Chemicals Used In Packaging May Play Role In 100,000 US Deaths a Year (theguardian.com) 113
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: The group of chemicals called phthalates, also known as plasticizers, may contribute to the early deaths of 91,000 to 107,000 older adults in the US each year, according to a new study. Adults between 55 and 64 with the highest concentrations of phthalates in their urine were more likely to die of any cause, especially heart disease, than adults with lesser exposure, according to the study published on Tuesday in the peer-reviewed journal Environmental Pollution. The study also estimated that this loss of life could cost the US between $40 billion and $47 billion each year. In the US, three types of phthalates have been restricted or banned in toys, but are less restricted in cosmetics and food packaging materials. Researchers said the study "focuses substantial urgency" in putting further limits on phthalates in food packaging materials and other consumer goods. Phthalates, a group of chemicals most commonly used to make plastic harder to break, can interfere with the function of hormones, and researchers plan to examine what role the chemical plays in hormone regulation and inflammation in the body. "Our research suggests that the toll of this chemical on society is much greater than we first thought," said the study's lead author, Dr Leonardo Trasande. "The evidence is undeniably clear that limiting exposure to toxic phthalates can help safeguard Americans' physical and financial wellbeing." He cautioned that the biological connection between phthalates and early deaths has not been established, so the study does not prove phthalates were the direct cause of these early deaths.
So people eating processed foods (Score:2)
are kicking off earlier.
Must be chemicals. OK
Re: (Score:2)
To be fair, no matter the cause, it is likely some chemical. Hell that horribly deadly chemical dihydrogen-monoxide claims numerous lives every year!.
Re: (Score:2)
To be fair, some people are so stupid that they even try swimming in that stuff.
Re: (Score:2)
woosh
http://www.dhmo.org/ [dhmo.org]
Re: (Score:2)
How did you take this:
Adults between 55 and 64 with the highest concentrations of phthalates in their urine were more likely to die of any cause, especially heart disease, than adults with lesser exposure
And come to the conclusion that processed foods were involved?
Whether food is processed or not has nothing to do with the correlation between higher phthalate levels in urine and a higher incidence of death.
Older adults you say? (Score:2)
Re: Older adults you say? (Score:2)
Is it okay for people to die of old age and the infirmity that comes with it? Or is it written in the Constitution, the Bible, or any or the Gitas that any old man on his death bed *must* be hooked up to all kinds of gizmos and gadgets until he's no more than a head in a jar?
Re: (Score:2)
Re: Older adults you say? (Score:1)
Reasoning about what's between those extremes requires quantitative thinking and the ability to be at peace with ambiguity and tragedy. And the humility to accept the possibility that 700k dead *is* a middle ground between perpetual lockdown on one end and something much much worse on the other.
But that requires a calmness and maturity that no one alive today will ever be able to muster in their lifetimes when talking about covid.
And the zomg plastix! clickbait in this post makes me less than optimistic tha
Re: (Score:2)
Re: Older adults you say? (Score:2)
When the public education system has been selling self-esteem instead of critical thinking for going on 3 generations...yeah, you get to choose which flavor of Brawndo! your plants crave.
Re: Older adults you say? (Score:2)
If you read all the way to the bottom of TFS you would have been rewarded with the following passage:
He cautioned that the biological connection between phthalates and early deaths has not been established, so the study does not prove phthalates were the direct cause of these early deaths.
Re: Older adults you say? (Score:2)
They (the 100K) aren't dying from the chemical in packaging, they are dying with elevated levels of the chemical when they die for any reason. Removing the chemical from packaging won't prevent their death from coranary, respiratory, or other cause.
This is nothing more than an observation - have 100K people been found to have died with lethal levels of the packing chemical in their bloodstream? No.
Re: (Score:2)
Considering the number of people who claim their religion [wikipedia.org] for keeping someone on life support for years after it's obvious the person is never going to exist on their own, it must be written in the Bible somewhere.
Re: (Score:1)
It depends on how much money is available.
Re:Older adults you say? (Score:5, Insightful)
Write back when it kills men in their 20s.
Endocrine disrupters like phtalates and phytoestrogens are wreaking havoc on us. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.go... [nih.gov]
And you don't need to be old to be affected. In utero they also do their dirty work.
side note - phytoestrogens in themselves are not a big issue. They become a problem when dealing with over-consumption and coupled with the endocrine disrupters.
And while males are the obvious big losers, women are affected as well.
One of the drugs they give males who are transitioning to female is estrogen.
Ever wonder why so many men are experiencing gynecomastia? https://www.mayoclinic.org/dis... [mayoclinic.org] It's caused by an imbalance between estrogen and testosterone in males, causing to to grow female type breasts.
Ever wonder about the falling sperm counts? https://www.theguardian.com/co... [theguardian.com]
Here ya go https://www.epa.gov/sites/defa... [epa.gov] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.go... [nih.gov]
Although at first, it would seem that endocrine disrupters and other estrogen mimics wouldn't be as much of a problem for women, they are, both in general, and in reproduction. https://www.womenshealthnetwor... [womenshealthnetwork.com] Point is, we're being really dosed hard with phytoestrogens - quite purposely via soy and pea products - and inadvertantly all of the endocrine disrupter estrogen mimics.
This ain't good, folks.
Re: (Score:2)
In Food Rules, Michael Pollan talks about the penchant of nutrition science to focus on what they can measure and ignore what they can't. Rather than analyzing 'food' they focus on a single component like carbohydrates and make some conclusion.
With additives we have exactly the opposite problem. The focus is on solving some problem, and the safety test is more a test of acute toxicity than long-term harm. In fact, this situation epitomizes the perversity of incentives: the magic bullet problem solver is
Re: (Score:2)
The idea we are all going to be exposed to, quite a lot for the foreseeable future, is negative synergy. Not one endocrine disruptor, but dozens. Not one barely harmful preservative, but hundreds. Asking the question "Do food chemicals kill people" is one almost beyond the concept of nutrition science, because their entire field is set up to ignore synergistic effects.
There is an NPR program called "Living on Earth" https://loe.org/ [loe.org]
Interesting when I looked up the website to give the links on their front page is an article on pthalates. But there is a lot of stuff in their archives. And they don't talk just to media, they speak to the scientists. In their archives they have some pretty scary stuff on how scientists have found some genetic damage that causes obesity that carries down generations. Others on a relationship of autism to organophosphates and especially ch
Re: (Score:2)
Write back when it kills men in their 20s.
If anyone ever wonders how a country with the world's best medical system (as voted by Americans) can rank 46th in life expectancy, I present to you this idiot.
Re: (Score:2)
No, they are correct. Since it's not killing younger people, it's not that big a deal. It's similar to abortion. If men could get pregnant, you can bet there would be all kinds of programs out there to support them, allow them abortions without restriction (their body, their choice after all. Just like wearing a mask or getting a vaccine), and
Re: (Score:2)
No, they are correct. Since it's not killing younger people, it's not that big a deal.
And you missed my point. Ignoring something because it's not killing young people is precisely how you end up with a society riddled with late life medical issues.
Re: (Score:2)
No, I understood your point. I was only remarking there are those out there who are doing the same thing with covid as you're saying. Since it's only the old and infirm dying, it's not a big deal.
It's like when people say they don't know anyone who had covid so it musn't be all that bad despite 740,000 people dying in this country from it. Since it doesn't affect them, they don't care.
Re: Older adults you say? (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
This is the most ridiculous counterfactual I've ever seen. Without sexual dimorphism we would not even have a gender axis, and the rules would be the same for everyone (whatever those rules might be) as they are already for other non-existent distinctions, such as ESP.
How about we upgrade your counterfactual to preserve dimorphism?
If men
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
This is Slashdot. It's 2021. This board is full of antivaxxers and morons saying that vaccines are dumb while promoting hydroxychlro-horsepastelaced-vitamin D supplements as a miracle cure. No one gets benefit of doubt here anymore. If he was sarcastic then he's still an idiot for not signing off with /s or at least a winking smiley.
There's just too many dumb people here now to assume sarcasm. *sigh* certainly wasn't like this 10 years ago.
The plastics industry seems to have become lazy (Score:4, Insightful)
I can't believe its beyond the wit of the polymer chemists to come up with some polymers that are safe , durable and also have physical properties that are inate rather than requiring a load of additives to make them so.
Also a load of food wrapping could be replaced (IMO obv) by cellophane which is already used for wrapping a number of foods but is also long term completely biodegradable.
Re: The plastics industry seems to have become laz (Score:4, Informative)
As a former polymer chemist that worked on using phthalates for food packaging, they are fantastic. Nothing else has come close to the characteristics and cost ratio (or at least hadn't ten years ago).
Plus, as the article mentions, we still don't have a mechanism for biological interference, only correlation. As someone said above, people are dying earlier because they eat lots of TV dinners and potato chips. That's a hard thing to suss out.
Re: The plastics industry seems to have become laz (Score:4, Interesting)
Re: (Score:3)
Do we really need New Car Smell in our food packaging?
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
"why people think polymer chemists can just come up with new designs that solve all problems"
Given they have done just that for car interiors I don't think you have much of an argument.
Re: The plastics industry seems to have become la (Score:1)
Re: The plastics industry seems to have become laz (Score:5, Insightful)
A more accurate depiction of the situation would be like this:
Many studies have been conducted with animal organism models, with proper exposure controls, which indicate unambiguously that exposure to pthalates that are used in plastics cause significant and profound endocrine disruption.
It is however, unclear if the older people in this study suffered from effects of endocrine disruption caused by the pthalate exposure; if the the effects of old age caused them to be less capable of filtering out the pthalates causing them to build up to biologically toxic levels; or even if any such endocrine disruption contributed to their earlier deaths. (It could be some other correlated cause of poor health, such as food poverty instead.)
That lack of certainty about the cause for older people having higher incidences of death, combined with statistically significant elevated pthalate in urine, does not in any way detract from the clear evidence of pthalate being an endocrine disruptor with strong environmental and human health implications.
It is still good medicine, and well supported by current literature, to recommend the cessation of use of pthalate as a plasticiser.
The lack of a quality replacement is not withstanding.
Re: (Score:3)
Neither is this to say, ban everything just in case. But carefully studying the group of people with chronic exposure to some
Re: (Score:2)
potato chips are cholesterol free. and because they are a complex carbohydrate taken with fat, they don't spike a person's blood sugar when eaten in moderation.
Of course if you pound through a whole bag in a sitting on top of eating ordinary meals and do this regularly you're going to gain weight. And the amount of fat in a whole bag of potato chips won't be nice on your digestive system. I don't get how people can eat that much greasy food and not suffer the next day. Your body can only produce so much of
Re: (Score:2)
and because they are a complex carbohydrate taken with fat, they don't spike a person's blood sugar when eaten in moderation.
Sorry. You are completely wrong. The are probably the second strongest insulin spiker after frenssh fries with ketchup.
Re: (Score:2)
Potato chips and French fries (without ketchup) are considered a medium level glycemic index food.
Examples of high glycemic index foods would be white bread, french baguette, cooked carrots, baked potato, steamed rice.
Something like jam is high except the serving size is very low compared to a bagel or slice of bread.
Something with a lot of fiber like wild rice is also low because it takes quite a bit of effort before your body can get at the starch.
Re: (Score:2)
As a former polymer chemist that worked on using phthalates for food packaging,
What I failed to get from the summary or a brief scan of the article is what type of food packaging uses pthalates. Is it all plastics, or just some particular plastics?
I buy fresh veg in sealed plastic bags. I buy some veg loose, but that usually goes into plastic bags. Some veg comes in plastic punnets, that have an overall plastic covering. There's frozen food, usually in thicker plastic bags than the fresh veg. Though not usually on my shopping list, there are soft drinks in plastic bottles.
It would be
Re: The plastics industry seems to have become laz (Score:3, Insightful)
Biodegradable and shelf-stable are often antonyms.
Re:The plastics industry seems to have become lazy (Score:4, Insightful)
Cellophane is indeed biodegradable, but its manufacture is not environmentally friendly. Its biodegradable benefit is also sometimes a negative as it is more permeable to air and water than plastic.
I like mother nature's packaging best. Making meals from scratch may be time consuming, but it is rewarding and more healthful.
Re: (Score:2)
What does mother nature package fresh beef in? A cow? There are limits to how from scratch one can go, yet the ingredients still need packaged if you're not buying and cooking a whole cow at a time.
Re: (Score:2)
I like mother nature's packaging best.
You've either never had to gut and pluck a chicken or you're a psychopath.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
I like mother nature's packaging best. Making meals from scratch may be time consuming, but it is rewarding and more healthful.
Long ago, I used to buy my veg loose, from a greengrocer, in brown paper bags. I think we can assume that paper bags are biodegradable, and don't use much in the way of dodgy chemicals. At one time, when supermarkets started packaging stuff in plastic bags, I bought paper bags to decant the produce, because it kept better. Veg and cheese and various other products tend to sweat in plastic packaging.
As far as I know, paper bags stopped being used partly because plastic bags are cheaper to make. I know paper
Re: (Score:2)
https://www.nationalgeographic.org/media/sustainable-shoppingwhich-bag-best/
Reduce - Reuse - Recycle
Re: (Score:2)
I think the problem with some environmental cost calculations is the full life cycle costing. I am pretty sure the initial manufacturing cost of plastic bags is cheaper than paper bags, but paper bags can be chucked in landfill with few problems, which you can't say for most plastics. Even if paper/card packaging is not disposed of properly, it does not permanently blight the environment. In fact, waste card is quite a useful fibre ingredient in garden compost.
Re: (Score:2)
The way you modify the physical properties of polymers is to add things to them.
Re: (Score:2)
Using that logic there'd only be 1 type of artificial polymer in existence. I'd rethink your position.
Re: (Score:2)
Oooh, an absolutist retort! How original!
There are several different kinds of polymer. They don't cover anywhere near the variety of physical properties we desire in our plastics.
Re: (Score:2)
No one says it is beyond them, but it takes a lot of time to do this. As in decades.
First time (often a decade or more) for the problem to become large enough to be detected. Second, time figure out the cause (again, may be a decade)
Then time to invent a fix, and fourth more time to find a way to make it economical and implement it.
Note, cellophane originally was one of the BAD plastics. But when we realized the problem, Dupont (in a fit of uncharacteristic environmental conscience) redesigned the prod
Re: (Score:2)
If we have gone to the moon, we can create a perpetual motion machine. Problem solved.
Re: The plastics industry seems to have become laz (Score:2)
In case you missed it, the study doesn't prove anything meaningful:
He cautioned that the biological connection between phthalates and early deaths has not been established, so the study does not prove phthalates were the direct cause of these early deaths.
Almost (Score:2, Insightful)
It's almost as if we should be very careful about what plastics/artificial colors/artificial flavors/artificial preservatives are put into our bodies. And maybe, just maybe, we should have stricter regulations about what we allow food companies to put into food and how they're allowed to package it.
Re: (Score:3)
Conveniently forgetting that a huge proportion of our ancestors died in childhood due to disease or contaminated food or drink and even if they made it to adulthood they were lucky to make it past 60 (or 40 in the stone age). I'll put up with a few E numbers if the alternative is ending up in hospital with severe salmonella/e-coli/listeria/botulism poisoning.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Most (I think all actually) necessary nutrients are harmful when over done and I've never in my life heard anyone with an ounce of intellect not acknowledge that sodium is a necessary nutrient. Also, the science on salt and high blood pressure is hardly settled one way or the other.
Re: (Score:2)
Yes, lets have salty cakes and puddings and nothing but salted meat. I'm sure they'll be winners.
Re: (Score:1)
Yea but they also used to think "first aid" == rub dirt in the wounds.
Re: (Score:2)
Soil in wounds helps to activate blood clotting factors [med.ubc.ca] and some soil compositions can even kill E. Coli and MRSA [upi.com].
Ignorance does not mean not stumbling on right answers. Thousands of years of trial and error is bound to find things that work. But a lack of understanding means that they did not know how it worked nor which circumstances where it would be helpful vs. harmful.
It's all in the numbers. (Score:2)
The study also estimated that this loss of life could cost the US between $40 billion and $47 billion each year.
Interesting especially in light of the COVID-19 discussion had earlier. If phthalates can cause that kind of fiscal loss especially with those numbers (91,000-107,000) then what's the economic impact of COVID-19?
Re: (Score:2)
Pathological science (Score:2)
Who would have guessed TV dinners and soda are bad for your health?
Re: (Score:2)
Fair point. It may be that phthalates are harmless. It could be that the correlation between early death and phthalate levels in urine is non-specific (ie. urine phthalate levels correlate with the cause, but aren't themselves the cause).
The problem with the Guardian article is that it doesn't give nearly enough context to assess whether regulators should be in a panic regarding phthalates. The abstract for the study behind the Guardian article does recommend, to my surprise, that "regulatory action is ur
Oh great! (Score:2)
I've worked in electronics for over 40 years, and was an active hobbyist for 10 years prior to that. So I've likely been exposed to boatloads of that shit - especially when drilling and cutting and filing plastic cases for prototypes, and probably while soldering many of the components I used as well. Fuck.
Re: (Score:3)
I imagine the lead in the old style solder fumes was a few orders of magnitude more dangerous to your health than any of the plastics.
Okay. How many lives do they save? (Score:1)
How many bad cases of food-borne illness, how many cases of contaminated or spoiled medications, how many cases of reduced emissions from transportation of lower-weight products, how many cases of reduced packaging costs eliminating the need to choose between eating or doing something else?
In short... 100k deaths (among the old and infirm...maybe) is a high-end estimate for the numerator. Where's the fucking denominator?
Automobiles kill 40k a year. They're useful in other dimensions so it's sad but tolerabl
Re: (Score:2)
Interesting point. Extending further, I know the article suggests that at least a subset of population avoids as much exposure, but can those lifestyles scale up to the full sustained population? Would spoilage cause mass starvation?
The question is what sources of phthalates are causing the increased concentrations among some and not others. Is the mode of exposure off-gassing/dust inhalation for people working with a lot of materials (people installing/cutting vinyl floors, people working in packaging, et
Re: Okay. How many lives do they save? (Score:1)
Here's a simple one for you: do you buy your bottled water or sugary soda in small bottles and drink each one down and throw it away, or do you buy gallon jugs or 3L bottles and pour them into glass/ceramic/plastic/silicone cups little by little.
Here's a hint: there's more surface area in contact with the product in the little bottles than in the big bottles.
Re: (Score:2)
So the three paths are: stay the same because the alternative is even worse or the phthalates aren't the problem in and of themselves, step away from these materials as a health hazard if we don't need them, or develop improved materials to serve the same purpose with less hazard.
The study definitely links it as correlation and no more. The fourth path is no knee-jerk reactions, but consider this an area worthy of further study. And avoiding something that has a potential to be a problem without banning it would not be a bad thing to do as a precaution.
Re: (Score:2)
What if you could continue to improve things while also continuing to improve safety? You can solve for both x and y.
Re: Okay. How many lives do they save? (Score:1)
That's a platitude against a strawman dressed up with smugness, but is devoid of content and consideration of context.
Life is full of tradeoffs and compromises because resources (physical, financial, intellectual) are finite. Sometimes there are win/win scenarios, sometimes there aren't. Assuming you can legislate or talk or code your way out of any and all physics or chemistry problems betrays a lack of humility and respect for the physical world.
"We can do two things at once" is a similar sentiment I hear
Re: (Score:2)
You must love hearing yourself talk. I was really thinking about seatbelts when I said that. You know, cars kill people but you can still make it safer without ruining the idea of a car. It's not like there aren't practical solutions to most things. It's not all materials science. Even pthalates can be worked around in large part by smarter planning. It's not like you have to eliminate the stuff entirely to make a large dent in reducing risk.
Re: Okay. How many lives do they save? (Score:2)
You must love hearing yourself talk.
I type silently, and I promise that my lips don't move when I'm doing it.
Re: (Score:2)
As you point out, higher automobile deaths occurred in the past and they made automobiles safer. They did that specifically because the danger was recognized. The rule in construction used to be to expect one death per million dollars of project cost. These days, that kind of death toll (even inflation adjusted) would be considered horrific. So cars have to be safety tested and better engineered, and construction workers have to do things like wear hard hats and harnesses with safety lines when walking arou
Re: Okay. How many lives do they save? (Score:1)
Radium water as a snakeoil and food packaging for sanitation do not belong in the same category.
Improvement in food packaging safety is one thing. Zomg this common thing is gonna kill ya! Is quite another.
One is a rational and coolheaded increment in the standard of living. The other is a prelude to a jihad against common conveniences like bottled water, free grocery bags, or meat in grocery stores, of the kind one sees out of the environmentalist left.
I don't fucking trust it.
Re: (Score:2)
Radium water as a snakeoil and food packaging for sanitation do not belong in the same category.
Perhaps not. For several reasons. Of course, one of those reasons is that radium water as a health drink only affects a small percentage of the population whereas food packaging affects nearly everyone. Buying and consuming radium water is also a pretty straightforward, simple choice. For most people, avoiding modern food packaging is not so straightforward and simple. For most people, there are a vast range of food products they have to avoid completely if they want to avoid potentially problematic food pa
Re: Okay. How many lives do they save? (Score:1)
Asbestos in homes isn't dangerous to occupants in nearly the same way asbestos in factories is dangerous to workers in those factories breathing it in without proper equipment.
Lead paint on walls is dangerous to children if they lick it or eat flecks of it, as small children might. Its danger to adult occupants is lower.
Asbestos equals bad and lead paint equals bad, always and in every case, is the product of a long-term public relations campaign meant to recruit defendants and secure rulings and settlement
Re: (Score:2)
Freshly made asbestos panels are relatively safe. Freshly dried lead paint is mostly safe. At the time, nobody really thought about what would happen when it degrades and crumbles. It's more than licking the walls. As that crumbles, it gets into dust on the floor. Dust gets kicked up and breathed in. Food dropped on the floor is likely to be eaten. The problem with these materials is that the end of the lifecycle is especially dangerous.
If you leave asbestos buried in the wall, there's really not muc
when you see the weasel word "may" in the title... (Score:4, Insightful)
you should read "does not". It says that nobody knows whether whatever ridiculous conclusion they're suggesting at you is even remotely correct. They're just grabbing for eyeballs.
"He cautioned that the biological connection between phthalates and early deaths has not been established, so the study does not prove phthalates were the direct cause of these early deaths."
Re: (Score:3)
you should read "does not". It says that nobody knows whether whatever ridiculous conclusion they're suggesting at you is even remotely correct.
No, you should read "may". Because that's what it says. As endocrine disruptors, phthalates are implicated in a range of health problems. It would be more surprising if they turned out to be harmless than harmful.
Re: (Score:3)
Don't worry, everyone here is automatically smarter than every scientist.
Re: (Score:2)
I would caution you that this conclusion is not correct.
Pthalates are known to be endocrine disruptors (As in, many laboratory trials with proper controls indicate rather radical changes in hormone levels and hormone responses in a wide variety or organisms), but the exact causal pathway for the pathogenesis is unknown.
https://journals.plos.org/plos... [plos.org]
Either god is playing a funny joke with statistics, or there is more than just a passing correlation.
We just do not currently know what that connection is.
Re:when you see the weasel word "may" in the title (Score:4, Insightful)
It's not weaseling, it's properly setting expectations. This is a correlation study. They have not constructed a proper study to check for causation.
Since getting all that data could take decades, it couldn't hurt to take caution with the products without knee-jerk bans. It would be too late to help you to wait on the full series of studies to have any certainty.
Re: (Score:2)
Though, isn't this old new by now? I mean, phthalate free products have been on the market for years now.
They were very popular in things made from
Re: (Score:2)
This particular study isn't even about the danger or lack of danger of the chemicals - it's about trying to quantify how many deaths they are responsible for in real numbers.
Re: (Score:2)
Yeah, I made an assumption. Apparently there are plenty of in-vivo studies of animals showing the direct risks of pthalates. It's only "may" because scientists aren't directly exposing people to the chemical and controlling for literally everything else. So the number of deaths is only a sample that could match up with pthalates or there could be other factors they didn't control for.
Re: (Score:2)
Definitely. Every worthwhile statement is certain, absolute, and uncompromising.
Like your post.
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
To be fair, radium paint on a watch hand is extremely safe. Nobody accounted for workers literally licking it.
Well, if they would stop eating Tide pods (Score:3)
Sensational headline or actionable evidence? (Score:3)
While I don't want phthalates in my diet, It's hard to find the real numbers needed to assess risk. WebMD has better info on the topic: https://www.webmd.com/a-to-z-g... [webmd.com]
FTFA: "...He cautioned that the biological connection between phthalates and early deaths has not been established, so the study does not prove phthalates were the direct cause of these early deaths."
Or just maybe... (Score:2)
Or just maybe... those that eat lots of food with plastic around for storage or cooking with plastic (think microwaving cheap noodles, etc) just eat worse than those that don't. The problem with lots of statistics like this is that just because you see a trend in something, it doesn't mean that is the cause of something.
Re: (Score:2)
Or just maybe... those that eat lots of food with plastic around for storage or cooking with plastic (think microwaving cheap noodles, etc) just eat worse than those that don't.
I don't live on cheap microwaved food, and I like healthy cooking, mostly vegetarian. But when I buy fresh veg, and dried stuff such as pasta and beans, it almost invariably comes in plastic packaging.
Population reduction solves so many problems. (Score:1)
$$$ is the reason (Score:1)
No careful approach, innovation instead!
Wrong metric; more work needed (Score:2)
I dislike the eyeball-grabbing quality of the metric of "how many people's lives are shortened" because it ignores or hides the very relevant question "by how much". Supposing that plastics shortened 51% of people's lives on average by at least one minute. The alarmist headline would be that plastics send hundreds of millions of people to an early grave every year.
The scientific paper is much better in that it reports the hazard ratio of having high phthalates:
Multivariable models identified increased mortality in relation to high-molecular weight (HMW) phthalate metabolites, especially those of di-2-ethylhexylphthalate (DEHP). Hazard ratios (HR) for continuous HMW and DEHP metabolites were 1.14 (95% CI 1.06–1.23) and 1.10 (95% CI 1.03–1.19), respectively, with consistently higher mortality in the third tertile (1.48, 95% CI 1.19–1.86; and 1.42, 95% CI 1.13–1.78).
If hazard ratios are indeed a few 10s of % hi
Balanced by life expectancy gains ... (Score:2)
Whether this does play a role or not, is almost a moot point.
Life expectancy in wealthier nations, has almost doubled in the last century and a half.
We tend to forget this, when discussing mortality rates and their causes.
I'm not saying we should ignore it, just that we need to bear it in mind.
Correlation != Causation (Score:2)
Perhaps they were just testing this idea
Correlation isn't causation (Score:2)
Adults between 55 and 64 with the highest concentrations of phthalates in their urine were more likely to die of any cause, especially heart disease, than adults with lesser exposure, according to the study published on Tuesday in the peer-reviewed journal Environmental Pollution.