A Simple Harmless Product

The dangers of polystyrene products

(January 2022)

It's been around for as long as I can remember. My brother once took a big chunk and carved it into a ball. While it made a great looking ball, it was so light that it didn't travel very far when you threw it. And I just can't remember how many coolers made of it that I've seen over the years.

Invented in the 1940s in Dow Chemical's Physics Lab, Styrofoam is the trademark name for a chemical compound called polystyrene. Polystyrene is a petroleum-based plastic made from styrene monomers that contains about 95% air. It is often used for food containers, coffee cups and cushioning material in packaging. And because of its good insulation properties, it is also used in building materials.

The problem is polystyrene does not degrade or break down over time, and it is unknown how long it does take to biodegrade. Some experts estimate 500 years and every day, approximately 1,369 tons of polystyrene are being buried at U.S. landfills. In addition, when exposed to sunlight, polystyrene creates harmful pollutants contaminating these landfills.

Polystyrene can be destroyed if it is incinerated at extremely high temperatures. However, if it is burned in a normal fire instead of in a specialized incinerator, it releases pollutants such as carbon black and carbon monoxide. It also has a way of evaporating its fumes into the air, which is bad for our lungs as well as the ozone layer that protects us from the sun’s cancer-causing rays. And when used with food products, especially when heated, polystyrene releases toxic chemicals into the food causing contamination which can be hazardous to your health. Therefore, it has been described as one of the most environmentally unfriendly types of waste that exist today impacting our planet's ecological system.

Another problem is that polystyrene is not commonly recycled. While some businesses do collect it for reuse and recycling, they seem to be too few and very far between.

We need to urge our state and federal elected officials to do more to completely eliminate the use of polystyrene products for ourselves and future generations. So who would have thought such a simple, harmless product could be so hazardous.