There's No "Safe" Plastic, Already!
Huffington Post, 4 April 2011, Mindy Pennybacker
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/mindy-pennybacker/theres-no-safe-plastic-al_b_843845.html
"All plastic should be labeled as hazardous waste," Captain Charles Moore, discoverer of the "Great Pacific Garbage Patch," said to me the other night at a Surfrider Foundation anti-plastics campaign benefit. At least three new studies about plastic's negative impact on our health and the environment confirm his statement. Moore was here with many others to present research at the UNEP/NOAA Marine Debris Conference in Honolulu last week, during which, incredibly enough, the word "plastic" was kept out of official circulation, replaced by the euphemism "marine debris," as the Plastic Pollution Coalition reports. "Almost all so-called 'marine debris' is plastic," Moore told me. Conference sponsors included Coca Cola and the American Chemistry Council (ACC), which has been pouring money into efforts to block bans on disposable plastic grocery bags nationwide.
Meanwhile, the latest science shows that plastics are really, really bad news. For years, the conventional wisdom has been that while some bad plastics, such as polycarbonate (PC #7) release toxic chemicals, notably hormone-disrupting Bisphenol-A (BPA), other plastics are safer. Unfortunately, they aren't. Hormone-disrupting, estrogenically active (EA) chemicals were found to be leached from all kinds of plastics, including those labeled BPA-free, in a study published by EHP in March. "In some cases, BPA-free products released chemicals having more EA than BPA-containing products," wrote researchers, who tested 450 baby bottles, water bottles, plastic food containers and wraps bought from retailers including Wal-mart and Whole Foods. Seventy percent of the items released EA into solutions at room temperature, and 95% leached EA after stress tests simulating normal use in dishwashers and microwaves.
There's more. In a small but compelling study released yesterday in EHP online, BPA levels in urine samples taken from five Bay Area families -- 10 adults and 10 children -- dropped by 66 percent over just three days when they stopped eating packaged food, including food from plastic packages and cans -- most of the latter are lined with BPA-laced epoxy resin. Participants' levels of DEHP phthalate, another hormone-disrupting chemical commonly found in flexible PVC plastic, dropped by 53-56 percent. This is good news!
There's another way we can get exposed to plastic chemicals -- by eating fish. Algalita's latest findings: Thirty-five percent of plankton-eating lantern fish, the bottom of the marine food chain, had plastic in their bellies. Like dioxins, mercury, PCBs and toxic fire retardants, this toxic plastic plasma will rise in the food chain and find its way into our bellies if we don't stop contributing to it soon.
What to Do?
First, we've got to stop buying single-use plastic. We should also recycle, rather than toss our old plastics in the trash. "Everything eventually makes its way into the ocean," Captain Moore says. His research voyages to the Great Pacific Gyres off Hawaii and Japan, and the waters between, show that the ocean is fast turning into a plastic plasma. Discarded plastic bottles, containers, toys, and fishing line are broken up into microscopic fragments, about plankton size.
We can reduce our levels of BPA and phthalates like those families by eating mostly fresh, not processed, packaged foods. Check out the SF Chronicle's interviews with the researchers here
What Else You Can Do.
Read about and support ongoing research by Moore's Algalita Foundation.
Help stop the use of single-use grocery bags in your community. Take the Plastics Pledge and learn more about Surfrider Foundation's Rise Above Plastics campaign.
U.S. vows continuing effort toward a 17% emission cut
Climatewire, 5 April 2011, Lisa Friedman
http://www.eenews.net/climatewire/2011/04/05/4/
U.S. Deputy Special Envoy for Climate Change Jonathan Pershing told a U.N. group today that the Obama administration still plans to cut its greenhouse gas emissions about 17 percent below 2005 levels by the end of this decade.
Meeting in Bangkok this week for a round of U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) talks, delegates from nearly 200 countries appeared keenly aware that a new Republican majority in the U.S. House and increased GOP strength in the Senate have killed chances for passage of cap-and-trade legislation. Meanwhile, several pointed out, climate advocates are playing defense against legislative attacks on U.S. EPA's ability to cut carbon.
Pershing, though, played up the Obama administration's clean energy funding, proposed heavy- and medium-duty truck greenhouse gas standards and the possibility of clean energy standard legislation. Repeating the mantra that the administration has held to in the past year, Pershing insisted that American leaders "stand behind this commitment" to cut carbon by 2020.
"Until last year, we had been aggressively pursuing the cap-and-trade program. I think many of you are aware of that. Unfortunately, this did not pass through the U.S. Congress," Pershing told the crowd. "As in all countries, political circumstances change, and you have to work within those circumstances."
'A more complicated picture' emerges
The Obama administration is working on "a variety of alternative policies and measures that would lead to the meeting of our submission commitments," he said. In addition to regulatory actions, Pershing predicted "some kind of energy legislation" would pass this year.
"Will it be adequate? No. Will it be the extent of what we do? Also no. It will be one piece of what's now going to be a more complicated picture," he said. Whatever does move through Congress, Pershing said, will be "complemented by regulation, and it will be complemented by a budgetary procedure that will provide incentives to move on technology."
Pershing's comments came at a workshop at which representatives from industrialized nations outlined their governments' economywide emission targets and how they plan to achieve them. It will be followed by a similar workshop today that will feature presentations by developing countries about their plans for cutting carbon.
Yesterday, all eyes were on the United States as country after country asked Pershing to explain specifically how America will meet the promise that Obama made the world at the 2009 Copenhagen, Denmark, climate change summit. He noted in a series of slides that U.S. emissions have declined about 8.7 percent since 2005 -- and while he acknowledged that a portion of that is due to the economic downturn, Pershing insisted that the more important metric is whether America is meeting its target.
How to deal with an emerging 'gap'
Meanwhile, the E.U. chief negotiator Artur Runge-Metzger noted that the European Union "will certainly meet its Kyoto target."
With the first round of Kyoto commitments expiring in 2012, UNFCCC Executive Secretary Christiana Figueres warned that nations must move quickly to decide whether they will enter targets for a second commitment period. Many industrialized countries are resisting doing so unless both the United States and China are included.
The United States insists it will be part of a global treaty if major emerging nations are held to the same legal standards, but contends countries like China and India are not yet ready. Officials from China, India and others balk at being subject to a climate treaty when the United States hasn't even begun earnest legislative efforts to cut its emissions. The round robin of fighting has raised the specter of a gap between the current Kyoto Protocol and whatever new agreement emerges.
"Governments have to face the fact that a gap in this effort looks increasingly impossible to avoid," she said. "In 2011, we must figure out how to address this issue and how to take it forward in a collective and inclusive way."
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