BPA-Free Plastics Might Not Be As Safe As You Think They Are

By Roxanne Palmer
IBtimes: March 5, 2014

That sippy cup with the “BPA-free” sticker might not be as safe as you think. There’s scientific evidence that other plastics’ ingredients could potentially have hormone-disrupting effects as well.

BPA, or bisphenol A, is a compound used in plastics since the 1960s, and often turns up on the insides of water bottles and cans of food. It’s a useful chemical for making clear, strong plastic, but it has been linked to a wide range of health conditions, thanks to its ability to mimic the behavior of estrogens. Due to its structural similarity to the hormone estradiol, BPA can activate certain estrogen receptors. That creates the potential for a world of harm; our body’s hormonal system is a finely tuned machine, and disrupting its normal function, especially early in development, is thought to have wide-ranging effects.

When a plastic is subjected to certain conditions, particularly heat, compounds like BPA can leach out and potentially be ingested by people. BPA shows up in the urine of just about everyone in the U.S. (or at least the ones sampled by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control). In recent years, studies in humans and animals have found connections between BPA exposure and a host of diseases and conditions, from obesity to cancer to neurological issues. The case isn’t yet totally closed — most health officials haven’t found the evidence compelling enough to institute general bans, but several countries have moved to ban BPA from baby bottles and sippy cups.

Meanwhile, many manufacturers have seized the chance to promote “BPA-free” plastic products. But some studies show that non-BPA plastic ingredients could have the same endocrine-disrupting effects. In 2011, the journal Environmental Health Perspectives published a study from a team led by George Bittner, a researcher at CertiChem Inc. The researchers tested hundreds of plastic products with common-use stresses like microwaving, UV radiation, and employed specially designed human breast cancer cells that will quickly multiply in reaction to estrogen.

“Almost all commercially available plastic products we sampled — independent of the type of resin, product, or retail source –leached chemicals having reliably detectable EA [estrogenic activity], including those advertised as BPA free,” Bittner and colleagues wrote. “In some cases, BPA-free products released chemicals having more EA than did BPA-containing products.”

In a feature published recently in Mother Jones, writer Mariah Blake delves into efforts by Tennessee-based Eastman Chemical Co. to push back against the CertiChem team’s research. One of Eastman’s products is Tritan, a plastic marketed as “EA-free.” CertiChem started testing Tritan in 2009 and found that it had even more estrogenic activity than some BPA-containing plastics.

In 2008, Eastman signed a two-year contract with Sciences International, a consulting firm that had a long relationship with the tobacco industry. Sciences International had a history of marshaling studies to bolster industry-friendly claims, such as the “16 Cities Study,” which argued that workplace secondhand smoke exposure was a negligible factor. The Alexandria, Va., firm advised Eastman to try out a computer model that uses chemical structures to predict whether a plastic has estrogenic ingredients. The ensuing study suggested that Tritan ingredient triphenyl phosphate (TPP) was even more estrogenic than BPA, according to Mother Jones.

Subsequent Eastman tests with breast cancer cells also showed signs of estrogenic activity, but this didn’t prevent the company from marketing the plastic as free of synthetic estrogens starting in 2010. When customers such as baby bottle maker Philips Avent asked to have an outside lab run tests, the company strongly tried to dissuade them, internal emails obtained by Mother Jones show.

In 2012, Eastman commissioned another study of Tritan, but one that examined only select ingredients, and not TPP. Later that year, Eastman sued CertiChem and sister company PlastiPure to try and block them from publicizing their findings that Tritan has estrogenic activity.

(Read the full article and find more source links at International Business Times)

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by Janette D. Sherman, MD and Joseph Mangano
Counterpunch: March 4, 2014

The third anniversary of the Fukushima meltdown will occur on March 11th.

The news is that Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and major Japanese corporations want to re-open the 50 other nuclear power plants that closed when Fukushima blew up, calling them a friendly economic source of cheap power. Will this end up with business as usual?

We were recently asked if we thought that Fukushima could ever be cleaned up. We have to say “no,” based upon what we know of the biology, chemistry and physics of nuclear power and isotopes and the history of nuclear development.

Chernobyl melted down in 1986 and is still releasing radioisotopes. Not all life systems were examined around Chernobyl, but of those that were – wild and domestic animals, birds, insects, plants, fungi, fish, trees, and humans, all were damaged, many permanently, thus what happens to animals and plants with short-term life spans is predictive of those with longer ones. Worldwide, some 985,000 “excess” deaths resulted from the Chernobyl fallout in the first 19 years after the meltdown. In Belarus, north of Chernobyl, which received concentrated fallout; only 20% of children are deemed to be “healthy” although previously 80% were considered well. How can a country function without healthy and productive citizens?

Notable in the U. S. is the Hanford Nuclear Site in Washington State, built some 70+ years ago by 60,000 laborers, and currently leaching radioisotopes into the Columbia River. DuPont was the original contractor, but since, multiple corporations, each paid mllions of dollars and have yet to contain the leaking radioactivity. Every nuclear site is also a major industrial operation, contaminated not only with radioactive materials, but multiple toxic chemicals, such as solvents and heavy metals.

In 1941, the folk singer, Woody Guthrie was hired by the US government’s Department of the Interior to promote the benefits of building the Grand Coulee and Bonneville dams to harness the power of the Columbia River, and to generate electricity and supplement irrigation. It is unlikely that Guthrie learned that the dams were to provide electricity to the Hanford nuclear site, then under construction to produce plutonium for bombs.

He sang:

“Roll on, Columbia roll on
Roll on, Columbia roll on
Your power is turning our darkness to dawn
So roll on Columbia, roll on.”

Rather than turning darkness to dawn, we released nuclear weapons that made the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki “Brighter Than a Thousand Suns” – the title of Robert Jungk’s prophetic book.

Guthrie’s monthly salary was $266 – compare that to the yearly $2 billion it is costing taxpayers now.

From 1946 until 1958, the U. S. tested 67 nuclear weapons in the Marshall Islands, the most famous of which is Bikini Island. Stillbirths, miscarriages and thyroid gland defects were detected early in the islanders. 60 years on, decontamination of Rongelap, a small island, that lies about 180 km east of Bikini Atoll, continues. Only about 0.15 square kilometer of land has been decontaminated, or just 2 percent of the island’s area, at a cost of $40 million so far. In 1956, the Atomic Energy Commission regarded the Marshall Islands as “by far the most contaminated place in the world”.

Within the U. S., the Nevada Test Site, and countless other sites remain contaminated. The most recently reported releases occurred in Feb. 2014 at the Department of Energy’s Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) near Carlsbad, NM. Detected in the air were of plutonium-239/240 and americium-241, transuranic elements strongly linked to cancer. So far, thirteen federal contract workers have measured levels of internal radioisotope contamination. The release spread contaminants through more than 3,000 feet of tunnels, up a 2150-foot tall exhaust shaft, out into the environment, and to an air monitoring station approximately 3,000 feet northwest of the exhaust shaft.

Fukushima is still leaking large quantities of Cs-137 and Sr-90 into the Pacific Ocean, where all forms of marine life will absorb them – from algae to seaweed, to fish, to sea mammals and ultimately to humans who consume the contaminated sea life.

Our recently released peer-reviewed paper confirms hypothyroidism in newborns in California, whose mothers were pregnant during the early releases from Fukushima. Thyroid abnormalities were detected early in Marshall Islanders and in Belarus residents of Gomel located near Chernobyl. Radioactive iodine, known to interfere with thyroid function entered the U. S. from Fukushima in late March, shortly after the meltdowns, and was carried by dairy products resulting in damage to the unborn.

It takes ten half-lives for an isotope to decay. Sr-90 and Cs-137 have half-lives of approximately 30 years, which means three centuries will occur before the initial releases are gone, and the releases have not stopped.

(Read the full article at Counterpunch)

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By Kyoko Hasegawa
AFP: March 1, 2014

Tokyo (AFP) – Hundreds rallied in Tokyo Saturday to protest Japanese prosecutors’ decision to drop charges over the Fukushima nuclear crisis, with no one yet punished nearly three years after the “man-made” disaster.

No one is officially recorded as having died as a direct result of radiation released when a 9.0-magnitude earthquake crashed into the Fukushima nuclear plant in March 2011, swamping cooling systems and sparking reactor meltdowns.

However, some Fukushima residents committed suicide owing to fears over radiation, while others died during evacuation. Official data released last week showed that 1,656 people have died in the prefecture from stress and other illnesses related to the disaster three years ago.

“There are many victims of the accident, but there is no (charged) assailant,” chief rally organiser Ruiko Muto, 61, told the protesters, displaying a photograph of Kawauchi village which was hit by the nuclear accident.

“We are determined to keep telling our experiences as victims to pursue the truth of the accident, and we want to avoid a repeat of the accident in the future,” she said.

Tens of thousands of people are still unable to return to their homes around the plant, with scientists warning some areas may have to be abandoned.

“I used to grow organic rice… But I can’t do it anymore because of consumers’ worries over radioactive contamination,” Kazuo Nakamura, 45, a farmer from Koriyama city in Fukushima prefecture, told the rally.

“I want (Fukushima operator) TEPCO officials and bureaucrats of the central government to eat the Fukushima-made rice,” he shouted to applause.

A parliamentary report has said Fukushima was a man-made disaster caused by Japan’s culture of “reflexive obedience” and not just by the tsunami that crippled the plant.

– Criminal complaint –

Some 15,000 people whose homes or farms were hit by radiation from the stricken plant filed a criminal complaint in 2012 against the Japanese government and officials of plant operator Tokyo Electric Power (TEPCO).

However, prosecutors in September decided not to charge any of them with negligence over the nuclear disaster.

Campaigners immediately appealed against the decision to the Committee for the Inquest of Prosecution, which has the power to order the defendants to be tried.

The committee members comprise 11 citizens who are chosen at random by lot.

But the appeal was made in Tokyo instead of Fukushima, a move campaigners say is “aimed at preventing us from filing a complaint against their decision in Fukushima, where many residents share our anger and grief”.

“We want to share with many people in Tokyo our anger and sadness over the fact that no one has taken responsibility three years after the accident,” one of the organisers, 43-year-old Miwa Chiwaki, told AFP.

Junko Honda, 48, who evacuated to the northern island of Hokkaido with her family, said his son had to give up his post-high school education because the family income is lower there.

“We can never forgive TEPCO and the government,” she said.

Campaigners allege that government officials and TEPCO executives failed to take necessary measures to shield the plant against the March 2011 tsunami.

They also hold them responsible for a delay in announcing data predicting how radiation would spread from the facility in the aftermath of the accident.

But prosecutors decided to exempt all of them, saying that TEPCO and government officials could not predict an earthquake and tsunami of that size, and there was nothing wrong with their post-quake response under unexpected emergency situations.

Hiroyuki Kawai, a lawyer representing the campaigners, said “there were lots of measures that officials could have taken to prevent the disaster.”

“We won’t give up indictment of the officials,” he said.

(continues at Yahoo)

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RT: February 28, 2014

As operations at the United States’ first nuclear waste repository remain on hold due to a radiation leak that worked its way above ground, concerns are being raised about the wisdom of expanding such an initiative.

As RT reported on Thursday, the fact that at least 13 employees at the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) near Carlsbad, New Mexico, have tested positive for radiation exposure doesn’t make the current situation easier to defend for pro-nuclear advocates.

Complicating the situation further is the fact that there are multiple shipments to the plant on hold as a result of the leak. As noted by the Associated Press, this includes what remains of the roughly 4,000 toxic waste barrels from the Los Alamos National Laboratories, currently stored outside and placed under minimal protection.

Yet even as concerns grow over the leak and its fallout, there are few real alternatives available when it comes to disposing leftover waste and equipment related to the development of nuclear weapons.

Currently, the WIPP is one of three global deep nuclear waste dumps, storing radioactive material 600 meters underground in salt tunnels. The Department of Energy is spending $5 billion a year to clean up waste associated with US nuclear development, but the recent leak has also temporarily put on hold the possibility that WIPP could begin accepting hotter, liquid waste from other sites around the country.

(Read the full article at RT)

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Fukushima clean-up system hit by new problem – TEPCO

RT: February 28, 2014

The radioactive water clean-up system at the stricken Fukushima plant was hit by another issue as its alarm went off. The warning alerted that one of the two clean-up pumps had stopped functioning.

After the alarm, a pump for sending tainted water into equipment where radioactive materials are absorbed stopped working, the facility’s operator Tokyo Electric Power Co. (TEPCO) said.

The damaged line was one of the two currently in test operation.

With only one line working, the daily clean-up capacity stands at 250 tons per line.

The problem lies in one of the three lines of the Advanced Liquid Processing System (ALPS), according to TEPCO officials, as cited by Jiji, a local media outlet.

By March 2015, TEPCO plans to increase its total ALPS capacity to dispose of 340,000 tons of radioactive water currently stored in tanks, as well as large amounts of infected water in the basements of reactor and other buildings.

This is not the first incident surrounding Fukushima that has emerged this year.

(Read the full article at RT)

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American Senators told that oil sands are linked to a huge spike in cancer, despite Canadian government claims

By Mychaylo Prystupa
Vancouver Observer: February 26, 2014

A northern Alberta doctor warned U.S. Senators on what he says have been the devastating health impacts of the tar sands on families – effects, he says, that have been willfully “ignored” by the Canadian and Alberta governments.

“I appeal to you to keep up the pressure – this is an ongoing tragedy. A total disgrace,” said Dr. John O’Connor, Wednesday in Washington, D.C.

He sighted statistics for rare cancers – of the bile duct for example – that have shot up 400 times for what is considered normal for a tiny community, such as Fort Chipewyan – which is downstream, to the north of the oil sands.

“These are published, peer-reviewed studies that indicate that the government of Alberta and Canada have been lying, misrepresenting the impact of industry on the environment,” said O’Connor.

The Alberta government has long denied cancer links with the province’s multi-billion-dollar crown energy jewel. It states on its website that there is “insufficient evidence to link the incidence of cancer in Fort Chipewyan to oil sands operations” and rates of cancer are “within the expected range.”
O’Connor finds that hard to believe.

“All of the scientific studies that have accumulated, it’s almost like they don’t exist,” he said.

A new study for example, shows Leukaemia and non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma have spiked in the last 10 years — especially among men who live downwind of pollution plumes from the oil, gas and tar sands facilities east of Edmonton.

(Article continues at Vancouver Observer)

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A compelling new peer-reviewed report from two U.S. scientists argues that increased use of Monsanto’s glyphosate herbicide (trade name Roundup) could be the cause of the epidemic of symptoms labeled as “gluten intolerance.”

From the Journal of Interdisciplinary Toxicology
motherearthnews: Feb. 25, 2014

Is Roundup the Cause of ‘Gluten Intolerance’?

Increased use of Monsanto’s glyphosate herbicide (trade name Roundup) could be the cause of the epidemic of “gluten intolerance”, according to a compelling new peer-reviewed report from two U.S. scientists. Farmers are now using glyphosate not only to control weeds but also to dry down wheat, rice, sugarcane and other crops just before harvest, resulting in higher residues in the foods we eat. The abstract from the paper “Glyphosate, Pathways to Modern Diseases II: Celiac Sprue and Gluten Intolerance” is below. You can read the full report here and view graphs in the Slideshow connecting increased use of glyphosate with growing rates of celiac incidence, deaths from intestinal infections, acute kidney disease and deaths due to Parkinson’s.

Abstract:
Celiac disease, and more generally, gluten intolerance, is a growing problem worldwide, but especially in North America and Europe, where an estimated 5 percent of the population now suffers from it. Symptoms include nausea, diarrhea, skin rashes, macrocytic anemia and depression. It is a multifactorial disease associated with numerous nutritional deficiencies as well as reproductive issues and increased risk to thyroid disease, kidney failure and cancer. Here, we propose that glyphosate, the active ingredient in the herbicide, Roundup, is the most important causal factor of this epidemic. Fish exposed to glyphosate develop digestive problems that are reminiscent of celiac disease. Celiac disease is associated with imbalances of gut bacteria that can be fully explained by the known effects of glyphosate on gut bacteria. Characteristics of celiac disease point to impairment in many cytochrome P450 enzymes, which are involved with detoxifying environmental toxins, activating vitamin D3, catabolizing vitamin A, and maintaining bile acid production and sulfate supplies to the gut. Glyphosate is known to inhibit cytochrome P450 enzymes. Deficiencies in iron, cobalt, molybdenum, copper and other rare metals associated with celiac disease can be attributed to glyphosate’s strong ability to chelate these elements. Deficiencies in tryptophan, tyrosine, methionine, and selenomethionine associated with celiac disease match glyphosate’s known depletion of these amino acids. Celiac disease patients have an increased risk to non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, which has been implicated in glyphosate exposure. Glyphosate residues in wheat and other crops are likely increasing recently due to the growing practice of crop desiccation just prior to harvest. We argue that the practice of “ripening” sugar cane with glyphosate may explain the recent surge in kidney failure among agricultural workers in Central America. We conclude with a plea to governments to reconsider policies regarding the safety of glyphosate residues in foods

(Read the full report at motherearthnews.com from the Journal of Interdisciplinary Toxicology)

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Fukushima’s Radioactive Ocean Water Arrives At West Coast

By Becky Oskin
LiveScience.com: February 24, 2014

Radiation from Japan’s leaking Fukushima nuclear power plant has reached waters offshore Canada, researchers said today at the annual American Geophysical Union’s Ocean Sciences Meeting in Honolulu.

Two radioactive cesium isotopes, cesium-134 and cesium-137, have been detected offshore of Vancouver, British Columbia, researchers said at a news conference. The detected concentrations are much lower than the Canadian safety limit for cesium levels in drinking water, said John Smith, a research scientist at Canada’s Bedford Institute of Oceanography in Dartmouth, Nova Scotia.

Tests conducted at U.S. beaches indicate that Fukushima radioactivity has not yet reached Washington, California or Hawaii, said Ken Buesseler, a senior scientist at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute in Woods Hole, Mass.

“We have results from eight locations, and they all have cesium-137, but no cesium-134 yet,” Buesseler said. (Isotopes are atoms of the same element that have different numbers of neutrons in their nuclei. In this case, cesium-137 has more neutrons than cesium-134.)

The scientists are tracking a radioactive plume from Japan’s Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant. Three nuclear reactors at the power plant melted down after the March 11, 2011, Tohoku earthquake. The meltdown was triggered by the massive tsunami that followed the quake.

Cesium signals

The initial nuclear accident from the Fukushima reactors released several radioactive isotopes, such as iodine-131, cesium-134 and cesium-137. Cesium-137 has a half-life of 30 years and remains in the environment for decades. Cesium-134, with a half-life of only two years, is an unequivocal marker of Fukushima ocean contamination, Smith said.

“The only cesium-134 in the North Pacific is there from Fukushima,” he said. Cesium-137, on the other hand, is also present from nuclear weapons tests and discharge from nuclear power plants.

Smith and his colleagues tracked rising levels of cesium-134 at several ocean monitoring stations west of Vancouver in the North Pacific beginning in 2011. By June 2013, the concentration reached 0.9 Becquerels per cubic meter, Smith said. All of the cesium-134 was concentrated in the upper 325 feet (100 m) of the ocean, he said. They are awaiting results from a February 2014 sampling trip.

The U.S. safety limit for cesium levels in drinking water is about 28 Becquerels, the number of radioactive decay events per second, per gallon (or 7,400 Becquerels per cubic meter). For comparison, uncontaminated seawater contains only a few Becquerels per cubic meter of cesium.

Cesium-137 levels at U.S. beaches were 1.3 to 1.7 Becquerels per cubic meter, Buesseler said. That’s similar to background levels in the ocean from nuclear weapons testing, suggesting the Fukushima plume has not reached the U.S. coastline yet, he said.

The new monitoring data does not show which of two competing models best predicts the future concentration of Fukushima radiation along the U.S. West Coast, Smith said. These models suggest that radionuclides from Fukushima will begin to arrive on the West Coast in early 2014 and peak in 2016. However, the models differ in their predictions of the peak concentration of cesium — from a low of 2 to a maximum of 27 Becquerels per cubic meter. Both peaks are well below the highest level recorded in the Baltic Sea after Chernobyl, which was 1,000 Becquerels per cubic meter.

“It’s still a little too early to know which one is correct,” Smith said.

(Read the full article at LiveScience)

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