Eight weeks later, female snails living in plastic bottles had more than twice as many embryos inside their bodies compared to the glass-grown snails. "Something from the plastic," Wagner said, "must have leached out and changed the reproductive patterns of our snails." Wagner cautions against jumping to conclusions. Water is still a healthy beverage, he said. And until the compounds at work in the snail study have been identified, it's just not possible to know if PET plastics pose a human health risk. Still, tests in his lab have shown far less estrogenic activity in tap water than in even the most "ultra-pure" bottled waters. "Having done all of these experiments, I started drinking tap water," Wagner told Discovery News. "It might have other stuff in it, but at least it doesn't have estrogenic compounds." It may also be time, Swan said, to reconsider how safe the so-called "safe" plastics really are. "I used to say: '4, 5, 1, and 2. All the rest are bad for you,'" she said, referring to the recycling codes on plastic products. "Now, I'm not saying that anymore. We don't know about 4, 5, 1, or 2. This raises questions about all plastic bottles." Related Links: TreeHugger: Dangers of Nalgene water bottles and other plastic sport water bottles |
advertisement
|
-
our sites
-
video
mobile
-
shop
-
stay connected
-
corporate
