Bottled Water Found to Contain over 24,000 Chemicals, Including Endocrine Disruptors

Widespread consumer demand for plastic products that are free of the hormone-disrupting chemical bisphenol-A (BPA) has led to some significant positive changes in the way that food, beverage and water containers are manufactured. But a new study out of Germany has found that thousands of other potentially harmful chemicals are still leeching from plastic products into food and beverages, including an endocrine-disrupting chemical (EDC) known as di(2-ethylhexyl) fumarate, or DEHF, that is completely unregulated.

Martin Wagner and his colleague, Jorg Oehlmann, from the Goethe University Frankfurt, in conjunction with a team of researchers from the German Federal Institute of Hydrology, learned this after conducting tests on 18 different bottled water products to look for the presence of EDCs. Using an advanced combination of bioassay work and high-resolution mass spectrometry, the team identified some 24,520 different chemicals present in the tested water.

But of major concern, and the apparent underpinning of the study’s findings, was DEHF, a plasticizer chemical that is used to make plastic bottles more flexible. According to reports, DEHF was clearly identified in the tested water as the most consistent and obvious culprit causing anti-estrogenic activity. Despite trace amounts of more than 24,000 other potentially damaging chemicals, DEHF stood out as the only possible EDC capable of inducing this particular observed activity, a highly concerning observation. Read more >>

16-year-old has finally succeeded in making plastic out of banana peels

A few years ago, Elif Bilgin, now 16, began thinking about slimy, used banana peels in an entirely new light. She knew that mango skins could be used to make more environmentally friendly plastic, so why not banana peels, too?

But the peels proved a slippery subject, Scientific American writes:

Bilgin spent two years toiling away on her project to develop a bioplastic from discarded banana peels, enduring 10 failed trials of plastics that weren’t strong enough or that decayed rapidly. … Finally, in her last two trials, she made plastics with the features she sought, and it did not decay.

The plastic she made could be used to coat electric wires, for instance, in place of oil-derived plastic. And her patience paid off: She won a $50,000 award in this year’s Google Science Fair. Because there’s always money in the banana (-based plastic) stand. Read more >>