OMNIPOTENCE OF PLASTICS-NEW FINDINGS WITH UNCERTAIN RAMIFICATIONS!

It is no wonder that modern society is called a "plastic society" because of the omnipotence of plastics in all walks of life and practically every day the exposure is continuous and substantial. While use of these synthetic plastics in non-food applications may not pose very serious health challenges, the so called food grade plastic wrappers and other materials coming in contact with food are never considered absolutely safe. The protocols of testing plastics and standards and specifications in place in many countries give one a false sense of security while using plastics, though there is nothing in the world that can be considered absolutely safe. After all life is a fine balance between risks and benefits one must face to live comfortably. It is against this background that a new finding released recently in the US raises serious concerns about plastics continued use, indicating an urgent need to moderate the exposure through substantially reduced exposure.

"In a study published last year in the journal Environmental Health Perspectives, researchers put five San Francisco families on a three-day diet of food that hadn't been in contact with plastic. When they compared urine samples before and after the diet, the scientists were stunned to see what a difference a few days could make: The participants' levels of bisphenol A (BPA), which is used to harden polycarbonate plastic, plunged — by two-thirds, on average — while those of the phthalate DEHP, which imparts flexibility to plastics, dropped by more than half. The findings seemed to confirm what many experts suspected: Plastic food packaging is a major source of these potentially harmful chemicals, which most Americans harbor in their bodies. Other studies have shown phthalates (pronounced THAL-ates) passing into food from processing equipment and food-prep gloves, gaskets and seals on nonplastic containers, inks used on labels — which can permeate packaging — and even the plastic film used in agriculture. The government has long known that tiny amounts of chemicals used to make plastics can sometimes migrate into food. The Food and Drug Administration regulates these migrants as "indirect food additives" and has approved more than 3,000 such chemicals for use in food-contact applications since 1958. It judges safety based on models that estimate how much of a given substance might end up on someone's dinner plate. If the concentration is low enough (and when these substances occur in food, it is almost always in trace amounts), further safety testing isn't required. Meanwhile, scientists are beginning to piece together data about the ubiquity of chemicals in the food supply and the cumulative impact of chemicals at minute doses. What they're finding has some health advocates worried. This is "a huge issue, and no [regulator] is paying attention," says Janet Nudelman, program and policy director at the Breast Cancer Fund, a nonprofit that focuses on the environmental causes of the disease. "It doesn't make sense to regulate the safety of food and then put the food in an unsafe package." How common are these chemicals? Researchers have found traces of styrene, a likely carcinogen, in instant noodles sold in polystyrene cups. They've detected nonylphenol — an estrogen-mimicking chemical produced by the breakdown of antioxidants used in plastics — in apple juice and baby formula. They've found traces of other hormone-disrupting chemicals in various foods: fire retardants in butter, Teflon components in microwave popcorn, and dibutyltin — a heat stabilizer for polyvinyl chloride — in beer, margarine, mayonnaise, processed cheese and wine. They've found unidentified estrogenic substances leaching from plastic water bottles. Finding out which chemicals might have seeped into your groceries is nearly impossible, given the limited information collected and disclosed by regulators, the scientific challenges of this research and the secrecy of the food and packaging industries, which view their components as proprietary information. Although scientists are learning more about the pathways of these substances — and their potential effect on health — there is an enormous debate among scientists, policymakers and industry experts about what levels are safe. The issue is complicated by questions about cumulative exposure, as Americans come into contact with multiple chemical-leaching products every day. Those questions are still unresolved, says Linda Birnbaum, director of the National Institute of Environmental Health Science, part of the National Institutes of Health. Still, she said, "we do know that if chemicals act by the same pathway that they will act in an additive manner" — meaning that a variety of chemicals ingested separately in very small doses may act on certain organ systems or tissues as if they were a single cumulative dose. The American Chemistry Council says there is no cause for concern. "All materials intended for contact with food must meet stringent FDA safety requirements before they are allowed on the market," spokeswoman Kathryn Murray St. John says. "Scientific experts review the full weight of all the evidence when making such safety determinations." When it comes to food packaging and processing, among the most frequently studied agents are phthalates, a family of chemicals used in lubricants and solvents and to make polyvinyl chloride pliable. (PVC is used throughout the food processing and packaging industries for such things as tubing, conveyor belts, food-prep gloves and packaging.) Because they are not chemically bonded to the plastic, phthalates can escape fairly easily. Some appear to do little harm, but animal studies and human epidemiological studies suggest that one phthalate, called DEHP, can interfere with testosterone during development. Studies have associated low-dose exposure to the chemical with male reproductive disorders, thyroid dysfunction and subtle behavioral changes. But measuring the amount of phthalates that end up in food is notoriously difficult. Because these chemicals are ubiquitous, they contaminate equipment in even purportedly sterile labs. In the first study of its kind in the United States, Kurunthachalam Kannan, a chemist at the New York State Department of Health, and Arnold Schecter, an environmental health specialist at the University of Texas Health Science Center, have devised a protocol to analyze 72 different grocery items for phthalates".

If the above report is rubbished as is the usual practice one can feel pity for the inhabitants of this planet! While individual chemicals that are found in foods leached out from the containers may be relatively safe as per prevalent assessment protocols, what about their cumulative intake and long term effect on human body? Honestly no body knows. It is true that having come to the present situation banning all plastics totally through government policy is not a feasible alternative but every step needed to be taken to reduce the exposure must be considered. Voluntary shunning of these materials may be desirable but number of votaries for such an approach may not be many. As for industry a world without plastics is unthinkable. Recent reports that in the UK families are spending more to buy gasoline than that spent on food must come as a rude shock and reveals the mindset of people about the relative priority between cozy transportation and healthy food! Probably these ominous trends must galvanize the world community regarding the urgent need for deploying safer alternatives to unsafe fossil fuel based synthetic plastics. There are many alternatives already developed but it needs tremendous courage, far vision, sagacity and missionary zeal to bring about a change in this field.    

V.H.POTTY
http://vhpotty.blogspot.com/
http://foodtechupdates.blogspot.com