Plastics make it possibleFollow

*nod nod*

That's the stuff. Or class of stuff, perhaps? In biological science endocrine disrupters are also known as xenohormones, (foreign hormones) particularly because they are chemicals that come from the outside environment into a human or animal body, and act on the hormone system, instead of being generated inside the human or animal body.

There are a lot of plants that are xenohormones too, but in general the plants that we eat that are xenohormones aren't as problematic. That is, we've been eating some xenohormonal plants for a very long time, and have had a stable pattern of pathology. In the last 60 years or so, there's been an enormous upswing of xenohormones released into the environment and used as consumer products from synthetic chemical/crude oil sources, which has coincided with a huge upswing in some pathologies. The correlation has made a lot of biological scientists very nervous, and there's been a lot of studies investigating causative links. So lobbyists are focusing on asking regulators to investigate and regulate xenohoromones/endocrine disrupters of synthetic/crude oil origin.

That kid is messed up. Everyone loves macaroni and cheese.

How often do you need to see this before you start believing me Damien?

I let you know you're an idiot. What's more to explain?

Ever tried explaining physics to a two year old? It's a waste of time.

It's a stupid comparison. Your comparing totally different things. Is it more risky to "DRIVE" your kid to the hospital when they're having trouble breathing or leave them in their safe room and off the streets?

Yes, there are more dangerous things than plastic to an individual growing up. In fact, you have to weigh the risk of getting cut on a glass bottle vs. a slight chance of a life-threatening disease/illness from a plastic bottle. But, there are easy, time-efficient and cost-effective ways to reduce the risk from harmful chemical exposure. There's no reason not to utilize them if you can. Also, there are manufacturing alternatives to biphenols and phthalates to make plastic do what we want.

Lastly it's a public health issue. A whole generation of peoples getting diseases from low-level chemical exposures and you now have a weakened, at-risk population, more costly and longer term healthcare issues and lowered mortality rates.

Getit.

Yes, because I'm SURE your opposing viewpoint on this subject is so solid, that I would have no way to understand it.

Why not just admit you don't like me for some reason, and keep it at that? You obviously have no actual rhetorical argument to back up what you're saying. You may not agree with my viewpoint, but that doesn't make it idiotic. In fact, just blindly saying I'm an idiot without anything to back it up is more idiotic than anything I said.

So, let me get this straight, you're saying that it's idiotic to believe that getting all riled up about plastic baby bottles is pretty redundant when the same people who worry about plastic baby bottles will subject their child to things far more dangerous anyway? Like driving in a car, or hell...breathing city air?

Please. If you disagree with my viewpoint, at least have the balls to back up your insults with..I dunno...reasons.



Or you can just hide behind the hackneyed "Oh, I would explain why, but you're too dumb to understand" argument that 11 year olds use.



Edited, Sep 18th 2008 12:25pm by DaimenKain

Well, they are a risk. That's why there are regulations on seat-belts, air-bags, stability, etc.

We don't just turn our heads away from safety concerns because there are other, perhaps greater, risks to a kid in a crib somewhere.

And of course I don't like you, I never denied that. But I have no idea who the hell you even are.

Nads, truly, you are all woman.


edited to add: And congrats on 10k!

Edited, Sep 18th 2008 4:31pm by Yanari

Some plastics ARE EDCs, some are not. There are a lot of concerned people now that think we should be systematically going through and testing materials for whether they are an EDC or not. This is not a consumer protection movement that has it's origins with "ordinary people". This is a lobbying movement by scientists who have been appalled by what their studies find, who have gone to politicians directly, and have also started trying to publicize their findings more directly to ordinary people, to start a broad-based public and consumer movement, to get some new government health-protective regulations. The book Our Stolen Future is part of the effort by some scientists to raise public awareness of the issue.

I first became aware of the EDC/Xenohormone issue about 10 years ago, listening to my radio station, where a scientist was being interviewed. I don't remember his name from this distance, but he was using the word xenohormone to describe something that he was concerned about. I wanted to find out more, the only thing I tracked down at the time was a book on reproductive health in women. Which was actually useful for me in other ways, but not totally informative about the whole EDC thing. I heard more about EDCs on the radio about a year later, I subsequently tracked down Our Stolen Future, which to this day has given me the most wide-ranging and in-depth knowledge that I have on the issue. I am of course, a layperson, having never done science past first-year uni electives. The issue barely turned up in the media in Australia, until the last two years there has been an explosion of hour-long documentaries on the issue, from Britain and America, as well as Australia. The subject also turns up more often than it used to on current affairs shows both on TV and radio. The documentaries and interviews that I have seen lately don't mention Our Stolen Future, or the authors of that book, but the science that they are presenting all still agrees what I read in that book, so it's still my major text for the subject.

Right at this moment, the issue looks pretty much exactly like the earlier stages of the "Smoking causes lung-cancer issue." In the 1930s and 1950s, scientists and cigarette company executives knew cigarettes caused lung cancer. But it took a long time for that knowledge to filter down to the public and the politicians, and for anything to done about it.

The good thing about this particular issue is that for every material that is an EDC, there's another material that can get the job done just as well, that isn't an EDC.

The way that one student scientist discovered the issue of EDCs is that suddenly ALL of her breast-cancer tissue samples for her Doctorate paper started growing in their plastic petri-dishes, regardless of whether she had added a strong oestrogen to the dishes or not. She was going mad trying to exclude everything from her lab, until she finally rang up the petri-dish manufacturer, and asked if they had changed the plastic they made their dishes out of, and which batch was the turn-over point? Sure enough the manufacturer had changed the plastic formula for the dishes, and the change-over coincided with her experiments going wrong and staying wrong. The old plastic dishes wouldn't automatically make breast tumor tissue grow in the presence of it, the new plastic would.

So we have an example here of one type of plastic that is hormonally active, and another plastic that is identical functionally for consumer use that is not hormonally active. We aren't going to have to outlaw or phase out all plastics, and all additives. We are just going to have to outlaw and phase out some of them.

Yes, it's likely to be a long process. That doesn't mean that it's not worth doing. Some EDCs are as fully catastrophic and/or long lasting in their adverse effects as lead-poisoning or Asbestos

In plastic related news, first we had bacteria that ate plastic, now we have bacteria that make plastic.