Avoiding Plastic Lowers Your BPA Levels

by Nick
(Montreal)

It’s good to see some research has been done to make a direct connection between the plastics we use each day, and the levels of chemicals in our bodies.

A study by the Silent Spring Institute demonstrates that avoiding plastics will reduce the amount of BPA and phthalates in your body.

Here is an excerpt from an article about this which appears at Rodale.com.

"However, just how much of all those chemicals actually get from your food into your body has never really been clear. Today, researchers from the Silent Spring Institute, a nonprofit devoted to studying chemicals in our environment that have been linked to breast cancer, are releasing a study that, for the first time, looks at how much BPA and phthalates we actually ingest from foods wrapped in plastics. By putting families on a strict diet free of canned food (cans are lined with an epoxy resin made with BPA) and any foods wrapped, stored, or cooked in plastic, they were able to measure the exact reductions of those chemicals in people's bodies—and, not surprisingly, found that people who avoid packaged foods have fewer chemicals in their bodies."

Confirming the association between plastics and the levels of these chemicals in our bodies is an important step.

At some point, experts will agree on the exact levels of these chemicals that is deemed safe.

But that last step doesn’t bother me that much. Just to know that plastics are leaching endocrine disruptors into our bodies is enough. For me, it’s like asking, “How much cadmium or lead is it OK to have in our food?” The answer is zero. It’s the same with BPA and phthalates. The only truly safe level is zero.

We’ll probably none of us ever achieve that zero level, because these chemicals are everywhere. But we can dramatically reduce those levels by limiting our contact with plastics.

Read the full article at Rodale.com here...