Microwaved plastic containers release microplastics into food
pubs.acs.org
pubs.acs.org
Sure, there are some plastics labeled "for safe" and "BPA-free", but that doesn't guarantee some other plastic that's used doesn't contain harmful substances or cause as yet unknown side effects that just haven't been found by researchers yet. This goes double for new plastics which haven't had much research done on them yet but that manufacturers can honestly claim don't contain BPA.
Those kinds of assurances just aren't good enough, as this study shows.
Indeed, it's common to substitute bisphenol-B for bisphenol-A in these situations.
https://www.discovermagazine.com/health/many-bpa-free-plasti...
Of course you won't see that happen in real time in a way that's like "Ah, now it's unsafe." But rest assured knowing it's ALL unsafe, depending on how you feel about life.
Slashed the hell out of his hand trying to push a stopper into lab glass. It broke and momentum carried his hand into the glass.
You might get lucky if a cylinder of glass breaks across the diameter in your hand. You will not get lucky if it breaks lengthwise under your hand.
I haven't ridden seriously for years but my partner thinks I'm crazy for driving one handed. I had lots of practice doing low-speed maneuvers one-handed (end of the ride, it's hot, I'm thirsty). I could emergency brake one handed (once dual pivot brakes existed) For a brief moment I could do a track stand one handed. Driving one handed I'm more stable than most people are with two (also, grew up driving stick, so one-handed is de facto if not de rigeur).
I don't know if they still do this, but pros used to wear silk shirts under their jerseys to reduce road rash (source: Phil Liggett). I suspect any current gen synthetic sports undershirt (under armor, Kuhl, DSG, etc) would do. Two smooth layers of clothing will spin past each other instead of gouging you.
If this is the guy:
https://coffeechronicler.com/aeropress-xl-premium/
Then the fact that the inner cylinder is stainless steel means that if the glass shatters, you still have something supporting your hand. The inner cylinder might save you from life-altering lacerations to your hand. Might.
I'm not going to be the one to trust it. I've seen how much pressure people apply to aeropresses, and friends don't let friends push that hard on future shards of glass.
I'll take the risk.
Doesn't work for camping of course. Half the point of hot beverages and soup when camping is so you don't have an Oregon Trail-style misadventure.
I think it was just a couple years ago that I learned soup still often counts as hydration (obviously not so much if it's super salty). Another way to get sterilized water into your body, before public sanitation.
If you're using it at home, can sacrifice a little more space, and are doing more of an immersion brew then maybe go for a Hario Switch or french press. The Switch looks a lot like a cone brewer but has a ball valve at the bottom. There is still a wee bit of plastic involved but less than aeropress. You can grind for and/or use filters designed for faster draw down, personally I use a cloth filter which is a bit of faff as you need to rinse it out and store it in the fridge in a cup of water. Paper filters on the switch, in my experience, lead to over extraction unless you grind coarse etc etc.
If again you're at home and are really more into the high extraction pseudo-espresso kinda cups and you have more counter space, mental space, and wallet space to give to coffee then maybe go for a Flair lever espresso.
If you're not at home I don't think you're finding something without plastic.
I use a glass chemex with paper filters pretty frequently for larger quantity, and a Cona vacuum pot which is 100% glass for special occasions. Oh and a crofton (from aldi) carafe with a stainless insert for making cold brew.
You can perhaps mitigate the risk by making sure to brew at the "right" temperature (like 185F, not boiling). It is also possible to do cold brew in the Aeropress (even a much faster version of cold brew, where you use room temperature water and stir vigorously for a few minutes).
It's the ceramic model, so not very portable I'm afraid.
It is pretty frustrating trying to go plastic-less even with just food products. The glass storage containers for instance all seem to have plastic lids and seals...
How does one notice microplastics? Do you notice microplastics from anything?
BPA has been identified as a hormone disruptor. My question is, how many other plastics have been investigated to rule out hormone disruptors? Safe means more than zero evidence of harm.
1. Easy for cleaning
2. Good glass container will look new for years with proper washing
3. It breaks. So it requires full attention of person handling it. We all want to live in present moment, don't we? Use glassware and you will be in the present moment more often ;)
When you hold it in the hand, real borosilicate glassware is very easy to distinguish from other glassware, because it is noticeably less heavy.
The downside of borosilicate that no one seems to mention is that it is a good bit more fragile when it comes to mechanical shocks. So, if you accidentally hit it with something while it's in the sink, there is a much higher chance that it shatters there.
Borosilicate is more durable than regular glass. It's generally less prone to shattering, and it's also more tolerant of rapid temperature changes.
As far as microplastics go, I don't think it's any better than regular glass, but its properties do make it more suitable for the things we may want to replace plastic for.
You sure about that? I always heard that borosilicate was significantly less durable (30% is the figure I remember, not sure if that's 30% less or 70% less) and all the thermal shock resistance came from lowering the CTE.
I don't know if that was a half truth from a soda-lime salesman or if nostalgia googles are giving borosilicate credit it does not deserve.
About half of the glassware that I have been using has been from borosilicate glass and the other half from tempered soda-lime glass. I would have used only borosilicate glass, but it is more difficult to find every size and shape that one may want in borosilicate glass.
Even if not frequently, glassware has been dropped from time to time on floors or in kitchen sinks. Such shocks would have shattered traditional glass, but in most cases both borosilicate glass and tempered soda-lime glass survive.
From an approximately equal number of shocks during the years, I have broken a single borosilicate glass object, a double-walled drinking glass with extremely thin walls, while I have broken somewhere between six and ten tempered glass objects.
The only reason why someone may say that for a certain type of glassware borosilicate glass may be less durable is because it is frequent to make borosilicate glassware with thinner walls, because of its better toughness, while the objects made of tempered glass are invariably made with thick walls, to reduce the risk of breakage.
At equal wall thickness, there is no way for a tempered glass object to be more durable than a borosilicate object.
Moreover I have never seen a borosilicate glass object damaged by thermal shock, but I have broken a tempered glass teapot when attempting to cool it after boiling water in it.
That pipe lasted 20+ years until I lost it, meanwhile I broke at least 10 pipes of thicker normal glass. I dropped it in the sink and on the floor countless numbers of times when I braced myself for the sad cleanup, but it always survived.
Boro got heavy use in scientific glassware for more than one reason (durability, neutrality, etc)
Soda-Lime glass is the standard glass your think of and it's weak af.
Pipe makers would show off their Boro pipes by throwing them at the ground and having them bounce and stay intact.... Theres a reason that was the way to show off the product compared to traditional glass pipes...
In general. But less durable from physical shock (not temperature shock) than tempered soda lime glass which is what new pyrex is.
New pyrex Is Not Boro.
Pipe makers used to show off their boro pipes by Throwing them at the ground.... Something you could never dream of doing with traditional glass (soda lime).
Why do you folks keep saying this?
At least google it first.
They're still glass (tempered soda–lime glass), which is what the OP was talking about, so you're just being needlessly pedantic without adding anything to the discussion.
Also, Pyrex is still borosilicate in Europe, since soda-lime is hard to get there.
In that case, I'm not sure whether the borosilicate is obviously the better choice. My biggest concerns is not having the container break in my lunchbox rather than the thermal shock. Which is generally more durable to physical shocks, borosilicate or tempered soda-lime? And then, for the given durability, which is more cost effective?
The chances of being not damaged by a shock depend both on the material and on the wall thickness.
Because they are intrinsically less resistant, the tempered glass objects are typically made with thicker walls.
The end result is that the borosilicate glass objects with thin walls have about the same mechanical shock resistance like the tempered glass objects with thick walls.
Nevertheless, because the soda-lime glass has greater density than borosilicate glass, combined with the fact that the tempered glass objects have thicker walls, makes the tempered glass objects much heavier.
Their great weight makes the tempered glass objects more prone to being dropped during handling.
The borosilicate glassware is more expensive, but the difference is not significant, especially for objects that may remain usable for an entire human lifetime, if used carefully. I have never hesitated to buy some borosilicate glassware because it was too expensive. The main problem has always been that there are few suppliers so it may be difficult to find the exact size and shape that you search.
In Europe, Pyrex still uses borosilicate glass because it's better and because Europeans are more discerning consumers than Americans. That's my theory anyway. American pyrex cheaped out by switching to soda lime glass.
Wikipedia disagrees with you:
"Since the closure of the soda–lime plant in England in 2007, European Pyrex has been made solely from borosilicate."
Europe makes huge quantities of soda lime glass for a myriad of other applications, soda lime glass simply isn't hard to get in Europe. Wine bottles to windows, all that stuff is soda lime glass; borosilicate glass is a specialized glass that isn't used for most things besides cookware, labware, and sometimes lenses.
How is soda-lime glass “hard to get”? The main reason why it's still borosilicate here is because the brand has been licensed to a different company, and their management hasn't chose to stop selling borosilicate.
I'm just going by what Wikipedia says:
"Since the closure of the soda–lime plant in England in 2007, European Pyrex has been made solely from borosilicate."
Something like 30 million plus of glass was made in the EU27 in 2007 in over 200 facilities, nearly all of it would be soda lime glass (i.e. "normal glass"). https://climate.ec.europa.eu/system/files/2016-11/bm_study-g...
We do have glass in some of the windows, you know.
I wouldn't want to trust my casserole in the oven to soda lime glass though. Best to have real pyrex aka borosilicate glass for that.
For the past 15 years there has been a trend of private equity buying brands and destroying them.
Why does this keep making them money? What is this "failure capitalism"?
I'm with you in that I only use glassware to store food. But it's a bit annoying to have to put a little plate on top of the Pyrex as a makeshift lid in the microwave.
My wife has an extensive collection of vintage Pyrex with lids, but she doesn't trust they're microwave safe.
You don't need to go vintage either. The Pyrex dish I bought around 5 years ago, to replace another Pyrex dish that I accidentally dropped, came with a glass lid. And the set it was replacing, which was maybe around 10 to 15 years old, had glass lids too.
As for being microwave safe, I thought the whole point of Pyrex dishes were that they could be thrown in the oven, microwave, under a grill and pretty much everywhere? Or does this vintage set have visible signs of age, which makes you concerned?
[1] https://www.fsis.usda.gov/food-safety/safe-food-handling-and...
The glass or the printing? Mine have survived without issue.
And yet, somehow it was the standard method of operation for more than half a century before plastic bowls became widely available.
I feel bad for those poor 1940's housewives, all hunched over and disfigured from dragging 200 tons of Corningware to the church potluck supper.
Unfortunately, borosilicate glassware is more difficult to find, so even if I would like to use it exclusively, besides some borosilicate items like teapots, double-wall glasses for hot or cold drinks, glass vessels with glass lids for microwave cooking, I still use other heavier items made of tempered glass, e.g. bowls, other sizes of vessels for microwave cooking and rectangular vessels with glass lids for storing food in the refrigerator.
You are right that I normally do not carry food away from home in tempered glass vessels and this is the only purpose for which I use polypropylene boxes, but when I have a borosilicate vessel of suitable size I do not hesitate to use it. Even if it is not so light as PP, the weight is manageable.
I am not sure how you'd get away from that, it's actually very hard to find anything that isn't like that on the market these days.
I also tend to wash a lower heat if that makes any difference. Though I can’t see why it should.
You should google this stuff btw, you may have mold/bacteria growing inside your wooden stuff.
So does plastic.
Also, it's a microwave oven. Who thinks that you can stick your hands on something in a device called an "oven" and not get burned?
Plastic with a brim is going to be cool, where glass with a brim will be hot.
I put my bare hands inside a microwave and pick up the paper or plastic from inside all the time!
The entire point of using a microwave is convenience. If I'm going to have to break out the oven mitts, I may as well just use the oven or an air fryer.
The reason why glass vessels become hotter in a microwave oven is because glass has a much higher thermal conductivity than plastic, so it becomes heated from the hot food.
Using two pieces of cloth (e.g. cut from a small towel) to hold the hot glass vessel is enough to take it safely out of the oven and this negligible inconvenience matters much less than the undesirable effects of heating food in a plastic vessel.
not at all
4. Glassware usually costs more. 5. Knowing that I can't break the tub of food that I have in my bag just because I accidentally dropped my bag, releases me of a lot of stress and worry.
Don't get me wrong, I do agree that plastics are toxic, but when I go to the store I always look at the prices and pick the cheapest option available, I wish I had the option of just being able to take what looks nice and pay without even knowing how much I pay, but sadly I can't, _yet_, afford that.
It does, plastic has similar structure to oil and it is a PITA to clean oil from plastic containers.
From glass/metal it is very easy.
I had multiple plastic containers stained forever after storing pasta sauce in them, that never happened to any of my glass containers.
Nothing will convince me it’s safe to cook food to high temperature on whatever that chemical coating is.
And after a while you notice the surface is wearing away…. where is it going? Into you and your family.
All my pots and pans are stainless steel.
The usual recommendation for skillets is carbon-steel and cast iron because the seasoning does provide some non-stick properties. I have the full gamut with carbon steel, cast iron, non-stick and stainless steel, and find myself mostly leaning on the carbon steel. (I don't have any other materials since I cook on induction.)
But here's a catch: that seasoning? Basically a plastic. It's polymerized cooking oil. You can decide if you care. But you'll also polymerize oil when cooking on stainless. Basically: if you want to go ultra-paranoid, don't fry things.
Unlike steel, cast iron generates dust when abraded. Dust that is really bad for you. Known to cause lung issues, etc.
I machine it all the time (both ductile and non). It is usually is machined dry with vacuum because it will clog coolant systems. It basically turns into a horrible mud when mixed with coolant or water I happen to filter the coolant system so i can machine it wet, but that's not all - i also run a dust extractor to avoid these issues.
Cast iron is popular, but i've seen no science that suggests it should be used. There is no evidence i've seen that it's particularly better at anything, none of the "seasoning" thing is a real rust protectant for either cast iron or steel (and steel will usually rust slower), though it is non stick in the same sense that things are harder to stick to burned things :)
Steel won't generate the same kind of horrible dust when you abrade through the seasoning.
I don't season anything though - if i want to protect something from rust i dry it. If seasoning was a super good rust protectant we'd use it as one in other cases.
If i want something to be non-stick i spray a light coat of oil on it.
How hard do you scrape your pans when you cook?! Does your pan end up half a gram lighter every time you cook or something?
And even then, if I am scraping it enough to actually abraide some of it, it's not being aerosolized. It's gonna get worked into the fats and oils I've got in the pan. Which, sure, some small amount eventually flings out, but by that point it's such a tiny minute amount.
Maybe if I was a chef it might be enough to actually care a tiny slight bit. But like, cooking with it a few times a week, I can't imagine I'm getting much of any bits of the pan in my lungs. I'd be more worried about the stuff burning in the pan over the bits of the pan being a problem.
> though it is non stick in the same sense that things are harder to stick to burned things :)
The usual way I've heard this explained, which seems reasonable, is that steel and iron are porous, and what causes sticking is the contraction of those pores when heated. A smooth covering prevents that sticking, and polymerized cooking oil provides that.
> I don't season anything though - if i want to protect something from rust i dry it. If seasoning was a super good rust protectant we'd use it as one in other cases.
Funnily enough, I have. I built a bookshelf that uses raw steel beams, and I seasoned it to protect it from rust. 3 years in, it's still rust free (amusingly, except for the inside of the pipes).
But I don't think anyone really argues that it's the best way to do things in non-cooking applications, just that it's food safe (again, the point of what we're discussing) and works. Seasoning does demonstrably prevent rust... For furniture you'd more often spray it with a protective coating, but I don't think anyone's recommending spraying pans with polyurethane. ;-)
Pushing back on 'DannyBee though: the narrative about cast iron vs. nonstick is easy to understand: nonstick pans are shitty, expensive, and overused; lots of people cook in nonstick exclusively (:scream-emoji:) and don't realize their pans have been worthless for years because the coating is all scuffed up. It's not a health thing so much as a "nonstick pans are evil" thing.
It has more thermal momentum, thus when I am pulling stuff out of my sous vide cooker, it's better at quickly adding char (because the temperature drops less than in carbon steel or anything else).
(The only other reason I use cast iron is for the cases where the pan size is just more practical than my carbon steel pans.)
I will admit that I'm conflicted by this since there's also a distinctive way that my 3.5 kW induction wok cooker chars stuff in a very limited amount of time, but that involves me removing the smoke detectors from my kitchen and the two rooms adjacent.
It's like saying that pure salt has "no added sugars or preservatives" Of course it doesn't, it's salt, not a salt-sugar mixture, and you don't need to add a preservative, it is a preservative.
Not blaming you, but this is just wrong and a fundamental misunderstanding of steel and iron.
Cast iron (and steel) does not have pores. It is not like wood. SAE 304 (stainless steel commonly used in cheap pans) does have micro-cracks in the surface. These can be removed through honing or surface polishing, and the substructure is weird. Let's put it aside for a second, and stick with cast iron, carbon steel, and other stainless because 304 is just super strange stuff at the microscopic level.
Cast iron simply has no pores at all, just surface roughness. The average surface roughness is not that high (125 microinches or better)
Here is a high magnification photo of cast iron with the different microstructures pointed out: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/325977459/figure/fi...
here's one colored a little nicer: https://www.struers.com/-/media/Struers-media-library/Knowle...
You can see there are no holes and no pores. There are just some different types of microstructures.
Here is normal stainless steel: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/327401795/figure/fi...
(the one on the right is after sandblasting :P)
Liquids theoretically fill the surface roughness of either but not like massively. You can see on the stainless there just isn't a lot to even fill.
For all of them the overall flatness changes when heated, and the surface roughness changes slightly, but that's it. Not a lot. it definitely does not expand pores, or change the surface roughness by a factor of 10, or any of this.
This is why cast iron is used to make precision laps - to surface things like lab grade surface plates to like 0.000005 inches and such: it stays flat once machined and surfaced, it has lots of thermal inertia, and doesn't get screwed up by things sticking to it once polished[1].
If your goal is to make it so nothing sticks, by adjusting the surface roughness, you could also just sand it outside with a respirator on to like 2000 grit or 4000 grit and never worry about it. This would cost you about 5 minutes of time, maybe 10, and you can do it by hand if you want (though it's like 1 minute with an ROS).
I can show you a non-seasoned, "polished once 8 years ago to 8000 grit" cast iron griddle that has 0 rust, and is quite non-stick.
Manufacturers would do this except now they get you to do it for them, because people won't buy it unless they can season it to "add flavor" and such.
The whole thing has become a silly cargo cult honestly. The number of people who now think that like cast iron and steel have pores is also way too high :)
Besides sanding, there are other ways to change surface roughness that don't involve burning cooking oil onto something that doesn't need it. They also last much longer.
Also note that depending on temperature that people season at, they can release really toxic stuff. 300C (572F) is totally achievable on most stoves, by people just leaving them on to season, and will generate some very toxic byproducts.
"Funnily enough, I have. I built a bookshelf that uses raw steel beams, and I seasoned it to protect it from rust. 3 years in, it's still rust free (amusingly, except for the inside of the pipes)."
Visibly, or did you check under the coating? Most seasoning just hides rust. It's still rusted, and as it gets removed it's just taking the iron oxide with it so it looks like it's not.
[1] Here's a fun side video of someone making precision laps out of cast iron using nothing but the 3 plate method, timecoded to when he puts the optical flat on it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Whyw5v7L70c&t=810s
The lines are straight because this cast iron is flat and not rough to at 1/10th or 1/20th the wavelength of light used here, which translates into an average roughness below 25-50nanometers.
You do not need to go this far to get a non-stick pan out of cast iron :)
Also eating iron oxide is fine, it's breathing it that is bad.
It just sounds like we're picking our flavor of poison when we pack our food, something we've done since pre-historic times.
It's possible they just have a slightly different steel grade.
A. it's a layer of burned, polymerized cooking oil. It is in fact a plastic. It is not particularly better for you. It's only non-stick in a weird sense that anything else that hasn't been cleaned is non-stick.
B. it does not really prevent rust - if it did, we would use this instead of rust protectants :)
C. Cast iron, unlike steel, generates mostly dust when it abrades. It is often machined dry with vacuum because it otherwise clogs up coolant systems (it makes a sort of mud).
The dust is very bad for you. So everytime you scrape through that coating and abrade it, or microabrade it, you are probably getting cast iron dust in the air/lungs.
I'm sure this will end up studied post PFAS and will be discovered to have been a similarly bad idea.
Use steel - it "seasons" just fine (it turns out burned cooking oil will happily stick to lots of things), and doesn't have this issue.
I once rented an old house with some old iron pipes... While it was a problem for doing laundry without turning clothes orange, when I investigated the health risks it wasn't a problem unless you consumed huge enough amounts to get iron poisoning. Iron is an essential nutrient after all...
So the carbon in carbon steel is redundant
With this in mind, I'm baffled about how many products with non-stick surfaces are marketed as safe up to 240C, considering that household ovens are often bad at controlling temperatures and can swing 20-30C above and below the set temperature.
[1] my wife likes fried food and she uses an iron frying pan.
Would also include plastic utensils in that. So many people I know have half melted plastic spatulas etc. Wooden and metal utensils work fine and barely cost any more. I have a nice old teak ladle that's lasted me for a decade while friends are throwing out their bubbled horror show plastic after 12 months.
Study Finds Microplastics in More than 90 Percent of Tested Water Bottles
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/study-finds-microp...
Just opening a plastic bottle can release thousands of microplastics
https://www.newscientist.com/article/2237900-just-opening-a-...
Study: Plastic Baby Bottles Shed Microplastics When Heated. Should You Be Worried?
https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2020/10/19/9255251...
NIST Study Shows Everyday Plastic Products Release Trillions of Microscopic Particles Into Water
https://www.nist.gov/news-events/news/2022/04/nist-study-sho...
Occurrence of microplastics in raw and treated drinking water
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S00489...
Plastic bottles for chilled carbonated beverages as a source of microplastics and nanoplastics
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/37354839/
Plastic containers still distributed across the US are a potential health disaster
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/jun/01/pfas-law...
A first overview of textile fibers, including microplastics, in indoor and outdoor environments
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S02697...
A Review of Human Exposure to Microplastics and Insights Into Microplastics as Obesogens
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34484127/
International quantification of microplastics in indoor dust: prevalence, exposure and risk assessment
Last I checked the evidence was shaky that this is even problematic for humans and read like a who's who of sketchy medical claims, up there with seed oils killing your testosterone.
The irony is that it's a problem that is clearly already having consequences already. It's quite likely it's behind some of the current issues both at the fringes (rapid onset gender dysphoria) and broadly in politics (see the correlation between male testosterone levels and voting patterns). It potentially wipes out humanity way before anything with climate change, but since it affects men, the West just doesn't care.
Also from what I've read, I think ROGD mostly affects young women and girls? It's not so much a male phenomenon. I don't think any of the research so far has linked it to plastics consumption, seems more to be a socially contagious, culture-bound syndrome, like anorexia is.
Can you expand on this? Are you attributing political movement to the left in young men to lower testosterone levels?
Anyway, about the first, there are people studying a possible link between plastics contamination and the testosterone trend. AFAIK, nobody has got anything yet. And given that there are other very likely culprits, I do think stating the link with plastics is way too premature.
...is it?
https://www.ft.com/content/f14ab282-1dd3-46bf-be02-a59aff3a9...
And unlikely that this same cause would spare animals while only affecting humans. We do want animals to reproduce too…..
Might be. Or might not be. Who knows? Let's leave it up to random chance and see what happens! No point in trying to understand this phenomenon right?
On current projections human world population peaks at 10 billion in 2086 [0]. If, for the sake of argument, microplastics were to lower reproduction somewhat so that "only" 9.5 billion people came to exist in 2086, would that be bad? We're already putting a lot of pressure on many of earth's scarce resources in ways that have harmful effects on the welfare of many existing humans. Increasing population increases that pressure.
But maybe it’s worth avoiding it at all cost? That’s the big question.
As the burden of proof for something being unsafe is on us, the consumer, rather than the companies introducing novel elements into the food supply, this is an important milestone. Things are safe until proven otherwise, and it's up to us to do the work to prove we aren't just being paranoid about any health issues that arise.
But now we can rest easy knowing that we're set up to get these misleading "microwave-safe" labels removed... a few decades from now.
(/s. Anyone could have done this study at any time - all they did was to microwave water in plastic containers to see what would happen. I guess literally nobody has ever done that before, certainly not the companies labeling their products as "microwave safe." Maybe in another few decades, someone will look at what happens with Teflon coated pans.)
Scientific lab equipment, a las, is still a field ripe for more work on democratization. Mind, even that suffers from things like the War on Drugs making possession of lab paraphenalia (accurate scales, glassware, and other things needed for taking accurate/controlled measurements) a risky proposition. In fact, one could say, the System is tilted against the Citizen Scientist unaffiliated with an organization from the get-go.
Found this paper from 1982: https://www.jstor.org/stable/44540143
Because many people use plastic Tupperware in the microwave. I've never purchased a piece of tuperware that said it would release microplastics into the food if I put it in the microwave.
I don't know what it is lately but I feel like a lot of things labeled as "myths" and "woo woo" seem to be coming out as actually harmful, forever chemicals, fluoride in drinking water are others that come to mind.
I remember there was a bit of a trend to rubbish using microwaves, as if it harmed the food or something, but it is curious that those people actually had a point, at least when the microwave was combined with plastic containers.
My opinion, it's better to always have an open mind.
Is there a legitimate issue with fluoride in drinking water? A quick google search yields nothing.
Other studies too from a quick google search. Pregnant women drinking fluoridated water lowers children's IQ by 3-4 points [2]
1. https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/news/features/fluoride-children...
2. https://www.forbes.com/sites/brucelee/2019/08/20/fluoride-an...
From google
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/18695947/
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31424532/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5285601/
This is a good article as an overview of the problem:
One thing to be skeptical or open minded or whatever but this statement is just stunningly naive. That you would only consider it if the company selling it tell you that. There is a thing called using your brain to come to independent conclusions. I'm probably just pissing into the wind here because I realize the current discourse it that you must listen to your betters and believe only the experts or whatever.
Maybe you should go see a doctor about that knee-jerk problem.
I feel i'm about to fall into a rabit hole where i read way too much about dish soap. Is this a joke or is there really such a thing as 7th generation dish soap?
The same thing happens with your clothes, which these days include a lot of plastic fabric, buttons, etc.
Never had a complaint or noticed a residual odor, though.
I don't even store cold food in plastic containers any more because I found out you can buy glass ones. They are so much more convenient and clean.
Almost as bad as "flushable wipes" which technically can be flushed but should never be as they clog the plumbing and sewer systems. By the same definition airpods and wedding rings are flushable too.
If wipes marketed as flushable were such a clear and direct problem, the iron-clad lawsuits would have wiped (heh) them off the market by now.
If you're super bored, you can watch videos of flushable wipes being tested. They disintegrate quickly, as designed.
I'm not sure about the toxicity of various wood sealers. I've been using butcher-block sealer which has e.g., bee's wax but also some more questionable substances. I'm interested in trying shellac but it's not overly cheap.
I'm all against microwaving brand new plastics (not a huge fan of take-out containers). But I suspect the plastic coffee brewer I've used ~1000 times has long since leached out anything that was going to leach out. I wonder if there's any research on this.
It'd be cool if there were a commercial lab I could send a some samples to measure microplastics, the same way I can send my tap water to be tested for lead.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36535828 - 7 hours ago
Worst case ingested dose for toddlers: 22.1ng/kg·day
Dose found to be toxic in vitro: 1,000,000,000ng/kg
Also, what does in vitro mean here? Do I remember correctly this means you're not dead?! Seems like an odd bit of jargon to add
Microplastics have measurable negative effects on mammalian brains. That's been shown recently.
I've never microwaved or cooked anything in plastic, and I've yelled at people who do since the 90s.
Unfortunately, I break my own teeth a lot. I've shattered three of them in my sleep. It's not fun to wake up to a giant cracking sound in your head, realize your nerve is exposed, swallow part of a tooth and need immediate dental surgery.
I started using over-the-counter night guards, which I chewed through like a fucking rabbit, little pieces of plastic all over. Finally, recently, I just paid for a "permanent" night guard.
First of all, the way this is done now is amazing. It's a 3D scan of your teeth using a tiny camera wand, and the model is built in full color directly on the screen; I even pointed out to the dental tech, on the model, a red spot where a tortilla chip had wounded me the previous week.
So they shipped me this perfect molded night guard which fits my upper teeth incredibly well, and feels like a gummy on the upper side. On the lower side, though, it has a harder shell and still takes the impact of my lower teeth. And after a few months, it's already starting to fray on the bottom.
With both these things, I have no idea what's in them. PFAS? How much of this shit am I swallowing? Wearing it all night, every night, I wonder what the hell it's leaching into my brain. I don't think there are any real regulations on what they put into them, and they're clearly extraordinary mixes of different plastics.
"Safest Splint Tested: There is no discernible leaching of free monomer. Studies verify residual monomer level of only 0.14%"
https://burbankdental.com/products/talon-splints/
Believe this is the manufacturer's site here: https://www.moderndentalusa.com/product/talon-hard-soft-guar...
But apart from the guard there are some things you can do to reduce it. There’s apnea testing, and also things you can wear to monitor it and get biofeedback. Also stress reduction, quitting alcohol/caffeine/chcocolate, some jaw exercises (rocabado), massage, physio, jaw alignment and teeth alignment, etc
Still, don't heat stuff for the infants in a plastic.
Or any human
Wax gets soft when heated, so I'd be really surprised if the cardboard you're talking about is actually using "wax".
Australian politicians too weak for stuff like this.
https://www.vic.gov.au/single-use-plastics
Other Australian states* have either already done this or have it in their legislative pipeline.
( * except for Tasmania )
From what I know, glass has no drawbacks other than fragility.
Also, glass is heavy, so impractical for many uses. But yes seems largely inert unless you expose it to some weird fluorides (Things I won't work with series).
Beeswax probably melts too easily to be used for hot liquids but I bet it would do the trick with "moist" things if not full-on liquids.
Bonus, greater demand for beeswax = cheaper honey and more bees around! :)
this, and microwave heating longer on low is my go to for consistent temps
Publishing companies are highly predatory, the industry is a scam/sham.
> The highest EDI of these particles for infants occurred when they drank microwaved water stored in a plastic container, while for toddlers, it was when they consumed microwaved dairy products in a container. These findings emphasize the necessity of collaborating with manufacturers to establish guidelines for the appropriate usage of plastic containers. Additionally, it is crucial to work with caregivers in order to raise awareness about the potential impact of these particles.
So parents, beware of feeding bottles!
Basically no one likes the academic paywalls, except for the world's most awful people [not an exaggeration].
Presumably you were being sarcastic, but it’s still caustic. What stereolab called easy cynicism.
If anyone would like to explain what that was about, I'd love to hear it.