The first plastic was created in 1855 by British metallurgist Alexander Parkes.   As nobody knew quite what to do with it, plastic remained obscure until the 1890’s when another Brit developed polymers called “silicones.”

By 1910, plastic was a fully synthetic compound revolutionizing industry, consumer products and military supply.  It is still the world’s most utilized material.

When plastic became readily available in 1910, life expectancy in the U.S. was 50.  Today it is nearly 79 and there are about 80,000 American over 100 years old.  Clearly, plastic is not a serious health concern.

Nevertheless, the Obama Administration has just unleashed yet another attack on plastics, using an end-run by bureaucratic fiat, hoping we won’t notice.

The Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) is a Carter-era law governing the Environmental Protection Agency’s management of chemicals through collecting data and designing regulatory protections.  Although its original intent was to address toxic PCBs, bureaucrats found other chemicals needing management once that crisis passed.

Some of the agency’s regulations have been good, such as rulemaking on lead paint and asbestos abatement.  But now EPA is abrogating the process by focusing on silicone.

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Two ongoing trends I chronicled during 2009 highlight an ironic situation: Leftists remain tough on their domestic political opponents, while lax when it comes to our real common enemies.

As we recently saw with the Christmas airplane-bombing attempt, leftists seem bent on treating terrorists with kid gloves, insisting they receive rights normally reserved for U.S. citizens (even when this means failing to extract timely information that might save lives).

Conversely, leftists play “hardball” when their opponents are not terrorists or criminals, but instead, American businesses and industries.   One such example is the left’s battle against Bisphenol A (BPA), a chemical used for more than a half century to make plastics more durable.

Though clearly less consequential than the war on terror, the Left’s war on BPA serves as a microcosm of the larger attempt to use “junk science” and litigation to redistribute wealth from job-producing American industries into the hands of trial lawyers and liberal special interest groups.

In this regard, the Left’s attempts are reminiscent of their past battle against the insecticide DDT. In the 1960s, many developing nation’s had nearly wiped out malaria, but it came back after DDT was banned.  It did not matter that DDT was harmless to humans – and actually saved lives — the Left attacked it, ultimately causing 50 million preventable deaths.

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