The threat used to be that plastics were filling our landfills and polluting beaches and national parks. Everything from grocery bags and old toys to pop bottles and house siding were found everywhere.

Sailors reported acres of plastics floating out on the ocean - twine, bottles, rope, sheets, packaging, bags of all sizes, giant beds of trash drifting in the high seas. Pollution was the threat, and recycling our plastics was supposed to save us.

Even with recycling, plastics are still about 20 percent of everything going in our landfills. We are not yet fanatics about recycling, but fanaticism is what it will take. Fanatics, for example, reject the plastic packaging which makes up much of our garbage-- that's positive fanaticism.

Attention has shifted to plastic itself -- the chemicals used to make the plastic soft, pliable, and flame resistant. These chemicals in soft plastic toys, teething rings, bags, food containers, medical equipment, and plastic wrap, can damage our reproductive systems, male and female.

We ignore our oceans filling with garbage (while being emptied of fish), but threaten our reproductive capacity and we pay attention. DEHP, used to soften PVC, is now a reproductive toxin in California. It has been shown to affect male reproductive tracts during fetal-to-toddler stages of development. Health Canada has warned about its possible dangers.

PVCs are used to make plastic wrap, but their chemicals can leach out, especially with heat. Heating food in plastic wrap in a microwave is asking for trouble. Researchers advise using polyethylene wrap (not PVC plastic wrap), but they favour glass or micowave-safe crockery even more.

A growing dangers are plastic bottles which researchers have found leach their chemical additives into what we are drinking. Plastic bottles and containers have a number code within a triangle on the bottle's base.

Bottles with a 2, 4 or 5 rating are the safest, but are not common.

Ordinary water bottles are ranked 1 and tests show varying results; number 1 can leach DEHA and DEHP into the water, especially when these bottles are re-used or if they have sat on the shelf for over a year.

Re-useable bottles of hard, clear, or tinted plastic are a number 7, and are now seen as threats for leaching the endocrine-disrupting bisphenol-A. The longer these hard-plastic bottles are used, the easier they contaminate their contents with the estrogen-mimicking chemical which can cause defective cell division during early development.

We could end up drinking -- and paying extra for -- a chemical brew that can be more harmful than the chlorine or flouride of tap water.

If we ignore these dangers, watch for results to show up later that will require decisions of a different magnitude altogether.

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Copyright © 2007 Fred Ryan/Log Cabin Chronicles/03.07