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Part V Cloze
The Truth About Plastic
By BRYAN WALSH Thursday, July 10, 2008 (Time magazine)
If you know where to find a good plastic-free shampoo, can you tell Jeanne Haegele? Last September, the 28-year-old Chicago resident 62. resolved to cut plastics out of her life. The marketing coordinator was concerned about 63. what the chemicals coming out of some common types of plastic might be doing to her body. She was also worried about the damage all the plastic 64. rubbish was doing to the environment. So she 65. hopped on her bike and rode to the nearest grocery store to see what she could find that didn't 66. include plastic. "I went in and 67. barely bought anything," Haegele says. She did 68. purchase some canned food and a carton (纸盒) of milk---69. only to discover later that both containers were 70. lined with plastic resin(树脂). "Plastic," she says, "just seemed like it was in everything."
She's right. Back in the 1960s, plastic was well 71. on its way to becoming a staple of American life. The U.S. produced 28 million tons of plastic waste in 2005--27 million tons of which 72. ended up in landfills. Our food and water come 73. wrapped in plastic. It's used in our phones and our computers, the cars we drive and the planes we ride in. But the 74. infinitely adaptable substance has its dark side. Environmentalists fret about the petroleum needed to make it. Parents worry about the possibility of 75.toxic chemicals making their way from 76. household plastic into children's bloodstreams. Which means Haegele isn't the only person trying to cut plastic out of her life--she isn't 77. even the only one blogging about this kind of 78. endeavor. But those who've tried know it's 79. far from easy to go plastic-free. "These things seem to be so common 80. that it is practically impossible to avoid coming into 81. contact with them," says Frederick vom Saal, a biologist at the University of Missouri.
