How Plastic We've Become   
Our bodies carry residues of kitchen plastics
By Janet Raloff

In the 1967 film classic The Graduate, a businessman corners Benjamin Braddock at a cocktail party and gives him a bit of career advice. "Just one word…plastics."

Although Benjamin didn't heed that recommendation, plenty of other young graduates did. Today, the planet is awash in products spawned by the plastics industry. Residues of plastics have become ubiquitous in the environment—and in our bodies.

A federal government study now reports that bisphenol A (BPA)—the building block of one of the most widely used plastics—laces the bodies of the vast majority of U.S. residents young and old.

Manufacturers link BPA molecules into long chains, called polymers, to make polycarbonate plastics. All of those clear, brittle plastics used in baby bottles, food ware, and small kitchen appliances (like food-processor bowls) are made from polycarbonates. BPA-based resins also line the interiors of most food, beer, and soft-drink cans. With use and heating, polycarbonates can break down, leaching BPA into the materials they contact. Such as foods.

And that could be bad if what happens in laboratory animals also happens in people, because studies in rodents show that BPA can trigger a host of harmful changes, from reproductive havoc to impaired blood-sugar control and obesity (SN: 9/29/07, p. 202).

For the new study, scientists analyzed urine from some 2,500 people who had been recruited between 2003 and 2004 for the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES). Roughly 92 percent of the individuals hosted measurable amounts of BPA, according to a report in the January Environmental Health Perspectives. It's the first study to measure the pollutant in a representative cross-section of the U.S. population.

Typically, only small traces of BPA turned up, concentrations of a few parts per billion in urine, note chemist Antonia M. Calafat and her colleagues at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. However, with hormone-mimicking agents like BPA, even tiny exposures can have notable impacts.

Overall, concentrations measured by Calafat's team were substantially higher than those that have triggered disease, birth defects, and more in exposed animals, notes Frederick S. vom Saal, a University of Missouri-Columbia biologist who has been probing the toxicology of BPA for more than 15 years.

The BPA industry describes things differently. Although Calafat's team reported urine concentrations of BPA, in fact they assayed a breakdown product—the compound by which BPA is excreted, notes Steven G. Hentges of the American Chemistry Council's Polycarbonate/BPA Global Group. As such, he argues, "this does not mean that BPA itself is present in the body or in urine."

On the other hand, few people have direct exposure to the breakdown product. Hentges' group estimates that the daily BPA intake needed to create urine concentrations reported by the CDC scientists should be in the neighborhood of 50 nanograms per kilogram of bodyweight—or one millionth of an amount at which "no adverse effects" were measured in multi-generation animal studies. In other words, Hentges says, this suggests "a very large margin of safety."

No way, counters vom Saal. If one applies the ratio of BPA intake to excreted values in hosts of published animal studies, concentrations just reported by CDC suggest that the daily intake of most Americans is actually closer to 100 micrograms (µg) per kilogram bodyweight, he says—or some 1,000-fold higher than the industry figure.

Clearly, there are big differences of opinion and interpretation. And a lot may rest on who's right.

Globally, chemical manufacturers produce an estimated 2.8 million tons of BPA each year. The material goes into a broad range of products, many used in and around the home. BPA also serves as the basis of dental sealants, which are resins applied to the teeth of children to protect their pearly whites from cavities (SN: 4/6/96, p. 214). The industry, therefore, has a strong economic interest in seeing that the market for BPA-based products doesn't become eroded by public concerns over the chemical.

And that could happen. About 2 years after a Japanese research team showed that BPA leached out of baby bottles and plastic food ware (see What's Coming Out of Baby's Bottle?), manufacturers of those consumer products voluntarily found BPA substitutes for use in food cans. Some 2 years after that, a different group of Japanese scientists measured concentrations of BPA residues in the urine of college students. About half of the samples came from before the switch, the rest from after the period when BPA was removed from food cans.

By comparing urine values from the two time periods, the researchers showed that BPA residues were much lower—down by at least 50 percent—after Japanese manufacturers had eliminated BPA from the lining of food cans.

Concludes vom Saal, in light of the new CDC data and a growing body of animal data implicating even low-dose BPA exposures with the potential to cause harm, "the most logical thing" for the United States to do would be to follow in Japan's footsteps and "get this stuff [BPA] out of our food."

Kids appear most exposed

Overall, men tend to have statistically lower concentrations of BPA than women, the NHANES data indicate. But the big difference, Calafat says, traces to age. "Children had higher concentrations than adolescents, and they in turn had higher levels than adults," she told Science News Online.

This decreasing body burden with older age "is something we have seen with some other nonpersistent chemicals," Calafat notes—such as phthalates, another class of plasticizers.

The spread between the average BPA concentration that her team measured in children 6 to 11 years old (4.5 µg/liter) and adults (2.5 µg/L) doesn't look like much, but proved reliably different.

The open question is why adults tended to excrete only 55 percent as much BPA. It could mean children have higher exposures, she posits, or perhaps that they break it down less efficiently. "We really need to do more research to be able to answer that question."

Read this article in it's entirety here: http://www.sciencenews.org:80/articles/20080202/food.asp

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Endocrine Toxicants can cause permanent damage to the reproductive systems of both men and women.

A man's sperm can be damaged genetically and be coated with the toxicant, and a woman's ovum can be damaged in the same way. An unborn child and those in subsequent generations may suffer because of these toxicants. Food in plastic containers, even the ones frozen dinners now come in contain chemicals that can be ingested with the food and could cause great problems for an unborn child and you. Meats and milk from the store contain rBGH. (Recombinant Bovine Growth Hormone). rBGH, is a hormone to increase milk production in cows. It causes mastitis requiring lots of antibiotics in cows that can be passed on to humans, which in turn, can create new incurable diseases.

The DNR, Inc. ENDOCRINE Toxicity Detox Regimen can help raise the body’s vitality and assist the body in expediting the extrication of endocrine toxicants thus, revitalizing the glands of the endocrine system so they perform more effectively and efficiently leaving the endocrine system with a well balanced cellular equilibrium.

Includes:

   2 105-END Body Soaks
   1 EVB-137EX
   1 END-SYSEX HBH Series Oral Liquid
   1 Brown Label EX Topical
   2 GLA-519EX Oral Supplements

Order Endocrine Detox PAK

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Suggested ENDOCRINE Toxicity Detox Regimen

Start by using EVB-137 water additive as directed on bottle.
Add 6-12 drops of GLA-519EX in 3 oz. water or juice and drink 3 times per day.
Take 1 teaspoon of END-SYS-EX in 1 oz. of water. Swish in mouth a while and swallow until 1 oz. is gone. Do this twice daily.  Please take it separate from the GLA-519EX, waiting 5 minutes in-between. 
After 3 days of above directions, you may now begin the Endocrine System Soak (105-END).  Soak for 30 minutes in warm water (not too hot) each Monday, Wednesday and Friday nights.  Take the weekend off.  Do this for 9 soaks, or as directed by your health professional. First 2 soaks add 4 oz. of 105-END to the bath water. Each soak thereafter add 8 oz. of 105-END to the bath water. If 4 oz. too much to start with, use 2 oz. until you can work up to 8 oz. per soak.
Use B111EX to balance yourself on the eight points before getting into the tub each soak night, and rebalance yourself with the B111EX after getting out of the tub.
As a maintenance program, consider soaking with 8 oz. of 105-END once per month.

After completing the Endocrine System Regimen, you may want to consider a follow-up regimen using the Nervous System Protocol. The DNR Information and Usage Guide can be used as a reference guide for all DNR products, protocols and regimens.

Nervous System Protocol:

Stress/Depression
Derived from St. John’s Wort and Ginseng with Valerian, Evening Primrose, Kava Kava and other major herbal remedies. Non-habit forming. ExStress users have expressed feelings of wellness, relaxation, happiness and ease under stressful situations.

ExStress (STR-525) 6 drops to 3 ounces of water 3 times per day.
Liquid Needle Brown Label Topical (B111) on your 8 points 3 times per day.
One week later, ExStress Body Soak (105-EXT).