How To Reduce Exposure To Plastic In Food & Everywhere Else: Consumer Reports

[appalachiablue]

It's nearly impossible to completely avoid bisphenols and phthalates. But several small, strategic shifts can help. Consumer Reports, Jan. 4, 2024. Ed. 🥕 🥦

Plasticizers—the most common of which are called phthalates—are used to make plastic more flexible and more durable. They’re so widely used that today, they show up inside almost all of us, right along with other chemicals found in plastic, including bisphenols such as BPA. Both types of chemicals have been linked to a long list of health concerns, even at very low levels. (Read our full report on these chemicals, "The Plastic Chemicals Hiding in Your Food," which includes the results of our tests of 85 food products.)

Experts agree that big policy changes are needed to address the health risks posed by phthalates and bisphenols, in the meantime, there are some things you can do to help protect yourself and your family.

In Your Food: Limiting exposure to phthalates isn’t as simple as avoiding particular types of packaging, because these chemicals can enter your food long before it is packaged. The best solution, says Maricel Maffini, PhD, a chemical safety expert and the author of a recent study of phthalate risks, would be for manufacturers and regulators to ensure that our food was safe, so we wouldn’t “have to make these decisions when we go to the grocery store.” But that doesn’t mean you’re powerless now. Reducing your overall exposure to the chemicals in plastic—including bisphenols and phthalates—may help you avoid some of the risks.

These 6 steps can help. Avoid plastic food storage containers. If you do use them, don’t heat them in the microwave, and avoid using them to store hot food, because heat can increase leaching. See CR’s top picks for glass and steel food storage containers. Keep your food below the top of the container to avoid contact with the lids, which are often plastic. Steer clear of fast foods. Plasticizers are one more reason to limit consumption of fast food. Our testing found some of the highest levels of phthalates and phthalate substitutes in fast food. One possible explanation is that fast foods are often prepared by people wearing vinyl gloves, which are known to be extremely high in these chemicals.

MORE ON PLASTIC.. Eat fresh, minimally processed food and include plenty of unpackaged fruits and vegetables, which have fewer chances to have contact with phthalates...

- Read More, https://www.consumerreports.org/health/food-contaminants/how-to-reduce-exposure-to-plastic-in-food-everywhere-else-a9640874767/

[Irish_Dem]

1. Excellent article, thank you for posting!

[appalachiablue]

3. YW, I learned from it too. Govt and industry must to take action.

[Irish_Dem]

6. Yes but it will cost $$$.

So they will drag their feet.

[appalachiablue]

8. For sure. But the 40 yr greedfest that's killing the US has to stop, someway.

[Irish_Dem]

9. We live in a toxic soup. It's causing serious damage to humans and the planet.

I suspect the neurotoxins all around us are causing a lot of the neurological
problems with seeing young people and older people.

I really noticed it beginning in the 1980s.

[appalachiablue]

10. Toxic soup is right, it will take years to work on

the issues - maybe like DDT, asbestos, tobacco..sheesh. That's interesting about neurotoxins, and scary. I think they're linked to pesticides, fertilizers, fossil fuels, additives in consumer products and more since the post WW2 'chemical wonder age.'

[Irish_Dem]

11. Exactly, that's what I'm thinking too.

All the chemicals you describe since World War II.

They were supposed to be miracle chemicals that made life better and easier.
Instead they're slowly poisoning us and damaging our brains and our bodies.

The problem is I don't know if we are gonna be smart enough or have the motivation to make the needed changes.
Instead we just keep inventing more medical diagnoses and more medical treatments to account for all the damage we are seeing in the human body and brain. And no one's really thinking about what is causing all of these new illnesses and all of this new brain damage we've been seeing since about the 80s.

I used to do quite a bit of IQ testing, intellectual assessments for adults and children. And in the 80s things really changed in terms of all the neurological brain damage and dysfunction in children.

And then you see today how many people are so susceptible to propaganda that's pretty ridiculous and nonsensical, but people seem to believe it, so you wonder what happened to the national IQ level.

[appalachiablue]

12. Great post, the issue is vast and overwhelming. Spot on about

the continual work on medical diagnosis and treatment instead of exposing the cause. I'm sure you've seen the changes in IQ from testing and the noticeable neurological issues. It's tragically adding to people's gullibility as you wrote. Thanks for replying.

[Irish_Dem]

13. There were more and more conferences and papers on child neurological disorders.

The situation in the clinics became more and more serious and obvious.

I kept thinking why in the hell isn't someone researching WHY this is happening.

[orthoclad]

16. Why? Capitalism.

The huge profits flowed to the investor class, who determine industrial policy. We also have a practice of having to prove harm, as opposed to having to prove safety. That helps the money to flow.

There was the research on lead poisoning. Reducing lead exposure helped. But that's only one substance among thousands - which are interacting in the environment.

[Irish_Dem]

18. Yep the billionaire class is destroying humans and the planet, our two most valuable resources.

Yes and the other thing that made me mad is that scientists kept picking out one substance to study
saying that it posed no threat to humans. But we know that we live in a toxic soup and it is all the poisons together
that are harming our children.

[orthoclad]

15. Follow the profits.

[Irish_Dem]

19. And ignorance on the part of the professionals, scientists, parents.

Last edited Mon Jan 15, 2024, 06:50 PM - Edit history (1)

It is difficult to get professionals legitimately interested in the area of preventing neurological damage in children.

This would include not only neurotoxins but brain trauma as well.

I was attending a number of professional seminars on child head trauma.

Primarily we were seeing an increase in severe head injuries in children due to so many kids playing dangerous sports. We know that the damage is serious and can be lifelong, especially if a child gets more than one hit to the head.

So I would go to the seminars and conferences about this, I was always shocked that the solution seems to be to make better helmets for children.

I remember in one seminar I stood up and said if we see a child and he has had three serious concussions, knocked unconscious playing a sport, perhaps we should take the child out of that sport and think of something less dangerous for the child. Because that child will have serious lifelong brain damage.

Everyone just looked at me like I was a Martian speaking a foreign language. I just sat down and shut up.

Parents would come into the clinic with a child who had more than four serious concussions and was experiencing very serious symptoms at home and school because of it. The clinicians would plead with the parents to take this child out of sports because every subsequent ding does more and more damage. Parents would adamantly refused for all kinds of reasons, including needing a sport scholarship to go to college, family pride, macho pride you name it.

I consider this child abuse but it did no good to report this kind of thing.

[orthoclad]

22. In addition to ignorance,

There is the tendency of specialists to focus on their specialty and not make cross-connections.
One of the outstanding characteristics of Rachel Carson was her ability to make connections. She saw the connection between farm practices and bird die-offs.

Look at all the trouble she received from the chemical barons. Money talks.

We need a Rachel Carson of neuropsychiatry.

And yes, competitive sports can be very harmful, mentally and physically. Tell that to the football industry. $port$!

[Irish_Dem]

24. It is difficult for scientists to step back and connect all the dots.

We are trained to dive deep into a very narrow area of speculation.
Thinking outside the box is not always valued in academia.

[orthoclad]

25. In order to publish, we often

have to drill down into pretty fine detail which calls for a high degree of specializaton. But interdisciplinary teams are a thing.

[Irish_Dem]

28. Yes I think interdisciplinary teams are a good approach.

But a PhD dissertation is typically a solo project which leaves an impression on your mindset.
And also typically you cannot research any topic you want within your field, your advisor is going to set strong
boundaries about that. And there are certain avenues which are off limits altogether.

And then the big names and egos of scientists who bring in big dollars may not want to collaborate.

[appalachiablue]

31. Great post, so focused on one issue, look larger. Carson was stellar.

[cilla4progress]

27. Plus

lead in water?

[orthoclad]

14. WWII was the inflection point

for a lot of problems for following generations. Toxic chems, CO2 pollution, nuclear weapons, for just a few.

[Irish_Dem]

29. Ironically many see this as one of the golden eras of the US.

The men came back from WWII and just wanted peace, to get married and have a family.
So times were relatively stable until the 60's with social turmoil but this improved society.
Stopped the Viet Nam war and ushered in social reform.

All the while we are seriously poisoning people and the planet.

By the 80's we see children and older people suffering from obvious neuropathology.
And people act so confused and can't imagine why it is happening. Why all the dementia
and learning disabilities and autism spectrum etc.

I absolutely knew back then we were swimming in a toxic soup but of course
people thought you were crazy if you said that.

[orthoclad]

35. I aso blame TV for some neuropathology

as well as political idiocy.
Hours and hours of a passive semi-hypnotic state while sucking up content.
It was the post-war generation that normalized the boob tube.

[Irish_Dem]

36. The biggest problem with TV has been the normalizing of violence.

Psychologists warned about this for decades, to no avail, and here we are.

I don't know, I can argue that TV did stimulate thought as well as entertain to some extent.
But excessive watching and in the place of reading, discussions, social interaction, was not a good thing.

Yes it the hours and hours in a trance like state, passively watching low value TV that is a problem.

[orthoclad]

37. Agree, that's a big one,

but even with high-quality content, the state of mind induced by the medium is destructive. After a while, you'll believe anything that that specially-modulated "tv voice" tells you.

Other media force the person to engage their imagination somehow: imagery from music, literacy from print, e.g. Even comic books are better. TV creates a totally passive state where people can sit for hours like a sponge. During this sponge-state, we absorb the TRUE content of the medium: commercials.

There are potent cultural and political attitudes transmitted often subliminally while the viewer lies hypnotized. "He can't be a man 'cause he doesn't smoke / the same cigarettes as me": Stones, Satisfaction, 1965. Today's off-road SUV commercials. Beer ads. Power tools.I used to say that most commercials were drug ads: "buy this and feel better".

The content features: Heroic government agents nabbing the bad guys du jour. Shows where alien tech must be hidden from the public because Boss Knows Best. The "work ethic". Adulating rich people. And so on...

Then there is Fox.

The actual information content, the signal-to-noise ratio, is very low. For example, I can learn more about my local weather forecast in a few seconds of looking at the NWS forecast page than in 20 minutes of "but first, these messages" from a tv weatherthing. We're talking gigabits of streamed or broadcast video data vs kilobits of text and graphics.

And I agree about the violence. How many bloody killings does a child witness before they reach puberty? Normalizing violence is one horrific dimension of tv's evil influence.

[appalachiablue]

32. Definitely..

[3Hotdogs]

2. So we simply can't eat out in restaurants. kitchen staff wear vinyl gloves. They wear them to avoid

fecal contamination.

So we get sick if they wear the gloves and we get sick if they don't wear the gloves.

[appalachiablue]

4. People can eat out with food from the gloved staff if

they don't overdo it, for now. I hope govt. and industry get to work on this serious health problem, including the gloves. We've achieved much larger feats.

Eating at home allows more control in avoiding toxins of course. Cut back some on restaurant food. Balance, and Bon Appetit!

[Irish_Dem]

7. Yes it looks like we need to stay home to eat.

[orthoclad]

17. I stopped eating restaurant food for the pandemic -

I lost 40 lb and got healthier. I try now to be very selective about restaurant food. I favor some Chinese and Indian dishes.

[Irish_Dem]

20. Yes I think many of us changed our eating habits during Covid.

We stopped eating out, stayed home, and cooked more.

Yes, if I do go out which is not often I prefer Asian ethnic foods.

[orthoclad]

21. And got healthier for better food

Homemade yogurt, homemade bread, garden veg...

[Irish_Dem]

23. Yes we had time to do all of that.

The biggest drawback to Covid was the social isolation which is not good for our health.

[FakeNoose]

5. K & R - bookmarked

Thanks, this article is a great reminder for all of us.

One of the greatest objections to plastic containers for storing food is that so many of them are one-use only containers. I don't mean the high quality "tupperware" type of containers that we can wash, store and reuse. I'm talking about the restaurants' inexpensive take-out containers (foam or plastic) that get used once and end up in the landfill forever.

Also the one-time use plastic cups that you get at convenience stores and fast-food restaurants. How did we get everything plastic, all the time? I can remember in my childhood and early adulthood when all we had were wax-paper cups, and they were fine. Also drinking straws were wax paper and disposable, but now everything is plastic.

I'm a baby boomer and I fault our generation for being complacent about the overuse of plastics. Our grandchildren's generation will quickly run out of landfill options, because of our laziness and complacency on allowing this abuse of the environment. Now we're seeing that it's not just the environment, it's our own health that plastics are destroying.

[Doc Sportello]

26. K&R

Thanks to appalachiablue for posting and the responders for their insightful and informed takes on the subject.

[appalachiablue]

33. You're welcome. It's such a serious, vast subject but people

have to be informed. Sometimes I think my username should be DoomerDem, but what the heck! - Thanks for replying.

[cornball 24]

30. Thank you so very much for this much needed information and to those who have

elaborated on the specifics of this endangerment to human health. I have always hated plastic! Back in the day, we had recyclable glass and cardboard and paper. I am now going into my kitchen and toss all the plastic containers. Though far too late in life for me to make that change, it will make me feel good!

[appalachiablue]

34. You're welcome cornball. I'm tossing a lot of plastics too

and am looking into glass, stainless steel and other alternative products and maybe a faucet water filter.

I feel the worst for young ones who've grown up in this toxic swamp. There's no doubt in my mind that the increase in cancers in under age 50 in the last 30 years is related to this problem.

Plastic, esp Forever Chems/PFAS is so pervasive - in toothbrushes, carpet, sheets, fabrics, food, air and water, and more, but we can still try to limit exposure somehow. What a chemical scourge.