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It should come as no surprise to manufacturers, retailers, and regulators that, when given the choice, parents opt for plastics and products that do not contain hormone-disrupting chemicals. The real surprise is that while we wait for our government to catch up with our own common sense approach to protecting our children's health, they won't acknowledge mounting scientific evidence and require manufacturers to divulge what's in their products so we can make informed choices.

I can grudgingly tolerate the dogma of unfettered capitalism, simply because at this point it is so entrenched that to ask otherwise would be a waste of energy. I have totally exceeded my patience level with our government's pandering to corporations by, first of all, allowing them to use chemicals that have not been comprehensively tested for safety and, second of all, allowing them to hide product information from consumers.

I guess I shouldn't be quite so shocked. The federal government only began requiring food labeling in 1994. From the FDA's own 1993 announcement, "Good Reading for Good Eating":

The new food label is reading that can be put to good use, too, because it's designed to help clear up much of the confusion that has prevailed on supermarket shelves. It also can help consumers choose more healthful diets. And it can serve as an incentive to food companies to improve the nutritional qualities of their products.

"[This isn't] just another government program," said FDA Commissioner David Kessler, M.D. "The new food label is an unusual opportunity to help millions of Americans make more informed, healthier food choices."

How about extending this opportunity so consumers can make informed choices about all products? With the growing list of chemicals that are surreptitiously added to seemingly benign things like baby bottles, mattresses, and shower curtains, I think it's about time to dispel all the consumer confusion.

The latest parental puzzle has been over safe plastics. Plastic is essentially unavoidable in today's world, nearly 100 billion pounds are produced in the US alone each year. We really tend to throw around the terms billion and even trillion these days without giving it a second thought, but stop for a moment to consider how much plastic that is. We are creating over 3,200 pounds of plastic every single second of every day. By the time you finish reading this article we will have generated another million pounds of plastic (yes, a million is really that small compared to 100 billion).

So, first off, we seriously need to curb our consumption of plastic. There are growing piles of floating plastic creating islands in the oceans. The biggest one is known as the Great Pacific Garbage Patch and is larger than Texas (or Spain if you're more Euro-centric). Aquatic species are starving as they eat the plastic thinking it's food and then dying with bellies full of our old toothbrushes and plastic wrappers. If you want to avoid the world envisioned in Pixar's new movie, Wall-E, make it a personal pledge to decrease your consumption. Think "Do I need this?"; "Can I get it made out of a more sustainable material?"; "Can I find an option with less packaging?"; and "Can it be recycled?", especially considering only about 5% of plastic actually gets recycled. Still, the main question people ask themselves of late is, "Is plastic safe for my health, or my children's health?"

Two types of plastic, polyvinyl chloride (PVC) and polycarbonate (PC), have been causing some real concerns. Two chemical ingredients, bisphenol-A (BPA) and a phthalate known as Di(2-ethylhexyl) phthalate (DEHP), are known hormone disruptors and have been detected in the blood and urine of nearly every person tested. The worst news is the youngest children tested have the highest concentrations in their bodies.

What does it mean to be a hormone-disruptor? Because hormones are integrally involved with the overall operations of our bodies, hormone disruptors can impact an almost endless diversity of bodily functions. Scientific studies show these two chemicals linked to everything from reproductive dysfunction to cancer and obesity. And we are unknowingly buying them, using them, and exposed to them all the time.

We are accustomed to thinking there are basically 7 kinds of plastics, represented on the bottom of our products by the system of numbers in the chasing arrows recycling symbol. Truth be told, there are nearly 500 different plastic chemical resins. The numbers 1 through 7 only signify the few that are recyclable. So, how do you know what you have? It's a guessing game because manufacturers are not required to list the ingredients they used to make the plastic. Sometimes they don't even know. I've called manufacturers before to request the chemical composition of the plastics they use and some have been disturbingly ignorant. They really wanted to help me (I'm pretty sure they really did), but they had no idea what was in the plastics they sold to consumers.

So the simplest guide I can offer is to look for the resin recycling numbers commonly found on the bottom of products and to avoid numbers 3 (PVC) and 7 (PC). If they're not labeled, skip it or call the manufacturer and ask what the heck it is. If they don't know, don't buy it or use it. Use your purchasing power to send a strong message to manufactures that if they don't disclose the ingredients in their products, you won't buy them.

As consumers, we are not being told the whole story when it comes to what we buy and consume. We all need to make it clear that we want to know what's in our food and products. It's called the right-to-know, and in an age of uncertainty, we all need to know as much as possible to make informed and healthy choices -- especially for our children and their future.

Click here to read other blog entries on The Huffington Post by Christopher Gavigan, and join our online discussion by leaving a reply. 

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