--Den här artikel är lite för paranoid och extrem men i en viss nivå är det säkert så att man tar in i sig "substances" från plast med mat som är inplastad. Det finns så klart kemiska reaktioner som man inte vet om.
When you eat or drink things that are stored in plastic, taste it, smell it, wear it, sit on it, and so on, plastic is incorporated into you. In fact, the plastic gets into the food and food gets into the plastic and you. So, quite literally, you are what you eat... drink... and breathe! These plastics are called "Food Contact Substances" by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA), but until April 2002, they were called "Indirect Food Additives." The new name is cleansed of the implication that plastic gets into your food. In spite of this semantic deception, migration is a key assumption of the FDA.
According to Dr. George Pauli, Associate Director of Science Policy, FDA Office of Food Additive Safety, the regulations mandated in 1958 assume that all plastics migrate toxins into the food they contact. Migration is the movement of free toxins from plastic into the substances they contact — in this case it’s your food. The manufacturer must "prove" that the migrations fall within an acceptable range. I agree with the assumption of migration from all plastics, but I find a critical disparity between the level of science employed by the regulations and the current scientific knowledge regarding the levels at which they migrate and the effects they can have. In particular, I am more concerned with extremely low concentrations. There is also a conflict of interest in allowing the manufacturer to submit its own testing to the FDA as proof of anything. We invite the fox into the henhouse and are surprised when there’s nothing left but eggshells and feathers.
The amount of migration and corresponding toxicological effects are highly disputed topics, even within the FDA, which has commonly acquiesced to industry in its regulation of technologies that are used in the production of our foods — plastics, pesticides, growth hormones, irradiation, and microwave. This is clear from the mass of expert and citizen testimony against such technologies that regulatory agencies bend over backwards and jump through flaming hoops to please their corporate clients, as they are called.
There is a worst plastic for any purpose — polyvinylchloride (vinyl or PVC). However, there is no best plastic to contain food or drink. It is my hope that this article will clarify this viewpoint. By the time you’ve finished reading, you should be closer to forming your own evaluation of plastics.
Its Uses
Plastic is used in contact with nearly all packaged foods. Most cardboard milk containers are now coated with plastic[4] rather than wax. It is sprayed on both commercial and organic produce to preserve its freshness. Plastic is even used to irrigate, mulch, wrap, and transport organic food. Organic bananas now come from wholesalers with a sticky plastic wrapping the cut stem to protect the bananas from a black mold.[5] The mold is controlled on non-organic bananas by dipping the cut ends in a fungicide. Chiquita would only reveal that it’s a "food grade plastic," which means that it meets minimum regulatory standards. But since it has a sticky feel to it, I suspect it either carries a fungicide or its physical characteristics act as a fungicide. Either way, if it is or acts as a fungicide, the EPA regulates it as a pesticide, which fungicides are considered a subset of. [6] In a way, this is similar to the regulation of corn that is genetically engineered to carry the toxic bacterium bacillus thuringiensis (Bt) in every cell. Rather than the FDA regulating it as a food, the EPA regulates it as a pesticide. Incredible as it may seem, they see our food as a pesticide.
According to the FDA scientist I spoke with, it’s a proprietary formula that he doesn’t know about and would offer nothing beyond that. Disclosure of proprietary information is a criminal offense.[7] All plastic manufacturers hide behind trade secrets. This is true with nearly all consumer products. It is quite impossible to know the chemical makeup of any plastic without paying a substantial amount of money for an independent lab analysis.
What's so bad about plastic?
For decades, the plastics industry has deceived us with assurances that the polymerization process binds the constituent chemicals together so perfectly that the resulting plastic is completely nontoxic and passes through us without a hitch. In spite of this industry disinformation,[9] the polymerization process is never 100% perfect. Logically then, there are always toxicants available for migration into the many things they contact — your food, air, water, skin, and so on. Both the FDA and the industry know this. However, because of many millions of dollars worth of advertising and public relations work, consumers are educated to think that plastics are safe.
The additives utilized are not bound to the already imperfect plastic, leaving them quite free to migrate. One quick example: without a plasticizer additive, PVC would be rigid. The plasticizer resides between the molecules of the PVC, acting as a lubricant that allows those molecules to slide by each other, and thus flex. Many containers used for food or water are made of it. Even Barbie dolls are made of it. The plasticizer migrates out from day one. And as it ages, the migration can visibly weep out of it.[10]
Plastics, their additives and other processing chemicals can be toxic at extremely low concentrations. In fact, some are significantly more toxic at extremely low concentrations than at much higher concentrations, which is contrary to the FDA scientist’s paradigm that, "The dose makes the poison," meaning that the higher the concentration, the more toxic something is. It is an interpretation of the writings of Paracelsus, an alchemist who wrote in the 16th century that, "Alle Ding sind Gift und nichts ohne Gift; alein die Dosis macht das ein Ding kein Gift ist" [All things are poison and nothing without poison; alone it is the dose that makes a thing no poison].[11] It’s now 500 years later and that assumption of Paracelsus is still the basis for the many regulations. Except on chemical-by-chemical investigations by various independent, institutional, and academic labs, plastics are not explored for harmful effects or regulated in any meaningful way.
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On the home front, even the products in our day-in and day-out humdrum lives are coated with, contain, or are made of synthetic chemicals that can interact synergistically with each other. The list is endless but includes beauty products such as nail polish, eyeliner, deodorant and aftershave; household cleaning products such as tile and carpet cleaners, air fresheners that are solid, plug-in, or spray. Even gas and diesel engine exhaust are included. Quite frankly, the FDA doesn’t even consider all sources of a chemical in its review of industry product applications.
Consider that there between 87,000 to 100,000 chemicals in commercial production. At the time I wrote this, there were 22,241,247 organic and inorganic substances registered with Chemical Abstracts Service (CAS) registry.[17] Only eight months before that, there were 1,112,474 fewer chemicals.[18] They are regulated and tested in what I would call a "don’t look — don’t see" style of science that boggles the minds of those who look just a little below the surface of the happy little corporate-science myths. The focus is on the wonders of plastic with a purposeful avoidance of the painfully evident negative human and environmental health effects. Using the more conservative 87,000 chemicals, there are approximately 1.063725377 x 1086,991 different combinations possible that could have a synergistic effect on toxicity.[19] For the purposes of this article, that number is roughly 1 with 87,000 zeros after it. Even if researchers had the time and money to test them all, they still wouldn’t know what to look for, because there is no precedent. In addition, one must account for the uniqueness of each living organism and its unique environment, which further expand the possible synergies and possibilities.
Avoiding Plastic
While it’s impossible to avoid all plastics, we must rid our diets and lives of this toxic material as much as possible. There is a huge amount of data confirming the migration of plastic monomers and additives in all steps of food processing.[44] And in my opinion and that of many top research scientists, it is only a matter of time and money spent on new studies before the harm is found. Because of corporate political campaign financing, meaningful regulations resulting from studies will take even longer to become law. We must protect our families while the obvious results trickle in.
I strongly advise individuals and governments to ban plastics wherever possible by utilizing the precautionary principal. The Wingspread Statement on the Precautionary Principle is the consensus statement of a conference in 1998. Simply put it states that if you have reasonable suspicion of harm coming from (plastic in this case) then you must stop it from happening; the burden of proof must be on industry, not consumers; alternatives must be fully explored before using a new material or technology; and any decisions regarding such activities must be "open, informed, and democratic" and "must include affected parties."[45]
Evidence of the negative health effects of plastics already exists in sufficient quantity to halt the use of it in contact with food. More importantly, I feel that the manufacture of plastic itself must be halted for a multitude of reasons. Besides causing an endless number of human deaths, disabilities, and diseases, plastic is clogging all habitats of the world and destroying the ecosystem. There is now 6 times more plastic than plankton floating around in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. Plankton is a major food source for sea animals.[46] A large portion of it is preconsumer plastic that has not been made into a product yet. Called nurdels, they look very much like plankton in size and color. According to a paper by Arrigo et al in Geophysical Research Letters in October 2003, plankton production has been declining for the last 20 years with rising ocean surface temperatures. Along with increasing plastic quantities, the ratio of plastic to plankton is increasing, making it more of a target for hungry animals.
The researcher who found this, Captain Charles Moore, Director of the Algalita Marine Research Foundation, told me that new data indicate that the ratio of plastic to zooplankton is even higher in two so-called floating plastic "Garbage Patches" that are each bigger than the State of Texas.
Nurdles are incorporated into all strata of the oceans with no known method of removal. DDE, a metabolite of DDT, and other dioxin-like chemicals concentrate on the surface of the plastic nurdles at a rate up to a million times that found in the ocean.[49] Captain Moore’s presentation includes images of sea animals that have suffocated and starved as a result. Even more startling is seeing plastic bits incorporated into the flesh of the sea animals.
Conclusion
I spent about two years answering telephone inquiries at an environmental organization in Berkeley. A great number of the callers asked what the safest plastic to use in contact with food or water is. They also wanted to know what the safest plastic is to microwave food in. My answer was that plastic should never contact food. And that one should never microwave food — it's probably as bad or worse than putting it in plastic because it creates free radicals in the food that damage cells in your body. It also heats the plastic, thus increasing the rate of migration into the food. That answer wasn’t popular with either the caller or the organization, which likes to point out positive alternatives. However, plastic is the alternative! And glass, wood, metal, and ceramics are the real things. Plastic is merely a foul imitation thereof. By using the least offensive plastic, one only prolongs and increases the toxic load on the Earth and in our bodies. If saving trees is your aim, stop using so much stuff. But in the mean time, don’t further degrade the environment with more plastic.
As consumers, we always look for ways to maintain the status quo of our modern lives. However, the only logic I can see in the regulation of food contact plastics is profit at the expense of our health, the economy, society, and environment. You needn’t be a polymer scientist to know that plastic shouldn’t contact food. What is essential though is a firm standing in reality and a good grip on logic. It also requires being free of ties to the industry before that logic becomes evident.
First set aside your assumptions and look at the known long- and short-term negative effects of plastic on health, economy, environment, and society, as well as the long-term viability of the human race. Next contrast that with what you find as benefits. I guarantee that the stack of chips will be far larger in the negative pile.
If one were to listen only to nonprofits and the industry, it would be natural to think that only the additives are toxic and migrate. But everything about plastics is toxic — both the additives and the base plastics. And both migrate in quantities that are problematic at extremely low concentrations. Some chemicals are obviously more so than others. But it is undeniable that they all migrate all the time into everything that they touch.
Fick den från: http://www.mindfully.org/Plastic/Plasticizers/Out-Of-Diet-PG5nov03.htm
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