Cooking items in your home are linked to cancer-causing chemicals | Hacker News Reader

Cooking items in your home are linked to cancer-causing chemicals

pennlive.com

46 pointsJimmc41493 comments

Replace your plastic utensils and delicate nonstick cookware with metal spatulas, wooden spoons and cast iron pans. Problem solved!

> wooden spoons

I suffer from a kind of tactile aversion where I can't stand the sensation of drying a wet wooden spoon (or any wet wooden object) with a towel. Curious if anyone else has this.

Yes. I can't stand holding anything that's made of wood with that rough, dry texture like cheap kitchen spoons. Also I've never been able to stand Popsicle type treats due to the wooden stick.

Wow thought I was the only one my entire life. I can give lots of very weird and specific examples, but yes; N=2.

Oh big time. I can't do wooden anything culinary unless it has a really thick coating that mostly bring us back to square one.

Wet wood is just SO viscerally unpleasant to me!

Yes wooden utensils are a huge sensory issue for me. I dislike using wooden cutting boards for similar reasons.

Not really but I have an aversion to drying anything with a towel.

That's why I have a dish washer, so I don't need to do those things manually. And yes I throw all my wooden cooking utensils into the dish washer and let them dry in there with all the heat it uses for that. I also leave things in the dishwasher until the heat has dissipated from all objects, which gets rid of most of the leftover dampness except for a few things including wooden utensils. I then place wooden utensils on a drying rack. Next day they go back in the cupboard.

And yes I know. You're not supposed to put them in there. I've been doing that for 10 years with the same wooden utensils now and they're all fine. Some have slightly warped handles where I assume the wood is taking back it's natural shape. Most are completely fine.

Yes, and I also have an aversion to cotton swabs and cotton balls. Just thinking about the sensation makes my skin crawl.

I find bamboo to be a way around this. it doesnt have the same feel to it when wet.

You can't, or rather shouldn't generally, cook acidic foods in cast iron pans. Plus cast iron is really poor to use for many types of cooking since they don't react to changes in heat. Saying that it's good to have one around for occasional things. I like enameled cast iron dutch ovens, etc.

Carbon steel pans / stainless steel pans are also an option. Switched to carbon steel a couple years ago and haven’t looked back. Sometimes it’s a little more difficult, but once you get the technique down it’s as easy as non stick.

It’s also cool to know the pan will work for decades to come. Non stick pans inevitable start breaking down and just become toxic trash.

If you're not averse to high prices, copper pans are available too. Though a full set seems like it'd set you back $5000 or more. I've got a few from estate sales and other places for just a couple bucks, but there's only like 3 or 4 places in the United States to get them retinned, and they all want $120+ per pan (and that's with shipping it twice where they could get stolen, lost, or crushed).

Half-tempted to try to do it myself. What's a few ounces of tin cost? The fiberglass glove's not that expensive. Afraid of screwing it up somehow though.

This is a disaster in the making. Expect copper toxicity if cooking in copper. It happens more often than you think.

Modern copper pans are lined with stainless steal. Falk in Belgium pretty much makes all the copper material for cookware by using high pressure to fuse a thin layer of steal to a thick layer of copper. This makes the pans safe for any acidity and still benefits from coppers amazing conductivity.

You know nothing about this obviously.

But..GP was talking about old copper pans from estate sales that have lost their tin (not steel) coating.

Yeah in that case then I’d get them re-tinned. Might not be the easiest service to find today. I’d still prefer the modern ones though. They’re so good. By far the best cooking pots/pans for many use cases.

I can't tell if you're ignorant or trolling. They're not commonly sold, because poor people have to make due with $10 teflon pans (you know, the "forever chemicals") at Dollar General.

https://mauviel-usa.com/collections/copper-sets

The 12 piece set is $4200. You were probably too poor growing up to ever learn anything about this is my guess. But to reduce your anxiety, I'll point out that the cooking surface is tinned.

I can't tell if you're ignorant or trolling. You have evidently not read the case reports of copper toxicity from cooking utensils resulting in irreversible organ damage.

Even if the internal surface is tin, it will easily thin out when on the stovetop, resulting in the food coming in contact with copper, leaking much copper into the food. Tin is also not okay with acidic foods either, again thinning out and bringing the copper into contact with food. I guess money doesn't teach even an iota of common sense.

In short, it is not worth even $42. If you're making a museum at home with your utensils, you're solving no one's problem, not even your own.

Again this was solved a long time ago. And even with tinned pans you’d have them relined. But with stainless steal linings that’s not needed. It has been this way for decades. Get with the program.

Ilove this Platform it's time fellas

We use our cast iron pans for close to 100% of our ("frying pan") cooking, I'd say it works great.

It’s great if you’re not precise and just want big sears or w/e. That’s fine for certain things. And anything acidic leeches so it tastes metallic.

I think once you learn to cook the limits of cast iron become clear. Great for certain things but impossible for many others. Compare to say a thick copper sauté pan and it’s a world of difference in temperature control. The pan changes temp as soon as you turn the gas up or down, etc.

Yep, and glass containers for storing.

Besides glass, steel containers are fine too for storing dry items.

Just ensure that your specific cast iron or stainless steel does not contain any heavy metals.

Do you have evidence to suggest they do contain heavy metals?

Seems like some brands do have potential issues:

https://www.consumer.org.hk/en/press-release/p-541-cast-iron...

The article also cites plastic takeout trays as a problem though, which is harder to avoid unless you're willing to simply never order takeout from a large percentage of restaurants.

Fine by me. I can count the amount of times I ordered takeout from a restaurant on one hand. This does not include Pizza delivery like for parties or something but those come in cardboard boxes.

With plastic coatings, unfortunately.

Judging by how soaked our local pizza place's boxes get after just a little while I hope we're safe (as in it's really just corrugated cardboard) :)

Chances are every ingredient of the pizza comes in plastic packaging, and it’s probably baked on an aluminum tray (can leak into food, associated with increased risk for Alzheimer’s). Besides, if you want to avoid carcinogens and other unwanted compounds, a reverse osmosis filter (either in-sink or countertop depending) is probably a more productive place to start, unless you switch to all home cooking but even then it’s nearly impossible to source plastic-free groceries.

But if you’re going to go down that road, you might as well get your fats and vegetables straight too. Theres a lot of debate about this, but it seems like saturated fats (found in coconut oil and animal fats [0]) might not be that bad after all[1] and preferable to PUFAs (specifically Omega 6s, more specifically pro-inflammatory linoleic acid), especially in the case of stearic acid. Aside from the potential negative effects of Omega 6s, most oils apart from EVOO and unrefined avocado and coconut oils go through many processing steps that degrade and oxidize the fats while introducing contaminants including benzene. And finally, there’s oxidation, where only olive oil and coconut oil (but not avocado oil) and animal fats are amenable to cooking[2] (smoke point has no impact on health effects, insofar as it isn’t related to peroxidation index value). Regarding vegetables, they might contains various anti-nutrients including lectins, tannins, and oxalates, and animal organs and eggs have them beat for nutrients. I’m not so sure that they need to go though, but eliminating them might alleviate certain gut or other troubles.

That being said, after trying for many weeks to eat ‘right’, I’ve reverted to eating burgers off plastic plates (not having an option being at college), though I am still using and very happy with an Aquatru Carafe countertop RO system.

[0] https://exrx.net/Nutrition/FatComparison

[1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9794145/

[2] https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Total-peroxidizability-i...

    unless you switch to all home cooking

Switch to? Literally, except for the pizza I already mentioned that is exactly what I have been doing all my life. Well my parents did and I have been doing ever since I moved out and the SO and I are doing as well.

Yes we let the kids have McDonald's from time to time or we all eat it when we're on vacation. But restaurant food or takeout is absolutely nothing "normal" for us.

I get what you are saying about packaging even if we cook ourselves. Absolutely right you are and there is not much we can do unless we had a farm ourselves. I do grow some stuff but not enough garden to feed us all year. Some fruit trees and bushes too. Usually potatoes, salad and beans. Bushes are Haskap, blueberry, cherry, currants and raspberries. We pick strawberries for freezing at a local farm. And yes you hear right cherry "bushes". I have all the University of Saskatchewan cherry trees that basically don't grow higher than large bushes.

Also on fats I'm with you. I've done protein heavy Keto for two years for example and it (together with the right probiotics) cured my gut issues. I do eat carbs again but my digestive and hunger systems work properly again.

My dad was the one cooking at home and the only oil he ever used was Extra Virgin Olive Oil. I do the same. The only Canola oil I used is the one used to season the cast iron. We also use butter (zero Margarine allowed in the house) and cream to get stuff to taste good. Not sugar. The only sugar I use is the one that goes into the jam I make from our fruit trees and bushes. Well and we eat honey from a local bee keeper. For flour we use spelt as the main one with some regular unbleached wheat flour mixed in to get enough gluten in there. It's funny. The kids love the buns and pan cakes made from it. The in laws don't eat our baked goods when they visit. They don't like the taste :shrug:

I also hear you on eggs. I used to avoid eggs coz I have high cholesterol and was on statins. The statins gave me muscle cramps and I stopped. Doctor agreed as the heart is a muscle. Could kill me in an instant. I now eat eggs like a normal person. I also figured out that I have better cholesterol values when I eat eggs the night before a blood test. On Keto literally every one of my blood markers that was even slightly off went to completely normal except for cholesterol.

Great, good for you, but what's your point? Lots of folks do enjoy takeout, and it's absurd to blame the individual when the fault is clearly with the plastic manufacturers secretly poisoning people.

You said "unless you're willing to simply never order takeout" as if that was a huge ask.

Like my sibling said, ordering takeout is a luxury. Something you do on special occasions only. Like going to a restaurant is as well.

It's easy to cook at home and takes no more time than ordering and waiting for the takeout to arrive.

I'm not blaming anyone. I'm just saying that it's not on the level of giving up your first born to give up takeout.

This is really easy to avoid; cooking and eating at home is much cheaper and does not really take any more time unless you want to make something special.

You're ignoring the fact that lots of people really like getting takeout. There's nothing inherently wrong with wanting to pay someone else to cook a nice meal for you.

The answer shouldn't be "nobody who likes takeout gets to enjoy it anymore without being poisoned," the answer should be "plastic manufacturers should be stopped from secretly poisoning people."

Unfortunately, the reality is probably just that plastic itself is bad, and you can put different lipsticks on the pig and some of them are less bad than others, but you're not really solving the problem. Of course I agree that we should avoid putting known awful chemicals in things and I will lobby for that to happen, but the easiest thing in my life to control is what I do.

Takeout is a luxury. In my experience, the best thing to do is focus on the things you can control. And for whatever reason, luxuries tend to be the source of a lot of these problems and easy to cut out. This is especially the case when you consider that odds are dangerous chemicals will be replaced with chemicals not yet known to be dangerous.

At the end of the day, a lot of our problems come down to consumption and convenience. How many people got cancer because nonstick was a tiny bit more convenient?

Unfortunately, novel, useful substances are pretty much always going to be destructive to the biosphere in some way.

It's often difficult to find metal utensils. Even when you can, they often have plastic handles... that sort-of-greasy, brightly colored plastics where the Chinese factory that made them used every plasticizer known to man. If you're lucky, wooden handles are available, but you see less of those every year. Not just Walmart/Target, but all the big box stores, even places you'd expect to be more upscale.

Searched for 2 or 3 years for a can-opener that wouldn't fall apart in a few months, finally found one. Nice big crank handle... but plastic knob on it. I don't think this can be solved by shopping at some hoity-toity NYC department store if only because anyone shopping at those places probably doesn't eat out of cans much.

Also, many of the foods one could have bought in glass jars just 10 or 15 years ago are now exclusively plastic. We switched to some regional off-brand on mayonnaise a few years ago because it was still in a glass jar, but even they eventually started selling it in plastic. Same with all the other condiments. Produce used to be in the egg-carton cardboard... I remember strawberries being sold that way as a kid. Or in little cheaply-woven baskets of some sort. I haven't seen that stuff since the 1980s. Deli meats used to be wrapped in butcher's paper, but sometime in the 1990s was put into plastic bags. Ice cream wasn't always sold in cardboard tubs (I remember even as a kid that the cheapest stuff was in plastic and I'm not sure why that is), but now even the premium brans have some plastic in contact with the product.

I highly recommend trying a restaurant supply store, like Chef's Toys. Most of them don't require a business license to go to (the ones that do typically sell food items). They sell primarily to commercial kitchens and restaurants, and often have a wide selection of "bare bones" cookware at various levels of quality to meet your budget. A lot of my kitchen items are from there — stainless bowls, a big stock pot, metal + wood cooking utensils, some knives, heavy-duty whisk, some glassware, my one non-stick pan, dry food bins, etc. The stuff lasts forever, and you can almost always get an exact replacement if you need it.

Another suggestion is to try is IKEA. They tend to have minimalistic kitchen stuff at very reasonable prices. My basic cooking utensil set (spoon, ladle, spatula, etc) is from there and if I remember right, cost around $10. Had it for years. Great for glassware too.

Sounds like a potential YouTube channel of someone buying what you would consider an otherwise acceptable product except for the plastic and then replacing them with DIY wooden replacements. Don't forget to smash that...ick

>It's often difficult to find metal utensils. Even when you can, they often have plastic handles

Restaurant supply store

I am starting to wonder if it is worth it to try to avoid cancer at this point. Outside the most obvious risks like tobacco...

Cancer is a bit like a lottery, except you don’t want to win. Every time you smoke you buy several tickets, and buy a little extra chance to get cancer. Maybe with plastic cooking items you also buy some tickets, but far less than if you smoke.

In other words: You have some choice. And it is a lottery at the end. There are people who smoke a lot and get to be old and never have cancer. And ultra-healthy people who die of cancer in their 20s.

There comes a point where the cumulative time needed to avoid the carcinogen exceeds the expected increase in lifespan

Also the enjoyment. Which I enjoy more for example cured meats for rest of my life, or the extension of that life without them...

I always wonder what kinds of cured meats they're checking as well.

Do they throw them all in the same category? Would there be a difference between what is done commercially today vs what you might have gotten at the local butcher 50-100 years ago?

I remember eating Salami with the white mold coating on it. Like you'd get if you made it yourself.

Then I got some commercial 3 kinds of salami package at Costco recently and while it looked awesome from the outside it turned out the white coating was inedible plastic you're supposed to remove before eating. No telling what else they changed over "real salami". I bet a lot of it is just to make it look and taste like the equivalent kind of salami.

It’s definitely worth advocating for regulation so consumers don’t need to worry about it on a case by case basis.

with cheap lab-grown diamonds on the horizon, how soon until i can replace/coat everything that comes into contact with me in pure diamond?

personally think diamond-tipped chopsticks to be the end-game utensil

not just coated with small diamonds on the tip: an actual huge single diamond on the end of each stick

Diamond tipped? Just make the whole chopstick out of diamond. One long diamond. "The hardest chopsticks you'll ever use"

Sadly, diamond is pretty brittle :(

I've never used one of those compostable forks made from potatoes without it snapping in half or leaving a broken tine in my mouth, yet they still seem to sell. Make the diamond chopsticks single use and they'll sell like hotcakes!

What are you doing with your chopsticks?

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/TGxBLBUC_VU

Diamonds don't seem compatible with teeth and the digestive tract. I wouldn't use that if it was free.

Well, at least your teeth could be diamonds.

Tl;dr cheap plastic is cheap and contains cancer

This is why I store everything in glass or metal and mostly use metal, silicone, or sometimes wooden utensils, especially when in contact with heat. I specifically attempt to minimize waste plastic and while I reuse the bromine-containing black plastics, I don’t store anything acidic or hot in them, mostly dry goods. However, if even contact with them can lead to exposure (as this article suggests) then I may start storing them away rather than reuse them or recycle them. If I can’t reduce the initial supply, I can at least reduce the recycled supply.

Something I don’t understand is why if silicone is also an oil derived product, does it not leach chemicals like other petrochemical polymers?

It does. Silicone is not as inert as people keep saying it is.

https://lifewithoutplastic.com/silicone/

Silicone can also be divided into two types based on curing process used.

The cheapest process is peroxide-cured. This creates dichlorobenzene and PCBs byproducts which can leach into your food/etc. The more expensive process is platinum-cured, which is cleaner and does not have the same byproduct risk. Some makers are transparent about using platinum-cured silicone. Hard to find though

more info: https://www.bumkins.com/pages/all-about-silicone

The short answer is that it does leach chemicals - but at much higher temperatures and longer exposure times compared to plastic. It’s just much more chemically stable, but to your question, everything breaks down at some point.

> Tl;dr cheap plastic is cheap and contains cancer

Only to the State of California, or to anyone?

> ...black-colored plastic... might contain potentially cancerous chemicals due to slip-ups in recycling practices

the stainless steel utensils at ikea are quite reasonably priced and last for decades

[flagged]

I usually enable reader view when I see these popups, which usually works to get around them (including in this case).

I'm assuming you're using ublock-origin, if so, ensure you have these filters enabled:

  EasyList
  EasyList – Cookie Notices
  EasyPrivacy
  Peter Lowe’s Ad and tracking server list 
  uBlock filters – Ads
  uBlock filters – Privacy
  uBlock filters – Unbreak

The ads on this site are horrendous. At one point I had a video ad pop up that I could not close and I had to refresh the page.

what ads? I don't see a single ad there. Are you using chrome by any chance? Cause I use Firefox with uBlock Origin and had no problem browsing the site without seeing a single ad.

Why is this comment downvoted? I also saw no ads, using Firefox Mobile with uBlock Origin and NextDNS.

There is something strange about asking "what ads" and then saying you are using ublock origin. Thats your answer to "what ads" right there...

I don't run ublock origin on my work computer (which maybe I should) which is where I viewed this article.

Just the same as all the recommendations. I think you mean pixels you've sold to the highest bidders.

Recommendations and perks are some of the most misused words in the 21st century.

this helps https://archive.li/kebfx

> disable your ad blocker before continuing

I read it as: disable JavaScript before continuing.

uBO is blocking all the ads without such a message for me

What a shitty website, completely unusable for me if it weren’t for reader mode. I sometimes wonder how people can stand this and even think it would be a good idea to share such websites (regardless of the actual content)

I guess you don't have uBlock Origin

Yes I don’t have it on my phone, since Apple says no :(

Please allow me to improve your life:

https://apps.apple.com/us/app/adguard-adblock-privacy/id1047...

https://apps.apple.com/us/app/hush-nag-blocker/id1544743900

Thanks !

AdGuard doesn’t really do much for me (maybe I need the paid version? Or use another browser not FF?)

I’ll try out the hush one, looks promising!

You may want to ensure you have adguard setup correctly. I don't remember the exact steps the app tells you, but you have to go into Safari settings and manually turn a bunch of crap on.

For me, on my iOS devices, adguard blocks every ad. always. Then hush kills off all the annoying "cookie notices" and a lot of "your using an adblocker" nonsense.

uBO worked fine for me on the site.

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