Save life from plastic pollution
Dr Hossain Shahriar | Saturday, 21 June 2008
The history of plastics goes back more than 100 years - however, compared to other materials, plastics are relatively modern. Their usage over the past century has enabled society to make huge technological advances to take us towards the new Millennium.
Although we think of plastic as a modern invention, there have always been "natural polymers" such as amber, tortoiseshell and horn. These materials behaved very much like manufactured plastics and were often put to similar uses to today's materials - for example, horn, which becomes transparent and pale yellow when heated, was used to replace glass in the 18th century. The original breakthrough for the first semi-synthetic plastics material - cellulose nitrate - occurred in the late 1850s and involved the modification of cellulose fibers with nitric acid. Cellulose nitrate had many false starts and financial failures following its invention by a Briton, Alexander Parkes, who exhibited it as the world's first plastic in 1862. Firstly known as Parkesine, then Xylonite, it began to find success in the production of objects such as ornaments, knife handles, boxes and more flexible products such as cuffs and collars. The American Hyatt brothers were attempting to develop a substitute for the ivory billiard ball and in so doing came up with a process for manufacturers using a nitrate cellulose composition. Celluloid was thus born and was patented in 1870 - its early commercial success lay in dental plates for false teeth.
In 1912, German chemist Fritz Klatte at Greisheim Electron unknowingly made the first PVC in an attempt to create uses for large quantities of acetylene gas fuel lamps just before the new technology of electric lights made them obsolete. He had reacted acetylene with hydrochloric acid (HCl). Not knowing what to do with the new material, it was stored for some time, and polymerization took place. Their patent expired in 1925 without them ever knowing what to do with it. Independently, in 1926, chemist Waldo Semon at the American company B.F. Goodrich invented PVC. And again, it was patented.
One of the first uses for PVC was insulation on electric cables in 1930. Mass production, facilitated by improved injection molding, and automation, greatly reduced its price. PVC has been commercially available since 1942. By 1950, there were five companies producing PVC. And by 1980, there were twenty. Today, vinyl is the second largest-selling plastic in the world, and the industry employs more than 100,000 people in just the US. PVC is the second largest volume thermoplastic only to polyethylene. Production capacity has almost doubled over the last 20 years, currently 27 million tons/year worldwide. Current worldwide uses of PVC by percent are as follows: Building 56%; Packaging 15%; Consumer goods 10%; Electronics industries 9%; Agriculture 5%; others 5%.
Health Hazard
Dioxin is created during all phases of PVC production, as well as in its disposal by incineration or accidental fire. There is no "threshold" dose, meaning that the lowest dose that has hormonal action has not been found yet. Researchers have been unable to find the threshold using the most up-to-date advanced systems.
PVC plastic is the largest single use of chlorine in the U.S., accounting for about 34 percent of all chlorine production. In 1996, the US and Canada alone produced 6.61 million tons of PVC and copolymers. A large body of evidence suggests that the greatest share of the nation's dioxin burden stems from the manufacture, use, recycling, and disposal of this enormous quantity of PVC plastic.
The US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has known since the 1980's, that dioxin is an unavoidable by product created during the production and heating or incineration of many materials containing chlorine such as PVC and paper. One can be fairly safe in assuming that the PVC industry's knowledge of dioxin being created by the manufacture of was prior to that of the EPA. Since they continued to manufacture PVC even after knowing this, it is therefore an intentional action placing profits above people. Industry also knows that PCBs are an unavoidable byproduct of PVC production.
Dioxin has been found in PVC process waste in concentrations as high as 200,750 parts per billion (ppb), which compares closely with that found in Agent Orange production wastes. Making the production of PVC free of dioxin is highly unlikely. One industry officially stated in 1994, "It is difficult to see how any of these conditions could be modified so as to prevent PCDD/PCDF formation without seriously impairing the reaction for which the process is designed." PVC is the largest single use of chlorine in the US, and is most likely the largest source of the dioxin in the US. It accounts for about 34 percent of all chlorine production.
According to the EPA, incineration of municipal and medical waste, which is heavily loaded with PVC, is the largest source. Dioxin has no commercial value and is extremely toxic, long-lived and ubiquitous in both the environment and our bodies. It is hormonally active in concentrations as low as 5 parts per trillion (ppt). The EPA has labeled dioxin a known carcinogen.
It is also unavoidable when PVC is incinerated or heated. PVC is the largest contributor of the world's dioxin burden and it is highly persistent in the environment, traveling up the food chain, and accumulating in body fat.
Much of the discarded PVC is burned knowingly in municipal incinerators or accidentally in building fires, sending minute but extremely potent quantities of dioxin into the air. How to prevent the creation of dioxin when certain organic materials are incinerated in the presence of a source of chlorine (PVC and other chlorinated materials) and oxygen is still unknown. When airborne this potent chemical travels a few feet or thousands of miles. After making its way to the upper atmosphere, it condenses in colder regions of the globe. According to a study by Barry Commoner at Queens College, CUNY, dioxin concentrations in Inuit mothers' milk are twice the levels observed in southern Quebec, even though no significant sources of dioxin are located nearby.
In 1994, the nonprofit organization Green peace sampled the sediment downstream the discharge of the Geon Corporation (formerly BF Goodrich) in La Porte, Texas. They found it to contain a dioxin concentration of greater 2,911 parts per trillion (ppt). This is about five times higher than what the EPA reported in their draft dioxin reassessment. From that reading, Green peace estimates that the quantity of dioxin discharged into U.S. waterways from EDC/VCM facilities may rival that discharged from all U.S. pulp and paper mills.
The lipophilic nature of dioxin allows it to be readily assimilated in the lipid (fat) stores of plants and animals. It rapidly enters the food of all creatures on earth. Bioaccumulation is the result of its presence and persistence at many locations on the web of life. It is not broken down in the systems of various organisms, and is accumulated in the organism that consumes it. The pace of accumulation increases with the level of the organism on the food chain.
The higher level, the more organisms of the lower levels it must consume to survive. Because humans are at the top of the web of life, we accumulate the most dioxin, PCBs, and other bioaccumulating contaminants. Children are at an even higher level than their parents.
Effects:
Sexual ambiguity of both internal and external genitalia, cryptorchidism (testicular maldescent), hypospadias, cleft phallus, suprainguinal (cryptorchid) ectopic testes, abnormal spermatogenesis, lowered sperm count and motility, genital abnormalities, deformed and reduced penis, abnormal concentrations of steroid and peptide hormones instrumental in reproduction, reduced levels of testosterone, elevated levels of estradiol-17
Although we think of plastic as a modern invention, there have always been "natural polymers" such as amber, tortoiseshell and horn. These materials behaved very much like manufactured plastics and were often put to similar uses to today's materials - for example, horn, which becomes transparent and pale yellow when heated, was used to replace glass in the 18th century. The original breakthrough for the first semi-synthetic plastics material - cellulose nitrate - occurred in the late 1850s and involved the modification of cellulose fibers with nitric acid. Cellulose nitrate had many false starts and financial failures following its invention by a Briton, Alexander Parkes, who exhibited it as the world's first plastic in 1862. Firstly known as Parkesine, then Xylonite, it began to find success in the production of objects such as ornaments, knife handles, boxes and more flexible products such as cuffs and collars. The American Hyatt brothers were attempting to develop a substitute for the ivory billiard ball and in so doing came up with a process for manufacturers using a nitrate cellulose composition. Celluloid was thus born and was patented in 1870 - its early commercial success lay in dental plates for false teeth.
In 1912, German chemist Fritz Klatte at Greisheim Electron unknowingly made the first PVC in an attempt to create uses for large quantities of acetylene gas fuel lamps just before the new technology of electric lights made them obsolete. He had reacted acetylene with hydrochloric acid (HCl). Not knowing what to do with the new material, it was stored for some time, and polymerization took place. Their patent expired in 1925 without them ever knowing what to do with it. Independently, in 1926, chemist Waldo Semon at the American company B.F. Goodrich invented PVC. And again, it was patented.
One of the first uses for PVC was insulation on electric cables in 1930. Mass production, facilitated by improved injection molding, and automation, greatly reduced its price. PVC has been commercially available since 1942. By 1950, there were five companies producing PVC. And by 1980, there were twenty. Today, vinyl is the second largest-selling plastic in the world, and the industry employs more than 100,000 people in just the US. PVC is the second largest volume thermoplastic only to polyethylene. Production capacity has almost doubled over the last 20 years, currently 27 million tons/year worldwide. Current worldwide uses of PVC by percent are as follows: Building 56%; Packaging 15%; Consumer goods 10%; Electronics industries 9%; Agriculture 5%; others 5%.
Health Hazard
Dioxin is created during all phases of PVC production, as well as in its disposal by incineration or accidental fire. There is no "threshold" dose, meaning that the lowest dose that has hormonal action has not been found yet. Researchers have been unable to find the threshold using the most up-to-date advanced systems.
PVC plastic is the largest single use of chlorine in the U.S., accounting for about 34 percent of all chlorine production. In 1996, the US and Canada alone produced 6.61 million tons of PVC and copolymers. A large body of evidence suggests that the greatest share of the nation's dioxin burden stems from the manufacture, use, recycling, and disposal of this enormous quantity of PVC plastic.
The US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has known since the 1980's, that dioxin is an unavoidable by product created during the production and heating or incineration of many materials containing chlorine such as PVC and paper. One can be fairly safe in assuming that the PVC industry's knowledge of dioxin being created by the manufacture of was prior to that of the EPA. Since they continued to manufacture PVC even after knowing this, it is therefore an intentional action placing profits above people. Industry also knows that PCBs are an unavoidable byproduct of PVC production.
Dioxin has been found in PVC process waste in concentrations as high as 200,750 parts per billion (ppb), which compares closely with that found in Agent Orange production wastes. Making the production of PVC free of dioxin is highly unlikely. One industry officially stated in 1994, "It is difficult to see how any of these conditions could be modified so as to prevent PCDD/PCDF formation without seriously impairing the reaction for which the process is designed." PVC is the largest single use of chlorine in the US, and is most likely the largest source of the dioxin in the US. It accounts for about 34 percent of all chlorine production.
According to the EPA, incineration of municipal and medical waste, which is heavily loaded with PVC, is the largest source. Dioxin has no commercial value and is extremely toxic, long-lived and ubiquitous in both the environment and our bodies. It is hormonally active in concentrations as low as 5 parts per trillion (ppt). The EPA has labeled dioxin a known carcinogen.
It is also unavoidable when PVC is incinerated or heated. PVC is the largest contributor of the world's dioxin burden and it is highly persistent in the environment, traveling up the food chain, and accumulating in body fat.
Much of the discarded PVC is burned knowingly in municipal incinerators or accidentally in building fires, sending minute but extremely potent quantities of dioxin into the air. How to prevent the creation of dioxin when certain organic materials are incinerated in the presence of a source of chlorine (PVC and other chlorinated materials) and oxygen is still unknown. When airborne this potent chemical travels a few feet or thousands of miles. After making its way to the upper atmosphere, it condenses in colder regions of the globe. According to a study by Barry Commoner at Queens College, CUNY, dioxin concentrations in Inuit mothers' milk are twice the levels observed in southern Quebec, even though no significant sources of dioxin are located nearby.
In 1994, the nonprofit organization Green peace sampled the sediment downstream the discharge of the Geon Corporation (formerly BF Goodrich) in La Porte, Texas. They found it to contain a dioxin concentration of greater 2,911 parts per trillion (ppt). This is about five times higher than what the EPA reported in their draft dioxin reassessment. From that reading, Green peace estimates that the quantity of dioxin discharged into U.S. waterways from EDC/VCM facilities may rival that discharged from all U.S. pulp and paper mills.
The lipophilic nature of dioxin allows it to be readily assimilated in the lipid (fat) stores of plants and animals. It rapidly enters the food of all creatures on earth. Bioaccumulation is the result of its presence and persistence at many locations on the web of life. It is not broken down in the systems of various organisms, and is accumulated in the organism that consumes it. The pace of accumulation increases with the level of the organism on the food chain.
The higher level, the more organisms of the lower levels it must consume to survive. Because humans are at the top of the web of life, we accumulate the most dioxin, PCBs, and other bioaccumulating contaminants. Children are at an even higher level than their parents.
Effects:
Sexual ambiguity of both internal and external genitalia, cryptorchidism (testicular maldescent), hypospadias, cleft phallus, suprainguinal (cryptorchid) ectopic testes, abnormal spermatogenesis, lowered sperm count and motility, genital abnormalities, deformed and reduced penis, abnormal concentrations of steroid and peptide hormones instrumental in reproduction, reduced levels of testosterone, elevated levels of estradiol-17