Here in Bluffton, we’re right on the May River and close to our Atlantic ocean shores. Most of us love the ocean and we collect souvenirs like seashells, driftwood, rocks, and other momentos. And still, there are individuals working to clean up the beaches by combing the beaches for trash – the human impact on our shores. On Twitter, we follow @beachcleanup and @floastsamdiaries – interesting people who are showing us in very creative ways what shows up on our shores. And then we found this artist who took a whole year’s worth of trash from the beach and turned it into art.
Sometimes the only way we get to the truth, the way we get behind the marketing, ad campaigns and propaganda is through truth-tellers. We share with you some of the best reasons to evolve beyond plastic – your health, the environment, cost savings and more. But sometimes the visual story tells us more and moves us to more urgent action. The documentary Trapped is one of those visual stories sharing the truth of your plastic bottled water. Not only are plastic bottles leaching chemicals, clogging our landfills, floating in our oceans, but the about40% of bottled water is nothing more than tap water. That’s right, the same stuff that comes out of your faucet. So check out the trailer, then check out the film and tell us what you think.
There are so many organizations helping to raise the awareness of the damage done by plastics to our health and our environment. Our friends at the Surfrider Foundation, have a great Rise Against Plastics campaign, asking folks to pledge an effort to end their use of single-use plastics. What we had to share though, was this creative and compelling video that, in a very simple way, shows the damage to marine life of plastics in our oceans.
Today, the news was released from a very interesting study from researchers at University of Missouri – turns out the BPA (bisphenol-A), found in plastics, can make men less attractive to women. While the researchers tested the theory on male deer mice, we humans can learn quite a bit from their reactions.
The unversity study found that male deer mice exposed to BPA through their mother’s diet exhibited compromised spatial learning abilities, a dominant trait exhibited in males. So these BPA-exposed males had a harder time finding females in the laboratory. To quote the researchers:
The disruption of male spatial cognition and the supporting brain systems would severely compromise the ability of the male deer mice to find mates in natural settings, and even if they did locate females, such animals would seem to be less likely to be chosen as mates than males that had not been exposed to BPA.
And, perhaps most disturbingly, both BPA-exposed and control females preferred the clean males to BPA-exposed males. BPA-exposed males were rejected 2 to 1 by the females in the study. In very simple language, BPA makes male deer mice less attractive to the female deer mice.
We’ve seen BPA and plastics linked with breast cancer, infertility and early puberty in females. Now we’re seeing it affect men’s brains and our attractiveness as well.
Even noted author John Steinbeck couldn’t have imagined this link between mice and men.
Once again, the links between plastics and our health are making headlines. In a recent article in Slate magazine shared:
Recent studies show that some pesticides, pharmaceuticals, and plastic additives appear to change when and how the mammary gland develops. Even low doses, close to what average Americans are exposed to currently, have been linked to altered development, cell growth, and gene expression in animal mammary glands. The chemicals include the notorious baby-bottle chemical bisphenol A, dioxin (a by-product from burning plastic and a common food contaminant), phthalates (plastic additives), atrazine (a top-selling herbicide in the United States, now banned in Europe), flame retardants, and stain repellants. PFOA, a common chemical used to make Teflon, appears to delay puberty in animal pups and reduce the size of the mammary gland, while chemicals that mimic estrogen may accelerate puberty.
Just reading that one paragraph, reminded of this great TED talk from Jeanne Rizzo, the CEO of Breast Cancer Fund:
