Yesterday I read this post over at Mom-101, which references this article about plastic baby bottles. It seems that all plastics, when heated either in the microwave or dishwasher, leach some chemical that has been linked to all kinds of bad diseases. And the worst kind of plastic is that which is labelled with a 7 inside the recycling symbol, or with the code “PC,” which stands for polycarbonate plastic. And plastic baby bottles and nipples, of course, are made from #7 plastic…and oh yeah, get heated a whole lot in the dishwasher, or in boiling water, and often, in the microwave, too.

The same site contains this list of recommendations, which basically boils down to, never put anything plastic in your kids’ mouths, ever ever ever. If you must have plastic dishware and/or toys, try to make them #1, #2, or #5 plastic, and never put them in the dishwasher or microwave.

To this I have to say…oops. Too late!

Luckily, our kids were never remotely interested in taking a bottle, so we never actually used the miriad Avent bottles that we own (the worst brand name, it turns out). Instead, we weaned them onto sippy cups directly, and our sippy cups are #5 plastic. Unluckily, those sippy cups have been through the dishwasher hundreds of time (only 50 washings can lead to leaching of the bad stuff), and the #5 plastic bowls and plates that we use for them, from IKEA, have also been in the dishwasher on a regular basis.

So now, I’m totally freaking out about this, because as you all know, everything you read on the internet is SO TRUE. This one does sound plausible, though. We’re trying to decide what actions to take to calm me down. We’ve already moved the Captain onto ceramic plates and glass glasses, and now we intend to move Gal Smiley onto the same “real” dishes right away. We’ll also try to take away or at least downgrade her sippy cup usage.

I would like to trash (or hopefully, recycle) all our existing sippy cups and plastic dishware, and replace it with new sippy cups (which will never see the inside of the dishwasher) and Corningware dishes. It seems like a rather radical move, but I think I have convinced Sir Monkeypants that this is a good idea. If only to shut me — and my Michael Moore-like ranting about conspiracies — up.

Meanwhile, Sir Monkeypants is having an awesome time shopping online for stainless steel or aluminum water bottles to replace the nalgene bottles we currently use when on the go with the kids (nalgene, apparently, also bad). He’s looking at Sigg and also Kleen Kanteen. They are cool and cutting edge and they sell them at awesome outdoor lifestyle stores like the MEC and Bushtakah, so he’s quite happy. Now if only I can convince him to get the one with the pretty flowered design stenciled on it, they’ll be something for everyone!