What is BPA, PBDE or TBBPA, and what does this have to do with my “pure and clean” bottle of Evian?

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In our last post we explained how harmful plastics in bottled water impact our health. Today we will explain what exactly happens in our body if we are in too much contact with plastics. This is important to know, as the chemicals plastic needs to sustain can have a large effect on the human body. These harmful chemicals we talk of are BPA, PBDE or TBBPA.

Shockingly, these chemicals have now also been found in us humans. And while they help to make plastic durable, they have a drastically altering effect on our endocrine system.

The endocrine system is responsible for managing and transmitting hormones in our body. Seems quite relevant, right? To give an example of how these chemicals work we will take a closer look at BPA. The chemical BPA works similar to the hormone oestrogen. Oestrogen is the female sex hormone necessary to develop the female reproductive system. (Specialists call BPA a Xenoestrogen, because it is a synthetic product which merely imitates hormones.)

While women might not be surprised by big changes to their body due to BPA, men will face quite some challenges. When they have higher BPA or oestrogen levels, they will observe a growing breast, larger belly and also reduced beard growth. Tell me, which man really wants this? 
And how would you feel if your small infant already had higher BPA levels than you? A study published in 2009 found, that there is a large amount of children with comparably high levels of these chemicals. This is because little children are more vulnerable and absorb toxins in their environment much quicker.

One easy way to avoid more chemicals from plastic would be to skip unnecessary plastic bottles ;)
To protect children further, one idea would be to buy toys made of wood rather than plastic.

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