I hate plastics. Very dangerous thing, plastics. I’m using the word hate here, about plastics….
This stuff is everywhere. Take, for example, my breast pump. Many relevant parts are made of plastic, including the storage bottles. All this stuff is BPA free, but a) what’s replaced this BPA and b) what other unsafe chems live in that plastic and touch my baby’s food? I was dismayed, appalled and shocked when I opened a brand-new BPA-free six-pack of Medela breastmilk storage bottles to find them STINKING on something like acetone. Chris tried to comfort me: Maybe it will go away after sterilization. Well, it didn’t. After I boiled the bottles for 10 minutes (as recommended) the water and the pot took on the smell! I was ready to kill someone. Right now, they are “airing” out, but seriously, should I really believe that airing it out will get rid of this sh!t?
Baby toys are another one. I am supposed to give my child teething toys. Let’s see, what are my options. Well, there’s the polyvinyl chloride, made soft with something called phthalates and I get to mess up his hormonal and reproductive parts. Or maybe I should stick with hard plastic, or polyvinyl chloride made hard with lead, a neurotoxin? Or I am to believe that there is a safe bladi-bla-free man-made thing out there?
I’m not buying it anymore, they lost me. I despise everything my great-great grandmother wouldn’t recognize. Period. I’ve been applying this principle to food as Michael Pollan meant it, but now I’m wondering about using it on other stuff, especially baby toys. We’ll have imagination in concert with sticks, rocks and maybe twine…. Oh, that we could!