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Comment by MostlyStable | Hacker News Reader

I am so tired of articles like this. Yeah, micro and nano plastics being ingested are probably not great, and, if it's easy for someone to make the change to avoid them, then great. But, as the article points out, the impacts of these plastics in real life is completely unknown, and considering that these plastics have literally been in use for the better part of a century, that puts a pretty strict upper limit on how bad they can be. If they were more than trivially harmful, we would know by now.

Again, if making the change is easy for you, then by all means do so. And we should absolutely keep investigating. But for lots of parents, it is _not_ easy to make the change. Avoiding plastics can be extremely expensive, and articles like this almost definitely increase the stress and anxiety on parents completely out of proportion of the actual level of risk.

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Past fifty years, maybe. I don’t think current food “safe” plastics are the same as those a century ago.

> If they were more than trivially harmful, we would know by now.

“The Increasing Prevalence in Intersex Variation from Toxicological Dysregulation in Fetal Reproductive Tissue Differentiation and Development by Endocrine-Disrupting Chemicals”

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5017538/

Sperm counts are dropping globally. Hormone disruption can help explain it. Wild life that live near human populations (and pets, and lab animals on controlled diets) are unexpected getting fatter. Hormone disruption can help explain it. Amphibians are having weird developmental problems caused by, you guessed it, hormonal dysfunction.

Variation in human physiology and psychology scales on a gradient; from subtle differences in brain structure, which might not even be noticeable to others, to macro differences visible to the eye. A chemical that can cause extreme variation of the external genitalia surely also can cause changes in glands and brains. IMO we see signals of the effects of hormonal dysregulation in our society with increasing prevalence.

I think plastics have been quite a bit more than trivially harmful.

We actually are not sure that sperm counts are dropping globally. The quality of evidence is extremely poor: https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/declining-sperm-count-...

But no matter what effect they have, if you can't conclusively prove it after decades and millions of people, it's by definition pretty minor.

Microplastics are rapidly accumulating in the environment and don't break down quickly. If we wait until the effects are significant it may be too late to stop significant future harm.

>the impacts of these plastics in real life is completely unknown

There's a huge body of research on endocrine disrupting chemicals, specifically from plastics, going back decades. The science is settled here.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S030372072...

The article links sources, but it's trivially googlable.

There's tons of evidence that these chemicals cause problems with sexual development and fertility, there's also lots of evidence that plastic containers leach them when microwaved. As the article states, it is obvious what people need to do. Glass containers are not expensive, and disposable food containers NOT made of plastic were commonplace up through the 90's and they can be again. Switching to glass and aluminum containers when possible is actually better for the environment as well, since they are actually recyclable whereas plastic is guaranteed to end up in a landfill eventually.

>Avoiding plastics can be extremely expensive

Tinfoil instead of plastic wrap, a glass Tupperware set is a few dollars more expensive instead of plastic, aluminum water bottles instead of plastic (actually cheaper than plastic bottles).

My family eliminated plastics from our lives and it cost us basically nothing. In what way is it extremely expensive?

I'd be very curious how much of that evidence is a) realistic dosages and b) in humans (actual humans not human cells in a dish). My guess is very close to none.

Do you imagine that a human kidney cell in a dish has very different properties than a human kidney cell in a kidney?

Yes. 1000% yes. Individual cells in a petri dish act _dramatically_ different in innumerable ways. For 1 thing, they are much _much_ easier to kill or harm.

Glass works really well, but you don't want to give that to children

As far as I understand, I’m not a chemist, rigid plastics don’t actually have these chemicals in them. It’s specifically the plasticizers that are bad, so flexible plastic is out, but rigid things like sippy cups are possibly better.

I don’t know though, that was just the result of my limited research when I went down the rabbit hole on this stuff. But we cut out plastics almost completely anyway, including rigid plastics, just to be safe.

Aluminum and glass are perfectly adequate. Microwave in glass and transfer to aluminum if you are scared of kids breaking glass, or just eat out of the glass/ceramic if they are a little older.

Avoiding plastic is trivial with a little thought.

I was thinking more about giving the children a container to microwave at school

tinfoil ain't going in the microwave, which was ultimately what OP was about

> But, as the article points out, the impacts of these plastics in real life is completely unknown, and considering that these plastics have literally been in use for the better part of a century, that puts a pretty strict upper limit on how bad they can be.

From this we know that they don't instantaneously kill you.

Does it cause cancer? Endocrine disruption? Long-term cognitive issues? That's hard to say, because we don't have much of a control group that hasn't been exposed to these things. But it seems unlikely that it's good for you, and when the cost of avoiding it isn't that high, why volunteer to be a test subject?

The ceiling on how bad it can be is much _much_ lower than "it doesn't instantaneously kill you". It also doesn't dramatically decrease fertility, or cause significant increases in cancer rates, etc. etc. etc. Any effects it has, by definition, _have_ to be subtle and minor or else we would know. Subtle like "doesn't obviously appear over the course of decades and across tens of millions of people". That is _extremely_ minor.

And because I mentioned fertility and two other people have already mentioned sperm counts, I'm gong to get out in front of that one: We aren't even sure sperm counts are actually decreasing [0], let alone that they are caused by plastics

[0] https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/declining-sperm-count-...

I was with you right up until you mentioned cancer. We haven't understood cancer long enough to know what historical rates actually were, and even if we did, we wouldn't know for sure what a delta (or lack of delta) actually indicates.

Like, maybe microplastics are actually pretty cancerous, but overall cancer rates haven't changed that much because as plastics became commonplace, we were getting away from exposure to things like radium and asbestos.

But the same is true of all of the other things. Maybe sperm count is actually decreasing, maybe it's just staying the same because microplastics make it worse but getting away from exposure to things like radium and lead and mercury make it better.

The best you can say is that we don't know, not that we know it doesn't.

Sperm count you can at least approximate by looking at per-capita birthrates.

That's a bad metric because there are many other things that can affect per-capita birthrates. There are birth control products that make it so even the most virile man with an explosive sperm count getting laid isn't going to result in a birth. People have have choosing less and less to have children, and deferring those choices to later in life, and I don't think that has anything to do with microplastics.

Here's a counterpoint: since the mainstreaming of plastic 100 years ago the average life expectancy has increased dramatically. In the US the average life expectancy was roughly 55 years in 1920, and in 2020 that average life expectancy had increased to over 78 years. Is anyone going to argue that plastic has increased life expectancy? Probably not. But at the same time it's a kind of hard to say plastic is so awful for human health when the average lifespan has increased nearly 50% since the widespread use of plastic.

Come to think of it, I think one could make the argument that plastic is prolonging life, but that doesn't necessarily mean plastic should be consumed.

Adding to this it also seems like such a small thing to do in the grand scheme of things. Let's say not microwaving your food in plastic removes 10% of your yearly consumption of plastic. That's extremely generous. You still have to contend with nearly everything else you eat, drink, swim in, bathe with, and breathe. Hell, the most amazing thing is somehow even butcher meat has microplastics in it from the processing plant!

At this point it's unavoidable. But if we're going to fix it there are probably much larger fish to fry here. Of course you should not microwave stuff in plastic anyway just like you shouldnt use a metal utensil on a teflon pan. But these articles are always written like it's One Weird Trick (TM) when the problem is actually everything else.

Also you don't need to heat baby food, and you don't need to heat formula. It should not be cold, but room temperature is fine.

It was a godsend when our pediatrican told us this. He said just use powdered formula, mix it with room temperature water at feeding time. No need to refrigerate premixed formula, no need to heat it up, no need to carry it around in a cooler when you're on the go.

I wonder where that came from. It's kinda obvious that baby food doesn't need to be heated up beyond body temperature but it's definitely a thing people tell you when you have kids.

The powder is not sterile. The advice I got was to mix it with 80C water to sterilize it and wait for it to cool.

But that doesn't make sense. As a microbiologist, I can tell you that plenty of bacteria can survive 80C. if you were were worried about sterility, you'd boil the mixture for several minutes (even so, there are extremophiles that can survive that but they aren't in general dangerous)

Sterilize was the wrong word, but a that high of a temperature will kill the germs that most commonly infect the infant human gut. You may have heard about cronobacter contamination being an issue a while back. If 80C doesn’t kill everything, but those germs pass through harmlessly, then it’s not a problem.

If that doesn’t make sense to you as a microbiologist, you should let the US FDA know.

https://www.fda.gov/food/foodborne-pathogens/cronobacter-sak...

Pretty much everything we and babies eat are not perfectly sterile (I don't think it's common practice to sterilize the mother's nipples?). I would be surprised if it is normal for baby powder to not be safe to consume without sterilization.

Not only that, but barring babies with compromised immune systems, you really don't want to get too crazy about sterility. They need to be exposed to pathogens in order to develop immune responses!

My doctor recommended it. The packaging on my infant formula recommended it. The US FDA recommends it.

https://www.fda.gov/food/foodborne-pathogens/cronobacter-sak...

But you do you.

Also, if you start heating up formula they’ll apparently have a hard time going back to room temperature.

We used silicone bottles along with a bottle warmer for refrigerated breast milk though.

Pro tip: buy a damned bottle warmer in that situation. Don’t try to get by putting hot water in a cup and putting the bottle in that. The $50 is worth your sanity when there’s a crying baby.

when we're young parents warmed expressed or formula milk in a pot with hot water.

mostly because it eliminated the potential to make the liquid too hot for the child.

but glad we did it that way now anyway.

> articles like this almost definitely increase the stress and anxiety on parents completely out of proportion of the actual level of risk

How can you know it's out of proportion when earlier in your comment you admit that you don't know what the risk is? We have no idea how bad these plastics are for us.

> probably not great

Sounds like it's being minimized for some reason. I'd err on the side of caution when it comes to putting things in your body and your baby's body and developing brain.

There is no big demand on parents to microwave plastic.

“Err on the side of caution,” when applied to every single thing in a parent’s life, translates into a great deal of stress and anxiety. Don’t microwave plastics! Don’t feed them box mac & cheese because it has phthalates! Don’t use Himalayan rock salt because it has microplastics! Don’t let your kids touch thermal receipts because they’re covered in BPA! Check plastics before you buy to make sure they’re BPA-free! Actually no, BPA-free plastics can be worse than BPA-containing plastics! Buy glass to be safe!

And that’s just the plastics. I could go on all day. Parenting in an internet-connected world is nonstop pressure from well-meaning people who likely don’t realize the additive effect of their well-meant advice.

Maybe you should be worried about all those things? Maybe we live in a toxic dangerous world that’s been shaped by corporate interests and priorities that are not our own. Because we’re surrounded by all these dangers doesn’t mean that somehow makes them okay to ignore. We have very alarming statistics on our population-scale health outcomes and it’s reasonable to suspect your list is related. Being a parent is a lot of responsibility that’s just the way it is.

If you’re surrounded by dangers, you literally have to ignore some of them while you fight off the others. There is no way to fight every problem at once.

I get the impression that you have children, and GP does not. You absolutely have to pick your battles, and you can't pick every single one. Trying to do so is not only guaranteed to result in failure, but it will riddle you with stress and anxiety that takes a real physical toll on your body (I speak from experience here).

A little while ago I took the kids hiking and they ignored my instruction to hydrate before we left, so 20 minutes into the hike we had a dehydration near emergency. There are a couple of (plastic) bottles of water in the trunk, but they sat for a long time in a hot car in July. Do I risk death or emergency room visit from dehydration? Or do I risk damage from microplastics? The latter seems obviously better to me. Agonizing over the potential damage won't do any of us any good. The only thing we can do is prepare better for next time. For example I now carry a Life Straw with us on all hikes, but we live in a desert and most of the places we go there aren't any sources of water.

We should definitely do the big things like not microwaving plastic, but trying to live a life where everything everywhere is toxic and it's our responsiblity to prevent it is not only doomed for failure but also a recipe for stress and axiety. I think it's important that we advocate for changes at the macro level.

I do have kids actually, and I protect them from everything I can because that's my duty as a parent. "Pick your battles" doesn't really apply when it's a bunch of small things that are easy to avoid. It's more a matter of habits than anything else. Glyphosate/organic food is one that's unfortunately a matter of money.

A one-off rare exception like the one you describe isn't really an issue. Like with all things in medicine, the dose makes the poison. Rare exposure to things in small amounts is usually not a problem, even for things we know to be toxic.

The problem is habits. For example, drinking bottled water all the time, which is very common.

> the impacts of these plastics in real life is completely unknown

What about this test they did though, I wouldn't say "completely" unknown?

> To test what these plastics do to our bodies once they’re consumed, the team bathed human embryonic kidney cells in the plastic roughage shed by the baby-food containers. (The team chose this kind of cell because kidneys have so much contact with ingested plastic.) After two days of exposure to concentrated microplastics and nanoplastics, about 75 percent of the kidney cells died—over three times as many as cells that spent two days in a much more diluted solution.

I think the safest thing to do is just not microwave the food in plastic anymore and slowly move from plastic storage back to glass for instance, which correct me if I'm wrong, doesn't have these issues. It is less convenient but convenience is what puts all this garbage into our bodies.

Cells in a petri dish are much more fragile than cells in your body, you can kill them with water that's the wrong salinity or PH.

Guess what happens to the body if you expose to pure oxygen for 48 hours?

These "concetrated" tests are BS. Anything is fatal in high enough concentration - as ever the dose makes the poison.

They did tests, and they also said, explicitely: "The human health effects of plastic exposure are unclear"

Everything else is in vitro and non-obviously harmful endpoints. There is not a single iota of direct negative health impacts in real people.

Heads up, when reheating leftovers, be cautious with glass containers - regular glass like soda-lime glass can explode in the microwave. This is because soda-lime glass contains additives that make it unable to withstand sudden temperature changes from microwave heating. Glass cookware sold specifically for microwave use is a special borosilicate glass that can handle the heat. Check any glass containers closely before microwaving - soda-lime glass is often clear glass like drinking glasses, glass baking dishes, glass Tupperware, etc. Look for labels indicating microwave-safe or borosilicate glass. If unsure, transfer food to a known microwave-safe dish instead.

>Avoiding plastics can be extremely expensive

There's nothing "expensive" about avoiding putting plastics into your microwave. Just don't do it: put your food on a ceramic plate or bowl instead. If the food came in a plastic container, dump the food into a normal bowl or plate instead. It doesn't cost anything at all: owning ceramic plates and bowls is normal, and you can buy them for very cheap.

The only thing "expensive" here is the few seconds it takes to transfer the food to something ceramic, and the extra time it takes to clean it. BFD.

I think you might be overestimating the degree that science has the power to answer these questions, especially when it can't be tied to some obvious grant funding source.

We can't even be sure of the link between CO2 and cognition. If you look at the studies, the bulk of them are done by the Navy and they're not super applicable to office/school settings. Of the ones remaining, most of them are too underpowered to convincingly demonstrate either way and the meta analysis is all a mess. This should be one of the most gotcha easy questions we can formulate but because nobody directly makes a high ROI from funding it, Scientists scrabble around for funds.

There was the famous, now retracted study that showed that judges were much more lenient on cases after lunch than before, that was taken down on methodological grounds. But notice that it wasn't taken down because it was inconsistent with previous literature on other fields and the impact of lunch on decision making... because there was no previous literature. We all know there's some pretty sizable effect that lunch has on cognition and the workplace is full of tips and heuristics about how to avoid that post lunch slump or what tasks to schedule after lunch. Plenty of anecdata that there's a effect but again, no money to scientifically characterize the effect.

I'd add, plastic pollution is bad and all, but the alternatives are kind of worse, from the point of view of energy and water they require to produce.

Glass for example takes a huge amount of energy by comparison, if you can reuse it 100s of times then you may break even, but let's face it, where disposable plastics are used, such as microwavable food, glass won't be reusable. Recycled at best, but that still takes lots of energy.

Same for reusable bags, hemp or even heavy duty plastic. Natural fibres need to be reused many times to break even on environmental impact. UK banned disposable plastic bags in favour of reusable bags... and amount of plastic dispensed out for bags increased.

I'm all up for eliminating plastics but not at the price of using substantially more energy (CO2) and water.

The real killer with glass is that you lose the product in the glass, which is way more expensive to produce than even glass.

Testosterone and sperm counts way down (and still dropping) in humans. Dog sperm counts are also down, but it’s not happening to livestock.

Something is causing it and until we know better it’s probably a reasonable assumption it’s plastic.

The sperm count thing is _dramatically_ overblown:

https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/declining-sperm-count-...

It is more reasonable to hypothesize that domestication cause this naturally, and livestock is only exempt because they are artificially selected the other way.

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