Picket Fence Post

I honestly do not know what to make of this new report that has been making its way through the media landscape over the past week, warning parents that plastic bottles and canned goods lined with a particular chemical — bisphenol A (BPA) — can be toxic to our offspring.

Here I am, a moderate, pro-green kinda gal, sending my kids to school with reusable, plastic water bottles each day for their snack times and for use during water breaks at their various sporting events, instead of giving them a brand, new, unopened bottle of water. When my children get those plastic, kid-friendly cups at restaurants, we take them home and reuse them until they, essentially, disintegrate. When we buy take-out or pre-made food (you do not want to know how much Chinese take-out crosses my threshold) that come in plastic containers, we keep the containers and reuse them — in lieu of plastic wrap or tin foil put over bowls when we store or reheat food — until the containers are no longer usable, in which case we bring them to our town’s recycling center.

And then the rug got pulled out from under me.

A division of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services now says that use of any products that contain BPA have sparked “some concern for neural and behavioral effects in fetuses, infants, and children,” reported the Boston Globe. The federal government tells consumers to look for plastic products with the numeral “7″ inside of the little triangular arrow recycling symbol and “to avoid canned goods.” (So we have to say adieu to our staple of canned beans, practically the only protein my Youngest Boy will willingly consume?)

Just for kicks, I went to my cabinets and started checking out the bottom of the plastic cups and water bottles to see if my clan was in danger. Here’s what I found:

• On the bottom of one of those mongo-sized World Series Champion Boston Red Sox plastic cups you buy at the park and then don’t have to have another drink for 47 hours, it read: “Digital Replay Inc., U.S. Patent 6,490,093, ASI #62050, Top Shelf Dishwasher Safe, Made in USA, 32T oz., 3.” Soooo, there’s no “7.” Does that mean it’s safe to use?
• On the bottom of another mongo-sized UMass Minutemen basketball plastic cups which was made by the same company as the Sox cup, the only difference in the writing was that this cup had a “7A” instead of a “3″ on the bottom. What the heck does that mean? Does the mere fact that it contains a “7″ in some form, although not inside the recycling symbol, mean that it should get the heave-ho?
• On the bottom of a colorful Spiderman cup, it read: “Technimark, Asheboro, NC, Made in USA, 9, TM-16.” Then there is a “5″ inside of the recycling logo. There’s no “7.”
• The bottom of a Dick’s Sporting Goods water bottle my boys got when they signed up for baseball last year said: “Guaranteed Odourless and Tasteless, Peraliment — Alimentaire.” There’s a “4″ inside the recycling symbol with “LDPE, Lebensmittelecht” beneath it.

On other plastic cups, I discovered many with the numeral “5″ inside the triangle, although I did see a random “7″ stamped on the bottom of a few cups NOT inside the recycling symbol. So what does this mean? A “7″ not inside a triangle is okay and won’t irreparably destroy my children’s health? Anything with the “7″ should be considered not so lucky?

It’s not as though I can send the kids to school with actual glass bottles, unless I want to pin their health insurance cards to their shirts and tuck a wad of cash into their backpacks in order to pay the deductible at the emergency room for the docs who’ll be sewing up the flesh wounds they’ll sustain when they inevitably break the glass bottles.

If I send the kids to school on a daily basis with brand new bottles of water or juice boxes for their snack times, Al Gore will bust down my door and tell me I’m killing the environment with all the unnecessary trash from new bottles every day, and the anti-obesity crowd will tell me I’m filling my kids with sugar water.

And seeing as though the stores which sell the reusable, plastic water bottles aren’t quite sure what they should do with this new information and the droves of panicked parents, what’s left to do? If I chuck all my plastic-wear and go out and buy new stuff, can the store managers guarantee me that their products are safe for my children to use? Maybe I should just tell the kids to wait to satiate their thirst until it rains, in which case they can run outside and open their mouths to catch the rainwater, that way, there will be no contaminated containers or trash to worry about.

But then, of course, I’ll have to start worrying about the toxicity of the raindrops.

Image credit: From Recyclenow.org.