Which plastics should you avoid like the plague and which should you ingest with abandon?

In an ideal and sustainable world we might be using little or no plastic but in the one we live in daily, we are surrounded by it. Encased in plastic as our lives are, we sit on it, eat out of it, write with it, walk on it, drive in it, brush our hair and teeth with it, pack gifts with it, open boxes with it, eat with it, drink with it, and not only that but also eat and drink it and that's just for starters! Yes we eat and drink plastic although hopefully not on purpose. The plastic containers you store food in and drink water from, the saran wrap you smother your leftovers with, the plastic forks and knives that purveyors of fast food provide you with, may all leach little bits of plastic into the environment, your food and drink, your body. Recently there has been more talk about what these little bits of chemicals that leach into your water from that water bottle you carry clipped on your pack or that seep into your food when heated in the microwave might do to you, and what scientists are finding is that the ubiquitous plastics we take for granted, the garbage pile of plastics we have built our daily live-in environments from may not be so good for us, may not be so benign after all. There are different types of plastics and different recipes for making them. Some may be worse than others. Some may be carcinogenic or mimic natural hormones in your body so that they disrupt function of normal processes. Of particular concern are plastics that come in contact with our food and drink. So, according to current belief, which plastics should you avoid? I'll sum it up for you here to make things simple and provide you with some links if you want to read more.

To avoid:
Containers to avoid include anything made with PVC that leeches BPA or contains known carcinogens. This means plastic #3 (most cling wraps), #6 (styrofoam cups), #7 (polycarbonates used to make those clear, hard colorful Nalgene bottles), and possibly even #1 (used in single-use water bottles, ketchup bottles, and other food packaging).

Maybe OK:
Plastic #2, 4, 5, (and maybe 1) are not currently known to leech harmful chemicals into your water or food, which isn't to say that they are OK or healthy.

Bottom line:
Avoid plastics and use stainless steel or other materials as an alternative!

Links:

http://www.plasticsinfo.org/ This is the industry website and according to them pretty much all plastics are OK. Read with a healthy amount of skepticism, and remember how the lead industry responded to good science on lead poisoning- they desperately marketed lead paint to parents using images of happy healthy children!

http://www.mindfully.org/ This website is clearly biased in the opposite direction but you have to ask yourself what their motivations are- profit or public health. They list their sources so you can decide for yourself whether they are full of truth or just full of plastic.

http://www.washingtonpost.com Journalists are supposed to be unbiased, honest, and fair right? Here's a transcript of a Q & A up on the Washington Post's site. Decide for yourself whether this is a load of plastic and you want to continue ingesting BPA.