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Study finds billions of nanoplastics released when microwaving containers (unl.edu)
471 points by thunderbong on July 21, 2023 | hide | past | favorite | 333 comments



> Rather than introduce just the number of particles released by one container, the researchers instead exposed the cells to particle concentrations that infants and toddlers might accumulate over days or from multiple sources.

> After two days, just 23% of kidney cells exposed to the highest concentrations had managed to survive

So they used concentrations that they believe toddlers might accumulate over two days and it killed 3/4 of the kidney cells?

Given that we’re not seeing toddlers around the world have kidney problems after consuming two days worth of micro plastics, let alone multiple years worth, this model doesn’t seem at all representative of real-world outcomes.

Still concerning, but when the results are so far removed from real world observations I don’t know what to make of the whole situation.


I don't have access to the paper, but just reading the abstract it gives these numbers:

> Exposure modeling results suggested that the highest estimated daily intake was 20.3 ng/kg·day for infants drinking microwaved water and 22.1 ng/kg·day for toddlers consuming microwaved dairy products from polypropylene containers.

> Furthermore, an in vitro study conducted to assess the cell viability showed that the extracted microplastics and nanoplastics released from the plastic container can cause the death of 76.70 and 77.18% of human embryonic kidney cells (HEK293T) at 1000 μg/mL concentration after exposure of 48 and 72 h, respectively.

If I'm reading this right, they exposed these HEK293T kidney cells to far higher concentrations (1000 μg is 1000000 ng, and that's per mL) than toddlers would be exposed to from these containers. So the fact that the cells die doesn't really mean much, since exposure to too much of anything will cause cells to die.

The real question is whether the exposure you'd receive from occasional microwaving would be enough to ever cause any meaningful health problems. Unfortunately papers like these always like to talk about dramatic metrics like 'billions of nanoplastics' without putting that into any meaningful context.


So it seems that a concentration of microplastics that's 50 million times higher than a toddler would get still leaves 20% of cells alive? To me this implies that normal exposure levels to microplastics are likely completely harmless.


Sleeping next to abandoned nuclear batteries will give you radiation burns and kill you in a few weeks to months, exposure to high radon will give you cancer in decades. Unrealistically high dosages can hint at problems that might occur at low levels.


While the Linear, No Threshold model is relatively widely used by regulatory and safety bodies, evidence for it (or any other competing mode of low dose exposure) is quite weak.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linear_no-threshold_model


An interesting addition is that a small amount of radioactivity might even be good for you:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radiation_hormesis


And yet living near the Rocky Mountains with a background radiation dose 3 times higher than gulf coast states still correlates with longer than average lifespans. Extrapolation of high dose outcomes might hint at what research needs to be performed but it doesn't mean the results will follow the same path.


Curious on that. Is this based on a study intending to understand background raditation and lifespan? Or are you just asserting gulf states have lower lifespans than rocky mountain states and also they have lower background radiation. Without controls for cough cough obesity its meaningless.


The very justified and panic-worthy deadly dose of radiation is around 1.4 million times greater than the background radiation that you can double or triple and not even notice.

And yet here we are with a comment thread of heated debate over a plastics exposure study that's 50 million times greater than realistic exposure levels. When or if a realistic exposure study is done we may find that a plastic cup is more like a transcontinental flight than living near a reactor meltdown. Let's find out before we jump to conclusions either way.


Drinking a shitload of water can kill you, not drinking water will certainly kill you. In fact having a shitload of just about anything is likely to harm or kill you.

Unrealistically high doses imply absolutely nothing about lower doses.


This comment is unhelpful; the person you're replying to clearly is not claiming that "absolutely everything that's harmful in large doses is harmful in small doses."

> Unrealistically high doses imply absolutely nothing about lower doses.

The example they give of nuclear radiation is a clear illustration of how a useful hint can be drawn from the high-level example of harm, a pattern which microplastics might very well follow.


But it's not actually a clear illustration. Quite the opposite of it. We are all (no exception) at all times exposed to radiation (And this is not something recent or man-made, we are exposed to natural radiation all the time). So his Assertion that High-level -> harm means low level -> harm is clearly False without specifying a threshold where this happens.


If it doesn't apply to everything then we don't know whether it applies to this which is exactly my point.

Ionizing radiation is also a great example of something everything on the planet is exposed to all the time and we're fine. So clearly the fact that you'll die standing next to the molten core in Chernobyl does not imply that you'll die from background radiation.

Similarly, showing that an extreme dose of microplastics is harmful does not imply that a normal dose of microplastics is. It might be, but we don't know because we've only tested extreme dosages, apparently.

We also don't know that it works the same way in the body as it does in a test tube.


Models can breakdown at huge scales because they introduce other non-representative factors or nonlinear responses.

Sending an astronaut to the center of the Sun and concluding their death is from radiation would be a pretty bad model.

Hitting a person with a car would be a pretty bad model for a fly landing on them.

The first model is bad because the sun is doing more than just exposing them to radiation.

The second model is bad because there's a nonlinear response to force applied to a human body.


There needs to be an understanding of the mechanism of cell death in the OP. And then the question is, under what circumstances will it occur in the human body? Is it basically impossible because the body is filtering it out? Or is there some long-term accumulation where eventually we will see some parts of the population suffering these ill effects? Unknown, but without studies like OP we aren't on the first rung of the ladder.


Sure, Data is data. It is the extrapolation and conclusion that are suspect and dishonest


Read better please


I wouldn't frame it as "harmless", but it is probably accurate to say any harm is insignificant at worst.


If it's a single, acute exposure sure.

I'm no doctor or microbiologist or anything, but there definitely seems to be a strong connection between "things that cause cellular damage" and "increased risk of cancer with long term exposure".


Yeah but cellular damage in the body is not the same as cellular damage in a petri dish.

I bet water kills cells in a petri dish. It's just a really useless test to do, that at absolute best gives a vague hint at something that may be true.

It's not useful to talk about in any capacity other than "let's explore this further with better experiments".


We don't know if it can be a long term exposure. We don't know at what rate they are expelled from a live person. And One thing is for sure. Cell Death that this experiment showed off at the unreasonbly hight concentration is still quite the opposite of Cancer. Cancer is Uncontrolled cell multiplication not death. So according to this we could use nanaplastics to kill cancer. See How easy it is to draw any conclussion that you want if you forget to factor the real conditions?


The concentration they used was 1000ppm or about 0.1%. Many things are toxic at that concentration. (This doesn’t cross the threshold of absurdity of “sodium chloride is toxic at that concentration,” but it would be preferable not to drink 0.1% salt water.)


I agree with your question:

> whether the exposure you'd receive from occasional microwaving would be enough to ever cause any meaningful health problems

Another question worth asking:

How much of the ~20 ng/kg/day makes its way to the kidney cells? Said another way, if one were to consume a liquid concoction with a certain concentration of nano/micro-plastics, what would the total negative effect be? How much would simply be excreted? That answer for babies vs adults may also vary.


These studies also don't take into account the fact that humans have an immune system that helps protect and repair against cell damage.


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.


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.


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 ?


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


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.


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.


They sell silicone bottle wraps that basically eliminate this concern.


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.


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


It's bad reporting. The actual numbers from the abstract are "22.1 ng/kg·day" for the worst case ingested dose, and "1000 μg/mL" for the tested toxic concentration. If you assume the solvent is water (solvent isn't specified in the abstract but water is the obvious choice) and convert the units to make it easier to compare, that toxic dose is "1,000,000,000ng/kg". There's no plausible way a toddler is going to accumulate that much within "days".


At that rate it makes cumulatively about 36 mg of nanoplastics using this pathway over the average 70 year lifetime of average 70 kg human. That would be approximately 0.6 μg/mL concentration if all would accumulate, which is very unlikely. Sounds like there is no real need to worry.


1,000,000,000ng is 1kg, so that'd would be as much plastic as solvent by mass.


1,000,000,000ng = 1g


@Omin, @mda, just a side note: I recommend using the (centuries old, I guess) established typography rule and putting a space between the number and the unit symbol. See [1] for additional info.

[1] SI Unit rules and style conventions, https://physics.nist.gov/cuu/Units/checklist.html


I never understand this pedantry. The GP is commenting on a forum, not writing a research paper. Who cares how they write, as long as they're understood?


It's just visually jarring. Do you consider your use of spaces after commas and periods and capitalizing the first word in a sentence "pedantry"? To me it's at the same level.


This is a style issue. Not at all on the same level. The ISO standard defines a space, but many, many style guides suggest otherwise. E.g. Very often you will find advice to omit space for one-letter abbreviations (i.e. '100g' not '100 g') — I believe this specific one is in the Chicago Manual of Style.


Keep being you. We all have our weird things that bother us. Apparently the spaces issue is centuries old and used a minority of the time, so you've just got a lot of convincing to do. Maybe you can multiply your effects by writing bots that, for instance, submit github pull requests. Good luck!


hey at least they're not doing something absolutely and deliberately idiotic like putting the % in front of the number like a currency symbol.


It is specifically:

#15 Unit spacing

There is a space between the numerical value and unit symbol, even when the value is used in an adjectival sense, except in the case of superscript units for plane angle.


My wife pointed out and I feel dumb for not realizing it because I know this myself, you never heat baby food much past 30 seconds, certainly not for 3 minutes at highest setting. Babies generally eat baby food at room temperature to body temperature, and anything outside that is considered extreme to a baby's sensitive nervous system, not to mention you wouldn't want to risk lava spots that might burn their mouths. That adds a rather unrealistic element to the study.

It's far more likely to effect people eating microwave dinners, reheating food/meals in plastic containers, and even then those are different tougher plastics, that said it might be reason enough to just invest in glass containers for food storage.


Our pediatrician said there was no reason to heat formula. We used powdered formula, just put it in a bottle with "cold" (i.e. unheated) tap water and shook it up right before feeding. Also great for traveling, you don't need a cooler/ice packs to keep mixed formula cool, just bring a bottle of water and mix with the powder as needed. Not storing formula in the bottles also means you don't need to sterilize bottles. Just wash them in the dishwasher and store them empty/dry. We never heated baby food in either, just opened the jar and fed it.


Yes, but in this case I'm referring to formula, food, or breast milk that's been sitting in a fridge.

You don't need to "heat" it, but some babies are more receptive if its not cold.


Same here, we never heated up milk/formula, it seems to be a preference thing.


I think baby food in this context is not formula, but puréed veggies etc.


I wonder how it went when our ancestors heated food for babies to eat on a burning camp fire? Was that a factor in high child mortality?


I wonder how our ancestors used a material not even developed yet without getting to to melt on an open fire.


I mean it's difficult to precisely gauge when cooking food on a camp fire how hot it'll be for a baby to eat.

I guess they would do it by finger touch then.


The practice of using utensils exclusively and not touching food with hands is a relatively recent thing.


I wonder how our ancestors used a material not even developed yet without getting to melt on an open fire they haven't discovered yet.


I'm pretty sure children just breastfed for longer before eating solid foods.


>Given that we’re not seeing toddlers around the world have kidney problems

We're not seeing them having severe kidney problems - easily detectable ones. They could still have damage or accululated crap on their kidneys.

In any case, the article doesn't say kids kidneys die in 2 days. It says lab kindey cells die when exposed to such microplastics, and microwave setups produce those microplastics.

Meaning: kids are exposed to kindney damaging microplastics through this mechanism. The extend of the damage, as the article also states, remains to be evaluated.


> Meaning: kids are exposed to kidney damaging microplastics through this mechanism

This is still the problem, then. The damage is based on the amount.

You could demonstrate that kidney cells die when exposed to cyanide, and apple pips have cyanide in them, and you might say "kids are exposed to kidney damaging cyanide through this mechanism. The extent of the damage remains to be seen".

If someone challenged that by saying that kids who eat apples aren't all dying of cyanide-induced kidney failure, you could also say we're just not seeing easily detectable ones.

But you'd be absorbing (and re-emitting) entirely the wrong impression without the supporting contextual info that genuinely links the two together. We don't create more and more unusual hypotheticals to explain a belief in things or effects that we don't know exist. We demonstrate why we think they should exist and go from there.


> we’re not seeing toddlers around the world have kidney problems

is it possible that then we don't fully understand the resilience of the human body? It is certainly possible, when the article can state that:

> the health effects of consuming micro- and nanoplastics remain unclear


We are seeing a steady increase in childhood cancer [0] and our male population now has half the sperm count the same population had in 70s [1].

[0]: https://www.mja.com.au/journal/2020/212/3/incidence-childhoo...

[1]: https://backreaction.blogspot.com/2022/11/why-are-male-testo...


Overweight and obese men are more likely to have lowered sperm counts[1] and obesity has tripled since 1970[2].

[1] https://www.healthymale.org.au/news/obesity-overweight-can-i...

[2] https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/obesity-and...


Surely it cannot be that hard to control for weight when doing a study on testosterone amounts in the body? i.e. we have half the sperm, but that's overall - do people who have a healthy weight also have half the sperm?


These are the problems that arise when everyone and their moms start talking about scientific studies this way.

We don't have enough information. We don't know how they collected their data, we don't know how they analyzed it, even if we did most of us don't know enough to judge those methods etc.

Most "science" is honestly worthless crap done by some random person mainly because they want a PhD or are trying to pad their publication count. They look for some arbitrary thing to test, half-assedly design a study, collect as little data as they can get away with, do a little p-hacking and such to make sure the results are significant (otherwise the time was wasted) then they publish.


Have you considered that you are simply listing two symptoms together instead of identifying cause and effect?


The average American consumes 23% more calories per day in 2010 then in 1970[1] and does 100 calories less physical activity per day in their occupation since 1960[2].

[1] https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2016/12/13/whats-on-...

[2] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3102055/


Have you considered that this is the _symptom_?


Those things could be related to any change in society. There's nothing to suggest it's plastics in particular, right?


Right, but is your suggestion to say "business as usual" until we have definite irrefutable proof for each and everything? I have no idea how likely or unlikely it is that having plastic in our bodies has any negative impact whatsoever, but that doesn't mean I can't still try to reduce the risk of accumulating more of it in my body. As with most things in life it's a tradeoff, with convenience mostly.

I don't have pans with teflon anymore. I avoid plastic bottles for beverages, which means I almost never drink any soda. I got rid of almost all my Tupperware and use paper bags or boxes made of steel when possible. And even though I grew up using the microwave a lot as a teen, I somehow ended up never owning one myself after moving out.

Yet for some reason I still managed to survive.


If it isn't plastic then what is it? We have been steadily identifying and reducing the number of toxic agents the public is exposed to. Fifty years ago in the 70s the average person would have regular exposure to lead gas, lead paint, tobacco smoke (even if they didn't smoke themselves - indoor smoking was still legal), potent pesticides, and maybe even asbestos. But there were far fewer everyday plastics at the time.


I suspect improvements in communications media. Every day, the average man sees many other men who out-compete him, with no hope of that ever changing. He sees men who are richer, taller, stronger, smarter, etc., in ever increasing realism and "engagement". Beating them is impossible, so the correct strategy in the environment of evolutionary adaptedness would be social submission and hoping they are generous. It seems plausible that there's some biological mechanism that lowers testosterone to aid this process.


so if you put the "natural" back around the people, biology and mental well-being will improve?

> I suspect improvements in communications media... But this is an interesting take. So wifi is hurting us after all haha


> We have been steadily identifying and reducing the number of toxic agents the public is exposed to

In some cases, we have just been uncovering what the businesses selling a toxic product already knew but covered up for a quick buck - even using sophisticated and “scientific” arguments.

In many cases, we just need the right incentive from the regulators. To prioritize long term thinking.


> If it isn't plastic then what is it?

a good thought exercise, but a distraction from the question at hand, which is, do we have convincing evidence that it's plastics?


> There's nothing to suggest it's plastics in particular

Sometimes wonder if these arguments are just devil’s advocating. I mean do you avoid heating food in plastic for you and yours? Or are you so scientific that you believe it’s fine until proven otherwise?

Said another way, if you were to bet money, which way would you bet - that plastics are benign?


I'm not OP but yeah I assume it's fine until proven otherwise. Why wouldn't I?

Otherwise where does it end? What other things should I assume are dangerous despite no evidence? Or are you saying I should latch on to whatever baseless hysteria is popular at the moment?

I'm not a betting man. I think plastics have been around for a long time and as far as I know we haven't proven that they have a negative effect. If they did have a significant negative effect I'm pretty sure we would have proven it by now. So maybe they have an insignificant negative effect. I'm okay with that risk. If I weren't I wouldn't have time to do anything other than worry about and avoid shit that might have an insignificant negative effect - not to mention things that we know have a significant negative effect such as alcohol.

Honestly if you drink alcohol and you worry about microplastics you're just hypocritical.


> Honestly if you drink alcohol and you worry about microplastics you're just hypocritical

That’s correct. Some people feel powerless to address the bigger elephants in the room.

Being obsessively anti-plastic (or anything) shouldn’t be a coping mechanism (but that’s what it is, not hypocrisy).

But I’m suggesting that as a society, we can easily have the collective will to uncover and address issues - more research on plastic, more education on alcohol, etc.

Because we know what short term thinking unregulated actors can do, intentionally or unintentionally.


They are man-made, mostly non-biodegradable and mostly non-recyclable. Which means they are thrash. I'd rather avoid ingesting or creating thrash.


They are microscopic trace amounts of trash that until recently we didn't even know about.

They are unavoidable, doesn't matter what you eat. Fish, vegetables, meat, whatever you can think of it has microplastics.

If you want to expend a bunch of energy trying to minimize it go ahead and good luck. Personally I don't see the point.


FWIW I think this is a good remark. It's just correlation until proven otherwise. I was just saying there are changes in society, one of which is the widespread use of plastics, and there are changes in population health roughly starting along the same time. But indeed, we also started to do sitting work massively, and started using wireless communications etc.

Then again, we also reduced coal use in cities, we burn less wood in our houses, etc.


It really, really hard to prove causation beyond doubt. If you have a strong correlation and a reasonable concern that it might be causal relationship, and we are talking about health impacts, at some point it is rational to use the precautionary principle and take action even if you don't have definite proof.

As an extreme example, we actually can't state with 100% confidence that exercise is good for your health, it's just too hard to prove. But nobody with a sane mind will doubt it.


> we actually can't state with 100% confidence that exercise is good for your health

Doubt. It depends what definition you use for "health" but we know for a fact that a sedentary lifestyle has negative effects and that an active lifestyle has positive effects. Those assertions are indisputable.


There's tons of evidence pointing the finger at microplastics.

Besides, the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Precautionary_principle dictates that lawmakers should anticipate risks instead of allowing everything "because it's profitable" only to ban it 30 years later.


The OP was walking about kidney damage specifically. Have these cancers and sperm quality issues been linked to kidney function?


The first thing they said is that real world impact to health remains unclear.

Then they added the in-vitro test results.

One can imagine it's not trivial to run a trial on toddlers to discover how bad nanoplastics are to their kidneys...


this model doesn’t seem at all representative of real-world outcomes.

That made laugh. Like you said, it doesn't pass the sniff test.

That should be the first thing any scientist does with their results - Does this match up with what we current know about X?

If it doesn't, you need to go back and find out what's wrong with your model.


Generally speaking I don't take lab results seriously until I see tests in real world environments. Deployment always presents new challenges after development.

Not trying to be dismissive, but statements like that reminds me of "Miracle Drug Ivermectin[0]/Industrial Bleach[1] Cures Covid After XX Hours"

[0] https://www.monash.edu/discovery-institute/news-and-events/n... [1] https://www.fda.gov/news-events/press-announcements/coronavi...


It's surprising to me how much we don't understand about plastic still.

Years ago I was in a kitchen shop with an out of town friend and we saw some Sous Vide equipment. I told her that we had one and that you could either plastic bags or vacuum sealed bags to cook in the water. Her reaction was an immediate "absolutely not." That's when I realized that she worked in a lab that focused on plastics. Her big call out was that there's been studies on heat and how it relates to plastic breakdowns, but those are at high temperatures. There wasn't much related to lower level heats applied for longer periods of time. Based on what she knew from the other studies, she refused to go near anything like Sous Vide as she assumed it was way too risky.


What exactly were those studies on?

Those bags are almost certainly polyethyelene without any additives, which is safe and has been in widespread use for almost a century.

Petroleum jelly is far more reactive than PE, although it's substantially the same chemical structure, yet most of us regularly use it on our skin.

If the biggest concern about sous vide is the plastic, then I think that's a very strong argument for its safety, as I'm sure you get far worse byproducts from other more common cooking processes like baking or frying.


There are plenty of things that are perfectly safe, even beneficial, on the skin that are harmful if eaten, injected, or inhaled.


genuinely, i ask, like what?

i was told by a doctor once that the general rule is to never put anything on your skin you wouldn't also eat, inject or inhale. your skin is your body's largest organ, and allows many types of molecules to pass through it in either direction. if you rub it on there, you may as well be injecting it, the effect is the same, except, in most cases, the magnitude


Hand soap, for one. Probably not a great thing to be eating.

I'd probably also avoid eating most moisturizers, those probably aren't great to eat.

Anti-fungal creams to fight toe fungus probably aren't for eating as well.


Well, GP's example of petroleum jelly.

In small quantities it's a strong laxative. In larger quantities it's a chocking risk.


>Petroleum jelly [...] most of us regularly use it on our skin.

I think I've used it maybe a handful of times in my whole life; once a year at the very most. Do you mind expanding on your statement here?


It's an ingredient in many topical medicines, like antibiotics ointment. Also an ingredient in some lip balms and lotions (like Aquaphor).


My highschool science teacher told use Vaseline was an excellent moisturizer, she said to put in on after showering, when your skin is moist, for best effect.


While the end of your comment could be seen as 'whatabout-ism', you are right that in simply over cooking something or just adding to much salts/sugars to some foods would probably be a bigger issue.


One wonders why they go to all the trouble of these expensive scientific studies when they could just let people on HN make up answers.


Salt and sugars are natural parts of our environment and salt is actually a necessary part of our diet. We have organs evolved explicitly for the purpose of maintaining homeostasis of salt and sugar, namely our kidneys and pancreas.

For plastics we have no evolved tolerance.


> For plastics we have no evolved tolerance.

Based on what evidence?

What do you think happens when you overheat animal fat or oils in a cooking vessel and "season" it? It forms a plastic. We've been living and eating alongside that type of plastic since we learned to cook food as a species.


The more chemists I have spoken to over the years, the more I hear warnings about polymers in general. Seems as though, that in general structure simply cannot be manufactured in a way that is innocuous to our health.

It is plausible that plastic will be the next tobacco/leaded gasoline. Time will tell however.


I have wondered about carbon steel and cast iron for cooking. The common method is to "season" them for use. But that is done with fats and high heat? What is the stuff that forms? Is it also some type of polymer? It doesn't seem to survive acidic environment too well. So acids could break it down, is it actually safe to eat? Or something comparable to plastics?


My background is cooking not chemistry, but I suspect there's a lot more to that process. IIRC the iron is a catalyst for oxidation in a particular way that affects the resulting polymer. Then the polymer is carbonized by the very high heat process.

This all happens in the same "step" of seasoning, over time, but when learning to season I was taught it was several distinct things that had to be allowed time to run their course.

Pans where the seasoning was done at too low a temp or aborted early, usually both to avoid smoke, have a distinctly tacky or even sticky feel to their surface. This is probably the more straightforward polymer you're thinking of. I believe these actually handle acid better though. When you get the acid reaction it's definitely the iron part of the seasoning involved. Tastes like old coins.


I have no idea about this stuff but wouldn't it be fair to say that those ... byproducts.. haven't been found in humans, so at least it isn't comparable to plastics?


Or is it just not something we are searching and looking for.

Then again, maybe it goes under the known carcinogenic effects when food is cooked at high temperature.


>It is plausible that plastic will be the next tobacco/leaded gasoline.

More like lead, since it's impossible to remove the microplastics from our environment.

Tobacco you can just stop, I know it's addictive and all, but at least the issue is psychological, not physical.


Dependence on many drugs, including nicotine, is indeed very physical: https://nida.nih.gov/publications/research-reports/tobacco-n...


I'm a chemist and I'm not sure what the problem with polymers is? Many of them are some of the most inert substances we know of.

Maybe you could share what these chemists told you?


We're all part of a giant experiment. It's a bad experiment too, in the sense that it doesn't really have a proper control group.



I'm pretty sure they're being exposed to plastic too, at this point. Via seafood mostly, so probably at a lot lower concentrations.


Don't think so. This is nanoplastics we're talking about. Even microplastics are found everywhere (https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/article/microplas...). stuff spreads well through water air precipitation foodchain etc.

Remember how they they could not find a control group for PFAS anywhere on the planet, I'm sure this is true for all common pollutants.

Edit: OK, I replaced the link to the article about Everest with a link to the article about all the other places.


Right. The control group is off-planet: some aliens took a tribe of Native Americans a couple centuries ago to another planet far away. Eventually, Captain Kirk will find them. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Paradise_Syndrome


>Even microplastics are found on Everest

Funny that you mention Everest. My first thought on Everest is rainbow valley, not untouched by humanity.


Plastic aside, that was an interesting read.


More aptly described, those who wants to reserve themselves into the control group are outed from the society by those who are in the treatment group.


First off, there are silicon sous vide bags.

Second… if you are at the level that a bag with meat in it for 2 hours at 140 degrees is too risky… you had better get working on that cabin in the woods.


First off there weren't silicon Sous Vide bags back then and the general attitude was "stick it in a plastic bag" and it will be fine.

Second, this is coming from someone that works in a research lab in plastics. So pretty well educated.

Anything else you want to be condescending and dismissive about? I'm sure we'd all appreciate hearing more about how you know better than the rest of us and please - make sure you lecture us about how much better you are with your logic and understanding of the world. We early await your amazing contributions. <3


I'll bite, your friend may be a professional scientist, but their response was simply "absolutely not". I had a biologist friend who had the same attitude toward eating raw eggs.

The fact is the science has not looked at risks of sous vide plastics. There's maybe no money for such research, unless like in this article the professor became a father and had to microwave food for his newborn baby. In their research, they showed that those particular nanoplastics cause kidney damage, but only in vitro (EDIT: Ah yes, a quick Google shows a horrifying 2023 study that says nanoplastics do get absorbed into the bloodstream...). That's like a doubly indirect argument for concerns about sous vide.

I think a more nuanced answer is that we just don't know, and so it is reasonable to invoke the precautionary principle. Other people, when made aware of the risks, might go ahead but that's their informed choice to do so.

So unless there's a series of studies that shows, "Sous vide produces X amount of polyethylene nanoplastics, and adult/child/rat consumption shows measurable harm", the best we have is precautionary principle and informed risk. It would be nice to have something definitive like "Cigarette smoking causes lung cancer", or more recently from WHO "Drinking alcohol causes breast and gastro/rectal cancer", but we don't have that scientific closure to an open question for sous vide yet.


But wouldn't it be fair to say "these results of microwaving plastic containers and using soft plastic bottles show concerning results, so we'll say this other thing that is in the same ballpark needs to be researched and until then carry a warning"? I mean, it seems like guilty until proven innocent is the safe way for items used in producing or containing food, etc, no? Or would that cause too many problems?


The sad thing about people like GP is they'll spread stuff like that for 40 years, and then become silent once they get cancer, COPD, or whatever that quite possibly was at least influenced by their lifestyle decisions.

Sorta like those construction workers that are full of bravado at 25, and can barely get out of a chair at 50 because they wrecked their body with improper lifting technique.


I think if you work for 25 years in construction you are bound to wreck your body regardless of what you do. It's hard to not wreck your body in that span of time even if you only do yoga and meditate for that long.


I know many people with 30+ years in construction that are physically fine (I'm ~ 60 ATM).

A good technique and steady approach goes a long way and there are many jobs in construction that don't break the body - crane operator, bobcat | front end loader | etc. operator.

Push up slab building have been around for decades now, if you can avoid being squashed under a giant mass of concrete (not that common) you're not going to be putting your back out (unless you're running at jobs like a bull at a gate).


Nothing you said is untrue, but I'm pretty sure that wasn't the point of the post. Doing the same over and over again is very hard on the body.


Sure, but in any hard graft manual labour industry that's why you have young guns.

Anybody that stays in such an industry for 20+ years has (generally) worked smarter and not destroyed their body - they're still in the industry but moved onto machine operations, management, supervision, health and safety, etc.


you had better get working on that cabin in the woods.

...where you use a wood stove and inhale far more proven carcinogens instead?


I do like to bring up camp fires in any "the modern world is killing us" discussions.

In genernal there does seem to be little discussion of relative risks, trade-offs - plus a tendency towards romanticizing older tech as well as a big dose of the naturalistic fallacy.

However I think research into microplastics is important and I'm personally reducing plastic use when it's easy and low-effort.

I also rather enjoy a nice wood fire when I'm camping.


Surely the cabin has a chimney.


Chimneys cut it down from “catastrophic” to “tolerable”. That pollution sensor will still be at red.


Stuff gets everywhere


Chimneys are for snowflakes.


I work in hospitality supplies. We sell about a thousand plastic sous vide bags for every 1 silicon one. Silicon bags are basically a rounding error.


Are you talking about silicon or silicone? I'm confused here.


Silicone


Soft silicon products still contain plastic polymers.


Wait, really? Like baby bottle nipples?



Yeah - can you provide some more info about this? i use silcon trays - and i always thought they were too good to be true tbh


Silicone is plastic. Or at least a combination of synthetic polymers and probably dyes, if you don't agree with the definition of "plastic".


I read some (Danish?) research about soft squeezable drinking bottles, like those used by cyclists for example, and the result was pretty bad. Do you know if they use the same process / chemicals in silicone products?


i just read on wikipedia...i dont know why i assumed it was some kind of wizz-bang glass...i feel like a fool now. Thanks for posting :)


I'm one of the most skeptical people when it comes to these types of claims. I think the effects are being exaggerated. However, I've recently begun to replace all plastic containers and dishware from my kitchen with stainless steel and glass. Drinks taste better in glass anyways, and steel is a good non-fragile alternative. And I cook in cast iron. It's almost impossible to avoid plastic, and I'm not religious about it, but I figure I'm replacing fragile disposable junk with more robust alternatives anyways.


Yeah, this is one of those cases where I think it's better to take the cautious route. Now that we know we're ingesting massive amounts of plastics and it's been found in every human organ, and in blood, and in breast milk, etc I think it's probably a good idea to take what steps we can to cut down on it until things are more clear about the harms.

Avoiding this exposure will be easy for me, because I was never very comfortable microwaving plastic. I've seen companies lie about their stuff being "microwave safe" too many times.

I thought cast iron would be too much work and got a decent carbon steel pan to replace the non-stick crap I was always replacing, and I don't mind the extra care. I'm not sure that cast iron would take any more effort than what I'm doing now.


Cast iron is not bad at all to clean if you have a chain link steel scrubber (The Lodge sells these, other companies too). Ideally you scrub it when the pan is still warm. If you've let something sit in there that hardens, like cheese, you may have to let it soak in some warm water for a bit and apply elbow grease with the scrubber. You can even fill it with water and set it on the stove to warm the water up a bit to break down anything that's hardened.

Most of the foods I cook are basic meats and veggies so it's usually quite easy to clean for those.


I wouldn’t soak a cast iron pan.

Just apply a little heat, then use a bamboo/wood spatula to scrape the stuck food, then rinse (if needed) and wipe clean.

For me, the biggest problem with Cast iron is the weight. I’m a big guy, with physical strength commensurate to my size, and cast iron pans are cumbersome to deal with. I have a 9” pan that I leave on the stove for daily use, but I don’t want to have cast iron cookware exclusively.


>For me, the biggest problem with Cast iron is the weight

Seek out better cast iron cookware. For example, Lodge brand stuff is very heavy and poorly balanced. Compare to a Wagner cast iron pan of similar size made a century ago: it is significantly lighter, and well-balanced. I'm sure there must be modern cast iron cookware that can offer the same experience, but probably not new for $30.

I have problems with my hands and those heavy Lodge pans are annoying (good value though). My old Wagner stuff is no more cumbersome than my nice stainless steel pans, and, for meats at least, is a pleasure to cook with.


Carbon steel has much the same cooking properties as cast iron but is like half the weight. You can get a good pan very cheap if you want to try something more wieldy.


Soaps that don't include detergents are safe for cast iron, too. Many people confuse carbon and crud buildup for 'seasoning'. The seasoning you want is a micrometer-scale carbonized oil on the surface of the steel, and possible some excess carbon buildup to fill in any surface pores. A mild soap won't affect this, at all.

You can definitely damage a pan leaving it wet, so of course make sure to heat it up on the stove after washing and drying to cook off any remnants of water. I'll usually put on a very thin layer of Crisco if I've used soap.


You mean soaps that don't include caustic lye. Just about every dish soap is a detergent and safe for use with cast iron as they are not caustic.


> Avoiding this exposure will be easy for me, because I was never very comfortable microwaving plastic.

Maybe this specific one, but microplastics are in everything you eat and drink, the presented article merely points out that this specific use case produces lost of micro plastics which are ingested by children.


If you avoid this and other easily avoided situations, like stop using soft plastic drinking bottles and stop reusing bottled water bottles, you would be a big step in the right direction though.


> stop reusing bottled water bottles

Can you elaborate? Like is it somehow worse to buy a bottle of water and refill it periodically over the course of a year, than to let the original contents sit in my house for a year and then drink it? If so, I'm guessing the extra handling (squishing, crunching) is the main culprit? Or does leeching occur more readily when the contents are refreshed, as opposed to static contents that already reached equilibrium? Or is the pH (or other characteristics) of the original contents less likely to cause leeching than arbitrary contents?


I've heard that handling is the main issue with leeching and also shredding of micro/nano plastics into the water, heat and UV also degrade the plastic. It's worse the thinner the plastic bottle is.

I do drink a lot of bottled water, and while I don't reuse bottles I'm still considering how much just pouring the water from the bottles into a glass would help.


Not OP, but I'd imagine the extra handling is the concern here, as far as water bottles go. You do want to refresh water in water jugs routinely as 'preservatives' like chlorine dissipate.

The better wording of 'stop reusing bottled water bottles' to avoid plastics would be 'use glass or metal water bottles'.


The biggest drawback I find with cast iron is the weight. The cleaning, as much as you are supposed to clean it, is generally simplistic. Either just hot water and a light brush or paper.

A good thing to know is that any surface that get hot enough will release a bit into the food. Cast iron generally leech iron, stainless steel leech iron, nickel, and chromium, and ceramic leech whatever coating it has similar to non-stick. There has actually been studies done on cast iron on people with iron deficiencies, with gains in haemoglobin concentration.


Carbon steel is similar to cast iron in that it gets "seasoned" over time, but is much lighter (and heats up more quickly and evenly).


the biggest appeal of cast iron is its large thermal mass, owing to the weight and material


I just think of it as a workout! But yea suckers are heavy.


On the exact same journey as well. Ceramic, glass and cast iron, but still avoiding non-stick coating. My partner has IBD, and various gastro issues. Probably not related, but doing what we can to avoid anything that can make things worse. Still end up nuking plastics though tbh, trying to form better buying + cooking habits, but takes time.


Can't you just use the ceramic or glass in the microwave?


What about the heavy metals that are part of the cast iron and steel though? What about the heavy metals in ceramics? The list is pretty endless, but very specific types of glass (boron silicate or pyrex) and titanium can be good to switch to, as long as you are very careful about not getting lead or uranium glass.

Or you could just not buy that lead testing kit or Geiger counter and live in ignorant bliss. People lived without them for quite some time.


But there isn't lead or other heavy metal in the cast iron itself. If there are heavy metals, they are found in the glazing, so the best thing to do is buy pure cast iron, not glazed cast iron. The same goes for ceramics, but you can't really buy ceramics without glazing, because the ceramic itself is porous - I personally replaced all ceramics with glass and stainless.

Just as a single data point, all our kitchenware today is:

glass, borosilicate glass, pyrex(the US made ones are not borosilicate),

stainless, titanium, cast iron (that we season ourselves),

wood (but not bamboo -- too much glue in there), silicone (for mats and mittens).

Almost no plastic anywhere.


Stainless does have problems leeching nickel (and sometimes chromium), especially after being cleaned by an abrasive, or cooking acidic foods, which is common. This happens to an extent to cause allergic reactions in people.

Also silicone products are commonly mixed with plastic fillers that have the same issues as normal plastics. Pure platinum cured silicone products are premium products and somewhat rare.


It's very hard to stay away from everything that is bad for you...We do use some stainless pots for cooking, because really there is no 100% good alternative: cast iron pots are waay too heavy, ceramic can contain heavy metals in the glazing, glass can explode if not handled properly...and there isn't a pot-like glass option anyway (something you need for a soup or stew).

Our cutlery and cooking utensils are stainless, but when possible we use plain wood spoons (not the kind that is glued).

Is there a good alternative to stainless for these things? let me know.

I am aware of silicone issues, it's usually not in contact with our food.


I assume titanium is better than stainless as far as leaching goes? With a quick search I could find titanium pots (actual titanium, not coated) up to 5L. I have a few on hand for backpacking, but I've never thought of using them for routine cooking... but this thread has got me thinking. I use cast iron for most purposes, but not for sauces or soups.

I can't imagine a stock pot size would be cheap.


I'm not an expert in metallurgy, but I think a cast iron pan is just made out of iron.


My wife pointed out that the 3 minutes at highest setting they used in this study is not something you'd ever do for baby food. The goal of microwaving it is to simply knock the chill off and get the food/milk up to room-body temp. You wouldn't go further cause baby's are sensitive and you don't want to risk hot spots or burns. This means the food is never heated for much more than 30 seconds at most.


> I think the effects are being exaggerated.

Are they?

The article points out that effects of nanoplastics on humans are still unclear.


Unclear means no one's got a plausible mechanism, which for the widespread existence of them being implied is a bit of a problem.

They're inert long chain polymers, and amongst other things you need to show bioavailability in the area t you propose would cause damage at sufficient concentrations.

In the current case: how efficiently do nanoplastics cross from the digestive system to the blood stream, how long do they persist before being filtered out by the kidneys, do they retain their structure in the blood stream unchanged, is their a lower limit on toxicity.

i.e. injecting someone with enough pure water will also damage their organs, exposing kidney cells to silica dust in solution in huge concentration would also kill them but there's no way for it to get there in vivo.


Aren't there documented impacts of additives like bisphenol A as endocrine disruptors?


But micro plastic have been found in newborns, so why not avoid it until science isn't unclear? Seems to be the smart way but I'm no expert.


Here's the thing about that: lots of particles have been found in the placenta[1]. In the case of the study that found microplastics[2], they found 12 particles in 4% of the volume. 12 - total. So maybe 300 total particles. In about 600 total grams of placenta. It's difficult to put a scale on how few that actually is.

So the issue here is we're not really talking about a unique threat, just a vector of an existing one. In terms of bioactive compounds which could find their way to the placenta, metals and carbonaceous soot are going to be a lot worse then inert plastics (of note: the paper involved notes that the primary possible mechanism is the microplastic acting as a carrier delivering bioactive molecule - not the material itself).

It is also worth noting that in the same study, 2 of the studied placental samples showed no microplastic contamination. Which is to say, given the transport mechanism proposed - inhalation of particles - it's quite likely that the medium is not things ingested in the GI tract, but rather airborne contaminants.

Which would make a lot more sense, seeing as how if micro or nanoparticles were routingly migrating through the gut, we'd suffer serious problems with bacterial infection, or just dealing with something like soluble fiber (which is essentially a plastic - long chain cellulose - that isn't digested).

So the question isn't "why not avoid it?" it's, "are you even avoiding it?" The GI tract is a relatively robust system that's very good at rejecting the external world from it. Whereas your lungs are pretty much a direct link to the blood from the atmosphere.

[1] https://www.qmul.ac.uk/media/news/2020/smd/air-pollution-par...

[2] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S016041202...


Same. I have some plastic containers left, but I make sure only cold food goes in there. Otherwise, SS/Glass cups, SS mixing and salad bowls, glass storage containers, SS sieves, ceramic coated pans.


Can you cook eggs or stir fry on cast iron? Or should I get ceramic pans? I’m wanting to get rid of my “forever chemical” Teflon coated pans. Anyone knowledgeable please chime in.


To-go food containers are impregnated with plastic lining, leeching all sorts of crap into heated, acidic food.


The lifecycle of (artificial) plastic stuff in the biosphere is one of these bold, impact agnostic technological adaptations whose true footprint only reveals as densities and exposures become systemic and get integrated over time.

Our mental models and economic organization are simply not geared to long term, insidius, slow cooking phenomena. If a profitable and desirable convenience is not immediately and obviously harmful it assumed to be "ok" for the long term and at scale.

At some point we might have to switch to a thinking pattern where every and any technology that is applied at planetary scale must undergo a long and exhaustive testing process before being deployed.

This will have a dampening effect on innovation in certain areas, but we must accept that moving "fast and breaking things" at planetary scale is no longer a viable strategy.


> we must accept that moving "fast and breaking things" at planetary scale is no longer a viable strategy.

It never was, and we knew it. Whole civilization went extinct when they depleted their sources of food or energy (e.g. wood) or poisoned themselves.

It's not ignorance. People in power took deliberate decisions to prioritize their interests.

E.g. "COAL CONSUMPTION AFFECTING CLIMATE" was published on 1912 https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/ROTWKG19120814....

(see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_climate_change_scie... )


Chief Seattle had it right all along it seems[0]. We should have been aggressive about considering the impact of technology on the next seven generations. It’s not too late to start of course, but it is too late to avoid dire planetary changes.

0: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seven_generation_sustainabil...


It is a one-time cultural leap or socioeconomic transition that needs to happen, but at global scale and spanning fairly diverse cultures (some more ready than others).

In some sense the amount of damage that will cumulate till that transition process is complete is secondary to it actually happening (for which there is not guarantee)

In any case, given that such views are nowhere yet close to being common ground truth that is widely accepted the next decades will likely see enormous strife, debate and ideological movements (maybe even religious ones).

A defining moment in our social evolutiom that a lot of us that grew up in the age of carefree consumerist ignorance probably did not see coming.


You frame it like we're incapable of that kind of thinking as individuals or as a species. That's demonstrably untrue.

The problem is that the entities that are tasked with protecting us from shortsighted and other problematic paths are not doing that. Either they're incapable because they're not invested with the necessary authority to do their jobs, or they're influenced by those who would gain from harmful scenarios, or both.


A planetary scale strategy is only viable if it first outcompetes the alternatives, and then produces the “right behavior” as a side effect.

A few buy a Tesla to save the environment. The majority buy a Tesla because it has “self driving”, it appeals to their vanity, FOMO, etc.

A few buy bitcoin because it’s a necessary tool to curb fiat devaluation and other forms of corruption. Most buy bitcoin because “number go up”, appeal to greed, and even the worst intentioned actors engage simply out of self interest.

Whether Tesla and bitcoin are “the right thing” is not the point. They illustrate the right strategy, where a desired new behavior is adopted at scale even by those with no interest, or even opposing interests.

The hard part is not figuring out what new behavior is needed. It’s figuring out how to bring about wide scale adoption.


Actual paper: https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acs.est.3c01942

The real question is whether the exposure you'd receive from occasional microwaving would be enough to ever cause any meaningful health problems. Unfortunately papers like these always like to talk about dramatic metrics like 'billions of nanoplastics' without putting that into any meaningful context.


I guess that's because we don't know, yet. But the question is why let all those plastic particles into your baby if you could avoid it until we know better? A newborn today will likely live to know the result of some future research.

If in doubt shouldn't that be enough for at least a warning label?


Because every decision in life is about trade-offs. Sure you could completely stop using plastics in the microwave, but that means buying new items that are potentially more expensive and may have other disadvantages. And for some plastic items there may not even be a viable replacement - for example I'm not sure how you would replace flexible pouches.

So to make any sort of sensible decision you need to know how bad these plastic particles really are, to weigh that against the cost of avoiding them.


As someone who avoids cooking with plastic, I've always wondered... what makes people think it's safe? Does it not occur to most people that plastics can break down through the heat they're subjected to, or do they assume the plastics in question have been specifically designed to adequately withstand that?


My basic mental model is that my body is constantly consuming chemicals that it doesn't use, be it particulates in the air or substances in the foods I eat or drink. My body is very good at incorporating the substances that it finds useful and ignoring (or killing) the ones that it doesn't, so I don't find myself worrying too much about any particular substance it might take up.

To your point, I don't have any particular reason to think that trace quantities of plastics going through my digestive system are going to cause any harm to me. Obviously if I have specific reason for concern I'll be careful (I'm not, like, going to eat off of asbestos plates...) but otherwise I'm not going to think about it much.


Exactly. Few things can cross the intestine wall, for example we don't have a problem with the absolutely insane amount of bacteria that process food inside of us and produce, well, shit. If you were to make a small cut in the intestine somewhere, well, then chances of getting septic (i.e. the bacteria overpowering your immune system) are high.

So I'm not worried about things larger than a bacteria, unless proven otherwise.

The other issue is with quantity. We all have lead or radioactive isotopes embedded in the body. Or, we can breath in small quantities of carbon monoxide, form example from a passing by car. That doesn't immediately cause problems, the quantity matters.


Nanoplastics are 1nm - 1 micrometer. So that is smaller than a bacteria.


> My body is very good at incorporating the substances that it finds useful and ignoring (or killing) the ones that it doesn't

What are you basing this off of? From my perspective, the body is decidedly not good at ignoring substances. There are thousands of poisonous or cancerous chemicals. Things like mercury or lead build up in the body to the point of causing severe harm. Anything that can be made small enough will enter your body, and the body was only “designed” to tolerate a narrow band of substances that are encountered in the natural world.


I just ate a dinner off of a plate that's been sitting on my shelf for a few days, using utensils that have been sitting in my drawer for a few days, accumulating whatever residual particles have been floating through the air settling on them.

Like most people I lick my fingers after eating chips and don't sterilize my hands in advance, hands covered with whatever I've recently been touching (including the plastic bag that the chips came in...).

I have an air purifier at home, but there's all sorts of detritus kicked up in the air from materials around the house that my body is constantly inhaling (not to mention the exhaust and tire particulates that I get from cars driving by me or whatever is being produced in the construction site down the street).

I absolutely agree that there are plenty of things out there that are bad for you, at least in sufficient concentration. But every breath you take and every bite you eat is consuming at least some trace amounts of particles that your body doesn't need, from all sorts of sources.

It may well be that nanoparticles of plastics are particularly bad for you (in the concentrations that are normally consumed) but my heuristic is to not worry too much about things like this unless given concrete reason to.


That was a really long response, but I think you missed this:

> and the body was only “designed” to tolerate a narrow band of substances that are encountered in the natural world.


It’s the route into your bloodstream through the lungs that really worries me.


Yeah, I'm always wondering why are people so concerned about what they eat while they are breathing in particulate poisons that have direct access to their blood.


Willful ignorance? It's not like these studies are uncommon now.


Your mental model is plain wrong. Humans are not "very good" at ignoring lead, asbestos, particulate, radiations, nox...


Most things my body consumes (even the ones it doesn't use) don't fall in to that category. And most of what you're describing our bodies are very good at ignoring. I'm bathed in radiation constantly and I'm fine (unless I stay out in the sun too long without sunscreen...). I wouldn't want to live in a house with asbestos or lead paint, but I wouldn't be too bothered visiting a friend who lived in one. And so on.

It may absolutely be that nanoparticles of plastic are so harmful that eating off of plastic plates is a really bad idea, but my heuristic would be to not worry too much about it.


You can find tons of reliable information about pollution health hazards on the Internet - or continue to ignore reality.


If it were extremely or noticeably bad for you in the short term, it would be obvious and we would know about it.

Generally I assume that I consume microscopic inedible dirt/mineral/etc particles all the time without know it and they most likely pass through my digestive system. I know of course that digestion is complex and that many of these likely are absorbed to varying degrees. I try to not cook with plastic generally but I also do not go out of my way too much to avoid it - same as me not trying to eat vegetables with dirt on them but not being anal about making sure all vegetables I consume are dirt-free


Why only care about the short term?


Because life is short term. And it will end soon enough in one gruesome way or the other regardless. If you can keep yourself from falling apart too rapidly till then it's all good.


I don’t


I don't think plastic is safe and avoid it whenever possible, but an argument for its safety is that it has been widely used for a hundred years and we still don't have many direct causal links between plastic and health problems.


They would be hard to establish if you didn't have data on the kinds of health problems that would only show up post-plastic.


Why do you think that?

If microplastics is a problem, I would expect studies to have shown up linking microplastics to cancer in the elderly, or to dementia, or heart disease, or any of the other very widely spread health issues that could arise after decades of exposure in a population.

I'm not an expert, but wouldn't you need just a scalpel, a microscope and lots of donated tissue samples?


The windows of opportunity would have been narrow to definitively target microplastics as the cause of many diseases where observations of the potential mechanism of action for a morbidity - in this case, probably inflammation or endocrine disruption - could also be caused by other factors which are easier to measure.

This is because plastics became common when a lot of other industrial practices and materials became common in the environment, many of which we know contribute to diseases of modernity.

Microplastic pollution is likely easily confused with other forms of pollutants that were easier to detect historically, and thus care way more about. This would include lead poisoning or carbon monoxide or other chemicals that mimic hormones in the endocrine system.

So why isn't this an argument for disregarding microplastics as being marginal? Because there are microplastics on the larger end which exhibit effects on the endocrine system more definitively than smaller plastics, and these results are easier to report because these plastics are easier to observe.

But with the presence of smaller plastics everywhere, which we would have to know because larger plastics always break down into smaller ones over time, to both understand that they are a common water pollutant yet also observe them in biological tissue requires more precise modalities than historically have been available when microplastic pollution could have started.

It's possible that it might be only "larger" microplastics that have an effect on health, and smaller ones end up being flushed out before they have an effect, or end up not mimicking any hormone and just end up being an chronic inflammatory like pollen would be to those allergic to it.

But that cutoff is quite arbitrary if we rely on just the microplastics that are easy to observe as the only ones that affect our health. A better idea would be to suspect smaller plastics and then gather evidence on their effect on tissues over other pollutants, as the ability to sample them becomes available.


Used in what manner, though? People certainly haven't been heating food in plastics for a hundred years, right?


Tupperware was founded in 1946, and the home microwave was invented in 1967. So it has been about 56 years of just that combo. As I said, I agree that plastics cannot be considered safe, but I was presenting a possible argument that others might use.


56 years is kind of an upper bound on microwaving plastics (for the sake of argument, let's focus on that for now), and that's when it started. It means people who were born then and are < 56 years old now might've been exposed to some fraction of (not even nearly the same amount) as much plastic as people born today would be. If we posit that the current exposure levels might cut a few years off the human live... as a layman, naively speaking, can I really expect anybody to have even noticed this in the last 56 years? And given scientific studies like this take years/decades to bear fruit, why would anyone expect this to have been an established fact if it were true?

(I get that this isn't your personal argument; I'm trying to figure out why this argument might seem plausible to other laymen.)


> we still don't have many direct causal links between plastic and health problems.

On the contrary.


Care to provide some examples?


>what makes people think it's safe?

That plastics are incredibly stable. That is why they last so long.

EDIT: Chem engineer here

I'm far more concerned about the non-plastic additives, added to plastic than the actual polymer.


Yeah, there’s just something too suspicious about heated plastics.

I feel the same way about those Teflon pans as well. I don’t have any evidence, I just… don’t trust ‘em.


I think intuition is underrated too.


When it comes to small risks adding up, intuition is massively massively overrated. People are awful at estimating it.


I disagree, if you drink water that tastes like plastic from your drink bottle, you intuition will probably tell you drinking it isn't healthy. You avoid drinking the water until you have evidence to support your intuition.

Is something wrong here? Was something bad done? I would see a problem if I blindly trusted it.

Personally, I was told for a long time to ignore my intuition and it actually got me into trouble quite a few times, I take a more balanced attitude towards it now.


The problem is we have health regulatory agencies from whose lack of statement we derive an implicit assumption of safety.

Either they need to do more testing/whitelisting rather than observing/blacklisting, or there needs to be better communication about the limits of these regulators.


The lack of any data pointing to the opposite?


what makes people think it's safe?

Marketing, eg https://www.americanchemistry.com


Most people have bigger issues in their life. Some trust that the regulators would never allow potentially harmful products on the market.


What makes you think it's unsafe? The amount of people using it without obvious problems indicates it's not obviously unsafe, and presumably most people just go with the flow (as I do - I'd assume that if there were problems it would have been found over the preceding decades of use)


Unless your philosophy is "I will put anything in my mouth that isn't proven to be unsafe", I don't think that's the right way to look at it? It's not that I see it as "unsafe" (at least not obviously so), but rather that I don't see it as "safe", either. "An [obviously] unnecessary risk" is probably a better phrasing, because it seems like its safety isn't really well-understood at this time. Why take the risk when you can just spend a few seconds transferring food onto a plate or something?


> what makes people think it's safe?

"You don't know what you don't know"; additionally asking too many questions makes you a "health nut" or "health freak", as portrayed by popular media.


> Experiments have shown that microwaving plastic baby food containers available on the shelves of U.S. stores can release huge numbers of plastic particles — in some cases, more than 2 billion nanoplastics and 4 million microplastics for every square centimeter of container.

> After two days, just 23% of kidney cells exposed to the highest concentrations had managed to survive — a much higher mortality rate than that observed in earlier studies of micro- and nanoplastic toxicity.

surprised I didn't see more studies like this when researching for avoiding plastics with our baby... its not like these are new materials/ technologies... right?


A cell culture would die if the water was slightly saltier than regular media. Or the temperature was a few degrees higher, or the gas concentration was off by a few percent, or the shape of the container is weird, or etc. etc.

You need a much more rigorous study to determine toxicity to a full-size living organism. Much more costly and much less likely to get funding...


1. Every few years we find a new chemical like BPA is bad for us. The companies just made a meme called 'BPA free' and continue making slightly different crap. Goto 1.

I still see microwave popcorn bags, teflon pans and plastic tea bags in shops. The local municipality still pretend that it's all being recycled. It needs to be phased out of food industry leaded fuel as phased out of gas.


There's still no replacement (must be at least as cheap), so it will keep going for quite a while. Maybe plant or mushroom fibers can eventually take over some of the market.


Aluminum, glass, paper, bamboo/light wood, cloth, silicone, steel, etc all pretty good alternatives and were widely used before plastic became widespread, what 60ish years ago?


> must be at least as cheap

It really doesn't need to be just as cheaper for a lot of applications if reuse is an option. What we need is reusable containers that are standard sizes. It used to be a thing several generations ago where glass milk and beer bottles would be returned, the consumer would be paid a small amount for each bottle and then they got washed and reused. The thing is we still have glass bottles for beer today but the marketing people have made it so they're all different shapes so it wouldn't be possible to reuse a bottle for a different brand. What we need is a shipping/docker container model for packaging. The marketing people keep ruining it. Every packet is made like a tiktok clip with shiny bright colors and weird shapes. With cigarettes at least where I live the govt had no problem taxing cigarettes and banning shiny packaging in favour of plain text labels. We can also get rid of the recycling meme, you know the American Indian with the single-tear, who was actually an Italian hired by the companies making all the waste. So much of the plastic shit is created by marketing people.

Some areas it would be difficult to replace plastic for instance powertools which need to be light and strong. But it would still help if they all used a standard battery interface.


> must be at least as cheap

No, we need goods with extremely long life, even if they get expensive.


I think one of the biggest issues in society today is that so much is changing so quickly, on a species level scale, that it's phenomenally difficult to isolate cause and effect for any thing that requires more than a 6 month controlled trial to show up on. It's not like you can just do an observational study on families of children who were not exposed to microplastics vs those who were, because the former group doesn't exist. And even if it did, what if the effect is something like leaded fuel, where it's only really measurable, and indirectly at that on a population level sample, decades after exposure?

Just think about how absurdly much has changed in the past 30 years in terms of consumption and lifestyle. Trying to figure out what might even possibly be causing something is just going to leave you with an endless series of "The evidence is inadequate to accept or reject a causal relationship between [a] and [b]."


I don't think we need exhaustive studies to know that using reactive chemicals that aren't found in nature for literally everything is a bad idea. if it's not been harvested with something with DNA, it's probably not a good idea by default


I had the same thought so I bought thin silicone bags from Platinum Pure, on the assumption that silicone withstands much higher temperatures and leaches less. The only drawback is that the bags are not airtight.


it still contains plastic, right? I wonder what are the proportions though.


'Plastic' is an ambiguous term for a consumer material, and needs to stop. It's synonymous with 'metal' or 'organic'. The article describes the food containers are polypropylene and polyethylene. Choose those words, not 'plastic'.


> then heated them at full power for three minutes in a 1,000-watt microwave

This seems like unrealistic use of a microwave. The liquids are likely boiling for well over a minute. Are people really boiling liquids in the containers they’re serving their infant children?

I’m not especially plastic-phobic but I also don’t think a reasonable person would think it is a good idea to boil liquids in their children’s bottles regardless of heating source.


https://blog.mambaby.co.uk/feeding/how-to-self-sterilise-the...

Popular milk bottle brand instructing users how to sterilize their product with the microwave.

Boiling milk bottles is a very common way of sterilization as well.


I can confirm this is common. But after sterilizing the bottle or washing the bottle, you don't give that water to the child. One usually just cleans using the microwave, rinse it out, then you add water from another source that hasn't been in the microwave in a plastic container.


They probably don't advise serving the water that you used for sterilization to your child.


Well yes, but whatever milk/water you serve in it right afterwards will still taste and smell of burnt plastic. I take it as something inevitable because no one's going to be giving a glass milk bottle to an infant.

Maybe I should dump every single child plastic drink/dinnerware for 18/10 stainless steel.


That's fucked up, for real.


Because it’s boiling plastic or silicone? Silicone should be fine, no? Can’t the plastic be engineered to take it?


About 20 years ago I used to make boiled potatoes in the microwave - just had to boil in there for a good 10 minutes in a plastic container... yeah that wasn't so great.


I learnt a technique of poking holes in them and wrapping them in paper towels. Hopefully tiny pieces kitchen paper towels are safer to eat than nano plastic particles..


Now you gotta deal with nano paper particles in your blood stream.


Some day in some lab someone will find tiny origami in a blood sample.


I can’t think of a frozen meal that doesn’t boil on the sides after being cooked for three minutes. Those taste awful, but are pretty popular.


Yeah. I mean I avoid microwaving plastic now (or even packing my kids' lunches in it where possible) but in my student days I ate a lot of tv dinners. My kid loves this seasoned rice that comes in a plastic microwaveable cup. Probably should stop her eating that.


Totally. Have to get the edges boiling to get any heat through to the middle


For 10 years I used a plastic microwave steam steriliser for my kids plastic bottles that boiled 200ml of water for 5 minutes at 1000W.


Well, then think of frozen TV dinners. Lots of those are blasted for more than 3 minutters.


Does anyone have a link to the actual study? The article mentions there were variations based on the container and liquid, and I'd be curious to see what those differences were.

Unfortunately, avoiding plastics with a child is very difficult. We never microwaved anything, and generally prefer glass bottles, but breast pumps use all plastic containers and we definitely have warmed those in hot water before.


https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acs.est.3c01942 (It's linked in the bottom right of the article)


It's still loginwalled/paywalled from there. Not all of us have institution access.


Oof how bad. Can they study dishwashing plastics next? Good thing I used glass. I think parents these days are rather more aware of plastic leaching than those of the previous generation.


The hot water in the dishwasher is flowing through plastic hoses and a plastic sprayer before it reaches the dishes.


But wouldn't most of the particles end up in the water and not stick to the dishes? It seems fine to me but.... yeah I don't know.


The worry with glass is that it's dangerous if it breaks. I find stainless steel Bento boxes are excellent if it's not something that needs a tight seal.


Enamel tableware were once popular and still available. Enamel is glass like in its properties and should be as safe as glass (unless lead containing colour pigment is used which should not be the case nowadays).


Except for the part when it shatters and ends up in your food.

I had a situation where (and thankfully nobody was hurt) I had cooked a stew and the enameled coating from the pot I was using had popped off a 2cm x 2cm area section into the stew at sometime during the cooking process. We didn't detect it until we had served half the food.


Of course, with steel there's always the slight chance of lead.

It's been found in at least 2 different manufacturer's cups that were specifically made for children.


same with ceramics and plastics, too


One of the most interesting films I've seen recently was Crimes of the Future by David Cronenberg. It's pretty typical Cronenbergian body horror, so be prepared for what that entails, but one of the major plot points is about humans evolving to consume plastics directly. I won't spoil the specific details but I really recommend watching it.


One factor to consider is that "plastic" is almost as generic a term as "material"

Most consumer plastics are low grade polymers that, in their pure state, resemble glass fiber. They're only made useful through the addition of plasticizers (flexibility), flame retardants (increase melting point, reduce chance to burn), stiffeners (durability), colorants, antioxidants, fillers (reduce cost and change density), blowing agents (foam plastics like polystyrene), and more.

These additives are responsible for most of the negative health outcomes, and many of the remaining problems (like microplastics) stem from the unstable nature of the base polymer that these additives try to address.

These additives and the poor properties of the original material are also a problem in industry, where the financial problems that stem from them can't be swept under te rug like they can with human health or environmental impact.

To address that industry has several grades of plastic, some you're familiar with, but there are advanced plastics like PEEK and PEI that we don't see in consumer products yet. As you move up in sophistication to materials like PEEK and PEI, they inherently have the properties we associate with the chemical cocktail commonly referred to as "plastic"

https://i.imgur.com/NwqhfVl.png

This means that they're more stable in almost all dimensions and in a wide range of temperatures, and don't leech additives because there are no additives in them.

AND the good news is that you can buy food storage products made of advanced plastic, namely PEI. https://www.webstaurantstore.com/cambro-66hp150-h-pan-1-6-si... You can actually cook in these up to 300°f without leeching materials into your food. It's really awesome


I see lots of people saying they avoid microwaving plastics. We do as well in my household and are all in glass. However, the microwave covers to prevent food splattering is plastic now I think of it. What do you all use to cover your food?


I've just always used a Corning plate or bowl upside down. I didn't even know there were plastic covers until recently


A sheet of Paper towel


I use a plate.


Plenty of glass and ceramic containers are available, but they almost all have plastic lids, which isn't great if food is reheating and the water's condensing on the plastic and dripping back into the food.

What's the status of silicone? Silicone container covers are available, which won't seal but will work to prevent spatter.

Since I don't have any of those yet, and all my glass or ceramic containers have plastic lids, I've been avoiding my microwave. Instead, I've steam-reheated ceramic and glass food containers, uncovered, in a pressure cooker. It's not as quick, but there's little to no plastic exposure (except the silicone sealing ring, if that leaches microplastics into the steam, but it's still probably vastly less than reheating with a plastic lid on) and it heats more evenly too.


I only use the plastic lids (on the glass containers) for storage. If I want to heat the container, I just use a plate or bowl as lid.


The dangers of microwaving plastic have been known for a long time. the advice has been the same for decades. Despite this, millions of microwavable meals in little plastic tubs continue to be cranked out. We now have the tools to quantify the actual effects but lack the fortitude to do anything about it. Plastic use is only on the increase with no end in sight. Source: https://www.statista.com/statistics/282732/global-production...


I just want to read the paper, can someone with a institution access liberate it?

I commented about a month ago in a related thread and would like to know if the study measured a thought I had: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36534508

To reiterate, is there a difference between adding boiling or near boiling water or other liquid from a kettle to a plastic container vs putting a container full of water in microwave oven? Is there local heating that happens in the plastic that causes it to shed more than just heated water alone?


Do a billion nanoplastics make one plastic?


I always use glass plates and cups to heat my foods anyway. I remember about 20 years ago I overheated a microwave dinner and the food temperature deformed the container so much, I thought this isn't good. We only use the microwave for heating foods, not cooking. A lot of people use air fryers. You have to be sure yours isn't a cheap one coated with all the non-stick coatings and to clean out old oils and fats. The oils and fats burn and are carcinogenic.


I don't get it, why people not using glassware ... glass has some small convenience problems though but it's save. The biggest problem is convenience IMHO.


FYI you can buy glass “Tupperware” that works better than the plastic stuff. It’s more durable and easier to clean.

Why did we start even buying plastic containers for this purpose?


Glass chips and breaks. "Tupperware" can take punishment for years. Decades even. Our household started replacing plastic containers with glass last year and we've already cracked 3 and smashed 1. The plastics, used for pet food now, are unchanged.


Strange, I rarely break any of mine, and even when I do, I just replace it


Cost and weight, most people won't see the plastic version as something important and won't invest. Also the weight difference means transport to stores cost orders of magnitude more than the plastic so its more difficult to stock.


Likely plastic was cheaper, easier to transport and easier disposed


Man, I wish we didn't have so much plastic, but I do what I can, and that includes never microwaving anything in plastic. If it's a microwave dinner (generally the ones I like are in paper trays) I pop it onto a plate and cover it with a paper towel.

I'm trying to find a solution to my Aeropress that tastes as good. Taking suggestions? (I've tried Chemex and french press, haven't been able to get the same flavor)


The Aeropress shouldn't be as much of a problem, right? It's rigid plastic and contains far fewer polymers and is less prone to breakdown I believe.


Avoid excess microwaving plastic containers. And don't keep old plastic wares for too long. Change them periodically (annual for permanent wares, 2 months for disposable wares).

I only microwave 30 sec, frown on microwaving more than a minute. My wife microwaves for 2 minutes or more! The latter is a problem because I know (some of) the food gets unevenly hot (while the other parts are still cold) that it melts the plastic.


Well it's not going to melt the plastic being evenly cold after 30 seconds.


Microwave ovens have been everywhere for 70 years already.

If gazillions femtoplastics killed toddlers left and right, that'd be kinda hard to miss hmmyes?


We are seeing suspicious changes across populations though in that timeframe... earlier onset of puberty for example, lower fertility as a whole and higher rates of infertility due to poor sperm quality, obesity rates, cancer rates and others.

Of course there is no single cause behind this, and many have been suggested - microplastics, hormonal agents in plastics, more food, higher amounts of processed food, overusage of medication. It may even be the cause that progress from other unrelated changes (like the lead bans) "mask" bad effects getting worse.

The problem is, some of the effects take decades to show up in general population, and because microplastics are everywhere on the planet there isn't even a control group any more.


It's really past time to stop putting more money in the overstuffed pockets of oil companies. Biocompatible plastic alternatives, should have long been an option. More people need to use glass containers, particularly for food or drinks, when viable. Constantly consuming microplastics, is clearly a health disaster.


I think we need more studies into how plastic is useful in the body. Seriously though, how many do we have? It's a hidden bias. We were so convinced cigarettes are good for sore throat and anxiety, that we forgot to test for harm, for decades. Maybe plastic is the other way around.


Plot twist, we learn how to extend life by 100yrs and find out that all the cans we've kicked down the road as "not a problem in a human lifetime" accumulate to cause misery and death during that extended period.


So many feeding bottles and sterilizers are plastic. I'd like to see plastic and forever chemicals banned from as many areas as possible. Baby feeding equipment has got to be the best place to start along with hot food packaging.


Makes me wonder, would the heat cycle on a common dishwasher do similar things, coating the plastic dish in nano particular or is it specifically the microwave aspect?


Oh, wow, we have studies on obvious things. I'm honestly surprised that anyone would warm food in plastic containers, especially baby food.


Reading this thread, I didn't know so many people use microwaves.

I've never owned one, traditional cooking, food taste better and insert other conspiracies...


Reheating food and defrosting things are much faster in a microwave.


I don't just re-heat my left overs, I make them into a new dish.

Defrosting is a funny one, most people don't know you can roast frozen chunks of meat perfectly fine.

You can reverse sear a frozen steak too. (it works, I've done it)

I sound like a tosser, but you know, food is one of the greatest things humans have to experience. (and perhaps the reason we exist at all)


99% of the homes, apartments, and hotel rooms I have been to in the US have them. Most every restaurant has them.


A microwave is a tool, and like all tools, sometimes it's a good fit for the job and sometimes not.

I also prefer home cooking, but resent the implication that my cooking is inferior because I sometimes use a microwave.


If heat releases particles then what happens when hot water is traveling through plastic pipes, hoses, and other items - say like in a dishwasher?


Also lots of nano plastic in papertowels as coated fibres are woven on


It looks like my mom was right, again! :)


I think studies/articles like these just cause fatigue rather than motivation.

At this point I just don't give a damn, microplastic away.


I'm sorry you feel this way, but sticking your head in the sand doesn't make things better


It's not that i disagree with the science... it's just.... what do i do with this knowledge? I feel helpless in the fight against Microplastics.


Plastic is made of oils.

Oils degrade and/or dissolve with heat.


Plastic is not an oil, not to mention you can make plastic from air and nothing else (other than energy). (You can make plastic from CO2 and Water.)

Plastics are polymers, oils are not. Oils have specific chain lengths, polymers have no specific length. Both are hydrocarbons, but almost everything we interact with is, so that's not saying much.

Saying something degrades with heat means very little - everything degrades with heat. The question is how much heat.


Umm actually, iron-56 doesn't degrade with any amount of heat ;)


Umm actually, it does, with certain amounts of heat (energy), despite having one of the strongest binding force per nucleon for known nuclei. It is energetically a net-negative process, you need to input energy to split that atom.


If this were true, we would be using it in lieu of tungsten for lightbulbs.


That's pretty well known + understood. What's not pretty well known and understood is: how much heat?


Do people actually do this - do people really hear up food in plastic containers?

I suppose people generally aren’t concerned about this sort of stuff.

People still eat off Teflon cookware, which I would never use.


Bottle fed babies are often fed using plastic bottles that are steam sterilised in the microwave.


Not my baby.


Think frozen TV dinners. Plastic containers with plastic cover. Yikes, a lot of those are sold.


I've always had a not so enthusiastic opinion about microwaves. The tech just didn't sit right with me.

Finally some years I gave in and bought one. 2 months later it broke. Never replaced it. Good riddance.

I just use the stove/oven. It is slower but I understand it.


I absolutely despise microwaves. It comes from a (seemingly) irrational fear of my dad's - formerly a trained chemist, but also just a smart guy.

1. I feel that as with many products, microwaves are also maximized for perceived customer happiness - this means food hot ASAP. So, they're probably pushing out the legal maximum of energy in microwave form. "Better" microwaves are probably worse for this.

2. I notice a distinct flavor to microwaved _meats_ specifically - maybe this is true about all proteins, but I'm not entirely sure. It's very pronounced in more flavorless chicken dishes when I notice it. I've read (on some stackexchange site) that chicken can change when re-heated. I don't need to know what it is. I trust the tongue evolution gave me.

3. I have always noticed - no matter what type of plastic, all plastics impart a taste to water once the water has been sitting for some time. I imagine heat speeds up this process. Maybe, microwaves do too. Again, the tongue.

Based on these points, I:

- avoid microwaves like the plague to start with. Air fryers and mini-ovens FTW! Sometimes it's far and above the best choice; e.g. microwaving nachos vs. burning them with the broiler and wasting a LOT of energy in the process.

- never microwave with/in plastics. So, no TV dinners EVER, and pyrex/glass/ceramic containers.

- generally microwave at 70% or less power rather than the default 100% - usually on a program of progressive power reduction (see below)

- constantly stir/move food around - prevent hot-spots (see next bullet)

- immediately stop the microwave when I hear any popping sounds - it's a good heuristic that some part of the food is boiling hot, and the heat needs to be evened out

One piece of advice is to familiarize with the power settings and "programmed cooking" methods of a microwave. I often will heat food on a program of 70% power for 1 min, followed by 50% power for 1 min, followed by 40% power for 1 min.

I hope some of this helps someone. I feel like I'm the anti-microwave evangelist of the house - my wife heckles me about it constantly. I can't wait to send out this link in the AM!


Fun fact: Conventional microwaves always microwave on full power. They just flip the magnetron on/off to reduce power output.

If you want the microwave to actually reduce the power output rather than using pulse width modulation, you need to make sure you've got an inverter microwave.


What's wrong with microwaves? Aside from their mechanism of heating, what do they do differently to food to anything else? Arguably they get the outsides of some foods much hotter than otherwise, but I'm not sure how true that might really be - we regularly cook loads of other foods at very high temperatures in ovens or pans.


Presumably it's a psychological phenomenon similar to the 5G mind control crowd. Overshooting fear of the unknown.


I had a organic chemistry professor when I studied biology at university, who said he was convinced that microwaves split amino acid chains in proteins, thus leading to free radicals which could be cancerogenic.


Free radicals last for microseconds in any material. The moment you removed microwave power the free radicals would immediately react with other materials and stabilise (plenty of those in food since the whole point of it is it's high energy).

Which is to say, that's a very specific claim for a professor to make without publishing any papers about it.


> [...] all plastics impart a taste to water once the water has been sitting for some time. I imagine heat speeds up this process. [...]

I feel the same. Water from most plastic bottles tastes very different from the same brand & "type" in a glass bottle. Thinking about this, I should eventually do some experiments (e.g. ABX and fully blind). Especially since summer heat should impact this during transport.

For plastic dishes, I avoid these for hot(!) foods as well. At least my SO's cheap plastic outdoor dishes add some flavour. Though for fridge storage or cold foods I never noticed the plastic flavour. I still prefer glassware for practical reasons (except weight) and (highly subjective) fell like it's just nicer, but e.g. at BBQs I (luckily!) nothing ever tasted like plastic only because a salad was in a plastic bowl; same for use-once plastic stuff used at some events, luckily the short contact never contaminated the taste (which means this could be placebo except for really bad plastic ware!).

Just out of curiosity: Do you also taste milk changing its taste long before others notice? Maybe we have a similar sensitivity that's also affecting "plastic flavour"?

As for hot spots in the microwave, that's just a drawback of the tech imho (or our old-ish, non-inverter microwave with a poor radiation pattern), and except for reducing these (70% and stirring), I live with that. Though we basically never prepare raw food in the microwave, only reheat leftovers or boil water/milk. So actual food safety is less an issue for us. On especially lazy days (and with highly unevenly heating food like yesterdays home-made lasagna) I even skip the cold parts and put them in the microwave again; I'm pretty sure this is safe.


There's no legal limit, but lower power will help the heat even out better, so go for it.

Are you comparing those meats to other ways of heating that don't get the surface particularly hot?


Re. 2, cooking meat in the microwave almost never burns it. This is as opposed to the oven, where you’re always going to have a seared surface.

A lot of people find that tasty, and it certainly adds a lot of tastes. However, searing the meat always adds carcinogens, so…

The safest method is probably boiling.


Boiling loses many nutrients to the water. Unless you’re making soup, steaming is superior.


I never likes the microwave idea of heating the food actually, bombarding atomic particles on water particles? to give them more spin and make them crazy !

my gut feeling tells me this out of order state of particles must be causing some problem along with plastic. I never use microwave for more than 20 seconds even on ceramic plates, albeit never on plastic. I still can have cancer from other sources that i have not identified yet :)




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