Babys First Year Blog
Green Baby: I Can Taste The Plastic, Is That Bad?
Can we talk about plastic for a second?
So yesterday as I was sipping from a plastic cup, I noticed I could taste a faint plastic-y flavor.
Mmmm. Delicious.
But wait, if I taste plastic, doesn’t that mean that actual plastic molecules are entering my body? And if they’re entering my body when I drink, doesn’t that mean it’s entering my baby’s body when he drinks from a plastic bottle? Even if it claims to be BPA-free?
Plastic is a very versatile, useful product. It’s cheap, it’s easy to clean (usually) and it’s difficult to break. On the outset, plastic seems like the perfect material to make baby products. I guess that is why EVERYTHING is made of plastic: Baby bottles, pacifiers, high chairs, seats, car seats, bowls, plates, spoons, forks, bibs, and of course, toys.
Even from a non-baby perspective, my house is full of plastic. The bins that hold the toys are plastic. My laundry baskets are plastic. The containers that hold our medicines, vitamins, shampoos and lotions are all plastic. There’s plastic on the TV, computers, remote controls, etc. Plastic is everywhere.
Recently, plastic has been called into question because of it’s estrogen-mimicking properties. There’s Bisphenol-A which has been labeled toxic in Canada, and even though it has been removed from many (but not all) baby products like bottles and toys, it still exists in many places you wouldn’t think to look (see Monica’s Being Pregnant post from yesterday). Even still, there is the recent discovery that even plastics that DON’T contain BPA can mess with our endocrine systems and cause problems.
So, is it ok to drink out of plastic? What about plastic toys that go in my baby’s mouth? Even as I write this, Fuzz is sucking on a yellow plastic sun attached to his jumper/activity center. Arguably it is in his mouth for less time than liquid is in a bottle, but is this safe enough? Is even touching plastic safe, if his fingers go in his mouth later?
If you wanted to remove plastic from your life would it be possible?? There are other environmental concerns with plastic- for one, even if plastic is recyclable, how environmentally sound is it to melt plastic into new plastic?
What do you think? I’d like to hear your thoughts.
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1 Comment
Paige Wolf commented on Apr 07 11 at 6:19 pmHey Naomi!
I am equally crazed by this study and have no idea how to possibly purge plastics from our lives – and I dont think it’s reasonably possible. I wrote a bit about this here: http://www.spitthatoutthebook.com/?p=143 and continue to cringe everytime I give him a plastic sippy cup when the $20 a piece Kleen Kanteens are in the dishwasher. But even those have plastic caps, no? IMPOSSIBLE!!
Paige Wolf,
Author of Spit That Out: The Overly Informed Parent’s Guide to Raising Children in the Age of Environmental Guilt http://www.spitthatoutthebook.com
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