Last week I solicited reader input on glass and stainless steel food storage, after feeling growing concern about the possible release of BPA from even “safe” plastics.
As usual, TLT readers came to my immediate rescue, with lots of product recommendations, links, and their shared experiences. I had meant to go back to that post and leave a heartfelt “thank you” in the comments, but I was in a rush to get loose ends tied up before a weekend away and didn’t have time to do so. So first, if you took the time to leave a comment, please consider yourself thanked!
One central theme that emerged from the comments was, how much do we need to care about the BPA issue and, more broadly, are we all just making ourselves crazy when we try to avoid perceived environmental toxins, toxins about which the science may still be inconclusive, or to which we’re only exposed in tiny amounts?
I was mulling that question over in preparation for this post and then, in one of those lovely moments of blogging serendipity, I was checking Facebook and saw that Robyn McCord O’Brien had posted an article by Judith Shulevitz in The New Republic entitled, “The Toxicity Panic.” The quote that Robyn had pulled was
[has] detoxification become a kind of collective anorexia, a way for mothers to refuse to live in a world we found too terrifying, another means of bubble wrapping our darlings?
I groaned inwardly when I saw this quote, sure this was one of those contrarian articles that tend to get a lot of press, in which a wiser-than-thou pundit pokes holes in some collective, national hysteria and makes you feel like a complete boob for buying into it yourself. (Think: most pieces by writer Caitlin Flanagan.)
But the article is not that at all. After wondering whether she was being overly cautious about trying to reduce chemical toxins in her home, Shulevitz investigated further and came to the exact opposite conclusion. When it comes to household toxins, she writes, we might be even worse off than we fear.
One critical problem is our country’s shocking lack of regulatory oversight when it comes to industrial chemicals:
The United States deals with potentially toxic household products in a manner that is so cavalier that it would, in a saner world, be called negligence. . . .
While pesticides and pharmaceuticals go through batteries of tests well before they come to market, industrial chemicals and the consumer products made with them only get scrutinized by the Consumer Product Safety Commission and the EPA after they’re sold. Nor is the EPA empowered to require companies to provide basic safety data for chemicals. Instead, regulators must guess which chemicals to test.
What’s more, when the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) was passed in 1976, it grandfathered in about 62,000 chemicals already on the market, of which only about 2 percent have been reviewed by the EPA. About 85 percent of the 50,000 chemicals introduced since have never been assessed; in many cases, their makeup is shrouded in claims of confidentiality. At the EPA’s current rate of review, simply evaluating existing chemicals could take hundreds of years.
And when it comes to trying to rid your home of such chemicals and reduce your children’s exposure, Shulevitz concludes that you can certainly try — as she herself is trying — but that
[w]hatever you do, you will be absorbing an unthinkably huge list of chemical compounds whose long-term effects we don’t know, from more sources than you could possibly shy away from.
I’m both glad and sorry I read Shulevitz’s piece. Glad because my niggling concerns about plastic food storage appear to be validated, and sorry because even if I throw it all out and buy Pyrex, I’m only making a tiny dent in a much larger problem that’s beyond any one individual’s control.
Go read Shulevitz’s piece and let me know what you think.
NotCinderell says
My husband is convinced that the BPA scare is a confusion of correlation and causation. He says we’re looking at people with highly processed diets and noting their BPA levels are high and linking it to the chemical, when there are lots of factors in highly-processed diets that cause health problems. I think he may be right, and that the issue isn’t about the tupperware you use.
Bettina Elias Siegel says
Well, but there are animal studies that do show that BPA has ill effects and we do know it’s in everyone’s body and we do see the predicted problems on the rise statistically. But I take his point that we still don’t know if there’s a direct correlation — could be many other factors causing those problems.
Christina @ Spoonfed says
I’ll repeat part of what I said after your earlier post (see below).
But I’ll also add that, aside from food and plastics, in our household this extends to everything including toiletries, cleaning supplies, lawn and garden care, household paints/stains, art and office supplies, toys, paper products, drinking water, even rugs and mattresses. If there’s a safer alternative, we take it. As Shulevitz notes, there’s so much beyond our control. So if I can control it, I do. And that’s a lot easier to do than it seems.
>>>The problem, I think, is that — just as with chemicalized pseudo-food — we no longer have the luxury of viewing environmental toxin exposure as a sometime thing. Our parents and grandparents lived in a different world, with far fewer pesticides and chemicals in their food, no GMOs, no artificial hormones in their meat and dairy, no microwaves in which to heat plastic, a fraction of the industrial pollution, and on and on. So “moderation” back then actually meant something.
When we were at the Smithsonian in D.C. last month, there was a food-science exhibit showing a box of cake mix from the ’40s or so, side by side with one from today. The ingredients on the first box? One sentence on the front (imagine that) of the package. The contemporary mix? Yeah, a mile long. Just one example. But that’s the difference in our world vs. our parents’ and grandparents’ worlds.
So my thinking is that I’ll cut exposure where I can — where it’s easy and not super inconvenient and so on — and not worry about the rest. That’s not being alarmist. That’s being sensible.<<<
(BTW, you nailed it on Caitlin Flanagan. Wiser-than-thou is right.)
Nilam says
This may be off-topic slightly but I just saw this from Food Additives Mobile app from Centers for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI): http://cspinet.org/new/201104111.html