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BPA-free plastics may not be safer than regular plastics after all, a new study finds
Consumers turning to plastics made with alternatives to BPA in the hope that they're safer won't like what they're about to hear.
A new study [open, DOI: 10.1016/j.cub.2018.06.070] [DX], published in the journal Current Biology, concluded that common alternatives to BPA caused harmful effects in mice, notably in their reproductive cells. The findings add to the mounting body of evidence that these alternatives carry their own health risks. As Science noted, if further research on animals and humans continues to support these findings, it could derail efforts to reassure the many consumers already nervous about the plastics in their food and drink containers that there are safe options to choose from.
The issue has been one of major concern in recent years, in part because of the work of Patricia Hunt, the Washington State University geneticist who led the team behind the new research. She first helped draw attention to the possible perils of BPA—bisphenol A in its long form—after stumbling on them by accident.
From the paper:
DuPont's 20th century slogan "better living through chemistry" has been borne out. Remarkable technical advances allow us to synthesize molecules and create subtle variations in them. Innovation, however, has outpaced our ability to understand the implications of the release of rapidly generated families of structurally similar chemicals into our environment. Our data add to and extend the growing concern about the harmful reproductive effects of one such family, the bisphenols. Although most data derive from rodent studies, given the developmental and reproductive similarities, concerns almost certainly extend to humans. Importantly, bisphenols are not the only chemical family with an ever-increasing array of diverse members; other prominent environmental contaminant families include the parabens, perfluorinated compounds (PFCs), phthalates, flame retardants, and quaternary ammonium compounds.
The ability to rapidly enhance the properties of a chemical has tremendous potential for treating cancer, enhancing medical and structural materials, and controlling dangerous infectious agents. Importantly, this technology has paved the way for "green chemistry," a healthier future achieved by engineering chemicals to ensure against hazardous effects. Currently, however, regulatory agencies charged with assessing chemical safety cannot keep pace with the introduction of new chemicals. Further, as replacement bisphenols illustrate, it is easier and more cost effective under current chemical regulations to replace a chemical of concern with structural analogs rather than determine the attributes that make it hazardous.
Also at Fortune.
(Score: 3, Informative) by shrewdsheep on Monday September 17 2018, @12:20PM (3 children)
But what does it mean? Quite little, it turns out. For example, PVC [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polyvinyl_chloride [wikipedia.org]] is one of the biologically most inert products among all hydrocarbons (halogenated or otherwise).
(Score: 5, Informative) by VLM on Monday September 17 2018, @03:08PM (1 child)
Its almost perfectly analogous to the whole "RoundUp" situation where the active ingredient is quite harmless but the stuff added, such as various plasticizers to make it functionally engineering useful in the real world are unfortunately generally vastly more unhealthy than the active ingredient.
Another analogy is the classic silicate rock or Titanium Dioxide. No matter how inert a generic silicate rock or powder of titanium dioxide is, if the silicate rock cystalizes into weird long fibers and gets in your lungs you die of asbestos lung cancer. Likewise if titanium dioxide particles are large enough you can eat as much as you want and merely have lighter colored poop, but nano sized titanium dioxide may or may not be slightly hazardous.
Another analogy would be paint. Paint is just pigment with some gunk added that eventually solidifies, right? So if the pigment is harmless, which most are, and paint is mostly about the pigment, then you can drink paint, right? Well, not really, in that the "other gunk that solidifies" is usually quite harmful.
Still, technically, yeah, if you could somehow obtain spectrographically pure PVC and in that state it were engineering useful, you could use it for all kinds of bio stuff, implants or whatever. But there seem to be few engineering uses for PVC that don't involve icky levels of phthalates almost all of which are bad for you.
Denatured alcohol might be a good analogy... you can apply a nice shellac wood finish with it because its almost pure alcohol, but that 1% additive none the less makes it mostly undrinkable.
(Score: 4, Informative) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Monday September 17 2018, @04:47PM
Most pure plastic is quite hard and brittle. It cracks easily.
So plasticizers are added to most plastics. A chemistry major friend explained that "Plasticizers are a goo-ant. They make plastic soft and flexible".
Plasticizers are even added for applications that require the plastic to be hard, so as to make it less brittle.
The very first plastic - celluloid - was made of nitrocellulose and camphor.
Yes I Have No Bananas. [gofundme.com]
(Score: 3, Informative) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Monday September 17 2018, @04:41PM
Tests for carcinogenicity have to be done with glass lab equipment, not plastic. This because plastic tends to cause false positives.
Yes I Have No Bananas. [gofundme.com]