[JimOfferman]

I'm always a bit put off by this kind of alarmist / conspiracy theory article. Specially when they are all by the same author.

I'm not saying we shouldn't be concerned about the ubiquitous use of plastics, but the author of these two articles kind of skips over the fact that other containers (glass, paper, wood) come with their own set of risks. It's not like we can eliminate all dangers just by removing plastic from the equation. There exists no magic free-of-all-problems substitute to replace it with.

For what it's worth, in these parts (Europe) the use of PVC has been heavily regulated for many years now. Food packinging and barbies sold in the European markets are all made of flavors of PC, PP or PE(T). Regulations regarding the toxicity of packaging are also fairly stringent - but that's Europe, US might be different.

When I attended university (it's been a while), we received a fair bit of instruction on the pros and cons of plastics (and other materials as well). We also visited a bunch of plants where they made various products from plastics. What I took away from all that is that plastics aren't the be all and end all of materials, but also that it's not the worst stuff in the world by far.

Jim.