11 ms·

The word 'Plastic' needs to die. Instead we should be more specific on the type of plastic. Teflon, PLA, ABS, resins, foams, etc... are all plastics, but they

The word 'Plastic' needs to die. Instead we should be more specific on the type of plastic. Teflon, PLA, ABS, resins, foams, etc... are all plastics, but they are so unrelated outside their long chains, its terrible to stereotype them all into one category. You aren't going to get cancer from PLA or Teflon, but rather the manufacturing process. You can eat these plastics as far as I know and you'd be fine. Eat something with BPA in it, you are probably going to have a bad time. Maybe the solution is better labeling. I know its near impossible to have perfect consistency in plastic manufacturing(I worked in foam, mind boggling we consider testing these foams one time, and considered it the same foam for the next 8 years). However, knowing precursors, additives, and potentially process would make a huge difference in our ability to track problems. EDIT: Someone called out PLA as potentially dangerous. After looking it up, I'm skeptical of the oxygen double bond attached to a carbon attached to an oxygen. The wikipedia article had no health concerns, but that carbon atom seems ripe for reaction. Let me change my answer on PLA to 'I don't know'.

myshpa 3y ago
Plastic overuse/overproduction needs to die. What Microplastics Might Be Doing to Our Intestines https://now.tufts.edu/2023/06/09/what-microplastics-might-be-doing-our-intestines https://now.tufts.edu/2023/06/09/what-microplastics-might-be... Nanoplastic Ingestion Causes Neurological Deficits https://www.the-scientist.com/news-opinion/nanoplastic-ingestion-causes-neurological-deficits-71152 https://www.the-scientist.com/news-opinion/nanoplastic-inges... Microplastics can stick in human airways, new study finds https://www.ctvnews.ca/climate-and-environment/microplastics-can-stick-in-human-airways-new-study-finds-1.6441541 https://www.ctvnews.ca/climate-and-environment/microplastics... Many BPA-Free Plastics Are Toxic. Some Are Worse Than BPA https://www.discovermagazine.com/health/many-bpa-free-plastics-are-toxic-some-are-worse-than-bpa https://www.discovermagazine.com/health/many-bpa-free-plasti... Plastic pollution is so bad for animals it now has a disease name — 'plasticosis' https://www.cbc.ca/radio/quirks/research-ocean-plastic-birds-plasticosis-1.6863788 https://www.cbc.ca/radio/quirks/research-ocean-plastic-birds... Microplastics found in every sample of water taken during the Ocean Race https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/jun/05/microplastics-found-in-every-sample-of-water-taken-during-ocean-race https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/jun/05/micropla... Secret industry documents reveal that makers of PFAS 'forever chemicals' covered up their health dangers https://phys.org/news/2023-05-secret-industry-documents-reveal-makers.html https://phys.org/news/2023-05-secret-industry-documents-reve... Forever Toxic: The science on health threats from plastic recycling https://www.greenpeace.org/usa/reports/forever-toxic/ https://www.greenpeace.org/usa/reports/forever-toxic/ Microplastics detected in meat, milk and blood of farm animals https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/jul/08/microplastics-detected-in-meat-milk-and-blood-of-farm-animals https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/jul/08/micropla... Yet Another Problem With Recycling: It Spews Microplastics https://www.wired.com/story/yet-another-problem-with-recycling-it-spews-microplastics/ https://www.wired.com/story/yet-another-problem-with-recycli... Tiny Polystyrene Particles Detected in the Brain Just Two Hours After Ingestion https://neurosciencenews.com/polystyrene-brain-23079/ https://neurosciencenews.com/polystyrene-brain-23079/ 60% of home ‘compostable’ plastic doesn’t fully break down, ending up in our soil https://blog.frontiersin.org/2022/11/03/60-of-home-compostable-plastic-doesnt-fully-break-down-ending-up-in-our-soil/ https://blog.frontiersin.org/2022/11/03/60-of-home-compostab... (... thousands others)
Retric 3y ago
Teflon Aka Polytetrafluoroethylene cookware represents a health hazard. The stuff contains a great deal of Florine and breaks down at 300C, but that’s not purely binary instead it becomes increasingly unstable as your approach the temperature. Further no manufacturing process is perfect, I wouldn’t therefore assume eating significant quantities would be safe. That said, it’s generally used as a coating rather than a structural element so there’s less of it in the environment. PS: Toothpaste which you should mostly spit out generally contains less than 0.5% fluoride compounds such as sodium fluoride NaF or tin fluoride SnF2, the F in both being Florine.
- jansan 3y ago
  Is "Florine" the same as "Flourine", and isn't that what they give children so they get healtheir teeth? I am a bit confused here to be honest. Edit: Sorry, stupid question, was thinking of Fluoride.
  - iso1631 3y ago
    You're thinking of fluoride
- taneq 3y ago
  Does it contain Fluorine (a dangerous halogen gas) or does it contain Fluoride (the ion of that gas, commonly added to toothpaste and drinking water).
  - deelowe 3y ago
    Flourine...
  - oasisbob 3y ago
    "Fluorine" is also the terminology used for covalently bonded Fl moieties, not just difluorine, the gas. Fluoride is the ion, but if you want to get pedantic, you're not adding the ion to toothpaste and drinking water - you're adding another fluorine compound which is dissociating in solution. Ie, when you salt your food, you're not tossing in Cl- ions directly.
MagicMoonlight 3y ago
How do you know PLA is safe? I'm sure you would have thought lead was safe at the time
- hospitalJail 3y ago
  Thank you for bringing this up, I may be incorrect. I looked at the formula and that Oxygen double bond attached to a carbon with another oxygen bond... yikes! I have no idea why this is stable. It appears stable, but you wonder about things like UV light, exposure to some cation, etc... Well, seems like I have reading to do. (Chem engineer here, I feel like its my responsibility, similar to how programmers read open source code)
  - taneq 3y ago
    What does the oxygen double bond bit do? (Automation/controls here and high school organic chemistry was a long time ago, but I've printed kilos and kilos of PLA parts... some parts seem fine after being installed outdoors in full sunlight in a hot environment, they're nonstructural and covered in dust though.)
    - hospitalJail 3y ago
      I'm sorry if this is inaccurate, I'm pulling from orgo 10+ years ago, and I feel like an artist using feelings. If you look into molecular orbital theory, the double bond causes overlap, which makes the bonds unstable. It can more easily jump off and create a new bond. If you want to see an even worse situation, look at Nitrogen triple bonds. Further, the extra oxygen attached to the carbon makes the bond a bit polar since you have such a heavy electron clump on one side of the carbon.
      - selimthegrim 3y ago
        I think you’re confusing unstable with energetics it’s certainly unstable to UV but you’d have to look at the kinetics and enthalpies of formation
    - 3y ago
jimmychoozyx 3y ago
"The word 'Plastic' needs to die." ... "its terrible to stereotype them all into one category." I disagree, because, that's like me telling you "The word 'Cancer' needs to die." etc. That would imply you'd be required to tell me the specific cancer you refer to when you say "you aren't going to get cancer from PLA or Teflon" etc. General terms exist for a reason.
- gochi 3y ago
  Actually I think both cancer and plastics needs to remain as jargon for their respective fields, and instead media should focus on specifying the important elements that are easily digestible to the public and also not too wide reaching. Somewhat of a lost art apparently. To stay with your example, it would be like discouraging the media from saying "cancer is cured" when they actually might mean "this specific type of lung cancer has a cure". To bring it back to "plastic", the media could focus on saying things like "teflon coating encourages these negative reactions..." as opposed to "plastics are poisoning us" which is way too vague to matter.
- marcosdumay 3y ago
  > General terms exist for a reason. And on the case of plastics, that reason is that they are molded by the same processes. It's about as relevant as talking about "metal contamination" of food when you are measuring mercury.
- concordDance 3y ago
  I'd actually say that cancer as a general term is in fact very unhelpful given the varieties and probably does need to die.
chiefalchemist 3y ago
> You can eat these plastics as far as I know and you'd be fine. Can we? Have these been tested? Alone and/or while interacting with other such things in the wild? Or have these chemicals/plastics been introduced because they can be (i.e., no regulation or oversight), not because they are safe and have been proven to be so. The default of "they're safe" is not the default we should be using.
VoodooJuJu 3y ago
We refer to them as plastics because it's meaningful and useful to do so in most contexts, including the context of the harm they do. Whether that harm is done during manufacturing or ingestion is irrelevant. They're all plastics and they all cause harm. It's not useful to nitpick over their long chains or oxygen double bonds. That rhetoric contributes nothing but deflective nerdery and confusion to the conversation.
- steamer25 3y ago
  As we become more interested in the relatively new information about these materials, different kinds of conversations are occurring than we've had in the past. To facilitate these new interests, it's entirely possible that some of the more specific terms could/should/will become part of the household or water-cooler vernacular. BPA already has. > deflective nerdery FWIW, the point about carbon bonds was actually a response to nerdery that's already present here, in a forum intended for digging into the nerdy details of various subjects.
- concordDance 3y ago
  "Plastic" is not actually a useful or meaningful term. E.g. if scientists made perfect artificial skin that was atom for atom identical to your skin it would be mostly made of plastic. Not all "plastics" cause harm (at least, not any more than the skin you shed every day).
  - VoodooJuJu 3y ago
    If you go up to someone in the street, and tell them about the plastic in the water supply and food they eat, how it's harming them, and that we need to better clean it up and regulate it, they're going to understand exactly what you're talking about, and they won't get into a debate with you about whether you're talking about dead skin, artificial skin, or BPA.
    - concordDance 3y ago
      They won't understand, they'll just think they do. Just as if you talked about the dangers of "chemicals" and how dihydrogen monoxide kills thousands of people a year. I've seen countless disagreements on numerous topics caused by people thinking they both have the same definition of a term and even more instances of confusion because the intuitive implicit definition that came from the example usages they'd seen of a term was a non-representative subset of the things matched by the explicit definition. Nuance and clarity of language matters, otherwise you'll ban "chemicals" and discover you actually have no sane definition of it and are inflicting a lot of unnecessary suffering.
mint2 3y ago
Many dental flosses are literally strands of ptfe and some studies correlate using them with higher blood concentrations of pfas. Many “compostable” paper food and drink containers are lined with a ptfe film, which does get into the food. Okay sure maybe it’s all leftover pfas reagents, (or maybe some break down but ignore that) it’s impossible for anyone to know that this particular instance of ptfe doesn’t have residual pfas.
xhkkffbf 3y ago
A good point. Starches produced by plants are also long chains of sugars. Are they "plastic" too?
anigbrowl 3y ago
Maybe the solution is better labeling. No, we are awash in labels already and I am sick of everything having a legal treatise attached to it. Labels just throw the problem back in the laps of consumers, an approach which clearly does not work.
- hourago 3y ago
  > No, we are awash in labels already and I am sick of everything having a legal treatise attached to it. Labels just throw the problem back in the laps of consumers, an approach which clearly does not work. Some labels are good and informative. Some labels are just a way for corporations to blame consumers for what consumers cannot do anything about. Falsehood: - "Consumers are purchasing toxic products, so that is what we make." Reality: - "Consumers buy what is available and they can afford."
  - delfinom 3y ago
    Recycling labels are some of the biggest falsehoods. Many plastics are simply not recycled at all, I think at best only #1 and #2 plastics are largely ever recycled. Even things like orange juice containers are considered not recyclable due to their heavy plastic coatings inside the paper shell and they will get sorted out to be dumped. It's one way industry has scammed the public by convincing them much of the waste generated by low-cost (to the manufacturer) packaging was recyclable.
    - phero_cnstrcts 3y ago
      It’s terrible. Plus the west pays the Chinese companies to take care off the plastics anyway. They just dump it in the ocean and nothing is recycled. Is actually better for the planet that you just burn it yourself instead of wasting diesel on transport to nowhere.
  - hinkley 3y ago
    Brand names were introduced to fight product adulteration. We still default to assuming that is working today. We should probably demand that this is actually true.
Laaas 3y ago
Our skin is a (bio)plastic. It is indeed a completely useless term. Distinguishing between "synthetic" and "non-synthetic" isn't very useful either; all these compounds have in common is that they are toxic carbon-based polymers. It's the fact that they're toxic that is important, not that it's a carbon-based polymer.
ahoy 3y ago
I don't want more labels. I don't want to have to be an "informed consumer" when im buying cookware in order to know whats going to give me cancer. Those products shouldn't exist.
- concordDance 3y ago
  Everything has or might have a risk. For all we know carrots increase the risk of cancer. If we banned everything that increases the risk of some sort of bad thing we'd probably end up banning everything (or more realistically, everything we'd do studies on).
  - ajkjk 3y ago
    No, the symmetry of "anything could be dangerous" is broken by reality, by what is actually dangerous. Arguments of the form "all things look the same if you ignore all their differences" don't work.
    - concordDance 3y ago
      Uh... I think you're assuming all your readers have the same precise understanding of "actually dangerous" that you do. Is walking "actually dangerous"? Is cycling? Is driving? Is swimming? Is hang gliding? Different people will give different answers to these questions and I've even kept them all to the domain of transportation! Once you get to the realm of all chemistry things get very murky. E.g. Is sugar dangerous? In practice we're evolved creatures full of hacks that work well enough to mostly not die before we've had kids, I would be very surprised if there was a single substance we consume (both intentionally and not) that doesn't damage something.
- hospitalJail 3y ago
  FYI, the labels are not for you. They are for recycling.
joker_minmax 3y ago
I thought the reason people switched to PLA for 3D Printers is that the fumes for it were less toxic than other types of filament. I've never heard of PLA being used for food containers.
- bmurphy1976 3y ago
  PLA has a low melting point. It's gonna end poorly as soon somebody sticks it in the Microwave or puts hot enough food in the container.
AbrahamParangi 3y ago
We have this attitude regarding materials which is pretty close to “innocent until proven guilty” but the fact of the matter is that all you can know about any novel material is whether or not it kills you quickly. I think we either need to appreciate that the industrial world is poisoned and take that as the cost of doing business OR stop poisoning ourselves at the cost of substantial technological progress.
f38zf5vdt 3y ago
Ester bonds are not usually dangerous. Wait until you find out what all the natural and synthetic flavorants inside your food are! As far as polyesters go, the main cause for concern is the endocrine disrupting effect of polyethylene terephthalate[1] and the inability of PET to be broken down completely, leading to microplastic pollution. By contrast, PLA can be broken down by heat or a select number of micro-organisms, and the lactic acid monomer used to produce it is non-toxic. The polymer is formed by a simple condensation reaction to form ester linkages, releasing water. Esters are a very common and generally benign moiety found everywhere in nature, for example in cutin found in plants, forming the rigid exterior of cells exposed to the elements. [2] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polyethylene_terephthalate https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polyethylene_terephthalate [2] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/11217409/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/11217409/
ok_computer 3y ago
I thought bio / water degradation of PLA was seen as a feature. PLA and other acid co polymers are used in resorbable stitches and polymer medical devices where the biproducts are organic acids and carbon dioxide. I second the ‘I don’t know’ for actual health effects of PLA but wanted to provide a counter point to comparing PTFE (indestructible C-F bond) to PLA (readily hydrolized C(=O)O- bonds)
xracy 3y ago
Yeah, the problem is definitely that the recycling numbers on plastics aren't detailed enough... /s Bonus points if you can tell me what each recycling number on plastic means without looking it up (it's the internet, so I have no way to enforce this).
Metacelsus 3y ago
>skeptical of the oxygen double bond attached to a carbon attached to an oxygen Ester groups are quite innocuous. The most it will do is hydrolyze to oligomers of lactic acid.

myshpa 3y ago

Plastic overuse/overproduction needs to die. What Microplastics Might Be Doing to Our Intestines https://now.tufts.edu/2023/06/09/what-microplastics-might-be-doing-our-intestines https://now.tufts.edu/2023/06/09/what-microplastics-might-be... Nanoplastic Ingestion Causes Neurological Deficits https://www.the-scientist.com/news-opinion/nanoplastic-ingestion-causes-neurological-deficits-71152 https://www.the-scientist.com/news-opinion/nanoplastic-inges... Microplastics can stick in human airways, new study finds https://www.ctvnews.ca/climate-and-environment/microplastics-can-stick-in-human-airways-new-study-finds-1.6441541 https://www.ctvnews.ca/climate-and-environment/microplastics... Many BPA-Free Plastics Are Toxic. Some Are Worse Than BPA https://www.discovermagazine.com/health/many-bpa-free-plastics-are-toxic-some-are-worse-than-bpa https://www.discovermagazine.com/health/many-bpa-free-plasti... Plastic pollution is so bad for animals it now has a disease name — 'plasticosis' https://www.cbc.ca/radio/quirks/research-ocean-plastic-birds-plasticosis-1.6863788 https://www.cbc.ca/radio/quirks/research-ocean-plastic-birds... Microplastics found in every sample of water taken during the Ocean Race https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/jun/05/microplastics-found-in-every-sample-of-water-taken-during-ocean-race https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/jun/05/micropla... Secret industry documents reveal that makers of PFAS 'forever chemicals' covered up their health dangers https://phys.org/news/2023-05-secret-industry-documents-reveal-makers.html https://phys.org/news/2023-05-secret-industry-documents-reve... Forever Toxic: The science on health threats from plastic recycling https://www.greenpeace.org/usa/reports/forever-toxic/ https://www.greenpeace.org/usa/reports/forever-toxic/ Microplastics detected in meat, milk and blood of farm animals https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/jul/08/microplastics-detected-in-meat-milk-and-blood-of-farm-animals https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/jul/08/micropla... Yet Another Problem With Recycling: It Spews Microplastics https://www.wired.com/story/yet-another-problem-with-recycling-it-spews-microplastics/ https://www.wired.com/story/yet-another-problem-with-recycli... Tiny Polystyrene Particles Detected in the Brain Just Two Hours After Ingestion https://neurosciencenews.com/polystyrene-brain-23079/ https://neurosciencenews.com/polystyrene-brain-23079/ 60% of home ‘compostable’ plastic doesn’t fully break down, ending up in our soil https://blog.frontiersin.org/2022/11/03/60-of-home-compostable-plastic-doesnt-fully-break-down-ending-up-in-our-soil/ https://blog.frontiersin.org/2022/11/03/60-of-home-compostab... (... thousands others)

Retric 3y ago

Teflon Aka Polytetrafluoroethylene cookware represents a health hazard. The stuff contains a great deal of Florine and breaks down at 300C, but that’s not purely binary instead it becomes increasingly unstable as your approach the temperature. Further no manufacturing process is perfect, I wouldn’t therefore assume eating significant quantities would be safe. That said, it’s generally used as a coating rather than a structural element so there’s less of it in the environment. PS: Toothpaste which you should mostly spit out generally contains less than 0.5% fluoride compounds such as sodium fluoride NaF or tin fluoride SnF2, the F in both being Florine.

jansan 3y ago
Is "Florine" the same as "Flourine", and isn't that what they give children so they get healtheir teeth? I am a bit confused here to be honest. Edit: Sorry, stupid question, was thinking of Fluoride.
- iso1631 3y ago
  You're thinking of fluoride
taneq 3y ago
Does it contain Fluorine (a dangerous halogen gas) or does it contain Fluoride (the ion of that gas, commonly added to toothpaste and drinking water).
- deelowe 3y ago
  Flourine...
- oasisbob 3y ago
  "Fluorine" is also the terminology used for covalently bonded Fl moieties, not just difluorine, the gas. Fluoride is the ion, but if you want to get pedantic, you're not adding the ion to toothpaste and drinking water - you're adding another fluorine compound which is dissociating in solution. Ie, when you salt your food, you're not tossing in Cl- ions directly.

MagicMoonlight 3y ago

How do you know PLA is safe? I'm sure you would have thought lead was safe at the time

hospitalJail 3y ago
Thank you for bringing this up, I may be incorrect. I looked at the formula and that Oxygen double bond attached to a carbon with another oxygen bond... yikes! I have no idea why this is stable. It appears stable, but you wonder about things like UV light, exposure to some cation, etc... Well, seems like I have reading to do. (Chem engineer here, I feel like its my responsibility, similar to how programmers read open source code)
- taneq 3y ago
  What does the oxygen double bond bit do? (Automation/controls here and high school organic chemistry was a long time ago, but I've printed kilos and kilos of PLA parts... some parts seem fine after being installed outdoors in full sunlight in a hot environment, they're nonstructural and covered in dust though.)
  - hospitalJail 3y ago
    I'm sorry if this is inaccurate, I'm pulling from orgo 10+ years ago, and I feel like an artist using feelings. If you look into molecular orbital theory, the double bond causes overlap, which makes the bonds unstable. It can more easily jump off and create a new bond. If you want to see an even worse situation, look at Nitrogen triple bonds. Further, the extra oxygen attached to the carbon makes the bond a bit polar since you have such a heavy electron clump on one side of the carbon.
    - selimthegrim 3y ago
      I think you’re confusing unstable with energetics it’s certainly unstable to UV but you’d have to look at the kinetics and enthalpies of formation
  - 3y ago

jimmychoozyx 3y ago

"The word 'Plastic' needs to die." ... "its terrible to stereotype them all into one category." I disagree, because, that's like me telling you "The word 'Cancer' needs to die." etc. That would imply you'd be required to tell me the specific cancer you refer to when you say "you aren't going to get cancer from PLA or Teflon" etc. General terms exist for a reason.

gochi 3y ago
Actually I think both cancer and plastics needs to remain as jargon for their respective fields, and instead media should focus on specifying the important elements that are easily digestible to the public and also not too wide reaching. Somewhat of a lost art apparently. To stay with your example, it would be like discouraging the media from saying "cancer is cured" when they actually might mean "this specific type of lung cancer has a cure". To bring it back to "plastic", the media could focus on saying things like "teflon coating encourages these negative reactions..." as opposed to "plastics are poisoning us" which is way too vague to matter.
marcosdumay 3y ago
> General terms exist for a reason. And on the case of plastics, that reason is that they are molded by the same processes. It's about as relevant as talking about "metal contamination" of food when you are measuring mercury.
concordDance 3y ago
I'd actually say that cancer as a general term is in fact very unhelpful given the varieties and probably does need to die.

chiefalchemist 3y ago

> You can eat these plastics as far as I know and you'd be fine. Can we? Have these been tested? Alone and/or while interacting with other such things in the wild? Or have these chemicals/plastics been introduced because they can be (i.e., no regulation or oversight), not because they are safe and have been proven to be so. The default of "they're safe" is not the default we should be using.

VoodooJuJu 3y ago

We refer to them as plastics because it's meaningful and useful to do so in most contexts, including the context of the harm they do. Whether that harm is done during manufacturing or ingestion is irrelevant. They're all plastics and they all cause harm. It's not useful to nitpick over their long chains or oxygen double bonds. That rhetoric contributes nothing but deflective nerdery and confusion to the conversation.

steamer25 3y ago
As we become more interested in the relatively new information about these materials, different kinds of conversations are occurring than we've had in the past. To facilitate these new interests, it's entirely possible that some of the more specific terms could/should/will become part of the household or water-cooler vernacular. BPA already has. > deflective nerdery FWIW, the point about carbon bonds was actually a response to nerdery that's already present here, in a forum intended for digging into the nerdy details of various subjects.
concordDance 3y ago
"Plastic" is not actually a useful or meaningful term. E.g. if scientists made perfect artificial skin that was atom for atom identical to your skin it would be mostly made of plastic. Not all "plastics" cause harm (at least, not any more than the skin you shed every day).
- VoodooJuJu 3y ago
  If you go up to someone in the street, and tell them about the plastic in the water supply and food they eat, how it's harming them, and that we need to better clean it up and regulate it, they're going to understand exactly what you're talking about, and they won't get into a debate with you about whether you're talking about dead skin, artificial skin, or BPA.
  - concordDance 3y ago
    They won't understand, they'll just think they do. Just as if you talked about the dangers of "chemicals" and how dihydrogen monoxide kills thousands of people a year. I've seen countless disagreements on numerous topics caused by people thinking they both have the same definition of a term and even more instances of confusion because the intuitive implicit definition that came from the example usages they'd seen of a term was a non-representative subset of the things matched by the explicit definition. Nuance and clarity of language matters, otherwise you'll ban "chemicals" and discover you actually have no sane definition of it and are inflicting a lot of unnecessary suffering.

mint2 3y ago

Many dental flosses are literally strands of ptfe and some studies correlate using them with higher blood concentrations of pfas. Many “compostable” paper food and drink containers are lined with a ptfe film, which does get into the food. Okay sure maybe it’s all leftover pfas reagents, (or maybe some break down but ignore that) it’s impossible for anyone to know that this particular instance of ptfe doesn’t have residual pfas.

xhkkffbf 3y ago

A good point. Starches produced by plants are also long chains of sugars. Are they "plastic" too?

anigbrowl 3y ago

Maybe the solution is better labeling. No, we are awash in labels already and I am sick of everything having a legal treatise attached to it. Labels just throw the problem back in the laps of consumers, an approach which clearly does not work.

hourago 3y ago
> No, we are awash in labels already and I am sick of everything having a legal treatise attached to it. Labels just throw the problem back in the laps of consumers, an approach which clearly does not work. Some labels are good and informative. Some labels are just a way for corporations to blame consumers for what consumers cannot do anything about. Falsehood: - "Consumers are purchasing toxic products, so that is what we make." Reality: - "Consumers buy what is available and they can afford."
- delfinom 3y ago
  Recycling labels are some of the biggest falsehoods. Many plastics are simply not recycled at all, I think at best only #1 and #2 plastics are largely ever recycled. Even things like orange juice containers are considered not recyclable due to their heavy plastic coatings inside the paper shell and they will get sorted out to be dumped. It's one way industry has scammed the public by convincing them much of the waste generated by low-cost (to the manufacturer) packaging was recyclable.
  - phero_cnstrcts 3y ago
    It’s terrible. Plus the west pays the Chinese companies to take care off the plastics anyway. They just dump it in the ocean and nothing is recycled. Is actually better for the planet that you just burn it yourself instead of wasting diesel on transport to nowhere.
- hinkley 3y ago
  Brand names were introduced to fight product adulteration. We still default to assuming that is working today. We should probably demand that this is actually true.

Laaas 3y ago

Our skin is a (bio)plastic. It is indeed a completely useless term. Distinguishing between "synthetic" and "non-synthetic" isn't very useful either; all these compounds have in common is that they are toxic carbon-based polymers. It's the fact that they're toxic that is important, not that it's a carbon-based polymer.

ahoy 3y ago

I don't want more labels. I don't want to have to be an "informed consumer" when im buying cookware in order to know whats going to give me cancer. Those products shouldn't exist.

concordDance 3y ago
Everything has or might have a risk. For all we know carrots increase the risk of cancer. If we banned everything that increases the risk of some sort of bad thing we'd probably end up banning everything (or more realistically, everything we'd do studies on).
- ajkjk 3y ago
  No, the symmetry of "anything could be dangerous" is broken by reality, by what is actually dangerous. Arguments of the form "all things look the same if you ignore all their differences" don't work.
  - concordDance 3y ago
    Uh... I think you're assuming all your readers have the same precise understanding of "actually dangerous" that you do. Is walking "actually dangerous"? Is cycling? Is driving? Is swimming? Is hang gliding? Different people will give different answers to these questions and I've even kept them all to the domain of transportation! Once you get to the realm of all chemistry things get very murky. E.g. Is sugar dangerous? In practice we're evolved creatures full of hacks that work well enough to mostly not die before we've had kids, I would be very surprised if there was a single substance we consume (both intentionally and not) that doesn't damage something.
hospitalJail 3y ago
FYI, the labels are not for you. They are for recycling.

joker_minmax 3y ago

I thought the reason people switched to PLA for 3D Printers is that the fumes for it were less toxic than other types of filament. I've never heard of PLA being used for food containers.

bmurphy1976 3y ago
PLA has a low melting point. It's gonna end poorly as soon somebody sticks it in the Microwave or puts hot enough food in the container.

AbrahamParangi 3y ago

We have this attitude regarding materials which is pretty close to “innocent until proven guilty” but the fact of the matter is that all you can know about any novel material is whether or not it kills you quickly. I think we either need to appreciate that the industrial world is poisoned and take that as the cost of doing business OR stop poisoning ourselves at the cost of substantial technological progress.

f38zf5vdt 3y ago

Ester bonds are not usually dangerous. Wait until you find out what all the natural and synthetic flavorants inside your food are! As far as polyesters go, the main cause for concern is the endocrine disrupting effect of polyethylene terephthalate[1] and the inability of PET to be broken down completely, leading to microplastic pollution. By contrast, PLA can be broken down by heat or a select number of micro-organisms, and the lactic acid monomer used to produce it is non-toxic. The polymer is formed by a simple condensation reaction to form ester linkages, releasing water. Esters are a very common and generally benign moiety found everywhere in nature, for example in cutin found in plants, forming the rigid exterior of cells exposed to the elements. [2] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polyethylene_terephthalate https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polyethylene_terephthalate [2] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/11217409/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/11217409/

ok_computer 3y ago

I thought bio / water degradation of PLA was seen as a feature. PLA and other acid co polymers are used in resorbable stitches and polymer medical devices where the biproducts are organic acids and carbon dioxide. I second the ‘I don’t know’ for actual health effects of PLA but wanted to provide a counter point to comparing PTFE (indestructible C-F bond) to PLA (readily hydrolized C(=O)O- bonds)

xracy 3y ago

Yeah, the problem is definitely that the recycling numbers on plastics aren't detailed enough... /s Bonus points if you can tell me what each recycling number on plastic means without looking it up (it's the internet, so I have no way to enforce this).

Metacelsus 3y ago

>skeptical of the oxygen double bond attached to a carbon attached to an oxygen Ester groups are quite innocuous. The most it will do is hydrolyze to oligomers of lactic acid.