More on plastic

Canadian Retailer Bans Some Plastic Bottles
The following excerpt is from the NY Times


By IAN AUSTEN
Published: December 8, 2007
OTTAWA, Dec. 7 — A line of water bottles that had become a symbol of environmental responsibility has been removed from the shelves of Canada’s leading outdoor gear retailer over concerns about a chemical used in its manufacture.

Polycarbonate plastic bottles are transparent and almost as hard as glass.
The Mountain Equipment Co-op, which is based in Vancouver, British Columbia, removed the bottles, sold under the brand name Nalgene, and other polycarbonate containers from its 11 large-scale stores on Wednesday.

The retailer said that it would not restock the bottles, which are made by Nalge Nunc International in Rochester, a unit of Thermo Fisher Scientific, until Health Canada completed a review of bisphenol-a, or B.P.A., a chemical used to make hard, transparent plastics as well as liners for food cans.

...Church and environmental groups in Canada have mounted campaigns against bottled water because of concerns about the huge amount of plastic used in containers. As a result, the reusable Nalgene bottles have become ubiquitous on college campuses and elsewhere.

Polycarbonate plastic, which can only be produced by using B.P.A., creates bottles that are transparent and almost as hard as glass, but particularly shatter-resistant.

Recently, however, the use of B.P.A.-based plastics in food containers has questioned in Canada by Environmental Defence , a Toronto-based group. Environmentalists in the United States are also raising concerns about the chemical.

Last year, San Francisco’s board of governors passed a local law banning the use of the chemical in children’s products. B.P.A. was removed from the ordinance before it went into effect, however, after an industry lawsuit.

Critics point to studies dating back to 1936 showing that the chemical can disrupt the hormonal system.

While there is little dispute about that, the plastics industry, supported by several studies from government agencies in Japan, North America and Europe, contends that polycarbonate bottles contain very little of the chemical and release only insignificant amounts of B.P.A. into the bodies of users...