Strollerderby : plastic

Ban BPA? Manufacturers Cry Poverty

JeanneSager — Wed, 18 Mar 2009 13:26:00 GMT

You've got to love the recession - all of a sudden big manufacturers are worried about the poor. Worried their poor customers won't have the money to buy their products anyway.

As Suffolk County, New York tries to become the first county in the country to enforce a ban on Bisphenol-A (BPA) in children's products, manufacturers are crying poverty.

Force them to remove the reported carcinogen, and makers say they'll have to jack up their prices so high it will be bad for low-income parents and create problems for hospitals. Snort.

They do realize six of the largest baby bottle makers JUST announced they're going BPA free, right? It's obviously working for some companies . . . or at least six of them. Lobbying against the county, representatives of the plastic bottle and sippy cup makers asked lawmakers to point the bill toward EMPTY containers, freeing them up to fill bottles of formula sent to hospitals for newborn babies with lots of icky chemicals.

But, hey, they're helping poor people. They can sleep at night!

The Suffolk County Legislature voted unanimously in support of the ban on BPA earlier this month, and a set of state legislators are now working together to make a similar ban effective across New York.

Image: OhMyGov

Family Mounds Up 250 Pounds of Plastic in a Year

JeanneSager — Fri, 06 Mar 2009 22:06:00 GMT

All these "I did it for a year" people are starting to get to me.

They live the Bible for a year. They live on $1,500 for a year. They cook from the Julia Child cookbook for a year. Get ready to hear about one family, one year, two hundred fifty pounds of plastic (yes, this is where we start being REAL!).

The Garcias of Phoenix, Ariz. did everything they could to eliminate plastic from their lives. Jesse and Kim and their young kids skipped plastic bags at the supermarket and opted out on plastic water bottles.

Every piece of plastic that made their way into their house, they saved (where, I don't know - I get irate just dealing with a month's worth of yogurt cups and empty milk cartons waiting for the recycling truck to make its rounds). In the end, they had two hundred fifty pounds.

That's my three-year-old times eight! That's the more meat than you get from your average side of beef. It's disgusting. But not all that surprising (we fill an average of five milk crates with plastic recyclables each month. What's actually worst about all of this is that the Garcias were only able to recycle twenty five percent of the entire pile - the rest went into the landfill. And remember, this is a family trying to CUT BACK on plastics.

The problem is, not every "numbered" plastic is recycled in ever area. The "chasing arrows" at the bottom of a plastic container don't necessarily mean they're recyclable. And as the economy slumps, so does demand for recyclables - which means haulers don't want to take them off your hands.

Which means the only option is to do what the Garcias have done from the beginning - attempt to reduce consumption. But is it feasible? What percentage does plastic represent in your garbage can or your recycling bin?

Image: WasteRec

BPA More Ubiquitous and Tenacious than Previously Thought

Shannon LC Cate — Fri, 30 Jan 2009 23:04:00 GMT

Bisphenol A (BPA), a controversial chemical many scientists say contributes to a variety of health problems, has been used for years to harden plastics, like the plastic used in many baby bottles. You've probably heard the outcry among parents and seen the shift to "non-BPA" plastic bottles, glass bottles, stainless steel bottles and the like.

Now scientists say that either BPA is not eliminated from the body as quickly as its defenders have always claimed, or we are all exposed to much more of it than previously supposed. Researchers tested subjects by having them fast for various lengths of time and found that the BPA in participants' urine changed little from those who had recently eaten to those who had fasted for several hours.

Scientists speculate that tap water, house dust, and other sources may be causing a more constant level of exposure to the chemical. It is also possible that BPA lingers in the body long after exposure. It is, of course, most disturbingly possible that both are true.

This is a big problem because when the FDA ruled last year (to great protest from the scientific community) that BPA is safe enough not to ban, it based its conclusion on the idea that humans are exposed to only a tiny amount of BPA--far lower than lab animal testing suggested might be problematic. Now it looks like we are exposed to quite a bit more of it--or it builds up in our bodies--than we knew. It could be that a BPA pile-up in our bodies could reach those more dangerous levels.

As soon as I learned about BPA, I switched out my plastic baby bottles to glass, my plastic sippy cups to stainless steel, my plastic food containers to glass and I tossed all toys my kids chewed on that might contain it. But as a working mom with two small children and a mountain of laundry, house dust is far from my control, however fruitlessly I attempt to combat it. Here's hoping researchers find the answers about BPA soon, and do something to protect those of us with out of control dust bunnies.

For more on how we manage to accidentally poison our children, see:

Trace Mercury Found in High-Fructose Corn Syrup

Peanut Corporation of America Knowingly Sold Tainted Food

Peanut Allergies, Peanut Schmallergies?

Web Index of Recalled Peanut Butter Products

What Will Tainted Peanut Butter Really Do to Our Kids?

Peanut Butter Recall Expanded

Peanut Allergy Scare Overblown?

Morning News: Sunday Edition

Shannon LC Cate — Sun, 28 Dec 2008 14:30:00 GMT

Is Barack Obama secretly using modern parenting books for government leadership hints? Politico thinks so. The evidence? For one, Senator Claire McCaskill's comment that the Senate democrats decision not to strip Joe Lieberman of his chairmanship was a

“direct result of the tone [Obama] set...The old school was that you reward your friends and punish your enemies...But it’s a new day, and there is no reward and punishment going on.”

Politico likens this "tone" Alfie Kohn's parenting advice:

Alfie Kohn, whose book “Unconditional Parenting” is subtitled “Moving from Rewards and Punishments to Love and Reason” approves. Kohn says a “working with” approach in the political realm is “essentially more democratic” — particularly if it offers real choices, and not just the illusion of them."

Maybe the Catholic Church needs to consider its own "fathering" style. For want of local recruits, the Church in the United States has a growing stable of priests from abroad:

"One of six diocesan priests now serving in the United States came from abroad, according to “International Priests in America,” a large study published in 2006. About 300 international priests arrive to work here each year. Even in American seminaries, about a third of those studying for the priesthood are foreign-born."

Most of the places these priests end up working are, ironically, some of the most rural and isolated and the least exposed to outsiders. Having international priests, the New York Times suggests, has allowed some parochial parishoners to discover the world a bit:

"Kentucky Catholics who once did not know Nigeria from Uganda opened their eyes to the conditions in the countries their foreign priests came from — even raising $6,000 to install wells in the home village of a Nigerian priest serving in Owensboro."

The organization, Families of Flight 93 have asked still-president Bush to seize the land on which their loved ones died on 9-11, as the landowner has refused to sell it for a memorial. it's a tricky question for Bush, who, along with most republicans finds government seizure of private land abhorrent. But for this cause, how can he say no?

Finally, it's not breaking news, but it's worth reading: A mom who tries to stop using or buying plastic for a week. Here's an excerpt:

"Day 1:

  I use the shampoo bar, put my son in a paper diaper and talk up the new Hello Kitty stainless steel sippy cup that has replaced my daughter's mystery-plastic princess one. Smugness sets in as my girl swigs milk from Hello Kitty and my boy sucks on his rubber pacifier, content.   Then my 3-year-old wants breakfast. Everything we eat is wrapped in plastic except for bananas, oatmeal and salt. She wants none of these things. I feed her cereal out of a plastic bag with milk from a plastic jug."

Packaging SOS: How to Open Those Blister Packs

Miriam Axel-Lute — Thu, 25 Dec 2008 14:30:00 GMT

Merry Christmas! Or have you already progressed from merry to frustrated-plastic-package-opening warrior? It happens so fast...

Blister packaging has evolved from stupid to downright evil. Sealed shut with no breaches, too thick to rip even if you get a pair of scissors in there, as sharp as glass once you do start cutting . . . . I'm sure I'm not the only one who has severely injured myself trying to open these things. People get master's degrees in package design, and they come up with this?!

OK. Rant aside: The people at Wired, gadget fans that they are, have the answer, my friends: A can opener!

You're welcome. Now go back to making merry!

Photo by Papalars.

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When Wrap Rage Attacks

SunnyChanel — Mon, 22 Dec 2008 18:30:00 GMT

I hate kid’s Christmas presents. And I have the scars to prove it. Each year parents like me get cut, poked and mercilessly maimed by the sharp edges, slivered plastic and spiky wire twist ties that encase toys for our kids. Case in point, someone recently gave my daughter the My Little Pony Ponyville Sweet Sundae Amusement Park (yeah, it was a gift…what can you do), I spent more time attempting to unleash this beast from the packaging than my child spent playing with it. When you have to spend that much time, employ tools like scissors and pliers and actually shed not only sweat but blood in attempting to open the plethora of packaging, you know something is very very wrong.

One company heard the cries of the package openers across this great land and has launched an initiative that is "designed to alleviate "wrap rage", a very noble cause indeed. Amazon.com is stocking a selection of gifts that they deliver which are free of the hard plastic, plastic bindings and wire ties and are instead simply packaged in a recyclable box. They call it The Amazon Frustration Free™ Packaging. They even have a website called the Gallery of Wrap Rage where people post their pictures and videos of cuts, scraps and crying babies, all victims of excess packaging.

Let’s hope this trend continues. I’d really like to see clam shells only on the dinner table and never again under the tree.

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Crafty: Shrinky Dink Your Christmas Tree

JeanneSager — Wed, 03 Dec 2008 18:36:00 GMT

If you're not one of those "everything has to match" holiday tree people, you're my kind of parent. The more nursery school Santas and one-eyed reindeer the better in my book.

With the economy, well. . . you know what the economy is like . . . this year we'll be decorating the tree in a way that's both nostalgic AND futuristic. Think shrinky dinks (remember those?) from recycled plastic.

Instead of picking up the sheets of shrinkable plastic from a retro toy store online, rescue clear #6 plastic from your recycling bin (it's usually in the form of those single-serve take-out boxes from restaurants, salad bar containers or those the grocery stores use to store strawberries and blueberries).

Cut off the excess plastic so you have a flat sheet to work on, pour out a pile of markers and let them have at. Have your cookie cutters out to make holiday cookies? Trace around them, and let them add their embellishments. Let them write out a holiday message . . . whatever. Then cut around the picture. Make sure you cut a small hole near the topto later slip a string through to hang the ornament on your tree.

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees, and drop the rack to the lowest spot it can go in the oven. Create a "tray" out of aluminum foil, and place the kids' plastic pictures across it - just make sure you keep the pieces spaced an inch apart.

The plastic will start to get wavy in the oven, but it will flatten out, shrinking to about one third of the original size and nine times the original thickness. For a piece that's about six inches across, cooking time is about three and a half minutes - a little less for smaller pictures. You can keep an eye on the plastic through the oven door and take it out after it's finished the shrinking process and flattened out. Remove carefully (using tongs) - when the plastic is still hot, it is still relatively pliable.

Stick your string through after the "ornament" is cool, and commence decorating.

Image: Playlibrary

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How to Avoid #3 Plastic (That's PVC) in Everything

Miriam Axel-Lute — Thu, 27 Nov 2008 21:00:00 GMT

There are lots of reasons to dislike PVC, also known as #3 plastic or just "vinyl." Its production uses more mercury than nearly any other industry. When it's made or incinerated it creates dioxins, some of the nastiest of the nasty toxics. It's full of icky, bad-for-you additives like phthalates (that's "thay-lates" if you want to sound knowledgable when arguing with retail clerks) that can leach out. The list goes on...

The creepy thing is, it's everywhere. It's the covering on most waterproof "chewable" baby books. It's in some pacifiers. It's the frame of most new windows and all new "linoleum" floors. It covers three-ring binders and shows up in raingear and shower curtains and some disposable silverware and dozens of other common items. Not to mention tons of packaging.

Frankly, this sounds to me like a stellar case of why sometimes a little regulation is good. You could spend a full time job (and the pay from a part time one) seeking out and getting rid of all the PVC in your life. Not an efficient allocation of resources, in my book. Much better that we collectively decide this is something we don't want in our air, homes, landfills, or kid's bodies.

But in the meantime if you want to find PVC-free alternatives in at least some areas of your life (say, the stuff entering your baby's mouth or your own), or at least not add any more during the holiday season, the good folks at Center for Environmental Health and Justice are here to help with their Pass Up the Poison Plastic guide. The guide explains how to identify PVC and where it often shows up and offers a list of manufacturers of PVC-free versions of key items.

You may not be up for suggestions like "Call the manufacturer's 800 number if you can't tell from the labeling whether the packaging on a product has PVC or not" (though kudos to you if you are. I'm sure it will help get the stuff phased out), but surely anyone with a baby at least wants the list of safe pacifiers.

Picture of PVC pipes by Groupe Aménagement Numérique des Territoires, via Flickr.

They Say: "Microwave Safe" Ain't

Miriam Axel-Lute — Mon, 17 Nov 2008 17:00:00 GMT

If you're the type to be suspicious of chemicals and corporations, and especially their mixture, this will likely not surprise you:

A team of investigative journalists from the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel did one of those surprisingly simple things that we love real, honest-to-god investigative journalists for: an experiment. Specifically, they took 10 items marked with the comforting phrase "microwave safe" that were likely to be ingested by children or used for children's food (several were actually baby food, one was formula), heated them (in both a microwave and an oven), and had the contents tested for bisphenol-A (BPA).

(If you've been under a rock, BPA is the hormone-like substance that everyone from the Canadian government to Wal-Mart have been all freaked out about getting out of baby bottles recently, on account of it's been shown to do nasty things to neurological development and also cause pre-cancerous changes to mammary glands and other fun stuff at super low levels.)

I think you can tell where this is headed: All of the food had levels of BPA that were shown in lab tests to be problematic. The food in the Rubbermaid all-purpose container and the infant formula had the highest levels. So much for worrying about the bottles themselves. The article estimates how much an average kid might be ingesting per day, and it ain't pretty.

The manufacturers' response, of course, is to say it's just a tiny amount and won't hurt you. The FDA says "What they said" and goes back to buffing up an 8-year-old resume. There are (prepare to be shocked now) apparently no standards whatsoever behind the designation "microwave safe." If the container doesn't blow up, which would presumably generate complaints if not any regulatory action, then it can be labeled zappable.

This was one of those stories I almost didn't read, because I am (1) predisposed by my environmental studies background to be veeeerrrry skeptical of claims that strange chemicals are harmless and (2) completely and utterly dependent on my microwave. I'm sure as hell not going to put a pan on the stove every time I need to heat up a quarter cup of frozen peas or leftover lentil soup for my daughter.

I had been comforting myself with the vapid mneumonic that Real Money readers came up with a while back about the better and worse plastics ("1, 2, 4, 5 will keep you alive; 3, 6, 7 will send you straight to heaven." Yes, I am embarrassed that I remember it), but the infuriatingly thorough MSJ notes that BSA was leaching from no.s 1, 2, and 5 as well. Great.

I guess this is where I consider dropping the plastic bowls when microwaving is needed and hoping my toddler doesn't shatter enough of our motley assortment of ceramic ones to constitute its own safety hazard. The plastic is still going in the dishwasher though. I know my limits.

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Back to School for the Plastics Paranoid

Miriam Axel-Lute — Mon, 08 Sep 2008 18:45:00 GMT

Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean half the things your kid touches aren't toxic. Sadly plenty of them are, or might be. If you're still trying to sort out the question of BPA in bottles for your infant, you may just want want to bookmark this one for future reference: Center for Environmental Health and Justice's list of PVC-free school supplies. (Note to self: Since when is a cell phone considered a school supply? Aren't they banned in most schools?)

Photo by the prodigal untitled13

Budget Baby: Cooking It Up Yourself

Amy Kuras — Tue, 05 Aug 2008 20:02:00 GMT

When my daughter was born, I had high minded ideals of making all her food. I love to cook, after all, and am pretty good at it. I own both a food processor and a blender (and a potato masher, for that matter).

Then reality hit, and I was too busy, exhausted, and quite frankly apathetic to steam carrots forever, or figure out how to strain all the little pea skins out of peas, or whatever. And quite frankly, while I am a good cook I am a recipe cook –I can make just about anyting well, if someone tells me how to do it. Leave me to my own devices and who knows what might come out of my kitchen.

But since my girl graduated to "people food" I've gotten a lot more green and concerned out all that plastic and the carbon footprint of those little jars and tubs -- and it still irks me to pay 50 cents for what is probably the teeniest slice of raw squash.

Now I have another little eater-in-training, and made my first visit to the baby food aisle in a long time in preparation this week. Still expensive, still in little tubs. So I came upon this nice little article with recipes for baby food with great joy. It includes a recipe for chicken puree, which makes me so happy because those little jars of pureed meat were just nasty beyond belief.

I know from what I was able to make before that a few bucks and about an hour will make food for weeks. Now that I have an idea of what to do, I think I am up for it again, since I love the idea of knowing exactly what goes into my baby's food.

What are your ideas for baby food? What are some of your best sources for tips and ideas?

Crafty: Fun with To-Go Containers

Adrienne Martini — Mon, 14 Jul 2008 13:00:00 GMT

If your kitchen is like mine, there is an avalanche of plastic to-go containers every time you open certain cabinets, this is the craft for you. If you are a far more organized or don't do takeout, well, it's still a pretty cool project.

It turns out you can use #6 plastic for shrinky dinks. My love of shrinky dinks knows few boundaries and the discovery that I can combine them and recycling is nothing short of life changing.

You may have more going on in your life, which means you might only find this craft neat. Still, neat is better than nothing, especially on a rainy July day when all you have in your house are bored kids, sharpies and superfluous plastic containers.

Photo credit: Dot

Fear of plastic + timing = big bucks

Brett Singer — Sun, 08 Jun 2008 14:30:00 GMT

Interesting article over on Forbes.com about the BornFree people. Turns out they not only make the bottles, they help make sure that people know how dangerous the BPA-filled versions are.

Apparently, when BornFree began back in 2006, very few people cared about BPA. So what does a dadpreneur (that's a dad entepreneur – see how dumb it sounds?) do? Make sure that everyone knows how bad plastic is. According to Forbes, BornFree's President Ron Vigdor "sometimes exaggerates when comparing bisphenol A-free bottles to polycarbonate versions. 'One is with arsenic, one without. Which one would you like to buy?'"

So what's wrong with that?

It makes me wonder how many supposedly dangerous things are the result of hype rather than fact. I'm not saying BPA-free bottles are a bad thing, or that Bisphenol-A isn't harmful. I have no idea. I'm not taking a side, and if people would rather use BPA-free bottles, I think it's great that they have the opportunity to do so. But think about it this way: if you have a product that you think meets a need, and nobody seems to care, how far do you go to create that need? Are you doing the world a favor or just making a quick buck? Or both? Does anyone have a problem with that? How many question marks can I use in a single post?

image: Amazon.com

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The Poison Bottle: Canada and Walmart Take BPA Off Market

Cole Gamble — Wed, 23 Apr 2008 16:00:00 GMT

Thanks to Canada’s proposed ban on plastic baby bottles with the chemical BPA, Walmart stores have announced they look to have such bottles free from their stores by next year.

Playtex, manufacturer of baby bottles, has also jumped aboard the anti-BPA bandwagon, announcing the company will discontinue BPA products by years end.

BPA, or bisphenol A, is a common plastic component found in dental sealants, baby bottles, the liners of food cans, CDs and DVDs, eyeglasses, water bottles and hundreds of household goods. If you are not familiar with the possible dangers of BPA, check out Amy’s or Madeline's post. Among the concerns over BPA addressed in a recent report from the U.S. government's National Toxicology Program are changes in behavior and the brain, early puberty and possibly precancerous changes in the prostate and breast.

While the National Toxicology Program’s findings have found the evidence of BPA damage in animal tests to be “limited” this report states the possible effects on humans “cannot be dismissed.”

Evidence of BPA’s dangers has been around for a while, but this is the first major government initiative to get them out of circulation. How about you, have you been BPA free for a while or is this all news to you?

On a complete unrealted note, take a look at thebaby picture in this post. Are those infant's ears pierced? Who does that?

Photo: www.growingkids.co.uk

Yeah, Save the Babies, But What About Environmental Hazards For Moms?

Kelly Mills — Tue, 05 Feb 2008 13:31:00 GMT

I will admit that I did not go fully organic until I was pregnant, and all of the sudden became more conscious of the fact that what I put in my body went directly to the fetus I was boarding. Being a host made me care more about environmental hazards, because it wasn't just my health I was worried about anymore. And this is part of the point one writer makes when she calls attention to crap like phtalates in common products like cosmetics.

She points to a small sample study of umbilical cord blood that found, "an average of 287 contaminants in their cord blood, including mercury, fire retardants, pesticides, phtalates and Teflon's PFOA chemical." And 180 of those contaminants cause cancer. Now, there were only ten samples, which isn't a nice big size for a study, but it certainly makes my eyebrows rise. While it's great to recall toys and set up organic nurseries, if we just pass on toxins to our babies through our own exposures, there's trouble. And, um, we might want to care about the actual health of moms and other adults as well, even if children make our concerns feel more imperative. Careful with that mommy makeover.

Can the Formula: Canned Baby Formula Contains Chemicals

Karen Murphy — Thu, 06 Dec 2007 13:27:00 GMT

Remember BPA? It wasn't long ago that people were all up in arms about it: Bisphenol-A, found in plastics like polycarbonate baby bottles, has been found to cause all sorts of bad stuff that you want your baby to avoid, so much so that you're now using glass bottles or expensiver BPA-free bottles, right? Too bad what's going in them, namely canned ready-to-feed baby formula, ALSO contains BPA.

Screwed by the FDA, the BPA-baby way!

Yes, a non-profit advocacy and research organization called the Environmental Working Group has conducted tests of several leading-name canned baby formulas (concentrated and "straight" versions) and has found them to contain BPA. (Their report, released yesterday, can be found here.) But when confronted with this information, the FDA claims yes, it's true that the inner coating on the cans contains BPA, but that it's at levels considered "safe."

So why am I uncomfortable with this? After all, there seems little disagreement that the BPA in the bottles was potentially harmful, so why would it suddenly be safe in cans? So, cancer-causing nasty chemicals are bad, but a little is okay? And who decides how much is okay? After all, there haven't been a lot of trials on humans up to this point. Anyone want to donate their baby for experimental purposes? No? I thought not.

There are going to be people who helpfully suggest, "You could always go back in time and breastfeed instead of giving your baby formula!" so I'll just clear that one away now, m'kay?

So, breastfeeding people, play nice.

And formula people, you might want to look into other-than-canned formula. And if you're one of those who fed your kid canned formula, take a deep breath, hug your kid, and remember that we're all exposed to cancer-causing agents practically all the time, and sometimes we can only rely on the information we have. So no kicking yourself, 'kay?

Photo: thedoctorcooks.com