Pearls of Plastic
Plastic May Add to Life Expectancy
One of my professors in graduate school once quipped, “Statistics are like bikini bathing suits–what they show is revealing but what they hide is vital.” This technique of presenting statistics in a biased way to prove an argument is evident in Bryan Walsh’s article, Perils of Plastic published in April by Time Magazine.
The article begins with Walsh celebrating how much the quality of air and water in the U.S. has improved over the last four decades. But then without using research or facts, he goes so far as to suggest that “Americans may be sickening” [Italics mine]. Loaded, unsubstantiated phrases such as “may be sickening” play to the readers’ emotions but do not contribute to furthering the author’s arguments in any logical way. Peppered throughout Walsh’s article are many of these phrases: “may disrupt,” “could have,” “may have,” “may mess,” “a possible risk,” “which might,” etc. Yet nowhere in the article does he substantiate his hypothesis that as the land and waters have been healing since 1970, Americans are seeing setbacks in health due to the use of plastic.
The truth is that Americans have been extending their life expectancy, while the usage of plastics has grown. A little more than a hundred years ago, when the age of synthetically made plastics began, the life expectancy of Americans was 50.1 years. Today, in 2010, our life expectancy is 78.3 years, a whopping 56.3% improvement. And although the U.S. ranks 38th in world life expectancy, several other developed countries with relatively corresponding per capita plastic consumption and production facilities as the U.S. are in the top tier of countries with the highest life expectancy, including Japan at 82.6 years, France at 80.7, Canada at 80.7 years, Italy at 80.5 and Germany at 79.4 years1.
Nowhere in the scientific literature is there proof that plastics and other industrial chemicals cause lower life expectancy, either for Americans or for citizens of the other nations that are also large manufacturers and users of plastics.
With the advent and use of Life Cycle Analysis (LCA), the recognized and accepted scientific method of quantitatively assessing environmental impact of products from cradle to grave, one might effectively argue that plastics have helped extend lifespan of humans and other species. Consider the materials that plastic has replaced in such fields as building, packaging, furniture, clothing, transportation and industry. What materials did plastics replace? Glass, wood, concrete, vitrified clay, ceramics, ivory, animal hides and furs, as well as metals such as aluminum, brass, copper, cast iron, lead, steel, and tin, to name a few. In almost all LCA comparisons of plastics to the materials they replaced, plastics make significantly less of a environmental footprint on the planet.
But according to Walsh, scientists can’t be trusted. He stated in his article that government regulators (FDA) are the final judges of approving drugs and pesticides for public use. However, when it comes to chemicals (plastics), he advocates that the public, not scientists, should interpret the body of scientific data. In other words, he is saying the public is better equipped to make informed technical decisions about science than those conducting the tests. His suggestion brings sharply to mind many erroneous conjectures and subsequently dispelled myths, such as plastic shower curtain emitting toxic fumes; microwaving foods in plastic containers releasing cancer-causing agents into the food; and dioxins being released by freezing water in plastic bottles.
If Walsh really has an altruistic intent to improve the health of Americans, I would submit that he spend time reading and interpreting the internationally acclaimed best seller, The China Study.
In that book doctors T. Colin Campbell and his son document the most comprehensive study of health and nutrition ever undertaken, a survey of diseases and lifestyle factors throughout China begun in 1983 and continuing today. It investigates the relationship between diet and the risk of developing illnesses such as heart disease, diabetes, cancer and other chronic diseases. The book’s conclusion, backed by dozens of scientific studies, is that people who ate the most animal-based foods and had a sedentary life style got the most chronic disease, and that people who ate the most whole plant-based foods and minimally exercised were the healthiest and tended to avoid chronic disease.
But Campbell goes even further in stating that scientific conclusions from carcinogen studies yielding only marginal results in laboratory test animals are questionable, not definitive. He believes that to funnel research dollars into sometimes outlandish investigations trying to prove a carcinogenic link to a chemical is a waste of resources. Elsewhere in his book he states that, “Synthetic chemicals in your environment and in your food, as problematic as they may be, are not the main cause of cancer.” Again, he concludes that the majority of cancers are not caused by plastics or other chemicals but by poor diets and passive lifestyles.
Mr. Walsh, for your information, plastic products as a rule are produced using less energy, are more durable and easier to install, weigh less (which reduces the energy required to transport), and, oh yes, are extremely cost effective.
With sustainability, greenness and job formation being the hot topics in today’s news media and political arena, plastics should be looked at in a new, more informed light, not vilified.
Notes:
Data from the U.S. National Center for Health Statistics
David A. Chasis
Chasis Consulting
