SAY NO TO PLASTICS
Environmental scientist and writer Michael SanClements (@msanclem) shares some facts about plastic that you might not have known… Find out what else you might not know about plastic at www.mikesanclements.com
posted on Jun. 5, 2014, at 5:32 p.m.
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1.Plastic was invented when a billiards company offered a $10,000 reward to anyone who could come up with a replacement for ivory in billiard balls. Pretty weird considering that plastic now causes so many environmental problems.
2.BPA was initially used as a hormone replacement in women and a growth hormone in cattle. Now it resides in plastic products that regularly come into contact with your food and drink.
3.90% of the adult population has chemicals from plastics in their bodies. These chemicals, like BPA, mimic hormones and have been tied to cancers, birth defects, and developmental disorders in children.
4.BPA free plastics may be as bad for you, or even worse for you, than those containing BPA. That’s because alternatives to BPA, like BPF might be even more harmful.
5.Plastic might be making you fat – the chemicals in plastic have been linked to obesity. Plus, avoiding plastic is a great way to avoid junk food. Unhealthy snacks tend to be packaged in a lot of plastic.
6.At the start of WWII plastic was basically unheard of, but today we are producing approximately 300 million tons of plastic annually. In fact, it’s nearly impossible to make it through a day without coming into contact with plastic literally hundreds of times
7.Ever give any thought to the plastic in your toys? You should. toys are classified as novelties, which assumes they won’t actually be used. For that reason, the quality of plastics and amounts of potentially toxic substances aren’t regulated.
8.Up to 40% of the bottled water you buy is tap water. You’re basically paying for something you can have for free from water fountain or for 1000-2000 times less on your home water bill.
9.Bottled water is classified as a food by the FDA, (makes sense right?) which means it is subject to less stringent regulation than tap water. True story.
10.A liter of bottled water is about three times as expensive as a liter of gas.
11.Cash register receipts are loaded with loosely bound BPA which can easily migrate through your skin and into your bloodstream. In fact, the amount of BPA in receipt paper is approximately 100-200 times higher than typically found in food packaging.
12.Roughly 50% of the plastic produced is used once and thrown away.
13.In the United States we landfill roughly 85% of the plastic we consume on an annual basis. Plastic is made from fossil fuels. There is a lot of energy locked up in that plastic, the equivalent of nearly 180 million barrels of oil annually. The technology to turn plastic back to oil exists. Meaning, we are literally throwing away or littering oil every day.
14.Some plastic products, like PVC shower curtains, emit clouds of toxic vapors into your bathroom – and lungs.
15.Some areas of the ocean contain hundreds of thousands of pieces of plastic per square mile.
