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Microplastics Are Everywhere - Here’s How to Avoid Eating Them
- la64710 2y agoWow full of ads
- genman 2y agoTL;DR Don't let your food and drinks touch plastic.
- rufus_foreman 2y agoI thought some of the tips were interesting which is why I posted it. For example, the cutting board thing. I had never thought about it but obviously if you are using a plastic cutting board and cutting food on it with a knife, you are almost certainly getting plastic in your food.
- seventyone 2y agoIt's against health code for restaurants to use wooden cutting boards and that's also why the color coded plastic boards have invaded home kitchens too
- mcv 2y agoYeah 4 of the 5 are just variations of "don't put food and drink in plastic containers". But I've got another one: use rock salt instead of sea salt. This might not be feasible; most or all salt I see in sea salt, but it seems fairly obvious to me that rock salt is unlikely to contain any plastic, whereas sea salt is likely to contain plastic.
- toxicdevil 2y agoIn that case you also need to make sure that if you are grinding it, then grider's moving parts are not plastic.
- timellis-smith 2y agoColour me a bit cynical but we use plastic massively in healthcare and food industries precisely because it is non toxic. Given the massive prevalence of plastic on just about all our food, if it was really such a threat I would expect life expectancies to have dropped. Personally I regard this all as fear mongering.
- llamaimperative 2y agoWe used mercury in fur clothing and lead in gasoline also because they were nontoxic. We are seeing population-scale effects exactly identical to what we see in animal models and in Petri dishes. Hormone disruption, which you’d expect to see metabolic disorders (like obesity), changes in sexuality (in animals we see a reduction in sexual dimorphism — plausibly connected to gender dysphoria), and fertility problems. We don’t know for certain this stuff is bad, but I am absolutely sure that your confidence is unwarranted.
- germinalphrase 2y ago“ We used mercury in fur clothing and lead in gasoline also because they were nontoxic.” Ah, yes. That nontoxic mercury not at all turning our hatters mad.
- lotsofpulp 2y ago> Hormone disruption, which you’d expect to see metabolic disorders (like obesity) I would suspect consuming multiples more dissolved sugar day and night and sedentary lifestyles way before hormone disruption. Especially considering reducing caloric consumption leads to losing weight.
- llamaimperative 2y agoI think most major problems in the world are both overdetermined and multicausal. If we spend our time trying to isolate “the” culprit before taking action, we’ll solve roughly zero important problems.
- 2y ago
- toxicdevil 2y ago> 1. Cut back on bottled water Can't live without spring water and only a specific brand at that. I tried tap water and even filtered water but it tastes so horrible that I am barely able to drink 2-3 cups a day. > 7. Use wood or bamboo cutting boards I use the quartz (previously marble) countertops for cutting. My spouse hates me for it. Easier to maintain than wood boards (I obviously don't mind the scratches, it wasn't that shiny to begin with). Not sure about safety.
- kozd 2y agoDo you hate your knives?
- Kirby64 2y agoMaintaining a wooden cutting board isn’t that hard. Wipe it off with soapy water after use (the same as your countertops I hope) and then occasionally (monthly, or less often) add mineral oil to the board whenever the board looks “dry”. It also has the upside of not absolutely destroying your knives like using knives on a quartz countertop will do. You’ll save more time not sharpening knives than you would maintaining a wooden cutting board.
- toxicdevil 2y agoMy wooden boards always get black for some reason.
- Kirby64 2y ago… how? Are you washing them in the dishwasher? Leaving them soaking in water? Simple soap and water and drying them mostly off should never cause issues.
- scotty79 2y agoWhat about micrometals, microminerals, microglass, microlignine, microchitine?
- roflburger 2y agoAh Wirecutter, NYTs way to leverage the affiliate link. This article just exists to sell you things. It'd be better if we had a source that really helped people to understand the facts around the different types of plastics. Surely not all leach microplastics if they're used in medical settings for IVs and catheters.
- nojs 2y agoThis is just affiliate link spam.
- mediumsmart 2y ago5% of edibles in supermarkets are nontoxic in the long run.
- throwaway22032 2y agoI don't really buy that plastics are the enormous health issue that people claim they are. We've been eating TV dinners for what, over sixty years now, yet people are claiming that plastic is responsible for stuff like gender dysphoria which barely existed outside of drag until about five or ten years ago. Obesity is even more laughable. The fat and thin people I know don't differ in whether they use tupperware or eat takeaways. They just eat different amounts. We probably shouldn't fill the environment with this stuff, but I think that worrying about heating up leftovers in your microwave is an overreaction.
- lolitan 2y agoAuthor missed out on a very crucial thing: toothbrush/bristles. We voluntarily ingest micro/nanoplastics daily.