Before you dismiss any of this, just read it through. I'm not convinced myself, and I don't intend to convince anyone of anything that I myself do not believe. Having said that, I think there are some interesting findings about the health and safety of plastics, some of which seem rather compelling, others not. What's right? I don't know. What's the bottom line? I don't know that either, but I'd like to find out.

There are many different forms of plastic, and they have different properties and behaviors. Plastics are divided into numbered groups (1 through 7) and should be marked somewhere. It's pretty likely that you could walk into your kitchen right now and find a dozen items that are stored in plastic containers, and each should be marked. Right this minute, I'm drinking a bottle of Ozarka water stored in a #1 plastic container. In general, the consensus is that #5 is considered safest, and #2 and #4 are ok. Group #7 is kinda sketchy, because it consists of plastics that are composites of multiple materials. Within that group you'll find polycarbonate plastics, a great example being a material called Lexan. Lexan is used for all kinds of things, including the molded panels on a Segway scooter, compact discs and DVDs, and Nalgene water bottles.

There's a growing rumble about the safety of using certain plastics to store food and drinks. The health risk is that some plastics slowly leach chemicals into the food or drinks stored within, and those chemicals should not be ingested by humans without risking health issues. What kind of health issues? Good question.

In the past few months I've heard more and more rumblings about the safety hazards of plastics (again, related to food consumption). Do a Google search and look through some of the results yourself. I read through several articles and repeatedly found referenes to this research paper published in the April 2003 issue of Current Biology.

There is increasing concern that exposure to man-made substances that mimic endogenous hormones may adversely affect mammalian reproduction. Although a variety of reproductive complications have been ascribed to compounds with androgenic or estrogenic properties, little attention has been directed at the potential consequences of such exposures to the genetic quality of the gamete. [excerpt from Bisphenol A Exposure Causes Meiotic Aneuploidy in the Female Mouse]

Summary: the lab crew accidentally discovered the relationship bewteen BPA and genetic abnormalities in mice. One of the lab workers washed the mouse cages using a harsh detergent, and suddenly the number of chromosomal abnormalities jumped from 1 or 2 percent up to 40 percent. Eventually, the researchers tracked the cause to the polycarbonate plastic cages, and they were able to replicate the same kinds of genetic effects (and with similar rates) by administering BPA directly.

So who's at risk?

A friend of mine developed a particular form of brain cancer that's linked to high estrogen levels. Again, one of the chemicals that is known to leach out of some forms of plastic is Bisphenol-A, which mimics the hormone estrogen. Consequently, plastic is one of the things he's added to his health watch list. Is he just being a health quack? You could probably answer that question yourself. First, we have to insert a tumor into your brain, then show you a good amount of credible evidence showing that estrogen is influencing the growth of that tumor and that plastics leach BPA (which mimics estrogen), and finally we wait and see whether you would take more notice of whether your food is stored in plastic containers.

Theo Colborn, author of Our Stolen Future, says pregnant women and newborns are most at risk for developmental problems from plastics because they have developing endocrine systems. Next in line would be young children, and then women who might get pregnant.

Like many things in modern life, it's difficult to distinguish valid health threats from nonsense. It's an established fact that Americans experience different (and sometimes significantly higher) rates of disease and health problems compared to people in other countries. While it's extremely difficult to produce an explanation for something like high rates of cancer in this country, it seems pretty reasonable to be suspicious of our environment and our way of life. Are plastics to be blamed? Who knows. Could you avoid plastics entirely if you wanted? Probably not - since they're everywhere, in case you haven't already looked. So what then? Keep reading, be aware, and make your own decisions rather than have them made for you.