Plastic is nearly ubiquitous in modern society and has proliferated as packaging for foodstuffs in recent decades. According to the plastics business portal Plastemart.com, rigid plastic food packaging is projected to increase in North America from 2008 to 2013 at an annual rate of 4.7 percent, to the level of 17.2 billion lbs. in 2013. Plastic is a given in modern life, but you can, with a little effort, avoid the types that pose a risk to people and the environment.
Bisphenol A
In 2010 the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, or FDA, along with the Environmental Protection Agency, or EPA, moved to conduct additional research and update regulations regarding Bisphenol A, commonly called BPA. BPA is an additive used in polycarbonate plastics as well as epoxy resins used to line food cans. The Environmental Working Group cites laboratory studies that show BPA is a hormone disruptor, with the potential for causing a variety of ailments, including birth defects, infertility and breast cancer, even at low levels. Wouldn't you know, businesses in Japan and the United Kingdom moved to decrease use of BPA in plastics in the late 1990s and early 2000s, respectively. All polycarbonate plastic, labeled as number 7 recyclable, contains BPA, but number 7 also includes other types of plastic that may be BPA-free.
Microwave
All food packaging, no matter what kind, will leach some material into the food it contains, according to an article in Chemical and Engineering News. The FDA actually certifies safety levels of compounds that may be expected to "migrate" into foods. Tests conducted and reported by the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel on Nov. 15, 2008 found that a variety of "microwaveable" foods packaged in plastic, ranging from frozen food trays to plastic baby food packaging leached BPA into foods at levels documented to cause "neurological and developmental damage in laboratory animals." The containers leaching BPA included plastic numbers 1, 2, 5, and 7. The article concludes that if you want to avoid BPA, avoid microwaving food with plastic. In 2008, University of Cincinnati researchers also documented that contact with boiling water can cause polycarbonate drinking bottles to release up to 55 times the level of BPA compared with similar bottles exposed to tap water.
Polyethylene Terephthalate
PET, or polyethylene terephthalate, is the plastic labeled number 1 for recycling purposes and is also the plastic of choice for the burgeoning bottled water industry. Many environmental organizations have stepped up campaigns against bottled drinking water for a number of reasons. First, most bottled water is not superior in quality to tap water. Second, the expanding market means an increased demand for petroleum and all of its attendant economic, environmental and geopolitical hazards. Finally, Discover Channel reported in 2009 that German researchers had found some PET bottles may leach other, as yet unknown, hormone-disrupting chemicals.
Environment
The dangers of plastic containers to humans are magnified once they enter the environment. The same chemicals that can leach into human food, can leak into the soil, waterways and oceans when they are discarded, and according to the EPA "releases of BPA to the environment exceed 1 million pounds per year." According to the nonprofit Plastic Debris Rivers to Sea, up to 80 percent of ocean pollution is plastics. Plastics do not decompose into their constituent elements, rather they tend to break into smaller and smaller bits. The Algalita Marine Research Foundation tells the story of how, in the 1990s, researchers discovered a vast garbage patch of floating refuse in the Pacific Ocean. Additional garbage patches have been discovered since, where the weight of suspended plastic particles is six times greater than the weight of zooplankton, the base of the marine food chain. According to Algalita's video, "Synthetic Sea," a 2001 Japanese study has found that the small plastics in the ocean ingested by marine animals also tend to bind with toxins such as PCB, concentrating them up to one million times and thereby posing an even greater threat to marine animals.
