Published on Apr 7, 2014 by Missouri River Relief
This weekend, the group that I work with joined the 24th Annual Project Blue River Rescue in
Kansas City. Our site was on the Missouri River downstream of where the
Blue River joins it, a place we call the "Trash Trap" at mile 350.9. This is truly the "Plastic Soup" you can only imagine when you hear about it. The same stuff that is filling our oceans, only now its in every stream, tributary & river that feeds into the ocean.
You're not gonna believe it until you see it. Please....pick up trash
before it gets into our rivers and streams. It's so much easier there.
www.riverrelief.org
Tuesday, April 8, 2014
Search for Missing Malaysian Jet Brings Attention to Trash in the Ocean
Published Wednesday, April 02, 2014 in AllGov.com
Plastic debris from the Atlantic Ocean (photo: 5gyres.org via AP)
If there’s any good to come from the frustrating search for the missing
Malaysian Airlines flight, it’s this: Each time debris spotted in the
ocean turns out not to be from the aircraft, it demonstrates to the
millions of people following the story that’s there another important
one to know about: garbage.
Scientists have been trying for years to draw attention to the growing problem of trash, big and small, floating throughout the world’s oceans. Inadvertently, the search for Flight 370 has brought this environmental issue front and center each time objects spotted west of Australia have had nothing to do with the plane, but everything to do with how mankind has treated the ocean as a dumping ground.
The debris spotted on several occasions are part of a swirling mass, or gyre, in the southern Indian Ocean, one of five such gyres churning on the high seas.
The largest gyre, according to experts, is located between Hawaii and California. It’s about 270,000 square miles in size, making it about as big as Texas.
These gyres contain mostly tiny pieces of plastic, the result of larger items gradually broken down over time by the sun and waves. But there are also larger items—like refrigerators and lost shipping containers—which can be found bobbing along the surface, kept afloat due to the air pockets trapped inside them.
The number of steel shipping containers that fall overboard off of cargo ships each year is staggering: from 700 to 10,000. With them go their contents, be it computers, toys, clothing, appliances and more.
One container released a seemingly endless supply of Legos into the sea, another dumped 2,000 computer monitors, and yet another unloaded thousands of Nike sneakers into the ocean, according to one oceanographer.
Natural disasters also contribute to the garbage problem. The 2011 tsunami that struck Japan swept 10 million tons of debris—including homes, cars and trees—into the Pacific.
“The ocean is like a plastic soup, bulked up with the croutons of these larger items,” Los Angeles captain Charles Moore told the Associated Press. “It’s like a toilet bowl that swirls but doesn’t flush,” added Moore, whose environmental activism has brought attention to the northern Pacific gyre.
Appropriately, perhaps, he has found toilet seats in the ocean, along with light bulbs, fishing paraphernalia, and defrosted orange juice preserved inside a floating fridge.
Denise Hardesty, a research scientist for Australian science agency CSIRO, says the non-biodegradable items will remain in the ocean for centuries.
“It takes 400 or 500 years for lots of types of plastics to completely break down,” Hardesty told the AP. “It just goes into smaller and smaller bits. You even find plastics in plankton — that's how small it gets.”
These small items are dangerous to aquatic life, noted Hardesty.
Two-thirds of the sea birds she has examined had ingested plastic. One bird had swallowed a glow stick that was several inches long, and another bird was found to have consumed 175 plastic pieces.
Scientists have been trying for years to draw attention to the growing problem of trash, big and small, floating throughout the world’s oceans. Inadvertently, the search for Flight 370 has brought this environmental issue front and center each time objects spotted west of Australia have had nothing to do with the plane, but everything to do with how mankind has treated the ocean as a dumping ground.
The debris spotted on several occasions are part of a swirling mass, or gyre, in the southern Indian Ocean, one of five such gyres churning on the high seas.
The largest gyre, according to experts, is located between Hawaii and California. It’s about 270,000 square miles in size, making it about as big as Texas.
These gyres contain mostly tiny pieces of plastic, the result of larger items gradually broken down over time by the sun and waves. But there are also larger items—like refrigerators and lost shipping containers—which can be found bobbing along the surface, kept afloat due to the air pockets trapped inside them.
The number of steel shipping containers that fall overboard off of cargo ships each year is staggering: from 700 to 10,000. With them go their contents, be it computers, toys, clothing, appliances and more.
One container released a seemingly endless supply of Legos into the sea, another dumped 2,000 computer monitors, and yet another unloaded thousands of Nike sneakers into the ocean, according to one oceanographer.
Natural disasters also contribute to the garbage problem. The 2011 tsunami that struck Japan swept 10 million tons of debris—including homes, cars and trees—into the Pacific.
“The ocean is like a plastic soup, bulked up with the croutons of these larger items,” Los Angeles captain Charles Moore told the Associated Press. “It’s like a toilet bowl that swirls but doesn’t flush,” added Moore, whose environmental activism has brought attention to the northern Pacific gyre.
Appropriately, perhaps, he has found toilet seats in the ocean, along with light bulbs, fishing paraphernalia, and defrosted orange juice preserved inside a floating fridge.
Denise Hardesty, a research scientist for Australian science agency CSIRO, says the non-biodegradable items will remain in the ocean for centuries.
“It takes 400 or 500 years for lots of types of plastics to completely break down,” Hardesty told the AP. “It just goes into smaller and smaller bits. You even find plastics in plankton — that's how small it gets.”
These small items are dangerous to aquatic life, noted Hardesty.
Two-thirds of the sea birds she has examined had ingested plastic. One bird had swallowed a glow stick that was several inches long, and another bird was found to have consumed 175 plastic pieces.
-Noel Brinkerhoff
To Learn More:
Sea Garbage Frustrates Search for Flight 370 and Points to Wider Problems in World's Oceans (by Nick Perry, Associated Press)
Missing Jet Search Makes One Thing Clear: Indian Ocean Full of Trash (by Angela Mulholland, CTV News)
Plane Search Hampered by Ocean Garbage Problem (by Tom Cohen, CNN)
What is the Great Pacific Ocean Garbage Patch? (by Russell McLendon, Mother Nature Network)
Natural and Plastic Flotsam Stranding in the Indian Ocean (by David K.A. Barnes, The Effects of Human Transport on Ecosystems: Cars and Planes, Boats and Trains) (pdf)
Plastic Pollution in the Atlantic Ocean (by David Wallechinsky and Noel Brinkerhoff, AllGov)
Monday, March 24, 2014
Plane search hampered by ocean garbage problem
Published Fri March 21, 2014 By Tom Cohen, CNN
(CNN) -- Another debris field, another new and so-far futile focus in the search for Flight MH370. Two weeks after the Malaysia Airlines jet disappeared, one thing has been made clear: the ocean is full of garbage, literally.
What happens next in Indian Ocean?
With the world's eyes now
scouring Asian waters for any trace of the plane that was more than 240
feet long and weighed more than 700,000 pounds, the magnitude of the
ocean debris problem has become evident.
Photos: The search for Malaysia Airlines Flight 370
(CNN) -- Another debris field, another new and so-far futile focus in the search for Flight MH370. Two weeks after the Malaysia Airlines jet disappeared, one thing has been made clear: the ocean is full of garbage, literally.
"It isn't like looking
for a needle in a haystack," Conservation International senior scientist
M. Sanjayan said of the difficulty in finding the Boeing 777 aircraft.
"It's like looking for a needle in a needle factory. It is one piece of
debris among billions floating in the ocean."
"One piece of debris among billions"
Environmentalists like
Sanjayan have warned for years that human abuse of the planet's largest
ecosystem causes major problems for ocean life and people that depend on
it.
Map of the search area
What happens next in Indian Ocean?
Two objects floating in
the southern Indian Ocean, including one nearly 80 feet long, initially
were called the best lead to date when a satellite detected them last
week.
So far, though, search
planes have yet to find them or any other plane debris, with speculation
mounting that the larger item was a shipping container lost at sea.
No definitive records
exist, but estimates for how many containers go overboard range from
about 700 to as many as 10,000 of the roughly 100 million that the World
Shipping Council says get shipped each year.
Most ocean garbage comes from land
Lost containers are only
a minor part of the problem. While ship waste also adds to ocean
pollution, most of the garbage comes from land, Sanjayan said.
More than a third of the
world's 7 billion people live within 60 miles of an ocean coast, and
their waste inevitably reaches the water -- either deliberately or
indirectly.
Estimates from various
sources, including the Japanese government, indicate that more than 10
million tons of debris -- including houses, tires, trees and appliances
-- washed into the sea in the 2011 tsunami.
In addition, discarded
plastics -- including countless bags like the kind routinely provided by
retail stores and fast food restaurants until a movement in recent
years to decrease their use -- form huge, churning garbage fields in the
rotating currents of ocean gyres. One in the north Pacific is estimated
to be at least 270,000 square miles, or an area larger than Texas.
Photos: The search for Malaysia Airlines Flight 370
Sanjayan said the
plastic breaks down in the saltwater to form a kind of "plastic soup"
that gets ingested by marine life. Millions of sea turtles die from the
plastic each year, he said, and one in 10 small bait fish has plastic in
its stomach.
That happens in the same waters that provide roughly 15% of the animal protein consumed by people.
The world's "toilet"
"The world does use the ocean as its toilet, and then expects that toilet to feed it," Sanjayan noted.
Many island nations and
coastal cities lack infrastructure sophisticated enough to deal with all
the waste produced, he said. In addition, much of that waste -- such as
plastics -- now is so durable that it lasts for decades or longer in
any environment.
Sanjayan cited Dhaka,
Bangladesh, as an example. Considered the fastest growing city in the
world, the capital of 15 million people could expand to more than 20
million people in the next decade, according to the United Nations.
Such growth far exceeds
the capacity to deal with the garbage and sewage, Sanjayan said, adding:
"All that waste in countries like that -- low-lying, prone to flooding
-- periodically flushes into the ocean."
CNN's Jason Hanna contributed to this report.
A response from Crest (Proctor & Gamble)
Here is a response from Crest I received in response to comments I submitted to them about microbeads (polyethylene) in their toothpaste products:
Hi Melanie! Thank you for contacting Crest.
We
appreciate your interest in our products. In regards to your question,
nothing matters more to us than the well-being of our consumers around
the world who use our toothpastes. We want to assure you that our
products are safe. Our products and their ingredients undergo rigorous
safety evaluations before going to market. And once in market, we continually monitor their safety. The
colored polyethylene (PE) specks used in our oral care products are
safe, FDA approved food additives. They are used in chewing gums and are
commonly used in toothpastes. P&G and other toothpaste
manufacturers use limited amounts of small colored polyethylene specs in
some toothpaste. Polyethylene beads are commonly used as
scrub beads (e.g. in exfoliating products) but are also sometimes used
to give color, like in chewing gum and toothpaste. There is no evidence
from clinical studies or from on-going monitoring to indicate that these
particles persist underneath the gum line or cause harm. We've already
begun the process of identifying alternatives for use in our toothpaste
and the PE specks will be replaced as soon as alternatives are
qualified. In addition, we have decided not to introduce microplastic beads into any new product category.
I hope this information is helpful to you, once again thank you for taking the time to write!
Krissia
Crest Team
Thursday, March 20, 2014
Crest toothpaste imbeds plastic in our gums
Published Mar. 4th by Trish Walraven in dentalbuzz.com
This is polyethylene:
This is also polyethylene:
Well, not all of it. Most of it is toothpaste. But do you see those
blue specks? That’s plastic. This is the suggested pea-sized amount that
you should use when you brush your teeth. Yes, there is plastic in this toothpaste.Want to see how many pieces of plastic are in this exact sample?
Not that I’m counting the bits but that seriously looks like A LOT of plastic… err…high density polyethylene. That’s what plastic trash cans are made from! If you throw away the box like most people do, the ingredients aren’t actually listed on the tube (sneaky, sneaky, Procter & Gamble!) However, I was able to track down the box here at this link. We’re not talking about polyethylene glycol, which is soluble in water. This stuff won’t dissolve in water, or even acetone or alcohol for that matter. How do I know it won’t dissolve? Because I put on my little scientist hat and tested it.
Like many of you, we often let our daughter pick out her own toothpaste at the store. She liked the tween vibe of this particular product so much that she chose it twice, but eventually the squeezed-out tubes ended up in the back of her toothpaste drawer.
They didn’t dissolve in the acetone, (nail polish remover) or in the alcohol either. I even left the samples in the solutions overnight, then re-hydrated them. No change in the particles.
So it has been established here that
polyethylene will not dissolve in the mouth, or even in household
products. It is an inert substance, which means that it doesn’t change
at all. You know, that’s pretty good in some ways, because at least it’s
probably not morphing into big blobs of plastic evil cancer bait.
Here’s where the story gets scary, though.
You see, I’m not just a concerned mom. I’m also a dental hygienist. And I’m seeing these same bits of blue plastic stuck in my patients’ mouths almost every day.
Around our teeth we have these little
channels in our gums, sort of like the cuticles around our fingernails.
The gum channel is called a sulcus, and it’s where diseases like
gingivitis get their start. A healthy sulcus is no deeper than about 3
millimeters, so when you have hundreds of pieces of plastic being
scrubbed into your gums each day that are even smaller than a
millimeter, many of them are getting trapped:
The thing about a sulcus is that it’s
vulnerable. Your dental hygienist spends most of their time cleaning
every sulcus in your mouth, because if the band of tissue around your
tooth isn’t healthy, then you’re not healthy. You can start to see why having bits of plastic in your sulcus may be a real problem, sort of like when popcorn hulls find their way into these same areas. Ouch, right?
Like I said, I’ve been seeing these blue
particles flush out of patients’ gums for several months now. So has the
co-hygienist in our office. So have many dental hygienists throughout
the United States and Canada who have consulted with each other and
realized that we have a major concern on our hands.
This is what an actual polyethylene speck looks like when it’s embedded within the sulcus, under the gumline:
I am not saying that polyethylene is
causing gum problems. I’d be jumping too soon to that conclusion without
scientific proof. But what I am saying definitively is that plastic is
in your toothpaste, and that some of it is left behind even after
you’re finished brushing and rinsing with it.
Do you want plastic in your toothpaste? So far the only mention of polyethylene on the Official Crest website at this link is
that it is added to your paste for color, not as an aid in helping to
clean your teeth or to disperse important anti-plaque or anti-cavity
ingredients.
In other words, according to Crest:
Polyethylene plastic is in your toothpaste for decorative purposes only.
This is unacceptable not only to me, but to
many, many hygienists nationwide. We are informing our patients. We are
doing research separately and comparing notes. And until Procter &
Gamble gives us a better reason as to why there is plastic in your
toothpaste, we would like you to consider discontinuing the use of these products.
Here are some of the brands (click each to
see their ingredient list and labeling) that we currently are aware of
which contain polyethylene:
What you can do
At this point, it’s probably best if you leave your flaming torches back in the barn. We’re not going after witches or Frankenstein here; you’re using your power as a consumer to send a message that you do NOT want plastic in your toothpaste. Heck, you might even be worrying about what may happen if you or your children swallow some of it.
1. If you’ve already purchased one of these toothpastes you can take it back to the retailer where you bought it, make sure that the manufacturer knows why you’re returning it, and ask for a refund.
2. Lodge a Crest consumer complaint at (800) 959-6586 and report an adverse health effect, namely, that you’re concerned that plastic pieces may be getting trapped in your mouth.
3. Click here to send an email to Procter & Gamble, the makers of Crest.
4. Share this! Let your
friends and family know that you are also concerned about the plastic in
their toothpaste by clicking on your favorite social media link below
and getting the word out.
Response to criticism
Procter & Gamble’s current party line? “We will discontinue our use of PE micro plastic beads in skin exfoliating personal care products and toothpastes as soon as alternatives are qualified.”And your response then may be, “I will discontinue MY use of Crest toothpaste until there are no more decorative microplastics entering my mouth.”
References and acknowledgements
Plastic Trades Industry: http://www.plasticsindustry.org/AboutPlasticsUS National Library of Medicine: http://dailymed.nlm.nih.gov/crest
HygieneTown: http://www.hygienetown.com/blue-dots-in-patients-mouths
And a HUGE thank you goes out to my friend and colleague Erika B. Feltham, RDH for bringing this problem to our attention and for her extensive research. Erika is dedicated to providing the best possible care for her patients. She has been active in the dental profession for over 30 years, is a recipient of the 2008 American Dental Hygiene Association/Johnson and Johnson Hygiene Hero Award, the 2010 RDH Sunstar Americas (GUM Dental)Award of Distinction, lectures extensively about the harmful effects of sour candies, energy and sports drinks, and along with her San Diego component, she is responsible for presenting the resolution on sour candy labeling at the 2009 CDHA House of Delegates.
Eco Lunch Company Launches Ocean-Friendly Bento Collection
Published March 19 on MarketWired.com Earth Day Is Every Day for San Francisco Bay Area Green Business
LAFAYETTE, CA--(Marketwired - Mar 19, 2014) - As awareness of the
perils of plastics grows, an eco mom business is responding with the
release of a new plastic-free and ocean-friendly lunchware collection
designed to help families pack lunch without plastic.
"Lunchtime is a great time for families to think twice about their daily plastic habits," said Sandra Ann Harris, who founded ECOlunchbox at her kitchen table in Lafayette, Calif. five years ago to make available plastic-free lunchware that's healthy for people and the planet.
"The toxins in plastic don't belong in our food, especially when it comes to kids," Harris explained, "and we don't need any more plastic littering our oceans, beaches and lands."
The unique, aquatic-themed Blue Water Bento container is made from non-toxic stainless steel and has a food-grade silicone lid with an embossed blue wave. The silicone lid offers the "leak-free convenience of a plastic lid without the plastic," Harris explained. Silicone is a non-toxic and plastic-free material made from silica, which is also used to manufacture glass.
The Splash Box™ bento lunch box coordinates with three Blue Water Bento organic cotton lunch sacks featuring: a blue whale, a green dolphin and an orange sea horse.
"It's really shocking how much plastic washes up on our shores," said Angela Haseltine Pozzi whose non-profit organization Washed Ashore builds large art sculptures from plastic marine debris to bring attention to the issue of plastic pollution in our oceans.
"I love what ECOlunchbox has done with their new Blue Water Bento collection," Pozzi said, taking a break from installing sculptures at Sea World parks nationwide, "because it directly connects the dots between our behavior as humans and how using less plastic can help out the critters in our oceans and the environment in general."
Non-Toxic and Ocean Friendly
In recent years, the health hazards of bisphenol-A (BPA) and other plastic toxins have been well publicized. Scientists and doctors have linked toxins in the petroleum-based material to diseases, such as cancer, diabetes, and obesity.
Environmental non-profits, like 5 Gyres, as well as major media reports, have also called attention to the accumulation of plastic debris in our oceans, such as the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, where plastic trash is hurting, poisoning and killing marine life throughout the world.
"I decided to call the new line 'Blue Water Bento,' because I wanted to connect the plastic-free lunch theme with helping out marine life in our oceans," Harris explained. "When kids go to natural history museums, aquariums or other environmental centers, they often are learning these days about the big problems with plastics in the environment, like the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. That's great! It's important to open their eyes to these problems, but I think it's equally crucial families don't walk away feeling hopeless or powerless.
"What we're trying to do with our Blue Water Bento collection is inspire people to 'do their part' by living life with less plastic," the San Francisco Bay Area eco mom entrepreneur added. "Everyone eats lunch, right? Why not start making change every day at lunchtime by packing a non-toxic and waste-free lunch?"
With its colorful blue silicone lid and a humpback whale swimming across its packaging through information bubbles and ocean jokes, the look of the company's aquatic-themed Splash Box is decidedly more modern and contemporary than the classic artisanal ECOlunchbox line. It's currently available through the company's online store for pre-orders.
"Packing a waste-free and plastic-free lunch is something that even the smallest child can do to start building a lifetime of healthy green habits," said Pozzi of Washed Ashore. "Our sculptures try to excite people around the idea of helping to save our oceans, but sometimes it's hard for families to know how to get started. I'm so happy ECOlunchbox is part of educating and activating people to use less plastic!"
Lunchbox Is Tool For Change
The new bento is expected to be available starting this summer through ECOlunchbox's distribution network, which includes The Container Store, select Whole Foods markets, independent natural grocery stores and children's boutiques nationwide.
ECOlunchbox will also be seeking placement for the product in aquariums and natural history museums so families who have learned about plastics can go to the gift shop and buy a Blue Water Bento as a tool to help them green their lifestyles.
Since ECOlunchbox was founded in 2009, the company has sold tens of thousands of their ECOlunchbox Three-in-One, Solo Cube, Tri Bento and other lunchboxes as well as ECOlunchpod and ECOdipper snack containers, various lunchbags and accessories. The lunchware sold has helped families avert millions of pieces of trash from the environment.
"Over the years we have heard the need again and again from our community that they loved our 100% stainless steel lunchboxes - non-toxic, dishwasher safe, rugged, plastic free!
What else could they dream for?" Harris said. "Loud and clear we kept hearing that families wanted a non-toxic and plastic-free lunchbox that was also leak-free. Now they can have their lunch and eat it too!"
For more information about ECOlunchbox and Blue Water Bento, please see www.bluewaterbento.com or contact bluewaterbento@ecolunchboxes.com
"Lunchtime is a great time for families to think twice about their daily plastic habits," said Sandra Ann Harris, who founded ECOlunchbox at her kitchen table in Lafayette, Calif. five years ago to make available plastic-free lunchware that's healthy for people and the planet.
"The toxins in plastic don't belong in our food, especially when it comes to kids," Harris explained, "and we don't need any more plastic littering our oceans, beaches and lands."
The unique, aquatic-themed Blue Water Bento container is made from non-toxic stainless steel and has a food-grade silicone lid with an embossed blue wave. The silicone lid offers the "leak-free convenience of a plastic lid without the plastic," Harris explained. Silicone is a non-toxic and plastic-free material made from silica, which is also used to manufacture glass.
The Splash Box™ bento lunch box coordinates with three Blue Water Bento organic cotton lunch sacks featuring: a blue whale, a green dolphin and an orange sea horse.
"It's really shocking how much plastic washes up on our shores," said Angela Haseltine Pozzi whose non-profit organization Washed Ashore builds large art sculptures from plastic marine debris to bring attention to the issue of plastic pollution in our oceans.
"I love what ECOlunchbox has done with their new Blue Water Bento collection," Pozzi said, taking a break from installing sculptures at Sea World parks nationwide, "because it directly connects the dots between our behavior as humans and how using less plastic can help out the critters in our oceans and the environment in general."
Non-Toxic and Ocean Friendly
In recent years, the health hazards of bisphenol-A (BPA) and other plastic toxins have been well publicized. Scientists and doctors have linked toxins in the petroleum-based material to diseases, such as cancer, diabetes, and obesity.
Environmental non-profits, like 5 Gyres, as well as major media reports, have also called attention to the accumulation of plastic debris in our oceans, such as the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, where plastic trash is hurting, poisoning and killing marine life throughout the world.
"I decided to call the new line 'Blue Water Bento,' because I wanted to connect the plastic-free lunch theme with helping out marine life in our oceans," Harris explained. "When kids go to natural history museums, aquariums or other environmental centers, they often are learning these days about the big problems with plastics in the environment, like the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. That's great! It's important to open their eyes to these problems, but I think it's equally crucial families don't walk away feeling hopeless or powerless.
"What we're trying to do with our Blue Water Bento collection is inspire people to 'do their part' by living life with less plastic," the San Francisco Bay Area eco mom entrepreneur added. "Everyone eats lunch, right? Why not start making change every day at lunchtime by packing a non-toxic and waste-free lunch?"
With its colorful blue silicone lid and a humpback whale swimming across its packaging through information bubbles and ocean jokes, the look of the company's aquatic-themed Splash Box is decidedly more modern and contemporary than the classic artisanal ECOlunchbox line. It's currently available through the company's online store for pre-orders.
"Packing a waste-free and plastic-free lunch is something that even the smallest child can do to start building a lifetime of healthy green habits," said Pozzi of Washed Ashore. "Our sculptures try to excite people around the idea of helping to save our oceans, but sometimes it's hard for families to know how to get started. I'm so happy ECOlunchbox is part of educating and activating people to use less plastic!"
Lunchbox Is Tool For Change
The new bento is expected to be available starting this summer through ECOlunchbox's distribution network, which includes The Container Store, select Whole Foods markets, independent natural grocery stores and children's boutiques nationwide.
ECOlunchbox will also be seeking placement for the product in aquariums and natural history museums so families who have learned about plastics can go to the gift shop and buy a Blue Water Bento as a tool to help them green their lifestyles.
Since ECOlunchbox was founded in 2009, the company has sold tens of thousands of their ECOlunchbox Three-in-One, Solo Cube, Tri Bento and other lunchboxes as well as ECOlunchpod and ECOdipper snack containers, various lunchbags and accessories. The lunchware sold has helped families avert millions of pieces of trash from the environment.
"Over the years we have heard the need again and again from our community that they loved our 100% stainless steel lunchboxes - non-toxic, dishwasher safe, rugged, plastic free!
What else could they dream for?" Harris said. "Loud and clear we kept hearing that families wanted a non-toxic and plastic-free lunchbox that was also leak-free. Now they can have their lunch and eat it too!"
For more information about ECOlunchbox and Blue Water Bento, please see www.bluewaterbento.com or contact bluewaterbento@ecolunchboxes.com
Contact Information
For more information, please contact
ECOlunchbox
925-298-9220 ext 1
Or Email Contact
Tuesday, March 11, 2014
The Scary New Evidence on BPA-Free Plastics
And the Big Tobacco-style campaign to bury it.
Photographs by Evan Kafka
Each night at dinnertime, a familiar ritual played out in Michael Green's home: He'd slide a stainless steel sippy cup across the table to his two-year-old daughter, Juliette, and she'd howl for the pink plastic one. Often, Green gave in. But he had a nagging feeling. As an environmental-health advocate, he had fought to rid sippy cups and baby bottles of the common plastic additive bisphenol A (BPA), which mimics the hormone estrogen and has been linked to a long list of serious health problems. Juliette's sippy cup was made from a new generation of BPA-free plastics, but Green, who runs the Oakland, California-based Center for Environmental Health, had come across research suggesting some of these contained synthetic estrogens, too.
He pondered these findings as the center prepared for its anniversary celebration in October 2011. That evening, Green, a slight man with scruffy blond hair and pale-blue eyes, took the stage and set Juliette's sippy cups on the podium. He recounted their nightly standoffs. "When she wins…every time I worry about what are the health impacts of the chemicals leaching out of that sippy cup," he said, before listing some of the problems linked to those chemicals—cancer, diabetes, obesity. To help solve the riddle, he said, his organization planned to test BPA-free sippy cups for estrogenlike chemicals.
The center shipped Juliette's plastic cup, along with 17 others purchased from Target, Walmart, and Babies R Us, to CertiChem, a lab in Austin, Texas. More than a quarter—including Juliette's—came back positive for estrogenic activity. These results mirrored the lab's findings in its broader National Institutes of Health-funded research on BPA-free plastics. CertiChem and its founder, George Bittner, who is also a professor of neurobiology at the University of Texas-Austin, had recently coauthored a paper in the NIH journal Environmental Health Perspectives.
It reported that "almost all" commercially available plastics that were tested leached synthetic estrogens—even when they weren't exposed to conditions known to unlock potentially harmful chemicals, such as the heat of a microwave, the steam of a dishwasher, or the sun's ultraviolet rays. According to Bittner's research, some BPA-free products actually released synthetic estrogens that were more potent than BPA.
Estrogenic chemicals found in many common products have been linked to a litany of problems in humans and animals. According to one study, the pesticide atrazine can turn male frogs female. DES, which was once prescribed to prevent miscarriages, caused obesity, rare vaginal tumors, infertility, and testicular growths among those exposed in utero. Scientists have tied BPA to ailments including asthma, cancer, infertility, low sperm count, genital deformity, heart disease, liver problems, and ADHD. "Pick a disease, literally pick a disease," says Frederick vom Saal, a biology professor at the University of Missouri-Columbia who studies BPA.
Today many plastic products, from sippy cups and blenders to Tupperware containers, are marketed as BPA-free. But Bittner's findings—some of which have been confirmed by other scientists—suggest that many of these alternatives share the qualities that make BPA so potentially harmful.
Those startling results set off a bitter fight with the $375-billion-a-year plastics industry.
The American Chemistry Council, which lobbies for plastics makers and has sought to refute the science linking BPA to health problems, has teamed up with Tennessee-based Eastman Chemical—the maker of Tritan, a widely used plastic marketed as being free of estrogenic activity—in a campaign to discredit Bittner and his research.
The company has gone so far as to tell corporate customers that the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) rejected Bittner's testing methods. (It hasn't.) Eastman also sued CertiChem and its sister company, PlastiPure, to prevent them from publicizing their findings that Tritan is estrogenic, convincing a jury that its product displayed no estrogenic activity. And it launched a PR blitz touting Tritan's safety, targeting the group most vulnerable to synthetic estrogens: families with young children.
"It can be difficult for consumers to tell what is really safe," the vice president of Eastman's specialty plastics division, Lucian Boldea, said in one web video, before an image of a pregnant woman flickered across the screen. With Tritan, he added, "consumers can feel confident that the material used in their products is free of estrogenic activity."
"A poison kills you," says biology
professor Frederick vom Saal. "A chemical like BPA reprograms your cells
and ends up causing a disease in your grandchild that kills him."
These efforts, detailed in internal industry documents revealed during Bittner's legal battle with Eastman, have sown public confusion and stymied US regulation, even as BPA bans have sprung up elsewhere in the world. They have also squelched debate about the safety of plastics more generally. All the while, evidence is mounting that the products so prevalent in our daily lives may be leaching toxic chemicals into our bodies, with consequences affecting not just us, but many generations to come.
The fight over the safety of plastics traces back to 1987, when Theo Colborn, a 60-year-old grandmother with a recent Ph.D. in zoology, was hired to investigate mysterious health problems in wildlife around the Great Lakes.
Working for the Washington, DC-based Conservation Foundation (now part of the World Wildlife Fund), she began collecting research papers. Before long, her tiny office was stacked floor to ceiling with cardboard boxes of studies detailing a bewildering array of maladies—cancer, shrunken sexual organs, plummeting fertility, immune suppression, birds born with crossed beaks and missing eyes. Some species also suffered from a bizarre syndrome that caused seemingly healthy chicks to waste away and die.
While the afflictions and species varied widely, Colborn eventually realized they had two factors in common: The young were hardest hit, and, in one way or another, all of the animals' symptoms were linked to the endocrine system, the network of glands that controls growth, metabolism, and brain function, with hormones as its chemical messengers. The system also plays a key role in fetal development. Colborn suspected that synthetic hormones in pesticides, plastics, and other products acted as "hand-me-down poisons," with parents' exposure causing affliction in their offspring.
Initially, her colleagues were skeptical. But Colborn collected data and tissue samples from far-flung wildlife populations and unearthed previously overlooked studies that supported her theory. By 1996, when Colborn copublished her landmark book Our Stolen Future, she had won over many skeptics. Based partly on her research, Congress passed a law that year requiring the EPA to screen some 80,000 chemicals—most of which had never undergone any type of safety testing—for endocrine-disrupting effects and report back by 2000.
Around this time, the University of Missouri's vom Saal, a garrulous biologist who previously worked as a bush pilot in Kenya, began studying the effects of synthetic estrogens on fetal mouse development.
The first substance he tested was BPA, a chemical used in clear, hard plastics, particularly the variety known as polycarbonate, to make them more flexible and durable. (It's also found in everyday items, from dental sealants and hospital blood bags to cash register receipts and the lining of tin cans.) Naturally occurring estrogens bind with proteins in the blood, limiting the amount that reaches estrogen receptors. But vom Saal found this wasn't true of BPA, which bypassed the body's natural barrier system and burrowed deep into the cells of laboratory mice.
Vom Saal suspected this would make BPA "a hell of a lot more potent" in small doses. Working with colleagues Susan Nagel and Wade Welshons, a professor of veterinary biology, he began testing the effects of BPA at amounts 25 times lower than the EPA's safety threshold.
In the late 1990s, they published two studies finding that male mice whose mothers were exposed to these low doses during pregnancy had enlarged prostates and low sperm counts. Even in microscopic quantities, it seemed, BPA could cause the kinds of dire health problems Colborn had found in wildlife. Before long, other scientists began turning up ailments among animals exposed to minute doses of BPA.
These findings posed a direct threat to plastics and chemical makers, which fought back using tactics the tobacco makers had refined to an art form. By the late 1990s, when tobacco companies agreed to drop deceptive marketing practices under a settlement agreement with 46 states, many of the scientists and consultants on the industry's payroll transitioned seamlessly into defending BPA.
Plastics and chemical interests worked closely with the Weinberg Group, which had run Big Tobacco's White Coat Project—an effort to recruit scientists to create doubt about the health effects of secondhand smoke.
Soon Weinberg, which bills itself as a "product defense" firm, was churning out white papers and lobbying regulators. It also underwrote a trade group with its own scientific journal, Regulatory Toxicology and Pharmacology, which published studies finding BPA was safe.
The industry also worked hand in glove with the Harvard Center for Risk Analysis, a think tank affiliated with the university's school of public health that has a history of accepting donations from corporations and then publishing research favorable to their products. In the early 1990s, its founder, John D. Graham—who was later tapped as George W. Bush's regulatory czar—lobbied to quash an EPA finding that secondhand smoke caused lung cancer, while soliciting large contributions from Philip Morris.
By this point, roughly 100 studies on low-dose BPA were in circulation. Not a single industry-funded study found it harmful, but 90 percent of those by government-funded scientists discovered dramatic effects, ranging from an increased breast cancer risk to hyperactivity. Four of the 12 panelists later insisted the center scrub their names from the report because of questions about its accuracy.
Chemical interests, meanwhile, forged deep inroads with the Bush administration, allowing them to covertly steer the regulatory process. For decades, the Food and Drug Administration has assured lawmakers and the public that BPA is safe in low doses. But a 2008 investigation by the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel revealed that the agency had relied on industry lobbyists to track and evaluate BPA research, and had based its safety assessment largely on two industry-funded studies—one of which had never been published or peer reviewed.
The panel the EPA appointed to develop guidelines for its congressionally mandated endocrine disruptor screening was also stocked with industry-backed scientists. It included Chris Borgert, a toxicology consultant who had worked closely with Philip Morris to discredit EPA research on secondhand smoke. He later served as the president of the International Society of Regulatory Toxicology and Pharmacology, the Weinberg Group-sponsored outfit, which met in the offices of a plastics lobbyist.
Members of the EPA panel say Borgert seemed determined to sandbag the process. "He was always delaying, always trying to confuse the issue," recalls one participant. And the screening approach the EPA settled on came straight from the industry's playbook. Among other things, the chemicals would be tested on a type of rat known as the Charles River Sprague Dawley—which, oddly, doesn't respond to synthetic hormones like BPA.
"Like the tobacco companies, they want to
set up a standard of proof that is unreachable," says Stanton Glantz.
"If they set the standard of proof, they've won the fight."
At the same time, Borgert and other industry-funded scientists made the case that the other common method for testing—using cells that respond in the presence of estrogen—did not necessarily tell us how a substance would affect animals or humans. In fact, a massive, ongoing NIH-run study has found that cell-based tests track closely with animal studies, which have accurately predicted the effects of synthetic estrogens, particularly DES and BPA, on humans.
Stanton Glantz, who directs the Center for Tobacco Control Research and Education at the University of California-San Francisco, argues the chemical industry's real aim in challenging specific testing methods is to undermine safety testing altogether. "Like the tobacco companies, they want to set up a standard of proof that is unreachable," he says. "If they set the standard of proof, they've won the fight."
During the height of the battle over BPA, vom Saal periodically traveled to Texas and huddled around the dining table with his old friend George Bittner, whose home overlooks a walnut grove on the outskirts of Austin. Bittner, who holds a Ph.D. in neuroscience from Stanford, is quirky and irascible.
But he has a brilliant mind for science and an interest in applying it to real-world problems—in his lab at UT-Austin, he had developed a nerve-regeneration technique that had helped crippled rats walk within days. And he had taken a keen interest in vom Saal's research on endocrine disruption. "It struck me as the most important public health issue of our time," Bittner told me when we met at his lab. "These chemicals have been correlated with so many adverse effects in animal studies, and they're so pervasive. The potential implications for human health boggle the mind."
In the late 1990s, Bittner—a squat, ruddy man with thinning red hair and Napoleon Dynamite glasses who had made a tidy sum investing in real estate and commodities—began mulling the idea of launching a private company that worked with manufacturers and public health organizations to test products for endocrine disruptors. He believed this approach could help raise awareness and break the regulatory logjam—while also reaping a profit.
In 2002, armed with a $91,000 grant from the National Institutes of Health, Bittner launched a pair of companies: CertiChem, to test plastics and other products for synthetic estrogens, and PlastiPure, to find or develop nonestrogenic alternatives. Bittner then enlisted Welshons to design a special test using a line of breast cancer cells, which multiply rapidly in the presence of estrogen. It features a robotic arm, which is far more precise than a human hand in handling microscopic material.
Bittner, meanwhile, enlisted V. Craig Jordan, a pharmacology professor at Georgetown University with an expertise in hormones—he discovered a now-common hormone therapy that blocks the spread of breast cancer—to refine the testing protocol. By 2005, Bittner had opened a commercial lab in a leafy office park in Austin. He managed to attract some big-name clients, including Whole Foods, which hired CertiChem to advise it on endocrine-disrupting chemicals and test some of its products.
At this point, BPA was among the most studied chemicals on the planet. In November 2006, vom Saal and a top official at the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences convened a group of 38 leading researchers from various disciplines to evaluate the 700-plus existing studies on the subject.
The group later issued a "consensus statement" that laid out some chilling conclusions: More than 95 percent of people in developed countries were exposed to levels of BPA that are "within the range" associated with health problems in animals, from cancer and insulin-resistant diabetes to early puberty. The scientists also found that there was "great cause for concern with regard to the potential for similar adverse effects in humans," especially given the steep uptick in these same disorders.
At the same time, a new body of research was finding that BPA altered animals' genes in ways that caused disease. For instance, it could switch off a gene that suppresses tumor growth, allowing cancer to spread. These genetic changes were passed down across generations. "A poison kills you," vom Saal explains. "A chemical like BPA reprograms your cells and ends up causing a disease in your grandchild that kills him."
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