It’s the holiday season, and along with the many joys that are associated with this fun time of year – cooking, baking, parties with friends and family – comes a lurking environmental problem: Toxic chemicals in everyday plastics. Plastics that seem to be everywhere in our holiday midst — in the packaging of toys, the toys themselves, our food packaging, in our holiday leftover storage containers, in plastic wrap, in water bottles — and the list goes on.

Many valid health concerns have been raised about poisonous chemicals present in our everyday plastics, and the headlines about these toxins leaching into our food are frightening. A recent Milwaukee Journal Sentinel investigation found, for instance, that food containers labeled as “microwave safe” leached BPA when heated. (See our report, “BPA turns up in ‘microwave safe’ products“.)

Just this fall, a scientific advisory panel set up specifically to review the Food and Drug Administration’s assessment of Bisphenol A (BPA), a plastic additive, concluded that the agency had ignored scientific evidence and used flawed methods when determining that it was safe.

The FDA had long said that the plastic, widely used in making clear plastic polycarbonate baby bottles and in the epoxy lining of aluminum food cans, was not harmful to the public. But the panel of scientists from government and academic circles concluded that the FDA did not take into consideration the many studies that have linked the plastic to prostate cancer, diabetes and other major health problems, according to a Washington Post report.

With headlines like these, no doubt many people are mistrustful about plastics and their labeling. The findings raise many questions: Are the plastic containers that our food comes in leaching chemicals into our systems as they are frozen or cooked? What about storage containers being dishwasher and microwave safe; can they be heated up at all? And when I’m ready to toss plastics, where do they go? Do they get recycled?

These questions are legitimate. But slowdown. No need to panic. There are ways to decode the current numbering system used to label plastics, and experts with advice on how to safely use plastics.

Look for BPA-free

“The measured amounts of chemicals found in humans derived from plastics is found to be well below levels considered to be harmful,” says Steve Russell, the Managing Director of the Plastics Division of The American Chemistry Council. “Evidence shows it (chemicals in plastics) to be safe, but, should government change their stance, then we make changes and comply.”

The American Chemistry Council, founded in 1872, represents the many companies that make plastic products. The ACC’s primary concern is to research and steer initiatives that serve communities and customers, and an extensive list of member companies follow their guidelines and also meet federal regulations.

Many of these companies now offer BPA-free products and provide information on what toxins (if any) are in their plastics.

Rubbermaid and Tupperware, two popular plastics manufacturers in the market, are both a part of the American Chemistry Council.

Rubbermaid provides extensive listings of their products that contain BPA, as well as lists of those that are BPA-free, so buyers can make their own decisions. (The number of BPA-free products, like those pictured, left, exceed those with BPA. The bowls pictured at the top of the story contain BPA.)

Tupperware has taken an aggressive response to market concerns about BPA and also produced a line of BPA-Free products that are listed on their site.

Still, it wasn’t the ACC that sounded the alarm about BPA and brought about all this transparency, but a consortium of health watch groups. Early in 2008, the Environmental Health Fund called for a moratorium on using the plastic in baby products after studies showed that heating polycarbonate plastic caused it to release BPA into the food or liquid being contained. As reported in US News & World Report, BPA can affect the delicate hormonal systems of developing babies and children, with studies linking it to the feminization of boys and a potential higher risk of breast cancer for girls.

The news on bisphenol A or BPA just doesn’t get better. The chemical, used to make plastic baby bottles and food can liners, could deliver a double-whammy to women, paving the way for breast cancer, and then boomeranging back to interfere with the treatment for cancer recovery.

A study by University of Cincinnati scientists released this week found that BPA exposure may reduce the effectiveness of chemotherapy treatments for breast cancer patients.

Researchers found that this man-made chemical – already implicated as a potential trigger in breast cancer because it is structurally similar to the estrogenic DES – induced a group of proteins in the body to protect breast cancer cells from the chemotherapy.

Resistance to chemotherapy is already a “major problem for cancer patients, especially those with advanced metastatic disease,” said UC’s Nira Ben-Jonathan, a professor of cell biology who’s been studying BPA for more than a decade.

Dr. Ben-Jonathan’s team discovered the BPA-chemotherapy problem by exposing human breast cancer cells to low levels of BPA, similar to those found in the blood of humans. The BPA mimicked estrogen, inducing the protein cells to protect the cancer cells.

Estrogen has been known to block chemotherapy treatment, but this new finding could help explain why some post-menopausal women, with lower levels of estrogen, suffer from chemotherapy resistance, Dr. Ben Jonathan said. Her study was underwritten by the U.S, Department of Defense, the National Institutes of Health and the Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer Foundation and is discussed in Science Daily.

BPA has been suspected of playing a role in a variety of health issues, acting as a hormone disruptor in children and adults and possibly inducing neurological changes in kids. Studies with rats and mice have shown changes in tissue that some believe presage breast or prostate cancer development.

Last month, an article published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, added another concern. It found that a group of adults with the highest levels of BPA detected in their urine were nearly three times as likely to develop heart disease and had twice the risk of diabetes compared with those who had the lowest levels of BPA.

In recent months, many medical and environmental science groups, notably the Washington-based Environmental Working Group, have been cautioning parents of infants to forego baby bottles made of polycarbonate plastic, and manufacturers began offering alternatives in glass or other types of plastic (look for the BPA-free label).

The problem with food cans, in which BPA is used within the epoxy liners to keep food from chemically eroding the metal casing, has been less publicized and there’s been little public response from manufacturers.

The EWG advises lowering exposure to BPA by simply avoiding products containing the chemical. Among those:

• Hard, clear plastic polycarbonate baby bottles or sport water bottles. They can sometimes be identified by their plastic notation on the bottom of the bottle showing they’re made with #7 plastic.

• Food sold in cans, and watching particularly acidic foods, like tomatoes, which may cause leaching from the BPA liner. Look for food in glass jars, or seek refuge in the produce section.

• Soda in cans (The levels of BPA may be lower here, but the volume of consumption could be higher.)

• Pre-mixed liquid baby formula sold in cans

The U.S. Federal Drug Administration has green lighted the current use of BPA in food cans, for instance, saying that the amount of the chemical ingested by humans is very small. But critics say the agency has relied on plastics industry-backed studies.

As cause for concern, scientists point to a 2004 Centers for Disease Control study showing that 95 percent of people tested had traces of BPA in their urine.

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