GreenSpace: How oil has seeped deep into our lives

If you want to make a statement about the gushing oil in the Gulf of Mexico, should you still wash your hair, put on lipstick, and take aspirin?

Should you also wear flip-flops, use scotch tape, and paint the living room?

Those items are much more connected to the BP catastrophe than they might seem. Every day a tsunami of petroleum goes into myriad consumer products, including those listed above, and it's all but impossible to avoid them.

The petrochemical industry started to saturate our lives in the 1950s and '60s. Plastics were its steroid, its killer app.

While my generation was blithely twisting to Chubby Checker, industry was inserting petroleum-based chemicals and byproducts into everything imaginable.

If you want to lessen your personal petroleum footprint - never mind as a BP protest - parking the car will get you there fastest. Transportation accounts for two-thirds of all the oil the nation uses.

But if you use a bike instead, consider that the tires are likely made from petroleum.

So, OK, you'll walk. Except that the soles of your sneakers probably contain petroleum, too.

Various groups have listed surprising things petroleum is in, from CDs and eyeglasses to beach balls and bubble gum to dishwashing liquids and deodorant.

It's in clothing, fishing line, disposable diapers, teething rings, crayons, and vitamins.

What's it doing in there? It's providing good old hydrogen and carbon, says Carnegie Mellon University chemistry professor Andrew Gellman. Hydrocarbons are a building block for plastics and synthetic materials of every kind.

Ballpoint pen? Plastic. Many inks are petroleum-based, too. Windshield wiper? Synthetic rubber, which is really just another plastic.

As for a simple bandage, the plastic is made from oil and the nonstick pad that covers the wound is man-made cloth manufactured from petrochemicals.

Here's another way to look at it: "The carbon is like a Lego, and you can put it together in different ways," says Dady Dadyburjor, a chemical engineering professor at West Virginia University and a member of the American Chemical Society's petroleum division. "By adding different things to it in different ways, you can get a detergent bottle or a pair of nylons."

If you're wondering about the aspirin, a component, salicylic acid, is petroleum-based, according to the folks at Bayer HealthCare L.L.C.

Triacetin, another petroleum-based chemical, is used as a plasticizer for the thin film coating that's on the surface of many pills.

Petroleum derivatives are in cosmetics and personal-care products, too, says the Environmental Working Group, a national nonprofit that tracks such things.

One example is propylene glycol, which works as a solvent and a skin conditioner. It's used in about 5,000 cosmetic products, including hair coloring, moisturizers, and conditioners, said EWG senior scientist David Andrews.

So now, not surprisingly, petroleum is in us, too.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has found 212 environmental chemicals in people's blood or urine. Among them are a who's who of petroleum products.

While their health impacts vary, they're not generally regarded as good for us.

The chemical industry is quick to point out all the benefits of petroleum, and it's true. Consider that petroleum-derived plastic in cars has made them lighter, which means they use less petroleum from the tank because they get better mileage.

Oy.

The good news is that whatever one does to conserve resources will probably wind up conserving petroleum.

Drink water from the tap instead of a plastic bottle, and you've just saved some petroleum.

Reuse a plastic container, and you've just saved a little more.

Hang onto a piece of synthetic clothing instead of buying new and add another checkmark under the "less petroleum" column.

As in so many areas of greenness, "it's a matter of conserving. Rather than trashing something, keep using the old one," Gellman says. "People have heard these things before. But they should keep hearing them, because they're real."