Question from Linda
good morning debra,
i have had your site on my bookmarks for quite some time now but this is my first interaction. i have been incorporating green approaches into my life for the past 25 years or so also.
i was interested in the plastic items offered and wondered if you were aware of the research initially done at tufts university that discovered that plastic emits an estrogen like chemical when handled. the thicker the plastic the greater the estrogen that is emitted. for example a plastic vegetable bag would emit less estrogen than a plastic container lid being snapped on or a baby’s bottle hitting the floor. the harder the plastic the greater the amount of estrogen emitted. i do believe all plastic emits this estrogen like chemical.
i first became aware of this issue while listening to an interview on npr with the oncology physician who discovered this fact. she thought her experiment was contaminated because the cells in the test tubes were growing rapidly as if exposed to estrogen. she began eliminating aspects of the experiment until she was left holding the plastic test tube and that is when she tumbled. she has written a book about it. the important issue is that estrogen causes tumors to grow. a pre-menopausal woman who develops breast cancer has a lower likely hood of survival than a post-menopausal woman. it is not just breast cancer that this substance effects.
it was quite a few years before i even began to see this information in the mainstream press and then it was a rare occurrence. it has remained quite out of the public domain which surprises me. think of the chaos this would cause given that so much of our lives are linked to plastic. our watering systems are now almost entirely dependent on p.v.c. china could implode.
i personally never drink water from plastic bottles. every time that plastic crackles you are infusing the water with another dink of estrogen. i also use only glass for food storage and have made a wonderful collection of vintage glass storage containers that actually stack quite well. i try to be pragmatic. i do not empty all of the yogurt containers into glass but i do tend to transfer food items, such as cottage cheese, into glass once i have opened them. i do still use baggies but often will use aluminum foil in its place.
Debra’s Answer
But I don’t think all plastic contains these endocrine disruptors. I found an article about the original Tufts study at http://www.alternet.org/story/7786 . It says that the problematic substance was “p-nonylphenol, an antioxidant sometimes added to plastics to make them less breakable.” Sometimes added to plastic. Not always.
This story about the estrogen is from the book Our Stolen Future which I have in Debra’s Bookstore. I also have the author’s website Our Stolen Future on the Toxics page of Debra’s List. I think a good rule of thumb is to choose something other than plastic whenever possible. In addition to containing toxic substances, it also does not biodegrade and will sit in landfills for centuries, if not for eternity.
