The Mushroom That Eats Plastic
Is this the answer to the ever-growing plastic scourge on our planet? From co.exist:
The Amazon is home to more species than almost anywhere else on earth. One of them, carried home recently by a group from Yale University, appears to be quite happy eating plastic in airless landfills.
The group of students, part of Yale’s annual Rainforest Expedition and Laboratory with molecular biochemistry professor Scott Strobel, ventured to the jungles of Ecuador. The mission was to allow “students to experience the scientific inquiry process in a comprehensive and creative way.” The group searched for plants, and then cultured the microorganisms within the plant tissue. As it turns out, they brought back a fungus new to science with a voracious appetite for a global waste problem: polyurethane.
The common plastic is used for everything from garden hoses to shoes and truck seats. Once it gets into the trash stream, it persists for generations.…
Exposure to BPA Before Birth Linked to Behavioral, Emotional Difficulties in Girls
Via ScienceDaily:
Exposure in the womb to bisphenol A (BPA) — a chemical used to make plastic containers and other consumer goods — is associated with behavior and emotional problems in young girls, according to a study led by researchers at Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH), Cincinnati Children’s Hospital and Medical Center, and Simon Fraser University in Vancouver, British Columbia.
BPA is found in many consumer products, including canned food linings, polycarbonate plastics, dental sealants, and some receipts made from thermal paper. Most people living in industrialized nations are exposed to BPA. BPA has been shown to interfere with normal development in animals and has been linked with cardiovascular disease and diabetes in people. In a 2009 study, HSPH researchers showed that drinking from polycarbonate bottles increased the level of urinary BPA.
In this study, published Oct. 24, 2011, in an advance online edition of Pediatrics, lead author Joe Braun, research fellow…
A Continent Made Of Plastics
Taken from a 1940 issue of Fortune, a rendering of a map of an imaginary future continent, ‘Synthetica’, composed of synthetic materials and plastic debris. This is our magical future. Via Strange Maps:
“On this broad but synthetic continent of plastics, the countries march right out of the natural world – that wild area of firs and rubber plantations, upper left – into the illimitable world of the molecule. It’s a world boxed only by the cardinal points of the chemical compass – carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen. Rayon is a plastic island off the Cellulose coast, with a glittering night life.”
Styrene Plates, Cups Found To Cause Cancer
Styrene 3D Balls
The only surprise here is that after years of delaying tactics by the plastics and chemical industries, the U.S. Government finally decided to tell its citizens that two very common compounds – styrene and formaldehyde – are carginogens. Rob Stein reports for the Washington Post:
Styrene, which is used to make those ubiquitous white foam coffee cups, food containers and many other products, is probably a human carcinogen, the federal government declared Friday.
The declaration came in the government’s latest update of its official list of known or possible carcinogens. It categorized formaldehyde, a chemical widely used to make many products, and a family of substances found in some herbal remedies as known carcinogens.
Officials stressed that the listings do not mean that any exposure to the substances will cause cancer. Instead, it means that the latest scientific evidence indicates that the agents can cause cancer in some people exposed to…
Pepsi Unveils Plastic Bottle Made Entirely From Plants
Pepsi is trumpeting its creation of a plastic bottle made entirely from plant matter. Great — now we’ll be filling our landfills with plastic forever, even after we run out of oil. Via Gizmodo:
Soda’s bad for you, but plastics—especially the petroleum-based PET plastics used widely for bottles—are bad for everyone. Thankfully, after millions of dollars and years of research, Pepsi thinks it’s cracked the code on a 100% plant-based PET bottle.
It looks…just like the old bottle. “It’s indistinguishable,” says Rocco Papalia, PepsiCo’s senior vice president of advanced research. But instead of drawing from our planet’s diminishing supply of petroleum, it’s made entirely from plant waste—currently switch grass, pine bark, corn husks and eventually incorporating orange peels, oat hulls, potato scraps and other materials leftover from its food business.
Pepsi’s going to test the bottle with a run of a few hundred thousand in 2012, and if all goes well they plan…
Many More Plastics Found To Leach Chemicals
The truth of the matter is, plastics are poisonous. Just giving up bottles of water and their BPAs is not nearly enough to avoid the health risks from plastic products, according to new research. Jon Hamilton has part of the story for NPR (and I say part, because estrogenic chemicals are only part of the problem):
Most plastic products, from sippy cups to food wraps, can release chemicals that act like the sex hormone estrogen, according to a study in Environmental Health Perspectives.
The study found these chemicals even in products that didn’t contain BPA, a compound in certain plastics that’s been widely criticized because it mimics estrogen.
But it’s still unclear whether people are being harmed by BPA or any other so-called estrogenic chemicals in plastics. Most studies of health effects have been done in mice and rats.
The new study doesn’t look at health risks. It simply asks whether common plastic products release…
Plastic Bottles Can Ruin Your Sperm
For all you macho men who couldn’t give a crap about your carbon footprint, the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, and other problems associated with bottled water, maybe this will help you get off the bottle: BPAs, one of the toxins in plastic bottled water, can seriously lower your sperm count. Oh, and also BPAs can cause erectile dysfunction. Still want to drink from plastic bottles? From CNN:
Exposure to bisphenol-A (BPA), a controversial chemical found in hard, clear plastics, is thought to increase the risk of birth defects, early puberty, obesity, brain damage, and some forms of cancer.
Add another potential problem to the list: A new study of Chinese factory workers suggests that very high levels of BPA exposure may decrease sperm count and contribute to other sperm-related problems in men.
The findings aren’t surprising. BPA—which can be found in some baby bottles and water bottles, as well the linings of food…
Canada Declares BPA Toxic. Is the U.S. Next?
3D chemical structure of bisphenol A. Author: Edgar181
Bryan Walsh writing for the Ecocentric Blog at Time Magazine:
It’s used almost everywhere. It’s in almost all of us. It does weird things to rodents and it may be doing weird things to us—but it’s tough to be certain. Bisphenol-A (BPA) has become a litmus test for how people view environmental health and the risks of common household chemicals—as I wrote in a long story for TIME earlier this year. The chemical has countless industrial uses, most often in the epoxy liner of cans and in plastic bottles. But BPA is also an endocrine disruptor, meaning that it has the capacity to mess with our hormones and potentially impact health—especially in developing fetuses—even at relatively low doses. (Because they can mimic hormones—which cause enormous changes in our bodies even at relatively low amounts—the dose-response relationship used to evaluate traditional toxins like lead may not work with…
Building Up The Immune System — In Plastic
Ira Flatow reports on NPR’s Science Friday Podcast:
Researchers have made plastic nanoparticles that can partially mimic the behavior of natural antibodies in the bloodstream of a living animal. Writing in the Journal of the American Chemical Society, they describe their experiment, in which they treated lab mice with synthetic polymer ‘antibodies’ to the compound melittin, the main toxin in bee venom. Antibody-treated mice had higher rates of survival than non-treated mice when injected with the melittin toxin.
Image, Above Right: Plastic antibodies, such as this cluster of particles viewed under a powerful microscope, may fight a wide range of human diseases, including viral infections and allergies. Credit: Kenneth Shea.
Finally A Plastic That We Can Feel Good About
If this becomes real, maybe we can stop feeling so guilty about all those plastic water bottles. That’s a big ‘if,’ though, so get off the bottle for now… Story from Popular Mechanics:
By year’s end, an Indiana company says it will be making plastic from algae, substituting up to half of the material normally derived from fossil fuels with biomass from the aquatic plants, and selling the product to manufacturers.
As the bioplastics industry surges, a search for alternative feedstocks led Cereplast CEO Frederic Scheer and his colleagues to algae, which he says is close enough to the starches the company already turns into plastics—like corn, wheat and tapioca—to go commercial after just 18 months of R&D. There’s just one hitch: getting enough of the green stuff to make it in quantity. Given a big enough source of algae, Scheer says, “we could have introduced this product probably last year.”
Algae has long…
When Water Bottles Kill
Last week I posted a story about Tapped filmmaker Stephanie Soechtig’s Get Off The Bottle tour. Stephanie and co-producer Sarah Olson came by the disinformation NYC offices and I asked her about her appearance on Fox Business Network’s John Stossel show the night before. I feared the worst after reading Stossel’s blog post in which he wrote: “On my FBN show, tonight at 8pm ET, I’ll confront director Stephanie Soechtig about the myths she’s pushing.”
Here’s the confrontation – who do you think comes out on top? My vote’s with Stephanie, although she didn’t have a chance to add information about some of the other problems of bottled water, such as the massive plastic garbage patches now floating in the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans.
Outlawing Bottled Water
For those paying attention, calls for removal of plastics from our food and water and elsewhere in our household and workplace environments have been getting a whole lot louder recently and will receive worldwide attention during World Water Week in September. For those who liked Annie Leonard’s Story of Stuff, she’s made a new film, The Story of Bottled Water:
The message is starting to go mainstream. TIME Magazine recently highlighted “The Perils of Plastic.” Here’s what they have to say about Bisphenol A (BPA), the type of plastic used to bottle water:
What It Is: A chemical used in plastic production
Found In: Water bottles, baby bottles, plastic wraps, food packaging
Health Hazards: The government’s National Toxicology Program has concluded that there is some concern about brain and behavioral effects…
People Eat Fish That Eat Fish That Eat Plastic
Why don’t we just start eating fish made out of plastic? Simplify the food chain. Eric S. Page writes on NBC San Diego:
Scientists exploring the Great Pacific Garbage Patch have made another disturbing discovery, according to a published report.
The UCSD scientists returned from their trip to the Northern Pacific in August, bringing back tales, pictures and more than 100 samples from a blob of degraded plastic that is reportedly the size of Texas or bigger.
Now, in addition to the large concentration of plastic, Scripps Institution of Oceanography researchers have determined some of the fish in the area are eating it. “We did indeed find some indisputable pieces of plastic in their guts,” Pete Davison, a Scripps graduate student dissecting the fish, told the voiceofsandiego.org.
Are There Really ‘Continents’ of Floating Garbage?
Map of the North Pacific Subtropical Convergence Zone (STCZ) within the North Pacific Gyre. Also the location of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. Source: NOAA
From Daily Galaxy [Disinfo editor's note: This story dates from Dec. 31, 2007 but appears still to be relevant. See also this report from 2008.]:
Since stories have started surfacing more recently, many have wondered, if the rumors are true. Are there really ‘continents’, or massive floating garbage patches residing in the pacific ocean? Apparently, the rumors are true, and these unsightly patches are reportedly killing marine life and releasing poisons that enter the human food chain, as well. However, before you start imagining a plastic version of Maui, keep in mind that these plastic patches certainly aren’t solid surfaced islands that you could build a house on! Ocean currents have collected massive amounts of garbage into a sort of plastic “soup” where countless bits of discarded plastic float…
FDA Says It’s Unable to Regulate BPA, Considered Hazardous Since the 1930s
Meg Kissinger reports in the Journal Sentinel:
U.S. Food and Drug Administration officials say they are powerless to regulate BPA, although they have declared the chemical to be a safety concern for fetuses, babies and young children.
A quirk in the rules allows BPA makers to skirt federal regulation.
“We may have to go after legislation to change it,” Joshua Sharfstein, the FDA’s principal deputy director, told the Journal Sentinel. The newspaper has been investigating the government’s lack of regulation regarding BPA for three years.
FDA officials announced Friday that they had reversed their position that bisphenol A is safe. The chemical, used to line most food and beverage cans, has been found in the urine of 93% of Americans tested.
The agency now considers BPA to be of some concern for effects on the brain, behavior and prostate glands of fetuses and the very young. Scientific studies have raised concerns about the chemical’s link…
Pervasive Plastics: Why the U.S. Needs New and Tighter Controls
John Wargo writes on Yale Environment 360:
Since 1950, plastics have quickly and quietly entered the lives and bodies of most people and ecosystems on the planet. In the United States alone, more than 100 billion pounds of resins are formed each year into food and beverage packaging, electronics, building products, furnishings, vehicles, toys, and medical devices. In 2007, the average American purchased more than 220 pounds of plastic, creating nearly $400 billion in sales.
It is now impossible to avoid exposure to plastics. They surround and pervade our homes, bodies, foods, and water supplies, from the plastic diapers and polyester pajamas worn by our children to the cars we drive and the frying pans in which we cook our food.
The ubiquitous nature of plastics is a significant factor in an unexpected side effect of 20th century prosperity — a change in the chemistry of the human body. Today, most individuals carry…
