BPA Controversy

Raloff, Janet. "Blood Levels of BPA Become Source of Controversy." Science News. N.p., 17 Feb. 2013. Web. 22 Feb. 2013.

This article was about how the testing that was done for how much BPA humans actually ingest and encounter may have been inaccurate.  This was discovered at the February 16 symposium when new data was reported.  According to the new data, the old results appeared to be roughly 1,000 times higher than what most people actually encounter.  Toxicologist and symposium organizer, Justin Teeguarden, wonders if the high amount of BPA found on his first test was because of high exposure or contamination.  This is a big issue because studies have linked BPA exposures with cardiovascular changes, altered behavior in children, prediabetic symptoms and reproductive impairments.  To this day no one has identified what amount of exposure to BPA is safe and what isn’t.  So if you ask me, this issue is very, very important. 

Coming into this article I didn’t know what to expect.  I had heard about BPA before and how it’s supposedly bad for you, but never truly understood it.  After reading this article, I am well aware as to how much bigger of a deal BPA is.  You never really think about the things that you can’t see because you can’t see them.  BPA is one of those things.  It’s scary to think about a thing that we can’t see, in the everyday things that we use, that is causing these side effects in humans.  What’s even scarier is that the scientists don’t have a good handle on testing for BPA, so the amount of BPA we are exposed to everyday is unknown at the moment.   

Environmentally Friendly?

I have honestly never really thought about our environmental issues very much.  It’s not that I don’t care about the environment, I do, but I’m just not as into it as some people.  I have always wondered what it means to be environmentally friendly.

What does it mean to be environmentally friendly?  Now-a-days you see many products with “environmentally friendly” stamped on the bottle or packaging or another common phrase is “made from recycled material”.  And it’s not like these stamps are small either, the companies will make sure that consumers can see that their companies are going green.   Many people just feed off the fact that many companies are going green and taking environmental precautions because they like the label of saving the environment.  What makes that bottle of soap different than a regular one?  Don’t get me wrong making containers out of recycled materials is very cool and a good way to make use of our unused materials, but  most people don’t realize is that being environmentally friendly is a lot harder than it looks.

We all know that driving our cars emits carbon dioxide into the air.  Looking outside the computer lab window, I see our school parking lot full of students’ vehicles that they drove to school today.  I bet at least one of those students is neighbors with or lives close to another student who drives.  They could be environmentally friendly and get a car pool started, so they can help eliminate the carbon dioxide that is emitted into the air.  Or once it gets warmer the students that live close enough could bike to school.  It’s the little things that you can do to help the environment.

Some of those things can include: simply planting a tree, recycling, picking up garbage that you see lying on the ground and throwing it in a garbage can and biking places instead of driving.  The truth about any problem is there is always a solution but that solution will always come with consequences.