Phil McKenna, contributor
FOOD containers, garden hoses, baby bottles. What do you do when the products you use in daily life could potentially be sowing the seeds for chronic illness? In an exhaustively researched book, Susan Freinkel traces our relationship with plastic from the initial love affair to our growing disenchantment and ambivalence.
She recounts how plastic first won our hearts as a great democratiser. Combs and other luxury items once limited to those who could afford ivory and bone became widely available thanks to inexpensive plastics.
Diving head first into polymer science, Freinkel introduces the reader to a magical world of "molecular conga lines" and "glad-handing atoms"; materials equally adept at wrapping a sandwich or tethering an astronaut in deep space.
Surprisingly, she gives little ink to bisphenol A, a key ingredient in plastic bottles that has been banned in a number of countries for its role as a possible endocrine disrupter. Rather, Freinkel alerts us to a wider range of chemical additives such as phthalates that may prove more toxic, especially when high exposure occurs during early childhood.
We can't put the plastic genie back in the bottle, but we can, Freinkel says, make it better behaved. Efforts to develop bioplastics from plants and biodegradable polymers are under way, for example. It won't be easy, but if we can begin thinking more critically about plastic, there may still be hope for our currently dysfunctional relationship.
Plastic: A toxic love story
by Susan Freinkel
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt