to assume they are safe until proven otherwise. You can run them through a preliminary gauntlet of tests designed to detect immediate or short-term toxicity. But long-term low-level toxicity as as appears to be the case with BPA requires years if not decades of data just to tease out a statistical probability that it might be harmful. If you required that all new chemicals be tested to root out that sort of low-level toxicity, nothing new would ever be developed because it'd be too expensive and take too long to approve for public release.
People want 100% safety, but practically that's an impossible goal to achieve. The best you can do is test for immediate toxicity, and recall chemicals which exhibit toxicity in the long-term after they've been in public circulation for a while.
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But manufacturers of food containers can and should, however, be forced to prove that the food containers/liners do not leach into food under various conditions (with certain time, heat, acidity, other parameters).
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What a load of chemical industry apologist hogwash. Firstly, the new chemical in question is a slightly tweaked version of the one that's already known to be harmful, so you're essentially arguing that if companies selling harmful products modify them in a way that we have no reason to expect will fix that harm, they should be entitled to market those products as not having the problem until absolutely proven otherwise. Secondly, you certainly can prove that a newly developed chemical doesn't cause the same
Re:Newsflash: plastic is toxic (Score:4, Interesting)
Plastic is toxic. Always has been.
The problem with that statement is that what's considered a plastic is chemical diverse. We do know some plastics do not have the kind of negative heath effects that BPA has because they are far more chemically stable. If you read the actual study, [cell.com] you'll see this is only in relation to "structurally similar bisphenols", not plastics in general.
The real problem we have here is that companies have been allowed to use any old molecular structure in their products they wish without proving anything about the health impacts it may or may not impart.
Speaking of diverse, one of the early plastics was made of casein, from cow milk. https://www.scientificamerican... [scientificamerican.com] Milk and vinegar will do it.
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Are they really? What do they use as plasticizers?
Many brittle plastics are relatively safe, but that's not what is usually desired as a material.
Re:Newsflash: plastic is toxic (Score:4, Informative)
The right kind of glass is generally good, but why do you think plastics are used in some cases where the container have to be really inert (strong acids for instance)? Because some plastics aren't affected by things that make glass dissolve.
Plastic is a description of material property, plastics a description of a material class that are (generally) plastic and made of some sort of polymer often (but not always) man made. Plastics aren't inherently toxic and anyone thinking they are should be forced back to school.
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The right kind of glass is generally good, but why do you think plastics are used in some cases where the container have to be really inert (strong acids for instance)? Because some plastics aren't affected by things that make glass dissolve.
Plastic is a description of material property, plastics a description of a material class that are (generally) plastic and made of some sort of polymer often (but not always) man made. Plastics aren't inherently toxic and anyone thinking they are should be forced back to school.
The issue with plastics is that some have given others a bad name. But some in here seem to think that any and all are bad, or just love trolling.
The estrogen mimics that are used in some plastics are unquestionably bad, especially for the male of the species. But to cast something like casein plastic, made of cow milk and acetic acid as somehow bad is silly, and only shows the ignorance of the person. condemning them.
Bisphenol A is an estrogen mimic, and it appears polysophone might release BPS. That
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This article isn't about anything new, people have tested all sorts of plastics, even the "safe" ones, and almost all plastic tested is toxic. The "safe" plastics are considered mostly safe because they shouldn't have toxic chemicals in them. Most do.
Not my argument. I was responding to someone's argument that merely by being plastic, it is dangerous.
Anyone claiming that plastic is safe is an idiot.
And vaccines cause autism, amirite?
I'm not certain where you pick up your outrage, but I'd never simply say "plastics are safe". That statement makes no sense. What do you mean when you say plastic? Plastic is a term of property of a substance, and not a term of what the substance is made of.
So it is really easy to have plastic materials that consist of substances that are not good for living things. Fo
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So use ceramics instead. Oh, the glazing often contains poisons. So wood should be good, right? Many woods are contains large amounts of toxins and/or poison, this as they are produced to protect the tree. The list goes on.
Many plastics are actually a much lower "danger" than the alternatives so you are wrong, always has been.
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Often!= Always
I see you did not mention glass, stainless steel, enamelled surfaces.. all of which can have toxics, but all more tractable to analyse, and probably safer than plaztics
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With that attitude, everything is toxic. We all might as well just lay down and die.
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With that attitude, everything is toxic.
I think that is only in California.
let's go back to glass (Score:1)
I've started going back to using glass containers for food and Stainless steel drink bottles. I wish we could go back to glass milk bottles where I live. With glass you can reuse and recycle. Businesses don't like it because glass weighs more and breakages etc but too bad - you have to put your own health ahead of dollars some time. Glass needs lots of energy to produce I hear you say - well just incinerate the plastic rubbish to power it.
Re:let's go back to glass (Score:5, Funny)
Yes... started using a Growler for drinking water and got a few side glance looks at work.
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Glass is too heavy and require too much energy to move around. We're trying to reduce our energy consumption and you want to go back to heavier cargo that will destroy our roads even more?
Aluminium should be used instead of both glass and stainless steel since aluminium is practically recyclable infinitely and is almost as lightweight as plastic at the mechanically equivalent thickness.
We're already packing sodas in aluminium cans, why aren't we doing the same for water? What's wrong with water in aluminium
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Uh, I don't know if you were aware, but that aluminum is always lined. And unless specifically stated, it's usually lined with plastic containing BPA. Which brings us back to our original problem.
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Na, you are confusing it with old tin cans that were lined. Aluminum cans aren't and that's one of the reasons that they are easily recyclable.
Not sure how much testing has been done with regards to the toxicity of aluminum although...
Mother Jones Was All Over This Years Ago (Score:5, Interesting)
Mother Jones had a series of articles covering the fact that BPA substitutes were untested and likely to have essentially the same endocrine disrupting effects as BPA because they are chemically very similar to BPA.
Here's one article from 2014. [motherjones.com]
After reading their coverage I switched to glass containers for all leftover food and I never microwave anything in a plastic dish. If I buy something that comes in plastic and is intended to be cookied in the packagin, I dump it into a glass dish and microwave it that way instead.
Here's some crazy stuff you probably didn't know - those thermal receipts that you get at the grocery store and fast food places are chock full of BPA, its a necessary component to the thermal printing process. And just handling a receipt gets BPA into your bloodstream - not very much, one or two receipts isn't going to make a noticeable difference. But, there are two chemicals that massively acclerate the absorption through your skin - grease (like from fast food) [time.com] and hand sanitizer. [newsweek.com] Get either of those on your skin before you touch the receipt and you get ~100x the dose. And if you are cashier who touches a couple of hundred receipts every day, well that's not healthy.
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What's worse is that someone handling money a lot, and who worries about the filth on that money, is going to go through lots of hand sanitizer.
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> While BPA can have effects similar to the hormone estrogen, it is between 10,000 to 100,000 times weaker.
There is a lot of debate whether microdosing of endocrine disruptors can have significant effects. The author of that piece seems to have made a career as a BPA apologist [google.com] because whenever a study comes out showing harmful effects, he's there downplaying it. Musgrave is clearly in the camp that believes microdoses do not cause significant effects. Others disagree. [scientificamerican.com]
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"Apologist" is a loaded term.
If there really is a debate, and he's right, then you could say he's a "realist" and those on the other side were "scaremongers".
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About 20-25 years ago there was movement to go "chlorine free" because of all the environmental impacts of chlorine compounds. Greenpeace, I think, was onboard.
At the time I worked for an environmental education organization, and we weren't onboard with the chlorine ban. The reason was that if you simply replaced chlorine compounds with other chemicals which performed the same functions, it is likely you'd get similar effects from discharging those chemicals, or perhaps other effects nobody knew about yet
I suggest that stupid headlines (Score:1, Funny)
about suggestive studies are harmful to my brain cells.
How about the older plasticiser? (Score:4)
So the plasticiser isn't leaking out like today's. But it was banned because the substance is cancerous. Why should we care though if it doesn't leak out? And beside the probably less health effects we would get long lasting products. Maybe that's the actual reason why it is banned?
Anyone knows the name of the substance? Chinese plastics were also on the news years ago fora cancerous plasticiser, this could be the same.
So, about those recycled plastic roads..... (Score:2)
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Your fish will lick roads. Your crops will lick roads. Hence you will too. Life doesn't fit into neat silos.