Common plastics chemical linked to human diseases

[denverbill]

Source: Reuters

LONDON (Reuters) - A study has for the first time linked a common chemical used in everyday products such as plastic drink containers and baby bottles to health problems, specifically heart disease and diabetes.

<snip>

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.

<snip>


Read more: http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20080916/ts_nm/chemical_heart_dc_3

[DangerDave921]

1. I am convinced

this is going to be the next big breakthrough in human illness. Not just this chemical, but the explosion of chemicals in our food/water/goods over the past 50 years. We are now finding traces of man-made poisonous chemicals in fetal cord blood! Babies aren't even born yet and they are already exposed to harmful chemicals.

[not fooled]

4. Yep.

The US people have been guinea pigs for a massive experiment unleashing toxic chemicals on us, without adequate testing, by greedy uncaring corporations. :mad:

Hope politicians have the fortitude to begin banning these poisons now that credible scientific evidence is building documenting harmful effects.

[Jackpine Radical]

7. Indeed. Millions of people have "environmental sensitivities--"

they can't tolerate all these damn chemicals. They are the canaries in the coal mine. The chemicals are not good for the rest f us either, but our immediate symptoms are either less dramatic or go unrecognized as due to the new toxins.

[Mnemosyne]

34. I am in that group, just 50 years old this year too.

More people are developing these sensitivities daily. Cancer, allergy and asthma rates have been rising and, imho, tip of the iceberg to 10 - 20 years down the road.

And those dicks have known all along what the effects would be...

[defendandprotect]

16. Unfortunately, we've had to sicken ourselves to PROVE the suicidal ...

nature/practices of capitalism --- !!

And what of our corrupt "slash & burn" medical system/government healyh agencies

that've failed to see this harm?

[midnight]

2. I know many of us have heard either through a commercial or

medical discussion that diabetes is an epidemic, and I bet we always were assuming it was triggered by the consumption of food and not chemicals via plastics. This is news for me.

[DCKit]

3. The interior of soda cans is coated with a plastic containing BPA..

as are nearly all canned goods (probably milk cartons too). Most who eat a poor diet and are already at risk for diabetes are, very likely, also exposed to higher levels.

But please don't think I'm advocating for BPA - I won't use plastic in the microwave at all and limit other uses. Saran wrap, in particular, is loaded with BPA, BPA is fat soluble and I try to limit my intake of meats wrapped that way as well. Unfortunately there is no "real" butcher shop in my neighborhood, so I'm stuck with trying to eat less meat.

[kayell]

9. Another major source of exposure - canned tomatoes, tomato sauce, paste.

"the Globe and Mail and CTV have tested a range of canned foods and found that they are leaching more than double the amount of the stuff than the baby bottle and Nalgenes that everyone has been dumping. Tomato sauce had 18.2 parts per billion, kid's ravioli 6.2 ppb and tomato juice 14.1 ppb. "These results provide further evidence that we are marinating in this chemical on a daily basis," said Rick Smith, executive director of Environmental Defence."

http://www.treehugger.com/files/2008/05/bisphenol-a-in-cans.php

[eagertolearn]

5. I really believe that the increase in Autism is related to a chemical

and metals build up in both the parents and the kids. When you think about everything we are exposed to everyday and that a lot of this stuff gets "stuck" in our bodies. It just makes sense. We need to just start eliminating one thing at a time and demand products that are safe. It's just like organic food, everything I can give my family that is organic is one less dosage of chemicals. If they drink their water for sports out of a chemical free water bottle then that is again one less dosage. Otherwise it is all so overwhelming.

[SoCalDem]

8. I'm with you.. Look back to our grandparents era

I am assuming you are my age or near it.. Back then (pre-plastic) people cooked with stainless steel or cast iron..

they stored food in glass containers/waxed paper...
baby bottles were glass..nipples rubber.. pacifiers were rubber as well
diapers were cotton cloth
clothes were wool, linen, cotton
floors were wood, tile or linoleum (a precursor to plastics)
carpets & rugs were wool or cotton
dishes were crockery, metal, china, or glass
they cleaned with vinegar, baking soda, borax, soap
most houses had plaster walls, and were wallpapered
drapes were usually heavy cotton or brocade or lace
toys were cloth,metal or wooden
Foods were "real"..

Now try and remember how many people you knew who were deathly allergic to peanuts, or any foods..

How many had asthma?
autism?
diabetes?
cancer?
alzheimers?
impaired immune systems?

I am convinced that we are "chemically" killing ourselves..

[TomInTib]

12. I am with you all the way.

Growing up in rural Texas, I knew one person with asthma (my preemie cousin), one person who died of lung cancer, (my chain-smoking Grandmother), and one person with diabetes (my 100-year-old Great-Grandfather).

But I knew a lot of crazy people.

[RaleighNCDUer]

13. Of course, they had their problems too.

There was lead in the crockery and in the interior wall paint. Asbestos in the walls and ceilings. Metal toys had lead welds.

But that was nothing compared to today.

[SoCalDem]

17. very few people I knew painted their walls

everyone wallpapered.... even the damned ceilings.. every try to wallpaper a ceiling?? It ain't easy :)

we didn't paint our house..it was brick :)

[sudopod]

23. Wouldn't it be ceiling paper then?

At least it might provide additional protection from prying Ceiling Cats. ^_^

[Thor_MN]

28. Trim and Mouldings? Cribs? Toys?

Brick and Wallpaper as well?

[SoCalDem]

41. nit

picked...:rofl:

of course there were some things that were painted, but our crib, even though it was painted, was also varnished, and truthfully, our babies were not in their cribs all that much:)

[Mnemosyne]

35. I'm trying to un-paper a ceiling and the house is over a hundred years old.

The last owner loved to paper over and over and over and over... :hi:

I love brick. :)

[SoCalDem]

40. We once peeled off 14 layers of wallpaper from a domed ceiling

talk about a hassle... and underneath it all, the plaster was so stained, we had to have it re-done:)

[Mnemosyne]

45. The latest any of this paper came from maybe the 1950's, maybe.

I'm to the point of dry-walling now. Over wood.

My old house had the plaster with hair in it and those slats, can't remember the name. I dry-walled those too!

:hi:

[SoCalDem]

46. lath... (the wood strips)

horsehair lath plaster

?v=0

[Mnemosyne]

47. That sure was it, thanks, always losing words.

Senility at 50. :cry::rofl:

[Thor_MN]

27. Pigments were heavy metals, things were insulated with asbestos

You could check your shoe size with an X-ray machine, no one bothered with those pesky seat belts, smoking anywhere was considered normal, OTC cough syrup had codeine.

How many died before they developed any of those diseases? My Grandmother's brother died at age eight of Scarlet Fever. Didn't get much of a chance to get cancer, alzheimer's, diabetes, etc. A simple shot of penicillin could have made my family tree much bigger.

Looking at the past through rose colored glasses serves little purpose.

I don't mean to say that there is no danger from BPA, but I do note that the study shows no causal relationship, it just draws a corelation. For all we know, people who tend to have heart disease and diabetes are less able to remove BPA from their system or have an affinity for it. It definately needs more study and BPA probably should be removed from food containers, but claiming that just returning to yesteryear would solve the ills of the world is a little over the top.

[SoCalDem]

29. Not "advocating" a trip back in time..

just reminding people that before plastics, we used natural substances..(not all are benign)..

the mish-mash of chemicals we are all exposed to daily, pretty much makes it impossible to ever "know" what one chemical or combination of chemicals made you sick..

Fact is..we all die..from something..at sometime :)

[Hekate]

37. Complete agreement with you. nt

[AlphaCentauri]

10. I think Asthma is another desease caoused by what we eat

In India, the No. 1 cancer among men is cancer of the mouth related to tobacco use, and the No. 1 cancer among women is cancer of the cervix, which could be caused by human papillomavirus (HPV), poor perinatal care and lack of screening and early detection. In the immigrant population, by contrast, the top cancer is prostate cancer for men and breast cancer for women.

A team of researchers at West Virginia University has shown that U.S. immigrants from India and Pakistan take on the habits of their adopted country, increasing their risks of prostate cancer among male immigrants and breast cancer among females.

http://www.newswise.com/articles/view/543843/

[Lydia Leftcoast]

18. Yes, I've wondered about plastic nursing bottles

When my brothers and I were growing up, baby bottles were always glass.

[Mnemosyne]

36. And who knows what the Chinese disposable diapers are made of now.

I tried to get my sister to use cloth on my 9 month old niece. Even bought her glass bottles.

She wouldn't use them, "the diapers are too much work and the bottles are too heavy".

[SoCalDem]

42. Nothing better than a crystal clear clean glass bottle

I hated the way those plastic ones smelled..used em a few times and gave 'em away..Evenflo-glass all the way for us.. although we did have one mishap..

Our oldest's crib was directly across the room from his window, and in the middle of the night once, we thought someone had broken in...It turned out to be Scott throwing his bottle out of the crib and right through the window pane.. He had the most startled look on his face.. We covered the window with some cardboard, threw an extra blankie in the crib, and retrieved the frozen water bottle the next morning :)

We did move his crib, to the side wall, so he could not repeat the event so easily, and a few days later bought wooden shutters for the inside of the window..

I also loved cloth diapers..we did use disposables when we went somewhere, but back then they were just coming ont the market in a big way, and were quite inferior to today's diapers..

[Mnemosyne]

44. Scott had a seriously fine arm!

:rofl:

Hope he makes the Majors!

The only thing I hated with the cloth was the pins. I wonder if they have velcro now?

:hi:

[bitchkitty]

32. You are so right -

our world is so full of chemicals, it's overwhelming and near impossible to completely avoid them. You're on the right track though - doing what you can is better than doing nothing at all.

[intheflow]

6. I haven't eaten off of, drunk out of, or cooked in plastic for years.

Except bottled water when I'm on the road somewhere. People think I'm nuts! But I had a very bad experience with a microwave and reheating something in styrofoam almost 20 years ago. It was such a chemical stench, I won't eat out of styrofoam, which often limits buying, say, soup to go at a restaurant. From there I started noticing it smelled like chemicals when I drank out of plastic cups. This all happened at least a decade before I fully absorbed the fact that plastic is a petroleum product; once I realized that, I bought earthenware plates and bowls and gave all the plastic dishes away. No more plastic spoons to stir my cooking, no more Tupperware to store my food in. (Quite honestly, refrigerator's are so good these days, food stays about as fresh in covered glass bowls as it does in plastic storage bowls.) It IS frustrating that so much of our meat comes wrapped in plastic, and unrecyclable plastic at that. But when I can afford it, I go to the meat counter to buy my meat, where they wrap your food in a light sheet of plastic and paper--and then the plastic's only touching your food until you can get home. But the plastic meat packaging has lessened my meat consumption all the same.

[StarryNite]

11. Primo

You can avoid drinking water from plastic bottles...Primo! Primo uses bottles made from corn not crude oil. They call it an American Grown Bottle. It looks just like plastic and the water is very good.

[intheflow]

14. Thanks!

They're also making plastic silverware (for take out and picnics) out of a potato base; just got some from a restaurant in town. Was going to keep them for picnic use on down the road, but my roommate's dog--never one to chew plastic, always one to eat food--found them and ate them.

[TalkingDog]

15. For this reason, I stopped using plastic several years ago.

I had lead poisoning and several years later it's affect on my thyroid began manifesting itself (as will happen).

But I was having other symptoms too, so after some research, I discovered that some studies indicated that plastics were affecting the organs and functions of the endocrine system in some people.

So out went the plastics, in came the glass and enameled containers, no teflon, no styrofoam, no plastic baggies.

If I have to use any plastic for food storage, I line it with waxed paper. If I buy sodas, they are glass with screw on tops, so those reused bottles become my means to transport liquids.

[mzmolly]

19. This chemical is also used in dental sealants.

Just an FYI.

[Hekate]

38. Oh great.On the other hand, sealing my kids' teeth spared them the humongous fillings I got as a kid

Their molars had deep fissures in them -- no way to brush down in those. I suspect that my sibs and I had similar teeth, because despite our good brushing, we endured a lot of deep drilling.

Plastics--I think Jung would call this invention the magic wish-fulfilling jewel of myth that brings with it a dark Shadow.

Hekate

[enki23]

20. For a quick (and fairly basic) dose of reality:

This link, if it's legitimate (and i'm perfectly willing to accept it is, at least for the sake of argument, so please lay off the "shill" bullshit for now at least) has not in any way been shown to be causal. Given its relatively low toxicity in laboratory animals, and a general lack of good evidence for toxic effects at typical adult human exposure levels (particularly of any effects that make obvious mechanistic sense for endpoints like diabetes and heart disease), I would be completely unsurprised to find that the problem in this "link" isn't with the BPA. It's seems even more likely to me that BPA body burden might be a good marker for unhealthy eating habits. Drinking lots of canned beverages (soda, beer) and eating lots of canned foods (soups, canned ravioli, canned veggies) will raise your body burden of BPA relative to people who consume less of those sorts of foods. If your diet contains sufficient BPA packaged foods to put you in the top quartile for the body burden, you are almost certainly eating poorly in the first place. High salt, and high sugar intake are already strongly linked (and in these cases, with a very real causal understanding) with diabetes and heart disease.

There's also a potential that higher body burdens of BPA instead point to some metabolic difference, or different rate of excretion of this compound. If that were the case, whatever gives rise to those differences (or a combination of factors, of course) could itself be the real culprit. Just to point out another potential complication in interpreting this sort of statistical link.

So is BPA a cause of, or a marker for diabetes and heart disease (assuming the link is real)? Or some of both? No way to tell from this study.

I hate to agree with the American Chemistry Council (if any group deserves the "industry shill" label, it's them), but in this case they're right. Even if this link is real, it doesn't necessarily mean what, to a casual observer, it might appear to mean.

[JimDandy]

26. The marker possibility jumped out at me, also.

hopefully, future testing will definitively determine what the real relationship is: causal or marker.

[2CheeseEnchiladas]

21. What a frickin coincidence..

Me and my fiance went to Ikea this past weekend and bought a shit load of these containers in all different sizes. No plastic containers for us.
http://www.ikea.com/us/en/catalog/products/40065867

They are amazing and seal air-tight. You guys might want to start doing the same.

[StarryNite]

22. Those look great!

I got rid of all of my plastic leftover containers a few years ago. I switched to Anchor glass leftover dishes. And now here I sit, writing this and eating Yoplait yogurt out of a plastic container. Go figure. :-( There's no way to live completely plastic free in a plastic world. But we can cut back on it a lot.

[Delphinus]

48. Too bad Ikea

doesn't sell on website as they are nowhere close to me.

[killbotfactory]

24. Wow, it's almost like we shouldn't puting untested industrial petroleum byproducts into everything

Who would have ever thought such a thing might be a bad idea?

[JimDandy]

25. And if Sarah Palin is VP, she's going to push for even LESS government

research into medical drugs and chemical testing, in order to shorten the time frame for getting items on store shelves.

We need that like we need bisphenol A in our bodies!

[Shallah Kali]

30. Breast cells exposed to Bisphenol A then behaved very similar to agressive cancer cells - link

http://74.125.95.104/search?q=cache:ovEY6GRS9ukJ:www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20080418.wlcancer18/BNStory/specialScienceandHealth/home+%22bisphenol+a%22+breast&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=9&gl=us&client=firefox-a


Bisphenol A can alter genes, study finds


Bisphenol A, the widely used compound in polycarbonate plastic, has the ability to alter the activity of genes in normal breast cells in ways that resemble what is found in extremely dangerous breast cancers, according to a new study.

The study, conducted by researchers in California and published this month in the journal Cancer Research, found that many genes in non-cancerous breast cells exposed to trace amounts of bisphenol A began acting in a way that closely resembled the gene activity in highly aggressive breast tumours that led to an increased likelihood that women would die of the disease.

snip

Animal experiments have found that fetal or early life exposures to BPA cause lesions that may lead to increased susceptibility to mammary gland tumours later in life, but the scientific evidence hasn't been deemed strong enough to conclude that the chemical is also a human carcinogen. Other researchers have exposed already cancerous breast cells to BPA and found the chemical causes them to proliferate.

snip

The researchers then compared the response they found in normal tissue with publicly available gene expression profiles from about 525 breast tumours taken from cancer patients in the United States, Britain, Norway, the Netherlands and Sweden. They noted that the tissue they had exposed to BPA had a "striking association with tumour aggressiveness," according to the study.

----------

Two words: Bad plastic
Scientists now fear a chemical used in baby bottles and CDs, food cans and dental sealants, can disrupt fetal development and even lead to obesity.
http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2007/08/02/bisphenol/print.html

In January of this year, Hunt and colleagues published a study showing that exposure to small levels of bisphenol A disrupts normal egg cell growth in a developing female mouse embryo, setting the stage for potential miscarriage. Bisphenol A, explains Hunt, affects three generations: mother, developing female baby, and the daughter's potential children. Meanwhile, Taylor and his colleges have seen lifelong changes caused by prenatal exposure to bisphenol A.

In a recently published paper, they show that exposure to bisphenol A during pregnancy can cause "lasting changes in development of the uterus that could pose problems in pregnancy," including potential miscarriage. Hunt and Taylor both explain that many factors contribute to miscarriage and fertility problems. But, says Hunt of bisphenol A, "We know enough to know that we should be concerned." Exposure to bisphenol A is "an important and modifiable environmental risk that we should at least inform people about," says Taylor, who is also an attending physician in the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology at Yale-New Haven Hospital.

Scientists have also recently discovered that prenatal exposure to bisphenol A can lead to a predisposition to obesity. Bisphenol A, explains vom Saal, interacts with the nuclear hormone receptors that prompt fat cell development. Bisphenol A apparently accelerates this process, known scientifically as adipogenesis, causing exposed animals to develop more fat cells -- as well as fat cells that store more fat -- leading to a lifetime tendency to obesity. It also affects the feedback loops to which hormones respond, prompting exposed fat cells to send more signals, asking, essentially, to be fed, causing excess fat accumulation.

snip

To date, a direct link between bisphenol A and human reproductive problems and obesity has yet to be proven. It's hard to make that connection, says Taylor, because "people don't know they have had an exposure and it may not manifest itself for 20 to 30 years." But, says Hunt, "If we wait for comparable human data and it comes out like animal data, we aren't going to be breeding as a species."

-------------------

Bisphenol A May Trigger Human Breast Cancer
Study in rats provides strongest case yet against common environmental chemical
http://pubs.acs.org/cen/news/84/i50/8450bisphenol.html

Soto and her colleagues exposed pregnant rats to bisphenol A at doses ranging from 2.5 to 1,000 µg per kg of body weight per day. By the time the pups exposed at the lowest dose reached the equivalent of puberty (50 days old), about 25% of their mammary ducts had precancerous lesions, a proportion three to four times higher than among the nonexposed controls. Mammary ducts from all other exposure groups showed elevated levels of lesions. Cancerous lesions were found in the mammary glands of one-third of the rats exposed to 250 µg/kg/day.

Bisphenol A, a known estrogenic compound, is ubiquitous in the environment. Many people receive exposures of about 2.5 µg/kg/day, and mammary gland development in rats and humans is very similar. Therefore, Soto says, "bisphenol A could be one factor causing the increase in breast cancer incidence over the past 50 years."

snip

"What is important to note is that Soto's research is not a one-shot finding," says Frederick vom Saal, professor of biology at the University of Missouri. "It follows five years of research demonstrating precancerous changes in the mammary glands of mice with prenatal bisphenol A exposure. Now, Soto has switched to the rat, which is considered a much better animal model for studying human carcinogenesis."

The Environmental Protection Agency has set a safe human intake dose of 50 µg/kg/day for bisphenol A. "On the basis of the effects observed in recent studies, this seems to be an unsafe level," Soto says.
--------

Bottle Maker to Stop Using Plastic Linked to Health Concerns
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/18/business/18plastic.html

The National Toxicology Program in the United States released a draft report on Tuesday reporting that some rats that were fed or injected with low doses of the chemical developed precancerous tumors and urinary tract problems and reached puberty early. While the report said the animal tests provided “limited evidence,” it also noted that the “possibility that bisphenol-a may alter human development cannot be dismissed.”

----------

A good government would follow the precautionary principle and require substances to be proven safe before letting the loose. Just because everyone doesn't instantly drop dead does not mean it is safe especially for pregnant women and children. I don't want to play human guinea pig so some chemical corp can make a few more $ before this crap is banned.

[sudopod]

31. Correllation isn't causation

I'm a rebel, lol.

[Shallah Kali]

33. Industry scientists have used 'strain of rats he says are hundreds of times less sensitive than huma

'Inherently toxic' chemical faces its future;
Bisphenol A, common in plastic and canned goods, is dividing industry and science

Toronto Globe & Mail, Martin Mittelstaedt
Published April 6, 2007
http://www.ewg.org/node/21498

Some researchers with close-up views of bisphenol A are so shocked by its ability to skew development in their laboratory animals, even at among the lowest doses ever used in experiments, they aren't waiting for the government to ban it. In their personal lives, they can't run away from products containing it fast enough. "I would love to see it banished off the face of the Earth," Dr. Patricia Hunt, a Washington State University geneticist, said.

She began ditching her bisphenol-A-containing products after discovering that mere traces of the chemical were able to scramble the eggs of her lab mice. In humans, similar damage would lead to miscarriages and birth defects, such as Down syndrome. "I thought, 'Oh my God,' " she said. "I'm going to throw out every piece of plastic in my kitchen."

snip

However, there have been more than a dozen studies in laboratory animals since 1999 finding adverse effects from bisphenol A at levels below Canada's standard. One study, done in 2005, found the chemical able to change breast tissue in ways that predispose them to cancer at a dose 1,000 times lower than Canada's limit.

In living things, hormones latch onto receptors in cells, turning vital biological processes on or off much like a switch controls a light. When cells are exposed to low doses of hormones, whatever activity they control is stimulated, but at higher doses these receptors are overwhelmed and stop their activity. That is why a hormonally active compound may have one effect at a low dose and no effect at a higher exposure.

[Shallah Kali]

39. Under 1/2 cup of tomato sauce or cup of chicken soup is higher than amounts proven to damagelabanima

http://blog.seattlepi.nwsource.com/environment/archives/139943.asp

The highest amounts were in a food often consumed by children -- tomato sauce, which had 18.2 parts per billion. But the news organizations tested 13 other canned goods purchased at Toronto stores, including beer, ravioli, apple juice and cream-style corn, and found bisphenol A in every sample. Tomato juice had 14.1 ppb, chicken noodle soup as much as 9.9 ppb and ravioli 6.2 ppb.

It's always fun to see what happens when journalists can convince their editors to spend big bucks to do laboratory testing for environmental threats. Because of the economics of the newspaper industry, that's not happening as much anymore.

Industry officials responded that all the readings were below Health Canada's safety limits. But the story goes on to say that those readings were set in the mid-1990s, well before the dangers of bisphenol A became better known:

Less than half a cup of tomato sauce or a cup of chicken noodle soup would exceed the lowest dose found in recent research to have an adverse effect on animals. That was a 2005 experiment at Tufts University School of Medicine in Boston on mice exposed to amounts far below those detected in the Globe/CTV testing.

[TheDebbieDee]

43. Kickin' cause I hope that more people will see this!