What energetic and informative conversations we’ve started about the safety of polymer clay. Is this holiday tension or pent-up anxiety about the future of our craft? Or as Lea Hernandez describes it, "…a wave of Booga! Booga! Booga!" Nan Roche suggests that perhaps it’s a tempest in a teapot (teapots courtesy of Karyn Kozak).
Most of you have pointed out that few artists’ materials are without risks if handled improperly. Here are a few excerpts from your emails. Thanks for all the wise comments…and wisecracks.
Judy Belcher says
I also wondered, do those galleries burn lovely yankee candles to make the store smell for the holiday or maybe spritz a little victoria’s secret room spray? Yep, you guessed it, phthalate in the fragrance oils.
Lindly Haunani asks
What happened to all the people who were getting brain tumors from using portable phones?
Nan Roche weighs in
What I tell my students about phthalates is this. Any medical procedure you have involving tubing, saline or blood bags etc are delivering astonishingly high amounts of phthalates directly into your bloodstream. It is excreted in your urine and feces.
Medicine has been using plastics for delivery of vital fluids for over 60 years now. If there was any obvious toxicity from this it would have surfaced by now. Without the use of these plasticizers to soften the tubing and bags used, delivery of safe, sterile and shippable fluids for medical use would have been severely hampered.
Over the past 60 years, average life spans have increased remarkably in part because of some of these advances in medicine. I think this is a tempest in a teapot in that, short of total global catastrophe, we will never abandon this technology. It’s just too practical and important for our modern way of living.
I bow in homage and submission to three totally amazing polymer clay artists. Or, as my teenage son would say, “touche!”. Lol!
Oh, and a hearty “Brava!” to Karyn Kozak for some terrific cane work. I only wish her site have more to drool over.
For the people who think polymer clay is using too many natural resources, what about one Nascar race? I can’t imagine the amount of fuel they use. How about jets? How about people driving SUV’s? Motor homes? What about new houses in the 3 to 4,000 sq ft. range and up?
I agree we need to conserve our resources, but there are many place to start other than polymer clay.
I agree that polymer clay is not Very Important in the overall greening of the world.
Still, I am planning on buying a Smart Car (assuming it will work for me) and I am trying to be MUCH more scrupulous about my recycling and all that. Global Warming is something I really believe we all helped cause and that we are all responsible to combat, and sometimes i think about the fact that polymer clay is, in fact, something I COULD live without. And it DOES add a certain amount of chemicals to the planet (and, face it, landfills — not everything I make is a keeper!) that I’m responsible for…
I love my polymer clay… nevertheless, I can’t help but believe that even the smallest effort at ‘being green’ truly does count for something. I don’t have a car, and my basic mode of transportation is my feet. I recycle. But that doesn’t give me a free pass to be ‘less than green’. .. It doesn’t make me comfortable to be a hypocrite.
Great advances in things (plastics) come with great responsibility and great consequences.