Plastic Schmastic, Part 2

Because I think I have scared some people with my last blog, I did some more research to confirm what I have already found. :) The results are...I still think plastic is bad for us.

Scattered throughout this article (http://blog.al.com/living-news/2009/01/do_common_plastics_raise_cance.html, 2009) are government admonishments and the usual plea to 'not panic' and not to do anything 'rash', i.e. stop buying plastic.

Are they worried that if too many people stop buying plastic in large numbers, that the economy will get even worse? Perhaps. In any case, aside from the reality that evidence isn't yet 'conclusive' and that no one knows how much plastic is dangerous and how much is 'safe', the article said this:

"Coral A. Lamartiniere, a top toxicologist and senior scientist at UAB's Comprehensive Cancer Center, said low levels of bisphenol-A, BPA, given orally to rodents caused tumors and genetic changes consistent with early stages of cancer growth...Lamartiniere said there was no doubt about his study results, and animals were tested at concentrations of BPA similar to exposures experienced by people."

In response to a member of a Senate committee saying that the who the heck knows just HOW MUCH BPA the rats were given, Lamartiniere says: "In fact, it's below the concentration that the EPA deems safe," he said. "With BPA we're finding changes that are consistent with oncogenisis, or cancer causation."

It bothers me quite a lot that the FDA, scientists, or anyone at all can throw a specific level out there for things like mercury, BPA, or anything carcinogenic or otherwise unhealthy. They don't know what level is safe because we're fallible humans and we don't know crap.

The research I did on mercury showed that the FDA kept changing what level of mercury was 'safe' as new evidence came up. What does that tell us? That even when we think we know something, we don't really know...crap. This article was from 2009 and two short years later more are admitting that, uh, plastic really isn't that great to be ingesting.

And the link I posted yesterday said that now they're finding that no plastic is safe (and that one was from 2011). That means that this chart:

...is crap.

It seems to me that saying one plastic is safer than another is like saying that the cancer you might get from it won't be as bad as it would be if you had regularly used an unsafe plastic.

If I get cancer even though I'm trying to avoid plastic, so be it, but I'm going to try to avoid it as much as I can. At least I'll know I put a good effort in. The bottom line is that it's not worth it.

PS-I found another crazy plastic blogger, from Mexico: http://nativestranger.blogspot.com/2005/07/unsafe-plastic_25.html.