Thursday, May 15, 2008

The Facts (or lack thereof)

I have awards to give out and meme’s to do but alas, I am not in the right mood for that. To those of you who have been sweet enough to pass on awards and tag me, I have not forgotten and I promise to get to them when I can.

The weather has been fabulous the last couple of days and we have been spending as much time out and about as possible which translates into far less time on the old laptop. A good thing, no?

But first I must go down a controversial path. Plastic. BPA.

You’ve heard about it.

We all have. You may have even gone through your plastics and turfed a bunch that “they” are claiming are bad.

I may have even started to do that.

But then I stopped and thought for a minute.

It’s all a bit ludicrous.

Now don’t get angry. Hear me out for a second.

I know there are risks to ingesting BPA. It’s a bloody hormone for goodness sake. That can’t be a good thing to be messing around with. I mean have you been around me when my hormones are out of whack? Let’s not go adding to the madness people that would be adding fuel to the fire.

But the part that I don’t get? Why can’t anyone say for certain WHAT BPA can do to you if in fact you do ingest it?

There are many things that it “may”, “could” and “might” do to you. But they can’t even give us a probably or most likely.

And as for the ingesting part, no one can say with any reasonable level of probability if in fact plastic that contains BPA does leach into our food or drink. Again with the “may”, “could” and “mights”.

And to add more uncertainty to all of this, no one can say which plastics even have the BPA in them.

Are you confused?

I am.

And I also think that maybe, just maybe, this is all a big ploy by the very people who make the plastics that may or may not contain BPA (the jury is still out on that) to have us all throw out all our plastics.

That way they can make even more money by selling us new and improved BPA FREE plastics.

Doesn’t that sound even remotely plausible?

Well okay, it sounds a bit like the theory that the whole lunar landing was faked. I’ll give you that.

But let’s get back to the risks of ingesting BPA. I read somewhere that one of the risks was homosexuality and gender confusion.

Um dude, list that as a risk to ANYTHING and you have lost all credibility with me.

To me, that’s a bit like saying that on sunny days, it’s more likely that I’ll take dump.

You might be able to make some kind of statistical link between the two but that by no means makes the sun cause my regularity. Trust me, I have been regular my whole life… and gee, the sun has been shining my whole life too.. DAMN maybe there is a connection…

I want facts people, cold, hard, scientifically proven facts before I go adding to the the plastic blob .

Remember when cell phones and microwaves caused cancer?

Me too.

I am just not yet convinced that I need to turf everything with a triangle surrounding a 3, 6 or 7. Or is that 1, 3, 6 and 7? One article I read said those where “bad” while 2, 4 and 5 were “better”.

*scratching head while drinking hot tea out of a #7 plastic mug*

(I mean this is jest and fun. If you do not use plastics or did just recently convert I am not dissing you. Not at all. I am just confused and mildly balking because I am at my heart a bit stubborn)



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14 comments:

Unknown said...

I love this post!! I am so confused too. I loved your line about the sun shining, etc.... I laughed out loud.

But yeah, the whole BPA thing has my head spinning too. I haven't gotten rid of anything, I just don't mircrowave anything in plastic and just try to use glass and ceramic dishes more.

If you find the facts, please pass them on!

Anonymous said...

Love it!! Finally, someone who looks at things the way I do!

We do what we can to avoid all this bad stuff, but what you speak of is using common sense when it all gets to be too much.

What's the alternative to BPA? Exceedingly expensive bottles and sippies; glass (have fun!); aluminum (so we can all get Alzheimers).

Like you, I don't want to make light of it all... but I appreciate your point: How much is too much, and what will it do exactly?

(Yeah, hi, too much wine. Sorry if I make no sense :)

Anonymous said...

GREAT POST!!

Totally agree with you, 100%.

I am completely cynical about stuff like this. It's my scientific background that makes me doubt those "scientific links". How ironic!

tracey.becker1@gmail.com said...

Yeaaahh.... I haven't thrown any away, either. Not for the high morals you have, but because I'm lazy. And they haven't really said anything concrete yet, have they?

mamatucci said...

ha, i was thinking about it all too. But I still turfed Matteos bad "sippy cups" just to be safe. Or until next month its something else,maybe lead paint in another toy. neverending I think

Anonymous said...

THIS IS WHY I LOVE YOU!

I mean, I posted about BPA, but haven't gone crazy. Lucky for me, all of the plastic dishes we use are a "safe" number 5.

Maybe the BPA is really bad, but maybe it's not. Life is too short to sweat the small stuff.

Besides, I think I should be more concerned about my Diet Coke consumption ;)

Cecily R said...

I can't throw away any of my plastic or we wouldn't have any cups or bowls. Yes, I am that lame.

I'm still waiting for the final vertict too. When you figure it out, let me know!!

Kellan said...

I haven't gotten rid of anything - I am also confused!!

Have a good weekend, Kami - see you - Kellan

Karen MEG said...

Kami, you hit the nail right on the head with this one... it is very confusing, and bad mother me for using those Avent bottles on not one but BOTH of my kids. I first heard of all this hoopla back when my sister and SIL were pregnant about a year ago. I was like "whaa ?!!" ... and then they started pulling the Nalgene bottles off the shelves etc.

I'll admit, we dumped all our plastics and bought the stainless steel (ya gotta wonder what THOSE companies have been doing to thank their lucky stars). Hubs and I both have scientific backgrounds, but I still suspect that the levels secreted are not likely worth the hoopla bandied about. It's because it may affect the babies in the least bit that I think it hit the media attention.

I'd say you're one smart cookie ;)

Natalie said...

I'm with you on wanting more information. I have cut back on some of the plastics here but lots of the motivation was the need for cabinet space!

Today on the news there was a report that actually said "more time in the sun can decrease you risk of breast cancer, but be careful because too much time in the sun can increase your chance of skin cancer".

UGH! We can't win for loosing! I want to do right by my family but sometimes there is just not enough information on the correct approach!

Laski said...

"this is all a big ploy"

You may have a point.

I think lately, especially with the media hype, everyone gets all up in arms and starts freaking out. Again, I think this happens because it is a slow day in media land.

The hubs is a chem engineer and says that he, as are his co-engineers, is a little puzzled about all the hype (his specialty is plastics). The only thing we do is avoid heating in them. That's it.

GREAT POST!!! Thanks for being REAL and puttin' it out there!

Anonymous said...

I am right there with you. But, here is what I did.

J needed to stop using a sippy and by fluke I bought him a stainless thermos for school. Points for me, YAY.

Apple needed a sippy, I checked, all my faves for J were BPA free, so I bought the same for her. More points for me, YAY.

I also bought a kleen kanteen, because I want to be hip too. Unfortunately the kleen kanteen is so heavy and Apple throws things on the floor and it will surely crack a tile, it is away until she won't crack a tile...

With all the evidence out there, it appears that the chemicals are only leached when the bottles are heated and we drink our juice or water cold, so I am not terribly worried. I did buy some Nalgene sippy's for Apple before she was even born. I haven't used them and Nalgene just redid them without the BPA, so I might just buy the lower bottle and reuse the tops.

In the end, what to do, Heinz puts baby food in #7 plastic containers. Who knows what is in stuff that we don't know about. I just want to drink water and enjoy!

KATE said...

I'm with you Kami, I don't get it either! I love that they tell us one thing & then the next day tell us something different! I'm not pitching anything yet either!

Anna-b-bonkers said...

So much craziness! I am so confused about what is good, bad or what(?)
The other commenters all said what I wanted to, so a big dido!