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> Experiments have shown that microwaving plastic baby food containers available on the shelves of U.S. stores can release huge numbers of plastic particles — i

by pkdpic 3y ago

> 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?

esafak 3y ago
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.
- karakot 3y ago
  it still contains plastic, right? I wonder what are the proportions though.
tomohelix 3y ago
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...
andersrs 3y ago
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.
- staunton 3y ago
  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.
  - chrisco255 3y ago
    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?
  - andersrs 3y 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.
  - goodpoint 3y ago
    > must be at least as cheap No, we need goods with extremely long life, even if they get expensive.
somenameforme 3y ago
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]."
- permo-w 3y ago
  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

by pkdpic 3y ago

esafak 3y ago

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.

karakot 3y ago
it still contains plastic, right? I wonder what are the proportions though.

tomohelix 3y ago

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...

andersrs 3y ago

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.

staunton 3y ago
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.
- chrisco255 3y ago
  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?
- andersrs 3y 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.
- goodpoint 3y ago
  > must be at least as cheap No, we need goods with extremely long life, even if they get expensive.

somenameforme 3y ago

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]."

permo-w 3y ago
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