I was shocked when I read Rick Steibel’s piece: Plastic solves most of our problems in the March 22 Sooke News Mirror. We have “solved” so much with plastics that our landfills, oceans and communities seem to be having “problems” of major ecological dimensions. For at least 50 years the production and distribution of plastics like BPA, DEHP and DBP and their process cousins like dioxins and pesticides have resulted in thousands upon thousands of injured workers, streams, rivers and wetlands. The dangers of the substances not known, not monitored and often left to corporations to monitor. Our science calendars and sources should be dated 2017, not 1954 or 1968. Plastics don’t just bag things and make our lives more convenient. Plastics are known to be endocrine and metabolic disruptors inducing transgenerational inheritance of obesity, reproductive disease and sperm epimutations. Frankly, it isn’t the plastics, but our understanding of them, that’s the “problem.” Easy to understand data is available. Google Parma Conference May 2014 concerning metabolic disruptors or visit TEDX, The Endocrine Disruptor Exchange.
Bob Phillips, Otter Point
