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The article is only presenting that:

1. nano/microplastics kill kidney cells in a lab environment

2. nano/microplastics come from microwaving containers

Regardless of whether you agree with the conclusion _you_ are drawing from reading the article, the article is saying those things.

In order to make a real-world-ish experiment, we'd have to start experimenting on children. I feel that while you're expressing outrage at a potentially real thing, you're also being unreasonable in that.

Sorry in advance if this comes off as harsh.

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The article does state though that 'Many studies, including ours, are demonstrating that the toxicity of micro- and nanoplastics is highly linked to the level of exposure'. But it doesn't provide evidence that the amount being ingested is enough to cause harm, so the bit about killing kidney cells seems to be fear mongering (I'm sure there are lots of things babies eat that would kill kidney cells if you instead injected them). What would be more interesting if there was detectable levels of microplastics in blood streams, or how the levels compare to things already studied such as bottled water.

In fact no. The parent comment is right in emphasizing the "exposure to concentrations equivalent to accumulations over several days and sources".

So while your point 1. is technically true, it comes with the caveat of heavy concentrations.

We know of thousands of "factors" that become dangerous or toxic in big concentrations but are innocuous or even beneficial in small doses. I'm not saying that plastic is either of these but to leave out the dose concentration is clearly misrepresenting from your part.

So I don't know if you haven't read the article till the end (because this caveat of the concentration comes later after the sensational part you emphasized) or you are purposely trying to mislead others.

The discrepancy of their result ("three-quarters of cultured embryonic kidney cells had died") with reality also clearly points to something very wrong with this study. That high level of cell mortality is not observed anywhere in reality.

I don't think anything Auronis was expressing outrage, nothing they wrote even hints at it to me. They just seem to be expressing a line of reasoning.

You wouldn’t have to experiment on children as such. You can follow children who were Brest fed and children who were bottle fed and compare the two.

It’s sort of a worrying study for me personally. Because bottle feeding only really works so well because you can microwave, both for cleaning and for heating, modern bottles so easily. If you have to go back to glass containers it’ll be a literal nightmare for most parents.

So the dish washer is out? There is those sterilization things where you add a little water and put the bottles in steam for a few minutes. No idea what the risks there might be, but this is what my sister did, and I think it was plastic bottles at first, though she switched to glass with her second child because of micro plastic concerns etc.

Not a parent, but curious: can’t you microwave glass booties ? I do microwave water in glass and don’t see problems. Is it the fragility of the glass ? In that case I guess any fabric protection can solve it ?

Not a parent, but guessing glass is bad because kids tend to throw things and glass is breakable.

I would use glass bottles to feed my kids, but I always held the bottle because the glass gets incredibly hot. I would wrap a towel around it to make it safe for me to hold.

By the time they could hold their own bottle we used plastic both for safe surface temperatures on the bottle and in case they threw it or dropped it as you mentioned.

The milk doesn't need to be that hot. Warm is fine, and if the bottle is that hot, I'd worry that the milk is too hot to drink.

I'm a parent and we are feeding our second child from glass bottles because of microwave+micro-plastic concerns. So far no bottle throwing, so we'll just see how far we get with these until the throwing starts. We'll probably also switch to glass food-containers for daycare once he starts going there.

They sell silicone bottle wraps that basically eliminate this concern.

So far, glass bottles have been fine for my kid.

I was guessing the commenter was referring to the expense of buying glass bottles, because they cost about double, and that "literal nightmare" was hyperbole.

What makes you think glass is safer in that regard?

See https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S277241662..., (Micro/nano glass pollution as an emerging pollutant in near future)

Now microplastics is all the rage so you see these studies, next you will see Micro-X whatever it is. The fact is that this is a headline grabbing study without any meaning and that did not show anything actually. They even say it in their study (but this does nto make headlines) that the study does not show at what concentration microplastics become a problem, just that at very unreasonably high concentrations they used it caoused cell death in petry cells. Almost Everything will cause cell damage at very high concentrations

If only there was some model, something like a human, preferably smaller, that maybe doesn't live quite as long. Perhaps it would be ideal if we could even hold it in our hands, and have a small space to contain many of these models.

Pfft who am I kidding, what an insane idea. People would just complain that the model has some unknowable flaw, and is therefore entirely useless.

Ok, it's too early in the morning. I can't figure out what you're alluding to.

Lab rats, I guess

yah so they have this HEK cells I'm guessing and they subject them to fluids that were cooked in a microwave in a plastic container which thereby released a bunch of these nanoparticles. That fluid was applied to the HEK cells in vitro and they basically died and stoped dividing and migrating and doing all they would do. I suppose the connection would be lots of blood passes through the kidneys being a blood filtering tissue and what not that should nanoparticles enter the bloodstream they could take a toll on the kidneys. So if we were to be intravenously injected with these things it wouldn't be surprising to see stuff die I suppose. But the real world scenario never just dumps chemicals on certain tissues, they have to first reach those tissues and cross barriers and survive past the liver etc etc, lots of obstacles. But these in lab conditions kind of give a toxicity clue for what the outcome may be if the substance comes in direct contact with the tissue of interest.

Obviously you don't have to "start experimenting on children". One can survey parents on whether or not they used microwaves, plastic containers, or not, look at the health of the children concerned in later years, and then work from that data.

I have a feeling there is a good number of parents willing to volunteer a child. They start getting mouthy around 3.

/s kinda

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