Food and Drug Administration does a double-take on bisphenol A

Turning Bacteria into Plastic Factories

jerry submitted, created time 3 months 2 weeks (www.sciam.com)

Plastics are one of the most versatile and useful things that can be made from expensive fossil fuels. ...except as of now, it's "that can be made from expensive fossil fuels and genetically engineered E. coli." A new company has found a way to produce polymers from genetically engineered microbes that feed on sugars, replacing fossil-fuel based processes.

The plastic in question is called butanediol, and the process has been in the works for some time. The trick was getting the bacteria to tolderate high levels of butanediol in the water. It's usually toxic.

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Toxicity is the question: Bisphenol-A on trial in Canada

Darkfrog submitted, created time 8 months 3 weeks (www.nytimes.com)

Bisphenol-a is a molecule found in many common rigid plastics. It also acts as an estrogen mimic in many different types of animals, including humans, causing or potentially causing lowered sperm count, increased risk of breask cancer, infertility in men and both toxic and neurotoxic effects. The Canadian government is preparing to label bisphenol-a as "toxic," and thereby forbidding it to be used in plastics that are meant to contain food or drink, such as baby bottles, water bottles and the linings of cans

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Turning Pollution into DVDs

Pulling plastics from pulp -- biomass-based plastics become practical

Darkfrog submitted, created time 1 year 6 months (www.sciam.com)

Turning plant matter into new plastics has been possible for many years; it just hasn't been practical. The processes used to convert glucose to a base for plastics yields chunks of impurities. Using metal chlorides instead of acid catalysts, writes Scientific American, is up to 70% effective on glucose and 90% effective on fructose, both at temperatures of only 100C, as opposed to the 600C used in oil refining.

Full commercialization is still a few years off. This study comes out of the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory in Richland, Washington

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NBOP? Nope! The preservation of plastics confounds curators, collectors.

Darkfrog submitted, created time 1 year 7 months (www.nature.com)

Museum curators and environmentalists have the opposite problem: Environmentalists can't get plastics to break down fast enough and museum curators can't make it stick around long enough. Many plastics -- think classic baby dolls -- are approaching the century mark, and though they may linger in landfills, they just don't have the longevity of ceramics, paintings and stone.

Now what might be cool would be if these two groups could get together and compare notes. Someone would pull something useful out of that discussion

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Mechanical force induces chemical reaction

badboy submitted, created time 1 year 9 months (www.newscientisttech.com)

"Self-strengthening plastics and artificial bone made from synthetic polymer may be one step closer to reality thanks to a breakthrough in chemistry that allows mechanical force to induce chemical reactions."

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