Plastics come in all sorts of shapes and colors to make our lives easier and more convenient, containing certain substances that improve their performance and also makes them less expensive. In general we are told that plastics have a low profile of toxicity due to its properties, for example water and relative chemical inertness. What we are usually not told is that plastics contain additional toxic substances -bisphenol A (BPA) used to strengthen some plastics and phthalates used to soften others- which at small concentrations cause a lot of problems.
BPA is found in baby and water bottles, can linings, laboratory flasks, plastic food containers, dental sealants, CD cases, eye glasses, soft drinks, and thousands of other household products. It is a “high production” chemical that is also used in plastic and epoxy resins.
Phthalates are found in children’s toys, vinyl shower curtains, salad dressings, cooking oil bottles, medical devices, building materials, personal-care products, food packaging, pharmaceuticals materials, some medication coatings such as -theophylline (for asthma and lung disease medication), omeprazole (an ulcer treatment), mesalamine (used to treat colitis)- and cleaning materials.
These chemicals are found everywhere in the environment and they enter our bodies through food, water, bits of household dust we consume, or they are absorbed through the skin. Eventually they get stored in fat cells making us unable to get rid of them! According to a Centers for Disease Control (CDC) study, BPA was found in the urine of 95% of the people tested and another study found that most newborns (9 out of 10) were born with BPA in their systems. Also when researchers examined the water of the Pacific Ocean they found it contained 6 times as much plastic as plankton by weight!