Tuesday, April 17, 2012

Plastic in Our Food


"If the food’s in plastic, what’s in the food?" By Susan Freinkel, Published: April 16The Washington Post 

[Excerpted] "In a study published last year in the journal Environmental Health Perspectives, researchers put five San Francisco families on a three-day diet of food that hadn’t been in contact with plastic. When they compared urine samples before and after the diet, the scientists were stunned to see what a difference a few days could make: The participants’ levels of bisphenol A (BPA), which is used to harden polycarbonate plastic, plunged — by two-thirds, on average — while those of the phthalate DEHP, which imparts flexibility to plastics, dropped by more than half.

The findings seemed to confirm what many experts suspected: Plastic food packaging is a major source of these potentially harmful chemicals, which most Americans harbor in their bodies. Other studies have shown phthalates (pronounced THAL-ates) passing into food from processing equipment and food-prep gloves, gaskets and seals on non-plastic containers, inks used on labels — which can permeate packaging — and even the plastic film used in agriculture...."

read the entire article here:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/trace-chemicals-in-everyday-food-packaging-cause-worry-over-cumulative-threat/2012/04/16/gIQAUILvMT_story.html?wpisrc=nl_headlines

1 comment:

  1. I have been sensitive to plastic toxicity for 44 years and can't drink from styrene cups without having a reaction. It is so hard to find substitutes for plastics in goid preparation and packaging.

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