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Plastics: Beware The Plastic Plague
BEWARE THE PLASTIC PLAGUE
By Leigh Erin Connealy, M.D.
“I’ve got one word for you…Plastics”
You recall this popular cinematic phrase comes from the sixties classic movie “The Graduate.” Dustin Hoffman’s character Benjamin has just graduated from college. While trying to escape the madness of a party he would rather not be at Benjamin is cornered by a man hoping to convince Benjamin that he has the secret for the future. He thinks Benjamin should think about a career in plastics!
Looking back thirty-five years later, we see our whole world engulfed in plastic. Isn’t it about time we learn about the “plastic plague”, a world of chemicals that surrounds and affects every aspect of our lives?
Despite all the conveniences of plastic, the worst-case scenario of plastic’s impact on our health is just that, the worst. Plastics can create practically every disease and symptom, including cancer.
First, plastic is not just one chemical. It includes styrene, vinyl chloride, and phthalates. You don’t have to be a chemist to know that these chemicals are swirling around you all the time, including now. Nor do you need to be a physician to discover how these chemicals are damaging your health.
Styrene, for example, is found in styrofoam. It’s also in the electrical wires on your appliances, televisions and computers. And you will find it in kitchen plastic wrap, grocery store packaging, insulation, carpeting, construction materials, adhesives, cabinets, furniture, carpets, dental work, paint, flooring, pipes, cigarettes and auto exhaust. If you get a new car, or a new boat, or a new RV, you actually smell the gases that styrene continually dispenses into the air.
Another chemical essential in the creation of plastic are phthalates. You can find phthalates in cosmetics, plastic wraps of fruits, vegetables and meats, plastic bottles for water, juices, soda, milk, ketchup, mayonnaise, and everything else that comes in plastic. And that includes vital intravenous medicine bags and tubing.
And it’s not just that plastic and all its dangerous chemicals are continually around us. They are in us. We have so much plastic in us that they are becoming a part of our bodies. Government studies show that 100% of human fat biopsies show storage of plastics.
When you think of how much new effort we’re making about incorporating recommended dietary allowances of nutritional foods in our diets, it’s amazing to think that we’re ingesting an unwanted average daily dose of environmental poisons provided by plastic.
The “plastic plague” would diminish if our body had a good way of getting rid of all the chemicals we accumulate all day. But it doesn’t. What do these plastic chemicals do when they get into our bodies? Everything.
We slowly accumulate more and more of these chemicals until finally we get a damaged organ that has been labeled as some particular disease. They damage the liver and liver enzymes. They can destroy our thyroids, can cause babies to be born with malformations, create mysterious fatigue, nausea, depression, addictions, liver kidney disease. Plastics can cause every type of genetic disease that leads to autoimmune problems and, of course, cancer. This includes any type of cancer from stomach to breast to prostate and lungs.
Not a very positive picture, is it? Well, I certainly don’t think we’re ready to surrender to this plague. You can minimize the effects of these chemicals on you and your family by reducing your contact with plastic.
First, buy as few foods in plastic as possible. It may not seem easy, but it is crucial, since plastic wrapped foods are the major source of contamination for must humans. There are nutrition
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