“Pandora’s Water Bottle” in Audubon

Audubon Magazine has an excellent article “Pandora’s Water Bottle” about the danger’s of plastics. I have read a lot about this subject, but my mouth dropped when I read this excerpt. Even though I know that BPA was first used as a synthetic estrogen, this was still shocking to me.

“The researchers had conducted hundreds of experiments, adding blood serum with and without estrogen to breast cell cultures; the estrogen-free cultures did not multiply, but the cultures to which estrogen was added did.

In 1987 the experiment went haywire. Cells in all the samples began multiplying like crazy. Something was contaminating the cultures. After methodically tearing apart every element of their procedures, the researchers finally discovered the culprit: the lab flasks themselves. Corning, the manufacturer of the plastic tubes in which the lab kept serum, had reformulated its plastic. Though the new flasks looked no different, they were leaching an invisible estrogen-like substance into the serum.”

Read the entire article for more information and at the end of the article are suggestions about what you can do to minimize your risk. Ultimately, we need free information about what is in these plastics and products. The formulations cannot be so secretive. Consumers–and our planet–need to be protected. Not the companies who produce products and plastics. The stakes are too high.

Isn’t it shocking that this lab experiment happened in 1987? A 2002 pubmed article in Reproductive Toxicology about the Comparative estrogenic effects of p-nonylphenol says that “Nonylphenol (NP ) is widely used as a component of detergents, paints, pesticides and many other formulated products.”

What To Do: Ditch those plastic kiddie cups NOW. Go to lifewithoutplastic.com and buy some stainless steel cups. Plastic is everywhere. Sadly, even my grass fed meat from Amish farm country is wrapped in plastic. Minimize plastic usage where you can.