8 ms·

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

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?

rcme 3y ago
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.
- dataflow 3y ago
  Used in what manner, though? People certainly haven't been heating food in plastics for a hundred years, right?
  - rcme 3y ago
    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.
    - dataflow 3y ago
      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.)
- bordercases 3y ago
  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.
  - pbmonster 3y ago
    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?
    - bordercases 3y ago
      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.
- goodpoint 3y ago
  > we still don't have many direct causal links between plastic and health problems. On the contrary.
  - rcme 3y ago
    Care to provide some examples?
defatigable 3y ago
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.
- bordercases 3y ago
  Willful ignorance? It's not like these studies are uncommon now.
- H8crilA 3y ago
  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.
  - rcme 3y ago
    Nanoplastics are 1nm - 1 micrometer. So that is smaller than a bacteria.
- danw1979 3y ago
  It’s the route into your bloodstream through the lungs that really worries me.
giantg2 3y ago
Most people have bigger issues in their life. Some trust that the regulators would never allow potentially harmful products on the market.
DANmode 3y ago
> 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.
opportune 3y ago
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
- bordercases 3y ago
  Why only care about the short term?
  - opportune 3y ago
    I don’t
  - scotty79 3y ago
    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.
elif 3y ago
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.
bee_rider 3y ago
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.
- ChatGTP 3y ago
  I think intuition is underrated too.
  - Dylan16807 3y ago
    When it comes to small risks adding up, intuition is massively massively overrated. People are awful at estimating it.
    - ChatGTP 3y ago
      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.
anigbrowl 3y ago
what makes people think it's safe? Marketing, eg https://www.americanchemistry.com https://www.americanchemistry.com
Panzer04 3y ago
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)
- dataflow 3y ago
  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?
estomagordo 3y ago
The lack of any data pointing to the opposite?
hospitalJail 3y ago
>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.

rcme 3y ago

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.

dataflow 3y ago
Used in what manner, though? People certainly haven't been heating food in plastics for a hundred years, right?
- rcme 3y ago
  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.
  - dataflow 3y ago
    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.)
bordercases 3y ago
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.
- pbmonster 3y ago
  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?
  - bordercases 3y ago
    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.
goodpoint 3y ago
> we still don't have many direct causal links between plastic and health problems. On the contrary.
- rcme 3y ago
  Care to provide some examples?

defatigable 3y ago

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.

bordercases 3y ago
Willful ignorance? It's not like these studies are uncommon now.
H8crilA 3y ago
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.
- rcme 3y ago
  Nanoplastics are 1nm - 1 micrometer. So that is smaller than a bacteria.
danw1979 3y ago
It’s the route into your bloodstream through the lungs that really worries me.

giantg2 3y ago

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

DANmode 3y ago

> 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.

opportune 3y ago

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

bordercases 3y ago
Why only care about the short term?
- opportune 3y ago
  I don’t
- scotty79 3y ago
  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.

elif 3y ago

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.

bee_rider 3y ago

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.

ChatGTP 3y ago
I think intuition is underrated too.
- Dylan16807 3y ago
  When it comes to small risks adding up, intuition is massively massively overrated. People are awful at estimating it.
  - ChatGTP 3y ago
    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.

anigbrowl 3y ago

what makes people think it's safe? Marketing, eg https://www.americanchemistry.com https://www.americanchemistry.com

Panzer04 3y ago

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)

dataflow 3y ago
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?

estomagordo 3y ago

The lack of any data pointing to the opposite?

hospitalJail 3y ago

>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.