About a week ago, just before I started this pledge, I responded to an email at work inviting people to set up appointments to get their flu shots.
I don’t get sick very often, and when I do, it’s not too bad. The only time I’ve taken antibiotics in the past five years was when I was abroad in Ecuador—and honestly, I’m not sure what I took. The doctor explained the medication in Spanish, and a Google search of the medicine’s name yielded few results.
I think one of the reasons I don’t get very sick is because I’m diligent about getting my flu shot each year. As I walked toward the meeting room where they were distributing the shots, I had a sinking feeling. I’d been talking to my co-workers about my pledge off plastic just minutes prior, so the subject was on my mind: I was certain that the shots were going to be in plastic syringes. And, sure enough, they were.
So I got out of line, returned to my desk, and mentally prepared myself for the flu that would inevitably strike me some time during the next three months.
All this got me to thinking about the medical industry, in which plastic has allowed great strides in sanitation. The use of disposable syringes means less likelihood of spreading contagion. Plastic pill bottles means each medicine can be uniquely labeled. Coverings for thermometers and other medical tools means less time wasted sanitizing instruments.
On the other hand, all that waste has to go somewhere, and you can bet most of it isn’t getting recycled. So can you avoid plastic when it comes to medicine and visits to the doctor? I checked Beth Terry’s site—my most reliable source of advice—and her Plastic-Free Living Guide is silent on the matter.
When it comes to over-the-counter medicines, such as painkillers like Tylenol and antacids like Tums, the solution seems fairly simple. There are natural alternatives. For painkillers, all it takes is a quick Google search to yield recommendations for a suite of herbs and foods to help with pain. For antacids, I found one site recommending baking soda (which I’m quickly coming to suspect is the non-plastic solution for just about everything—cleaning, deodorant, toothpaste). Other recommendations I found included bananas, chamomile, apple cider vinegar, ginger, and turmeric.
Still, that doesn’t solve the problem of plastic pill bottles. I suspect pharmacies would be loath to let you bring in your own bottles, and in my search for a solution, I discovered an even bigger problem with taking medicine while being plastic free: Many pills have plastic in their coatings to allow for timed release. I tracked down a study from Harvard that raised concerns that these plastic coating might even be harming us:
Laboratory studies show that some phthalates are reproductive and developmental toxicants. Recently, human studies have shown measurable levels of several phthalates in most of the U.S. general population. Despite their widespread use and the consistent toxicologic data on phthalates, information is limited on sources and pathways of human exposure to phthalates. One potential source of exposure is medications. The need for site-specific dosage medications has led to the use of enteric coatings that allow the release of the active ingredients into the small intestine or in the colon. (Article Source)
Although relying entirely on natural supplements isn’t necessarily the solution, my pledge off plastic does have me wondering more about what we’re putting in our body, and the assumption that everything that’s FDA-approved is really that safe. Can we know the long-term effects of housing our pills and medicines in plastic? The danger of BPA in plastic drink containers wasn’t discovered until well after use of the plastic was widely adopted. So, what other plastics that we take for granted might slowly be poisoning us?
Related Articles
- Are Chemicals Making You Fat? How the Chemicals You Come in Contact with Could Be Making You Fat and Sick. (fitsofhealth.com)
- Study Links Phthalates to an Increased Risk in Diabetes (bellasugar.com)
- Pervasive and Harmful: Phthalates (blogher.com)