Plastic certainly has its uses, and it is a revolutionary component in our modern technology focused world with advanced medical care. This post is not against all plastic, because in many cases is it the best, if not the only, material we have for certain important uses. For instance, many types of medical equipment, such as tubing, require plastic. Do you remember the commercials back in the 90's with the slogan "Plastics make it possible"? The reason for the commercial was to address the health concerns about plastic that many people were worried about. The commercial wasn't lying. Plastics do many many things possible, things that could even save a person's life. The problem is, yes, there are some serious health concerns with plastics. Those worried people in the 90's had very good reason to be worried.
Due to the importance of plastic in certain instances, my complaint is with plastics made from petroleum that are only made for a single use or that are used as a cheaper material to a more natural qualified material. Yes, plastic is petroleum product, though there are plant-based alternatives, but I'll get into this later in this post. By single use plastics I mean plastics such as water bottles, straws, candy wrappers, disposable utensils, grocery bags, etc. By cheaper material I mean clothing made from polyester instead of cotton, water bottles made from plastic instead of stainless steel or glass, etc. These are easily fixable problems.
But why are these plastics a problem? There are several issues: Plastic does not recycle as easily as we're lead to believe, plastic does not biodegrade, plastic is often totally unnecessary (it's not sustainable at all, yet it's used in place of sustainable materials anyway), and plastic is an endocrine disruptor (easily gets into our bodies and acts like estrogen.)
Yes, recycling companies do accept plastic to be recycled. But does it actually get recycled? For most of my life I was convinced that plastic sent to the recycling companies does actually get recycled, or else they wouldn't accept it. This is a difficult point to convince people of because it will shatter their view of the almighty Eco-friendly recycling programs. I encourage you to watch the documentary Plastic Paradise. It is currently free to view on Netflix. Even though the journalist who made the movie is inexperienced and a terrible interviewer, she does capture very important footage, interview some big names in the plastic industry, and takes part in a science experiment that went on to be an influential peer-reviewed published study. While she covers most of the very important points about the problem of plastic, what she did best with her documentary was give the audience a great visual idea of how much plastic is floating in our oceans. Plastic that may or may not have gone to recyclers. But let me give you evidence that you can read right now as well. China isn't accepting a lot of our used plastics anymore, and our recyclers in the country cannot support the amount of plastic that is put in recycle bins. What's worse is that only 6.5 percent of plastic that gets put into recycle bins actually gets recycled, and only 7.7 percent gets sent to waste-to-energy facilities. And so, recycling companies end up sending a lot of plastic to land fills anyway. Many of those landfills are in the ocean and countries like India. India has such a major plastic problem that there literal mountains of plastic. My friend's cousin is seeking funding for a project that would recycle the plastic in India into roofs. Please check out his project and support him!
The reason all this waste plastic keeps piling up is because it simply does not biodegrade. Organic materials biodegrade because the bacteria in the earth are able to break it down. Plastic is unlike organic materials, and therefore the bacteria cannot break it down. It does, at least, decompose in sunlight, but not all the way. The sun turns plastics into tiny little pieces... that don't go away. In the oceans, fish eat these tiny pieces. Then we eat those fish, meaning that we're ingesting the plastic we thought we "got rid of" when we threw it away or "recycled" it. I'll get into why ingesting plastic is a major problem later.
So why do companies use plastics when other materials could be used? I'm not sure that I really need to link to any sources to answer this question. It's cheap. Not only is it cheap, it has characteristics that other materials don't: it's versatile, flexible, doesn't break when dropped, is transparent, and can shaped easily. Plastic really is revolutionary! It provides convenience and new possibilities at the lowest price tag. There are non-petroleum plastics, though, such as hemp and corn plastic. You may have noticed in recent years that the plastic bags available in some grocery stores for vegetables and meat are now made from corn based plastics. More and more of the plastic air pockets used in boxes for shipping protection is being made from non-petroleum plastic that biodegrades quickly. There is hope for plastic to become less and less toxic as the years go on, but I'm not counting on it, and I plan to avoid plastic anyway. (...And then there's the issue of my corn allergy! I don't know if corn plastic bothers me, but if it's holding my food then there's the potential for it.)
Okay, you get it. Plastic pollution is a major problem. These reasons alone are enough to make you want to quit relying on plastic, I hope. But these reasons are only half the problem with plastics. This is a health blog, and I wouldn't necessarily bring up this topic if wasn't health related.
How plastics affect our health, and my personal plastic health story:
I'd like to start by sharing my story, because I believe having a concrete example of the health problems caused by plastics will help you understand the research I'm going to link to.
As you know if have been reading my previous posts, I spent about 8-9 years suffering from brutally painful and unmanageable menstrual periods. I was losing 10+ ounces of blood per month, not including spotting, when the average healthy woman loses about 1-2 ounces per month. The pain was so unbearable that I was taking up to 12 Ibuprofen on the first day of my period, and it often wasn't enough to manage the pain. I had PMS symptoms that were the result of hormonal and reproductive problems too: severe acne breakouts, oily skin, anger and mood issues, powerful cravings, bloating and inflammation, and more. I was told that I probably had endometreosis, but I did not go through with the surgery that would confirm this.
I decided to try an experiment about 7 months ago after getting diagnosed with Multiple Chemical Sensitivities. I had been reading up on endocrine disruptors in many common household products that caused me to react, and what I kept finding were warnings about plastic as an endocrine disruptor. I decided to see what would happen if I eliminated as much plastic as possible from my life, focusing on the kitchen and clothing. I switched to only wearing clothing from natural fabrics, like cotton and linen (yes, polyester, nylon, and spandex are all forms of plastic!) If I can get a body care product in something other than plastic, I buy it instead of something in plastic (for instance, Badger Balm comes in tin cans, and coconut oil from glass jars makes a fantastic lotion and make-up remover.) I choose to use natural bristles for my body brush and use a real loofa instead of the plastic imitator (and I just ordered a plastic-free toothbrush.) My make up brushes are made from wood and natural brush fibers. I purchased stainless steel and glass water bottles, glass storage containers and bakeware, and ceramic and stainless steel pots and pans. I do not use a plastic sack to hold my vegetables when I buy them at the store. I bought a half a cow and had the meat wrapped in paper, not plastic. You get the idea. I was unable to eliminate all plastic. For instance, I cannot get chicken, turkey, or fish locally that wasn't sealed in plastic. My doctor's herbs and supplements all come in plastic containers. My liquid soap comes in plastic. I did what I could to eliminate plastic from my life. What I noticed was that each month following the plastic elimination, my menstrual periods got easier and easier to deal with. Now, I need to be very clear on something: My doctor was already addressing my menstrual issues for a year between diet, herbs, supplements, tinctures, exercise, and progesterone cream. All of these things helped considerably, and my periods were about 40% easier to deal with. I still was dealing with horrific periods, though, and needed more help. The plastic elimination helped ease my periods faster and more dramatically than anything my doctor did for me (which I'm very grateful for and was very necessary!) Last month, I was down to only losing 5 ounces of blood with no pain at all. I still got dizzy, overly tired, and light headed. I still had to lay in bed half of the day to manage these symptoms. But this is better than spending the entire day in bed screaming in pain, unable to move without extra pain, on the verge of fainting every time I stood up, wondering how to make it to the bathroom every 20 minutes or so. What's more, my PMS symptoms have lighted up too. My acne has been reduced to one or two pimples the week before my period (instead of covering my entire face and some of my back.) My mood is stable the week before. My skin hasn't had an oil problem in a year, but now it's actually staying the same each day of the month. My bloating and tenderness issues are greatly reduced (to the point of being ignorable.)
I noticed another amazing benefit from avoiding plastic clothing: I no longer have body odor! I used to have a few shirts and pants that made me reek after half a day of wearing them, and other shirts made me smell too, just not as badly. I never knew my clothes were causing the problem until I tried this experiment. The shirts that made me reek the most were 100% polyester. I also discovered that my body odor never fully washed out of those shirts. Now that I'm wearing natural clothing I don't really ever smell. Even after I work out and am sweaty, I don't really smell. Sure, my sweat smells a little musty (doesn't everyone's?), but there was nothing repulsive about it.
So how is it that I got these fantastic results with my health just by ditching plastic? How could plastic actually have that much power over our health? Well, like I mentioned earlier, it's an endocrine disruptor. The endocrine system is your hormonal system. An endocrine disruptor is a synthetic chemical that when absorbed into the body either mimics or blocks hormones and disrupts the body's normal functions. Plastic mimics estrogen in our body. To be clear, there are many estrogen like chemicals other than plastic, but I'm focusing on plastic because it is one of the most prevalent sources of estrogen like chemicals. By clearing as much of the estrogen-like chemicals out of body as I could, my estrogen/ estrogen-like levels went down. I never had these levels measured in a lab, but why else would my menstrual problems be clearing up after eliminating plastic? (I should also mention that I've never been on birth control pills and I haven't used "regular" feminine hygiene products in about 7 years. I also haven't had any soy products in several years, as I've developed an intolerance to soy. All of those also contribute to an estrogen dominance. My estrogen was seemingly mainly a plastic problem, but I'm sure there were other contributing factors.)
We can easily understand how estrogen mimickers could affect women, but what about men? I really like what this article has to say about that. Poor men. Don't lose your healthy testosterone level to xenoestrogens!
I could get into more detail, such as exploring specific chemicals in the plastics, like BPA. I might save such details for future posts. :)
I will leave you with this Story of Stuff video on the dangers of microbead plastics:
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