[Aer]

Alright, so you've probably heard it all over the news about this product called Bisphenol-A, and wondered what the hell it is. But I have some news for you all, most of you are ingesting it on a daily basis.

I recently took a trip to Russia where I didn't use anything plastic (aside from the water bottles they had there since you can't drink tap there), and I literally felt much more alive. My sex drive increased ten-fold, hair was growing on my face twice as fast and I felt alive.

The second I came back to Sweden this all changed, however. I started drinking out of my water bottle, and I felt like a pacifistic person with almost no motivation. I put the pieces together today that it was due to this chemical.

If you all don't know, BPA is proven to increase estrogen levels in your bloodstream. And if you're like me, you drink water VERY often to help with your diet and exercise. It does have a ton of negative long term health effects in the long run, and is detrimental to your well being in the short term as well.

Today I give up the water bottle (from Bodybuilding.com nonetheless!) and I return to glass.

More info from a surprisingly informative Wikipedia page : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bisphenol_A


Seriously guys, watch out for this shit, it really does do harm. On the bright side if you're looking for a sex change operation it will help.

[Emancipator]

BPA has been massacred here in Canada, some stores are victims of a witch hunt if its found that they're selling BPA bottles.
Most plastics have to be avoided, not only BPA, but its hard to avoid them since they're in practically everything we use on a daily basis.

[zoom]

Just buy a metal water bottle

[MidniteSpecial]

Boys are born with micropenises outside plastic factories, there's a doc on it called 'disappearing male' , Fucked up shit.

http://topdocumentaryfilms.com/the-disappearing-male/

[globalunderground]

Alex Jones is big on this topic.

[Emancipator]

(04-07-2013 04:40 PM)MidniteSpecial Wrote:  

Boys are born with micropenises outside plastic factories, there's a doc on it called 'disappearing male' , Fucked up shit.

http://topdocumentaryfilms.com/the-disappearing-male/

Yeah apparently that Native village has seen an abnormal birth rate that is in favour of girls, well pass the normal 50/50.

[Pete]

I try to aviod plastic every time I can.

[globalunderground]

(04-07-2013 05:16 PM)Emancipator Wrote:  

(04-07-2013 04:40 PM)MidniteSpecial Wrote:  

Boys are born with micropenises outside plastic factories, there's a doc on it called 'disappearing male' , Fucked up shit.

http://topdocumentaryfilms.com/the-disappearing-male/

Yeah apparently that Native village has seen an abnormal birth rate that is in favour of girls, well pass the normal 50/50.

It's not 50/50, it's 107 boys to 100 girls at birth.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sex_ratio

[painter]

Fuck, you mean my Gatorade bottles are poison? The alternative is glass or stainless steel?

[Emancipator]

(04-07-2013 05:19 PM)globalunderground Wrote:  

(04-07-2013 05:16 PM)Emancipator Wrote:  

(04-07-2013 04:40 PM)MidniteSpecial Wrote:  

Boys are born with micropenises outside plastic factories, there's a doc on it called 'disappearing male' , Fucked up shit.

http://topdocumentaryfilms.com/the-disappearing-male/

Yeah apparently that Native village has seen an abnormal birth rate that is in favour of girls, well pass the normal 50/50.

It's not 50/50, it's 107 boys to 100 girls at birth.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sex_ratio

I stand corrected, Fisher's principle was what first came to mind.
But for that 107boys to 100girls, how much is it skewed in favour to males due to practices in China and India and other poor countries which seek male births?

[globalunderground]

If you exclude China/India, it's 105:100.

There are just more dudes in the world, something I noticed that as a kid. A guy I used to work with told me that at his very small elementary school in a small midwestern town, that there was an entire grade of all boys, and this was a co-ed school.

Think of all the stuff guys do...war, drug overdose, end up in jail...goto any bar and it's still male dominated. The only reason conventional wisdom says there are more women is because there are more women in the 65+ category.

http://www.lifeslittlemysteries.com/1756...ratio.html

[Lazarus]

What are some of the other sources you get BPA from besides water bottles? Surely you must have been ingesting BPA's from more than water bottles to have noticed that much of a difference?

[Kickb]

So water from the tap is bad for you, water from a bottle is bad for you. What can we do? Do I need to buy a filter and attach it to my faucet?

[kosko]

(04-07-2013 06:54 PM)kickboxer Wrote:  

So water from the tap is bad for you, water from a bottle is bad for you. What can we do? Do I need to buy a filter and attach it to my faucet?

Tap Water is the lesser of two evils if you live in a place where its safe to drink. Some places have dodgy water sources and testing and in those instances bottled water is better - but marginally - because for that premium in price you could easily purchase a home filtration system for much cheaper over the long haul. Bottled water IMO is far worse because it is not bound by the same rigorous testing standards and nobody knows how long that water has been sitting in that plastic container. The plastic degrades from different environments, and variations in light and room temperature can speed up this process. Your tap water has stuff like lead and shit in trace amounts but so does your bottled water as the majority of it is sourced from the same aquifers as Municipal water.

The only water I drink out of plastic is Distilled. I drink water out of glass or metal containers every other time. I tossed out my plastic Tupperware and only use class now to store my food. They are small steps that long term will do a lot more good for you.

[MidniteSpecial]

I first knew plastic was bull shit when I drank a snapple iced tea in a plastic bottle. It tasted nothing like the their tea that comes in the glass bottle.

[Emancipator]

(04-07-2013 07:18 PM)MidniteSpecial Wrote:  

I first knew plastic was bull shit when I drank a snapple iced tea in a plastic bottle. It tasted nothing like the their tea that comes in the glass bottle.

Mexican Coke in a glass = godsend.

[InternationPlayboy]

(04-07-2013 09:55 PM)Emancipator Wrote:  

(04-07-2013 07:18 PM)MidniteSpecial Wrote:  

I first knew plastic was bull shit when I drank a snapple iced tea in a plastic bottle. It tasted nothing like the their tea that comes in the glass bottle.

Mexican Coke in a glass = godsend.

I was in Mexico over 10 years ago. I bought a coke in a glass bottle, they poured the bottle into a plastic bag and put a straw in the plastic bag for me to drink out of. This was strange because the two gringos in front of me got theirs in the bottle. I was assuming they did that because they recycle every couple bottles?

[Tuthmosis]

(04-07-2013 06:40 PM)Lazarus Wrote:  

What are some of the other sources you get BPA from besides water bottles?

I heard thermal paper (as in most store receipts these days) has BPA too.

Yup, I was right--and it transfers through skin contact. (Don't worry, the invisible hand of the free market will fix this too.)

http://phys.org/news/2010-11-bpa-thermal...-skin.html

[Handsome Creepy Eel]

Interesting. Had no idea about thermal printers working that way.

I don't understand the moral of the post though. Bisphenol A is dangerous, yes, but you avoided it by... drinking from a water bottle? What other food or drink from plastic containers are you consuming? I find myself hard pressed to think of anything that isn't packaged in simple cardboard. Unless you eat those premade dinners (and even then the problem is plastic leaching from heat, not just by itself), I just don't know where all this plastic concerning food is.

[speakeasy]

(04-07-2013 04:19 PM)Aer Wrote:  

Alright, so you've probably heard it all over the news about this product called Bisphenol-A, and wondered what the hell it is. But I have some news for you all, most of you are ingesting it on a daily basis.

I recently took a trip to Russia where I didn't use anything plastic (aside from the water bottles they had there since you can't drink tap there), and I literally felt much more alive. My sex drive increased ten-fold, hair was growing on my face twice as fast and I felt alive.

The second I came back to Sweden this all changed, however. I started drinking out of my water bottle, and I felt like a pacifistic person with almost no motivation. I put the pieces together today that it was due to this chemical.

If you all don't know, BPA is proven to increase estrogen levels in your bloodstream. And if you're like me, you drink water VERY often to help with your diet and exercise. It does have a ton of negative long term health effects in the long run, and is detrimental to your well being in the short term as well.

Today I give up the water bottle (from Bodybuilding.com nonetheless!) and I return to glass.

More info from a surprisingly informative Wikipedia page : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bisphenol_A


Seriously guys, watch out for this shit, it really does do harm. On the bright side if you're looking for a sex change operation it will help.

I couldn't imagine you'd feel any measurable results that fast. Couldn't it be any number of environmental factors responsible for any changes? Food? Climate? Psychological/mood changes? How can absolutely rule out any other factor?

Has anyone come out with some conclusive evidence that BPA is something to worry about? Or is this just the latest empty scare like heterosexual AIDS, second-hand smoke, and anthrax in envelopes?

[Vicious]

While I think the topic is definitely interesting and worth exploring I have to say the OP's scientific method is somewhat whack. Any details on the effects of BPA available? I'm on my droid so my google-fu is weak right now.

[Ensam]

This happens to be within my area of expertise.

BPA is a monomer unit in two major types of plastics, polycarbonate and epoxies. Polycarbonates are used a lot in durable water bottles and the epoxies are used as liners for metal cans. It's unlikely that there's much BPA exposure here. The BPA is polymerized and there's very little free monomer left in the final products. It can leach out, but your body processes it very quickly and trace amounts of BPA will clear your system before doing much damage. It only becomes a problem when the exposure is chronic and high enough that your body can't clear the BPA out quickly enough.

Personally I'm mored worried about the applications where BPA is used in its monomer form. It's a plasticizer for PVC, so any flexible PVC material is going to have the potential to leach BPA. Another poster mentioned above it's used a lot in thermal printers. I wouldn't be surprised if that accounted for most of the publics chronic exposure. If you're really worried about exposure I'd avoid handling paper as much as possible rather than run away from plastics.

That's not to say there's not plenty of other nasty shit in plastics. The plasticy taste you get in cheap water bottles is caused by acetaldehyde. But acetaldehyde is also a biproduct of alcohol metabolism and it present in cigarette/marijuana smoke so avoiding it basically means not having any fun.

I think it's just another toxin fad for people to get worked up about. If it worries you limit your exposure but unless you live right next to a chemical factory you're probably ok.

[Aer]

(04-08-2013 04:31 AM)Vicious Wrote:  

While I think the topic is definitely interesting and worth exploring I have to say the OP's scientific method is somewhat whack. Any details on the effects of BPA available? I'm on my droid so my google-fu is weak right now.

Well I honestly rooted out all of the other options, including diet and exercise concerning T-Levels. It was strange how much different I felt though. Hell, maybe it was just Russia or something. But still I can't leave the water in the bottle for too long because THEN the plastic really starts to seep.

[Lazarus]

(04-08-2013 07:03 AM)Ensam Wrote:  

This happens to be within my area of expertise.

BPA is a monomer unit in two major types of plastics, polycarbonate and epoxies. Polycarbonates are used a lot in durable water bottles and the epoxies are used as liners for metal cans. It's unlikely that there's much BPA exposure here. The BPA is polymerized and there's very little free monomer left in the final products. It can leach out, but your body processes it very quickly and trace amounts of BPA will clear your system before doing much damage. It only becomes a problem when the exposure is chronic and high enough that your body can't clear the BPA out quickly enough.

Personally I'm mored worried about the applications where BPA is used in its monomer form. It's a plasticizer for PVC, so any flexible PVC material is going to have the potential to leach BPA. Another poster mentioned above it's used a lot in thermal printers. I wouldn't be surprised if that accounted for most of the publics chronic exposure. If you're really worried about exposure I'd avoid handling paper as much as possible rather than run away from plastics.

That's not to say there's not plenty of other nasty shit in plastics. The plasticy taste you get in cheap water bottles is caused by acetaldehyde. But acetaldehyde is also a biproduct of alcohol metabolism and it present in cigarette/marijuana smoke so avoiding it basically means not having any fun.

I think it's just another toxin fad for people to get worked up about. If it worries you limit your exposure but unless you live right next to a chemical factory you're probably ok.

Cool. Thanks. Do you know if there are any chemicals we are exposed to in our every day lives that are a threat we could minimise?

Also, when you said paper did you mean all printed paper (such as office print outs or books) or just receipts etc?

[Lazarus]

@ OP: Could the difference be something in the water? Does Russia not add fluoride to their water, for example?