*[Enwl-eng] Eating Organic,Avoiding BPA Plastics not Enough to Protect from Toxics Ingestion

[ENWLine]

*You're Eating Toxic Chemicals, Even If You Eat Organic And Avoid Plastic*
A new study found remarkable levels of endocrine disruptors in
even carefully catered diets.

You do everything right. You eat your organic produce, free-range meat
and eggs, and hormone-free milk. You studiously avoid plastic containers
that could leach Bisphenol A (BPA), a possibly toxic estrogen-mimicking
compound. Does it matter? A new study indicates that it does--but only
to a point. In fact, you could eat an organic, local diet without any
plastic exposure and still end up with high levels of toxic chemicals in
your body.

Dr. Sheela Sathyanarayana, a pediatrician focused on
endocrine-disrupting chemicals and health impacts at the Seattle
Children's Research Institute, noticed that her patients often asked how
they could reduce exposure to endocrine disruptors at home. So she and
her colleagues set up a study to test the efficacy of a written
recommendation versus a five-day catered diet to see which (if either)
would reduce exposure to BPA and pthalates, a group of chemicals used in
plastics that have been linked to cancer, birth defects, and more. The
results, published this week in the Journal of Exposure Science and
Environmental Epidemiology, were somewhat shocking.

Sathyanarayana's study consisted of 10 families. One group of random
participants was given written guidelines from the national Pediatric
Environmental Health Specialty Unit on avoiding BPA and pthalates in
daily life (i.e. avoid canned foods when possible). The other group was
given catered food and drink from a local company that offers organic,
fresh, and local items. Both groups were asked to drink filtered water
and avoid plastic drink containers. "People tend to focus on the organic
part of it, but it was also fresh foods when possible, and no plastic
used in cooking, preparation, or storage of foods," she explains.

The researchers assumed that urinary BPA and pthalate levels would drop
in the catered group compared to the group using written
instructions--people are generally bad at following advice from their
doctors after all. "Instead we saw big spikes and increases in the
catered diet group and no changes at all in the written education
group," she says.

Sathyanarayana's team tested the food samples in the catered group to
find the source of contamination. The culprits: milk, cream, ground
coriander, and other spices. "I honestly don't know why the spices were
more contaminated or why the dairy had higher contamination, but I do
know it's consistent with other reports," she says. In general spices,
high fat dairy, and animal fats tend to have higher phthalate
concentrations--but not at the levels reported in Sathyanarayana's study.

What happened? Remember: That milk came from local farms in glass
containers. And the coriander and other spices, while not local (many
aren't produced in the U.S.), came from an organic company trusted by
the caterer.

Nonetheless, Sathyanarayana stresses that this doesn't mean chemical
exposure is out of our hands. "We do have national studies that [look
at] general population exposures, and they don't see concentrations this
high. Other food studies don't document concentrations in food this high
either," she says. "It was a fluke in the sense that we happened to have
a catered diet with several spices and dairy with higher concentrations."

It's not like going vegan would have solved the problem. The kids in the
study had higher phthalate concentrations, possibly because the caterer
gave the families snacks (bread, cheese, etc.) that they turned into
grilled cheese. "But even without the dairy, we still wouldn't have seen
results we'd hope to see," says Sathyanarayana.

The authors conclude in their study: "It may be that our findings
reflect an isolated rare contamination event because of unusual
processing or a packaging abnormality. It also could be the case that
the food supply is systematically contaminated with high phthalate
concentrations, which are difficult to identify."

Sathyanarayana isn't planning to dig deeper in the supply chain to
figure out where the chemicals came from--that falls outside her
research interests, though she hopes that advocacy groups will pursue
the issue.

There are still ways to reduce BPA and phthalate exposure, despite what
the study's results indicate. Sathyanarayana recommends a fresh food
diet with reduced animal fat and canned food intake. "Diet can really
contribute to your chemical exposure," she says.

Ariel Schwartz is a Senior Editor at Co.Exist. She has contributed to SF
Weekly, Popular Science, Inhabitat, Greenbiz, NBC Bay Area, GOOD
Magazine and more.




http://www.fastcoexist.com/1681471/youre-eating-toxic-chemicals-even-if-you-eat-organic-and-avoid-plastic

*** NOTICE: In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this
material is distributed, without profit, for research and educational
purposes only. ***




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from Toxics Ingestion


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