Long Term Care Impacted By Modern Materials

This week I came across an interesting news article about the long term use of plastic food and beverage containers. The findings of this news article shocked me and I felt that people in the long term care industry, as well as people interested in their health, would be interested in a layman’s summary of this story. Please read on…

In a scientific study it was discovered that 92 percent of 2,500 people studied had traces of BPA in their urine. BPA stands for bispheral A, which is a main component of polycarbonates. Polycarbonates, in turn, are used to make a variety of popular plastic products including food and beverage container liners, food containers and baby bottles. These findings suggest that particles from plastic are finding their way from plastic products to our bodies.

While it may not seem that a few particles per billion of any substance will cause a problem, BPAs actually do have very harmful impacts on our long term health at these low levels. Lab animals that were tested, showed that BPAs can cause everything from infertility to obesity. For those of us planning for our future long term care needs, this is a huge blow. After all, how can we prevent damage to our bodies from plastics, when nearly every product we store, transport and serve foods and beverage has some plastic component? This is where the dialogue in the long term community needs to start.

The long term care implications presented by this study are monumental. However, while there are certain hazards we can’t avoid, there are ways that we can protect ourselves from threats to our long term health. These strategies include exercising, eating healthy and investing in ltc insurance.

This entry was posted on Friday, February 8th, 2008 at 5:00 pm and is filed under ltc and health concerns. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.