Plastic people: We're all experimental chemists now

Human beings, whether consciously aware of it or not, have conducted a 150-year chemistry experiment on the earth with the burning of fossil fuels. The results of that experiment are now clear and indisputable, even though the resolve of world leaders to do anything about it

In his book Green Intelligence (Yale Press), John Wargo, a professor of environmental policy at Yale’s School of Forestry and Environmental Studies who has spent his career studying the health effects of chemicals on women and children, calls the ubiquity of plastics “the quiet revolution.”

Because they are so pervasive, plastics have escaped Wargo’s scrutiny until recent years. But now, it has been learned, the molecules from plastics are entering our bodies. In a 2005 CDC study, these molecules, particularly endocrine-disrupting chemicals (EDCs)