As my final blog I wanted to focus on how it effected my life, this project. Almost naturally we’ve given up nearly all of our household canned foods. In fact I came across this fascinating chart on canned foods, I wished I had found it earlier so to include on my poster
I had a lot of people ask me about safe allowances of BPA found in foods. It really hasn’t been that extensively studied, but it’s measured in parts per billion…. which is just saying it’s always going to be small. But even small amounts over long periods of time can be dangerous.
One thing I wanted to make clear was that there were environmental effects to this. BPA can leach into soils, groundwater, and even be found in the air! It’s literally all around us. This means it has effects on fish, amphibians, invertebrates, mammals… life forms other than us. And similar effects as well, as a fake estrogen it’s disrupting the life cycles of all sorts of organisms.
Add to this that these plastics are notoriously difficult to recycle and you’ve got suddenly an entire landfill leaching toxic plastic chemicals into our environments! It really is a curious thought why companies even use this type of plastic at all. If it has harmful biological effects, and can’t be recycled in plastics. Where is the value in such a destructive product?
Well the value is that it’s cheap. And large companies only care about the profits. An unfortunate side of big business is a lack of care.
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May 7, 2010 at 12:28 pm
55helen55
wow that is just horrible! I really don’t do can foods very well, I actually today was trying to see what can food I do have in my cabinets to put out for tomorrow so the post office can get it and I just found 3…. that I myself did not buy, but the fact that this type of plastic is everywhere its horrible, I mean if I am not buying this particular product, I am still getting the effects.
I also agree I don’t understand why companies use this, especially if they know what it can do to us and just the earth itself. Is like seriously what do they expect when it gets to a point that it becomes an issue… is that the only way they will stop?!
Thanks for the graph, I will show it and tell my family and friends about it!
May 7, 2010 at 3:17 pm
rachweber
Again, such an interesting topic and I’m glad that you have been able to educate others (myself included) about this topic.
May 7, 2010 at 3:41 pm
shotbaker
Too True!! It is an interesting world we live in where companies only care about profit to please their shareholders and no longer about the consumer. The person who buys and uses the product!! I thought we lived in a CONSUMER based economy. I honestly don’t know though what could be done to make sure that BPAs are no longer used.
May 7, 2010 at 7:28 pm
starvingbrain
Too true… living in a consumer based economy, yeah right. LOL. I don’t know what could be done to make sure they aren’t used either. It’s really opened my eyes to chemicals and profit margins.
There is the old adage “you’ve got to break a few eggs to make an omelet”. There is even this idea that so many lives are acceptable as a loss in deciding speed limits. Speed v. Safety.
So in that respect I guess it’s really about thinking like a corporation and how some evils are necessary for a greater “good”…. but when that greater good is increased profits it just shows how messed up our values are.