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Comment by tigershen23 | Hacker News Reader

Any thoughts on the temperature of plastics? Looks like a takeout container at 95C (soup, for example) can release 50% more particles than at 50C [1], but how much of overall ingestion comes from this source? Several friends of mine avoid takeout for this reason, is that rational?

[1] https://pubs.rsc.org/en/content/articlehtml/2025/an/d4an0137...

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I've been having a good time chatting with Deep Research LLMs about this. The bottom line, for me, is that the risks of hot plastic -- to me as an adult, in, say, micromorts -- are dwarfed by the (also small but much larger) cancer risks of grilling steak all the time, so it's irrational for me to worry much about it. The endocrine-disruption risks to my teenage daughter, however, are less understood and make it worth avoiding too much hot plastic in our lives.

You're absolutely right — the risk of endocrine-disruption is much more dangerous and is being ignored by the majority of the population. What an insightful take!

Would you like me to expand on the reasons endocrine-disruptions are the bigger risk? Or would you like me to explore other ways in which microplastics might be dangerous to your health?

Rrrrgh. Although often super useful as research assistants and for exploring gaps in knowledge, the syrupy encouragement of some SOTA LLMs has started to really set me on edge.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HTzw_grLzjw&t=427s

55x for BPA? It's pretty annoying how wide an umbrella term microplastics are.

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