Plastic (39 page)

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contaminating the ground water
: Dina Cappiello and Dan Feldstein, "In Harm's Way: A Special Report,"
Houston Chronicle,
January 20, 2005, and author interview with Sharron Stewart, longtime environmental activist in the Freeport area, February 2009.

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It pays more than $125 million in state and local taxes
: Author interview with Tracie Copeland, Dow Chemical, February 2009.

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about 70 percent of plastics
: Author interview with Howard Rappaport, global business director, Chemical Market Associates, Inc., February 2009. Most crackers are able to process only one or the other.

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two carbons can bond to form the gas ethylene
: Ethylene is the largest-volume chemical made, and half of all ethylene produced is used to make polyethylene.

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"
Dow has come a long way
": Author interview with Charles Singletary, business manager, Local 564, International Union of Operating Engineers, February 2009.

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These pellets, also known as nurdles
: Some plastics, such as polyvinyl chloride, are shipped in the form of powder rather than as pellets.

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a seismic change is under way
: Steve Toloken, "Industry Shifts Toward Asia Continues,"
Plastics News,
March 16, 2009; author interview with Rappaport; presentation by Rappaport, "Economy, Energy, Feedstocks, Polymers and Markets," March 2009.

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the Middle East's share
: Author interview with Rappaport.

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the Saudis are trying
: Ibid. The country is building two complexes along the Red Sea coast to lure investors who want to set up plastics-production facilities. As Rappaport put it, the Saudi government is essentially telling product manufacturers, "'We can supply you with the pellets here and you can make your finished goods, and we'll ship finished goods around rather than pellets.' Which is what they do in China. It's the China model, except the Middle East has a lower raw-material cost."

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A wide gap still exists
: Li Shen, Juliane Haufe, and Martin K. Patel, "Product Overview and Market Projection of Emerging Bioplastics," a report commissioned by European Polysaccharide Network of Excellence and the European Bioplastics Council, November 2009, 7.

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plastics production to swell
: Ibid., 8.

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"
an 'ATM unit
'": Author e-mail correspondence with Danny Grossman, December 2009.

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Every mold maker in Southern California
: Author interview with Clare Goldsberry, contributing editor,
Injection Molding Magazine,
June 2008.

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Wham-O stayed put until
: Mattel owned Wham-O briefly, from 1994 to 1997, and then sold it to a group of American investors, who next sold it to Hong Kong-based investors. In 2009, an American company, Manufacturing Marvel, bought it.

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72a place that's been described
: James Fallows,
Postcards from Tomorrow Square
: Reports from China (New York: Vintage Books, 2009), 66.

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"
the heart pumping China's emergence
": Robert Marks, "Robert Marks on the Pearl River Delta,"
Environmental History
9 (2004): 296.

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As many as fifty thousand factories
: Steve Toloken, "Ecologists Seeking to Clean Up China's PRD Zone,"
Plastics News,
December 31, 2008.

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twice as many people
: Steve Toloken, Guangzhou-based reporter for
Plastics News,
in e-mail correspondence with author, July 2010.

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foreign investment at the incredible rate
: Marks, "Pearl River Delta," 296–97.

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Shipping containers left
: Fallows,
Postcards,
6.

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If the region were a country
: Michael J. Enright et al.,
The Greater Pearl River Delta
Hong Kong: Invest Hong Kong, 2007), 1. The estimate is based on 2005 data.

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By the 1990s, the silkworms
: Marks, "Pearl River Delta," 297.

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Guangdong has been a locus for international trade
: Sun Qunyang, Larry Qiu, and Li Jie, "The Pearl River Delta: A World Workshop," in Kevin H. Zhang, ed.,
China as the World Factory
London: Routledge, 2006).

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Hong Kong had a strong plastics-processing industry
: Hong Kong Government Industry Department, "Hong Kong's Manufacturing Industries," December 1996. Author interviews with L. T. Lam, Forward Winsome Industries, Tony Lau, Canfat Manufacturing, Dennis Wong, March 2009. A few manufacturers tried earlier to set up shop in the mainland. Lam, founder of Winsome Industries, claimed to have been one of the very first plastic-toy makers in Guangdong. He opened a factory there in the 1940s but then had to retreat back to Hong Kong when the Communists took power in 1949. When we met in Hong Kong, he showed me what he claimed was one of the first plastic toys ever produced in Asia: a whistle with a bird in a little round cage on the top.

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Enticed through Deng's open door
: According to author Leslie Chang, the first mainland factory was the Taiping Handbag Factory of Hong Kong, which opened in Dongguan in 1978 and made one million in Hong Kong dollars in its first year. "The factory processed material from Hong Kong into finished goods, which were shipped back to Hong Kong to be sold to the world. It established the model for thousands of factories to follow." Leslie Chang,
Factory Girls: From Village to City in a Changing China
(New York: Spiegel and Grau, 2009), 29.

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the average worker at Mattel's plant
: Jonathan Dee, "A Toy Maker's Conscience,"
New York Times Magazine,
December 25, 2007.

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China Labor Watch reported
: China Labor Watch, "Investigation on Toy Suppliers in China: Workers Are Still Suffering," August 2007.

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products are destined to go overseas
: China's domestic toy market is still minuscule; retail toy sales totaled $603 million in 2006, compared to the more than $20 billion Americans spend on toys. But this is starting to change with the rise of a Chinese middle class. Those parents who now can afford it often shop for foreign-brand toys, such as Legos from Denmark or Transformers made by Japan-based Bandai. Even if the toys were actually made in China, Chinese parents assume the foreign brand name means they will be safer and less likely to contain hazardous materials such as lead paint. Elaine Kurtenbach, "Chinese Kids Get Foreign-Brand Toys," Associated Press, December 14, 2007.

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epidemic of toy recalls
: See, for instance, Michael Lauzon, "Chinese Toy Recalls May Be Boon to U.S.,"
Plastics News,
December 17, 2007.

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more than five thousand toy companies
: Steve Toloken, "Safety Concerns Cost Chinese Toy-Makers,"
Plastics News,
January 27, 2009.

4. "Humans Are Just a Little Plastic Now
"

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Dutch physician Willem Kolff
: Fenichell,
Plastic,
329–30. Kolff later mentored Robert Jarvik, the inventor of the first successful artificial heart, which surgeon William DeVries said snapped into place "just like closing Tupperware" when he implanted the first one in 1982.

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With plastics, hospitals
:"Boom in Single-Use Markets,"
Modern Plastics
(March 1969): 60–62.

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medicine is a small end market
: A 2010 report by Global Industry Analysts suggests medical plastics will consume about 10 billion pounds of all polymers produced globally by 2015. Global plastics production is approximately 570 billion pounds. But many major producers of medical supplies are based in the United States, meaning medicine is a bigger end market for the domestic industry. In an interview with the author in August of 2009, Ken Pawlak, industry consultant and author of a forthcoming book on medical plastics, estimated medicine accounted for 10 percent of plastic consumption. Consumption figures for other end markets come from the American Chemistry Council,
The Resin Review
2007.

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a strong, recession-proof market
: It's also growing faster than many other end markets. See Mike Verespej, "Medical Faring Better Than Many Markets,"
Plastics News,
January 13, 2009; "Medical Suppliers Optimistic Their Market Will Remain Strong,"
Plastics News,
July 1, 2010.

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enormous PR value
: One of the biggest exhibits in the now-closed National Plastics Museum in Leominster, Massachusetts, was devoted to medical applications of plastics, including the Spare Parts Body Shop, a display of various plastic-based prosthetics. The neonatal incubator was featured in the American Chemistry Council's proplastics campaign Essential2.

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they play havoc
: For good overviews of the literature on endocrine disrupters in plastics, see John Wargo et al., "Plastics That May Be Harmful to Children and Reproductive Health," Environment and Human Health, Inc., North Haven, CT, 2008. See also Center for Evaluation of Risks to Human Reproduction (CERHR), "NTP-CERHR Monograph on the Potential Human Reproductive and Developmental Effects of Di(2-Ethylhexyl) Phthalate (DEHP)," November 2006; National Research Council,
Phthalates and Cumulative Risk Assessment: The Task Ahead
Washington, DC: National Academies Press, 2008).

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concentrations we never considered worrisome
: Bisphenol A has been found to have action at the parts-per-trillion range. See Wargo, "Plastics That May Be Harmful," 22; Frederick vom Saal et al., "Chapel Hill Bisphenol A Expert Panel Consensus Statement: Integration of Mechanisms, Effects in Animals and Potential to Impact Human Health at Current Levels of Exposure,"
Reproductive Toxicology
24 (August-September 2007): 131–38.

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Like many surgeons
: John R. Brooks, "Carl W. Walter, MD: Surgeon, Inventor, and Industrialist,"
American Journal of Surgery
148 (November 1984): 555–58.

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university trustees who considered it "unethical and immoral
": Quoted in research summary e-mail to author from Hank Grasso, DeWitt Stetten Jr. Museum of Medical Research, August 2009.

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Blood banks of that era
: Robert Ausman and David Bellamy Jr., "Problems and Resolutions in the Development of the Flexible Plastic Blood Container,"
American Journal of Surgery
148 (November 1984): 559–61.

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PVC is a unique polymer
: PVC was first created in 1872 but not commercially produced until 1920. More than half the molecule (about 57 percent by weight) is composed of chlorine. Andrady, "Applications and Societal Benefits," 1978.

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it can be "converted into an almost limitless
": Vinyl Institute website,
vinylinfo.org
.

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Such versatility has made PVC
: Vinyl is one of the largest-volume plastics produced in North America. More than fifteen billion pounds were manufactured in the United States in 2006, according to the Vinyl Institute.

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a frequent choice for makers of medical devices
: PVC constitutes about a quarter of the plastics used in medical devices. Joel Tickner et al., "The Use of Di-2-Ethylhexyl Phthalate in PVC Medical Devices: Exposure, Toxicity, and Alternatives," Lowell Center for Sustainable Production (1999): 9.

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plasticized PVC
: Prior to the 1930s, castor oil and later camphor were the common chemicals used to soften hard plastics.

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Phthalates have become so ubiquitous
: Over 470 million pounds of phthalates are produced each year, according to the EPA, "Phthalates Action Plan," December 12, 2009. Accessed at
http://www.epa.gov/oppt/existingchemicals/pubs/actionplans/phthalates_ap_2009_1230_final.pdf
. DEHP accounts for slightly more than half of phthalates produced. In 2002 manufacturers produced about 260 million pounds of the chemical, according to the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry (ATSDR), "Toxicological Profile for Di(2-ethylhexyl)phthalate (DEHP)," Production, Import, Use, and Disposal, 2002. Globally, about a billion pounds of phthalates are produced annually, according to the Our Stolen Future website,
http://www.ourstolenfuture.org/newscience/oncompounds/phthalates/phthalates.htm#
.

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They're used as plasticizers
: Ted Schettler, "Human Exposure to Phthalates Via Consumer Products,"
International Journal of Andrology
29 (February 2006): 134.

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you'll find phthalates in other types
: Ibid.; Wargo et al., "Plastics That May Be Harmful."

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They're even used in the time-release coating
: Schettler, "Human Exposure"; S. Hernandez-Diaz et al., "Medications as a Potential Source of Exposure to Phthalates in the U.S. Population,"
Environmental Health Perspectives
117 (February 2009): 185–89.

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There are about twenty-five
: Use of various phthalates depends on their molecular weight, that is, the mass of the molecule. Higher-weight phthalates, such as DEHP, di-isononyl phthalate (DINP), and di-isodecyl phthalate (DIDP), are produced in the highest volume and used in construction materials, clothing, and furnishings. Lower-weight phthalates, such as dibutyl phthalate (DBP), diethyl phthalate (DEP), and dimethyl phthalate (DMP), tend to be used as solvents and in adhesives, waxes, inks, cosmetics, insecticides, and pharmaceuticals. See Schettler, "Human Exposure," 134.

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DEHP is one of the most popular
: About a quarter of the DEHP manufactured is used in medical devices. ATSDR, "Toxicological Profile."