Plastic is not so Fantastic

I am now officially a paranoid mother. Usually I am pretty mellow about things, but after reading, Girls on the Edge by Leonard Sax I have decided to try to eliminate plastics from my families lives as much as possible. In fact this weekend I chucked all my plastic containers and Nalgene bottles and went on a shopping spree for new glass containers and stainless steel bottles.


The book just isn't about environmental chemicals that affect our little girls, but it was the chapter I could act on immediately. With so many girls hitting puberty so early it is leaving researchers wondering why. Plastics have endocrine disruptors in them that are leaching into our food causing this condition. Girls who reach this milestone at an early age have a greater chance of obesity, sexual abuse, depression, anxiety, cancers, and drug abuse. How is that for a scary scenario!

Not only does this affect my little girl, but in Boys Adrift, another book by Dr. Sax, he explains that plastics are also harming our boys by causing them to hit a later puberty and even taking away the very thing that makes them boys - their testosterone! That partially explains why so many guys don't want to get married anymore and are happy living a un-driven life of video games and chilling with their pals.

These books really did scare me silly, but at the same time they were very educational, informative and a must read (in my opinion) for all parents. I know I can't completely eliminate bad things from my kids world. In fact, as I was taking pictures of my bad plastics, I looked over at Sophie only to catch her painting her legs (which I'm sure has bad toxins in it as well).

Goodbye plastics. Our love affair is over. I now will be using glass and stainless steel products as much as possible in my life trying to hold off on my kids growing up any faster than they already are.





Here is just one passage from the book to maybe spike your interest...
"German researchers recently looked to see whether the water in clear plastic bottles made of PETE (number 1 in the triangle on the bottom) did in fact have estrogenic effects. They bought bottled water in PETE containers, emptied out the water, and poured in ultra pure water instead. They then put in 100 little snails into the plastic bottles filled with ultra-pure water. As a control, they put another 100 little snails in glass bottles filled with the same ultra -pure water. The female snails who were in the PETE bottles produced more than double the number of embroyos per female, compared with the female snails in the glass bottles. ""It is Obvious that the observed effects can only be attributed to xenoestrogen leaching from the plastic bottles," these authors concluded. (A "xenoestogen" is a substance in the environment that likes like estrogen, a female hormone.) They suggested that their findings were just "the tip of the iceberg" regarding the endocrine-disrupting effects of bottled water sold in PETE bottles." - pg. 111 Girls on the edge.