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New Study Links Plastics To Heart Disease, Diabetes
fprintf writes "There have been a number of studies over the years, some of which have been debunked, linking plastics with human disease. Now British researchers have released a study again linking common plastics used in food/liquid storage with human disease."
Correlation.is.not.spelled.like.corelation
If you didn't RTFA, how do you know their results only evidenced correlation then?
Blerg.
I wonder if they will compare the instances of disease to those from food poisoning from earlier methods of food storage?
"As God is my witness, I thought turkeys could fly." A. Carlson
Exactly right. "Correlation is not causation" has become more like a reflexive meme around here rather than a thoughtful addition to the conversation.
I may make you feel, but I can't make you think.
Every week there will be a new study that reveals some common chemical in our daily lives, will be harmful or good for your health.
Often it will be both harmful and good on consecutive weeks.
Soon I'll be releasing my own study that shows excessive worrying about common foods causes diabetes, cancer and spontaneous combustion.
It's called a cheap grab for mod points.
Once you start despising the jerks, you become one.
From TFA: "At least from this study, we cannot draw any conclusion that bisphenol A causes any health effect. As noted by the authors, further research will be needed to understand whether these statistical associations have any relevance at all for human health."
As noted by the authors. The authors, and the person TFA got a quote from, and TFA all make this concession, and you try to karma-whore by stating the obvious. Read. The. Fine. Article.
Keep using BPA products. And people wonder why girls are hitting puberty so much earlier now.
Internet? (reference: any adult web site)
attention deficit disorder
Internet? (reference: online games)
and neurological systems
Internet? (reference: goatse)
Disclaimer: I am not god.
We may not be created equal
But we can be treated equal.
The article in question actually says that they don't claim causality - but that it should be looked at further.
As usual from press reporting of scientific studies it's really hard to tell what to make of the conclusion. The article mentions animal studies that indicate BPA (the plastic) may disrupt hormones (especially estrogen).
The article suggests this is a preliminary study that only measured the correlation (so, yes it appears the assumption was correct) between BPA levels and heart disease and diabetes. It doesn't talking about removing the effect of diet, which is well-known to affect both of these diseases. If that effect is not accounted for in the study, it may well turn out that people who eat lots of meals from BPA containers (or have bad teeth and have fillings with BPA) tend to have less healthy diets as well.
And people wonder why girls are hitting puberty so much earlier now.
That is because children have much better nutrition than there used to be. As a result, they are able to reach puberty sooner because of better health.
"Exactly right. "Correlation is not causation" has become more like a reflexive meme around here rather than a thoughtful addition to the conversation."
I don't see how you can say that, just because a lot of commenters tend to reflexively reply with that meme to articles about scientific studies linking one thing to another. There can be many reasons for this. Correlation does not necessarily equal cau... uh ... oh, I see your point.
Wow, did you even bother reading the article? Do you really even understand statistics? Yes, correlation is not causation, but that really doesn't add much to the conversation. Correlation is necessary but not sufficient for causation. You do realize that there is a whole branch of mathematics and analysis that tries to extract causal relationships, if they exist, from this data? Are you also aware that analysis like this is the only way we can discover certain relationships?(Well, the only feasible way anyway). Getting a bunch of statistically random people to sit in a lab and drink from either plastic or non-plastic cups for 50 years isn't really going to be possible.
If you have a genuine statistical beef with something, please actually explain it rather than smugly stating, "corelation(sic). Is. Not. Causation)
Either that or show me your PhD in statistics.
Monstar L
It's time to play the what-is-the-causation game again. Most obvious to me is that junk food, prepared food (microwave meals etc.), and soft drinks are sold in plastic containers, and these foodstuffs are generally associated with heart disease and diabetes one way or another. It'll be interesting to see what the more rigorous studies find, although I'm sure this fine pilot study will be presented as Unarguable Proof That Plastic Makes You Die And We're Not Changing Our Minds On This by the world media before the day is out.
No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
Don't malign plastic, you dirty hippies. They saved my life in WWII! Why, when I was a lad, we would have KILLED to have plastic food storage. You know what I hear when you say plastics are dangerous? "blah blah blah I hate America blah blah I hate progress blah blah blah." Real Americans can eat plastic like it was apple pie and not get sick.
The same goes double for global warming & the ozone layer. In fact, let's just stop funding research into things that may be bad for us. Only sissies care. All you are doing with your sissy studies is holding back progress and making people worry over nothing.
Admit it: you want us all to go back to living in caves. You hate the modern world and everything in it and you want to destroy it with your evil 'studies.' Elitist intellectual claptrap.
America stands for progress. Except we're not progressive, the damn hippies stole that word and turned it into something dirty. Either you love progress and you know that everything new is better, or you hate America and want everyone to live in caves.
If you hate plastics, you hate the whole human race!
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
Straight from their own front page:
Never said he did. I was merely pointing out a similarity between Natural News and Kevin Trudeau both claiming that "natural" remedies are more effective than man-made medicines (which are also natural).
Just a few. Like this one, this one and this one. So yes, I have proof he is providing miracle cures. That and his infomercials on which he peddles his book which has in its title, "Includes The Natural Cures For Over 50 Specific Diseases".
I never said I didn't like the source. Some "natural" items can be very beneficial to certain people. However, claiming that ONLY "natural" products, such as supplements which are unregulated and don't have to detail what they actually contain or what effect they may have on people, is disingenuous and potentially harmful.
As far as proving them wrong, I don't need to prove them wrong because studies over the years have proven them wrong. Here is one article which discusses "natural" remedies, and this one which talks about Lycopene.
So yes, I was very intelligent to point out the bias of Natural News so people are aware of their bias. Whether people heed the warning is up to them but they have been warned.
We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security. -- Dwight D. Eisenhower
"some of which have been debunked"
Snopes is good at debunking (urban) myths. They are not, however, good at evaluating science. Debunking is not even an appropriate term or activity to apply to science (as stated by the poster, and as performed by Snopes). Their FAQ lists other forms of common fiction which are not urban myth, but fail to list badly researched statements by or about science among them.
Snopes reports the "debunking" coming from the International Bottled Water Association. Nobody conversant with science would accept a statement from such as biased source as authoritative. Their major hint should have come from the statement that the master's thesis was "not peer reviewed". A thesis is conducted by a student under a committee of professionals, at least one of which (the thesis supervisor) is an expert in that field. Peer review is conducted by the committee. A thesis is intended to be material suitable for rewriting into a publishable paper. It will have the committee members' names on it, in reference if not in the by-line. As professionals they will at least see to it that the result is worthy of carrying their names.
As for the quote in Snopes supposedly from Rolf Halden of Johns Hopkins that there are no dioxins in plastic, do your own research, as Snopes should have done to follow up, and as the Johns Hopkins people should have done before making the statement. Go to: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/sites/entrez and put in the search terms "plastic" and "dioxin".
Snopes should also have done their research on the link they provide to the Johns Hopkins PR release (not a scientific publication of any sort, and certainly not peer reviewed) making the "hoax" claim. It is not from Halden, it is from Kellog Schwab. In addition to misattribution, they fail to note that the statement is made in the context of J.H. distancing themselves from misattribution in the emails titled "John Hopkins Cancer Update" and such, not in the context of research conducted or reviewed. There is a similar J.H. missive listed among the 150 results from PubMed. It is in a J.H. publication (peer review?) and has no authors credited.
Snopes appears to have found a way to become a subject of their own scrutiny, as they have delved into science and come up as debunkable urban science myth. Stick to urban mythology, Sponesites. Science can and does take care of itself, if you dig for it in science rather than press releases. Evaluating science requires taking the specific hypothetical statements and applying scientific expertise, not merely quoting vested interests (!) who happen to disagree for reasons other than replicable evidence.
"I may be synthetic, but I'm not stupid." -- Bishop 341-B
From TFA
"At least from this study, we cannot draw any conclusion that bisphenol A causes any health effect. "
and:
"The researchers also cautioned that these findings are just the first step and more work is needed to determine if the chemical actually is a direct cause of disease."
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
There is a reason all chemistry beakers, bottles, and flasks are made from glass, its the only cheap inert material that doesn't on some level mix with what you are containing. Metal and plastic eventually leech out.
Rather than going overboard with the results I would follow some common sense guidelines:
1) If you are a baby or preggers then use glass containers.
2) Use glass containers for heating things in the microwave or for long term liquid storage.
Given that the vast majority of everything we drink and eat these days is either stored in plastic or touches plastic at some point I think its almost impossible to go plastic free, and I doubt it matters much.
mime
n.
A modern performer who specializes in comic mimicry.
1. The art of portraying characters and acting out situations or a narrative by gestures and body movement without the use of words; pantomime.
2. A performance of pantomime.
3. An actor or actress skilled in pantomime.
4. Twenty (20) points if you run one over with a car
"The problem with defending the purity of the English language is that English is about as pure as a cribhouse whore."
Exactly. People who eat more prepackaged foods are more likely to be taking in all sorts of stuff---high fructose corn syrup, higher levels of sugar, higher levels of various preservatives (some of which break down into rather nasty stuff in the presence of citric acid), etc., all of which lead to increased levels of disease, whether it's heart disease, diabetes, cancer, etc. Those prepackaged foods are frequently packaged in containers made out of plastics that leach... yup, you guessed it... bisphenol A.
The correlation is interesting, but it isn't remotely close to proving causation. What would be required for that would be doing another study that compensates for dietary differences (and genetic predisposition and...).
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
People who eat more prepackaged foods are more likely to be taking in all sorts of stuff---high fructose corn syrup, higher levels of sugar, higher levels of various preservatives [...]
It seems that no one bothers to actually read the articles before posting (save the "you must be new here", I'm being sarcastic).
You see, the study didn't test exposure to BPA. It only compared the likelihood of some diseases with the amount of BPA present in the body. That's an important detail.
In other words, this correlation may very well indicate causation... the other way around. Heart disease or diabetes may cause your body to retain more BPA. As simple as that.
Shooting off in random directions and making conjectures about the habits of people who come into contact with BPA is pointless (unless you're planning to back it up with data). For example, BPA is used in the packaging of several vegetables, so you can eat nothing but "health food" and still come into contact with BPA frequently. In fact the article points out that 90% of the people tested had some BPA in their body. Also, high-fuctose corn syrup is relatively rare outside the USA (extremely rare in Europe), and the study was (apparently) conducted in the UK.
In any case the study's authors are not claiming any causation, one way or the other, and they specifically say they did not identify any mechanism through which BPA would cause any illness.
Evidence that eating foods with more sweeteners leads to greater obesity, which in turn leads to diabetes? Do I really need to cite studies for something so commonly accepted? Okay, here's a good start:
http://news.healingwell.com/index.php?p=news1&id=521780
http://healthlink.mcw.edu/article/941223597.html
http://www.healthsystem.virginia.edu/uvahealth/adult_diabetes/obover.cfm
I'm not saying that all type 2 diabetes is caused by obesity---it is well established that this is not the case---but it is well established that a fair percentage of people with type 2 diabetes became diabetic after gaining weight and that these people often cease to be diabetic after surgical intervention to forces weight loss. That's about as clear an establishment of causation as you can get.... The causative mechanism is even somewhat understood at this point.
Or did you mean the proof about the preservatives?
http://www.foodnavigator-usa.com/Science-Nutrition/FDA-re-opens-probe-into-benzene-contamination-of-soft-drinks
Follow the links from there for loads of info on this subject.
It is fairly well established that sodium benzoate when combined with ascorbic acid (sorry, wrong acid in my previous post... my bad) releases benzene, which is a well known carcinogen.
Word to the wise: if you're buying soft drinks or fruit juices preserved with sodium benzoate, be sure to drink them immediately. Don't let them sit on the shelf of your home. What you don't know can kill you.
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.