11 ms·

Heart disease deaths worldwide linked to chemical widely used in plastics

256 points by amichail 2y ago

WithinReason 2y ago
DEHP has been known to be harmful for at least 30 years
- kurthr 2y ago
  Yeah, most of the comments here are crap. The regulation for this stuff (and there are so many it's stupid) started in "the west" around 1999 and is pretty complete post 2022. Remember when polycarbonate water bottles were a thing, when they took chemicals out of kids toys and couches? That was all bad, but virgin PET, PP, silicone, and HDPE don't really leach plasticizers. That's WHY they're used. Really, this borders on a 25 year human clinical trial on South America, Africa, and SE Asia... well maybe we can measure reintroduction to the US now that corruption is a thing and regulation or rule of law is out the window. Thanks, Obama.
  - 0xbadcafebee 2y ago
    > Remember when polycarbonate water bottles were a thing They're... still a thing... https://www.google.com/search?q=polycarbonate+water+bottles https://www.google.com/search?q=polycarbonate+water+bottles
    - kurthr 2y ago
      Yeah, they have "BPA Free" polycarbonate now, since that's what was regulated. I still wouldn't use it, there's many better cheaper alternatives, unless you're just importing it without testing? At least they're labeling it as PC?!? Mostly, don't get your polycarbonate hot. To be clear, if you're really worried about plastic, you can't use paper or aluminum containers either since they're coated. It's glass only, but no mason jars or screw caps since those have silicone seals. Seal it with wax/cork. Silicone is likely one of the safest, though.
      - yborg 2y ago
        Aren't steel food cans usually lined as well?
        hollerith 2y ago
        Yes, most cans are lined with plastic, but some are lined with tin, which I consider safe enough. And cans of pineapple are often lined with zinc, which I consider safe enough. Unfortunately, the only way to tell which cans have these tin and zinc linings is to buy one, open it, empty it and look at the lining. Also, Eden Foods uses cans linings free of phthalates: https://www.edenfoods.com/about/values.php https://www.edenfoods.com/about/values.php
      - horsawlarway 2y ago
        There's been some interesting pushes to use glass linings here. Ex Chico in the baby bottle space (glass lined plastic bottles) Purist in the adult bottle space (glass lined stainless steel). You can also get plenty of unlined aluminum/stainless cups/bottles (amazon is full of them). No idea how that idea is going to play out long term.
        ntonozzi 2y ago
        Purist has some cool plastic bottles with a glass liner: https://www.specialized.com/us/en/purist-watergate-water-bottle/p/161979 https://www.specialized.com/us/en/purist-watergate-water-bot... They are lightweight and flexible and supposedly have minimal plastic contact with water.
        timschmidt 2y ago
        > features an amorphous silicon dioxide coating that's infused into the inner-wall of the bottle. Essentially, this forms a glass-like finish that provides a totally natural, and completely inert, solution to the problem "glass-like" != glass Dollars to doughnuts that coating is spray lined. Which means some sort of solvent, at a minimum. And I'm unaware of any way to fuse silica at temperatures under which plastic would survive, so it's a coating with a binder (dissolved in the solvent) which can still be damaged, scratched, leach or flake off into the water. I wouldn't touch it with a 10 foot pole. Glass, stainless steel (316 please), or ceramics for me.
  - hammock 2y ago
    >virgin PET, PP, silicone, and HDPE don't really leach plasticizers. True but most people don't know what those are, and they also don't/can't currently cover all plastic in the household / daily life.
  - gamblor956 2y ago
    Obama's administration passed regulations on the most well-known endocrine disrupters in 2016. They wanted to include more on the list of regulated chemicals, but the chemical industry's GOP buddies blocked that. So basically you're blaming Obama for not managing to do something perfectly. Are you part of the "all or nothing" camp of policymaking?
    - kurthr 2y ago
      No I'm blaming the decline of American Civilization on Obama, because he didn't run for a 3rd term. Easily, the best Republican candidate since Nixon.
      - rawgabbit 2y ago
        If Michelle Obama ran for election, I believe she would have/ will win the presidency easily.
      - gamblor956 2y ago
        The U.S. Constitution, as amended in the wake of FDR, does not permit someone to run for a 3rd term. As a constitutional scholar, Obama had no interest in creating a constitutional conflict that could tear this country apart. It's nonsensical to blame him for something he couldn't, and wouldn't, do.
    - leptons 2y ago
      They should have included "/s" at the end of that, to avoid confusion. It was a joke.
      - gamblor956 2y ago
        Based on his followup comment, and other comments in this thread, it doesn't appear to have been a joke.
        leptons 2y ago
        The follow-up comment definitely was a joke, and if you didn't think so, then you really don't understand sarcasm.
  - rawgabbit 2y ago
    The PDF from NIH suggests that PP number 5 in the recycling code is the safest? https://www.niehs.nih.gov/sites/default/files/research/supported/translational/peph/resources/assets/docs/phthalates_the_everywhere_chemical_zero_breast_cancer_508.pdf https://www.niehs.nih.gov/sites/default/files/research/suppo... Another article says vinyl flooring including luxury vinyl may also leach off plasticizers? https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4540696/ https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4540696/
  - Eisenstein 2y ago
    FYI: "These recent regulatory measures reflect a growing awareness of the harmful effects of DEHP. However, it is notable that many of these regulations were not in place at the time of data acquisition for the present study and their effect is not reflected in our results." (pg 11) We are seeing results from pre-regulation era in this data.
RansomStark 2y ago
the chemicals are phthalates, in this case di-2-ethylhexyl phthalate (DEHP)
Havoc 2y ago
Much like asbestos well probably spend the next 200 years sorting the consequences of plastic out
- steve_adams_86 2y ago
  It seems like 200 years could be an extremely optimistic timeline without major improvements to our technologies used for removing plastic from the environment. At the moment those technologies hardly exist
  - conorjh 2y ago
    there are fungi that have evolved to eat plastic with no human intervention. we'll be fine.
    - MDGeist 2y ago
      There was a recentish David Cronenberg movie about humans evolving to eat plastic so we'll be fine. Can't wait to chow down on plastic.
      - tomaytotomato 2y ago
        I have a nice piece of aged nylon from the 1940s, very mature flavours, free range. Goes well with a Chianti red wine pairing.
    - metalman 2y ago
      many organisms are eating plastics, but that is not good for us at all in the short term. A study ? bedford institute? from a while back reported that plastics that they were collecting from the ocean, were full of holes from bieng eaten by something, and if you think about plastic as a widly distrubuted, easily broken down substance with very high intrinsic energy content, that it's no surprise at all that things are eating it. But back to us, thats bad, because all.of those things eating plastic, are then eaten, and passed up the food chain to us, at the top. So what we need to know, is how far advanced the process of filling the food chain with, undesirable for us substances, is, and what the future looks like if we just shrug, or how long will the system take to clear itself out. ie: is the biosphere "saturated" or not. If not, what is the max concentration that we can expect, and when
jiggawatts 2y ago
Link to the paper: https://www.thelancet.com/action/showPdf?pii=S2352-3964%2825%2900174-4 https://www.thelancet.com/action/showPdf?pii=S2352-3964%2825...
seper8 2y ago
People will look back in 50 years and say "You know they used to say that packaging all food in plastic was fine? Even though the science said otherwise?"
- netdevphoenix 2y ago
  Like with tobacco
- ChrisMarshallNY 2y ago
  I used to work as a bench tech at a defense contractor (microwave equipment). Every tech had a little bottle on their bench, with a special lid, that would have a small amount of liquid always in it (you'd pump it, to bring up more liquid). These bottles are still used, today. This was for removing solder flux. Worked great. At the end of each row of tech benches, was a red bucket, full of the same stuff. We'd use that to wash entire boards. If you got the liquid on your skin, it made the skin turn white, and flake off. Smelled like acetone had a one-night-stand with gasoline. The liquid was trichlor[0] (not the pool kind). Our management swore that it was perfectly safe, and that we could even drink it. This was in the early 1980s. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1,1,1-Trichloroethane https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1,1,1-Trichloroethane
  - kurthr 2y ago
    The industry started with carbontet (CTC), they replaced it in the 70s with the perchlor stuff you're describing (PCE) in the 80s, then with Trichlorethylene (TCE) in the early 90s, which in turn was replaced with (TCA) Trichlorethane and now all the chlorinated stuff is gone (along with the PCB industry). There's still isopropyl and GBL butyrolactone (which is regulated as a precursor to GHB) for degreasing. Back in the 60s carbontet was used everywhere (dry cleaning and industrial) and there are superfund sites in Happy Tx and Alabama. Everyone has seen the walk through dry cleaning right? https://youtu.be/WbkfkcSiYcI We're literally 60 years since the first regulation. And your local dry cleaner was leaking chlorinated solvents into the 80s. Now the cleanup for old gas stations is mostly complete, but the new MTBE stuff is nasty!
bhouston 2y ago
My suspicion is that the use of plastics with food is also the main contributor to the fertility crisis (declining sperm counts, etc) we have. Wouldn't be surprised that this then also contributes, through sperm quality degradation, to the increase in autism. And it isn't just my suspicion, see links below, but we haven't yet forcefully moved away from plastics around food. If RF Kennedy could do one thing, I would ask him to focus on plastics and food, rather than the more nutty stuff. Side bonus: it may help raise the low fertility rate that Trump and Elon are so concerned about as well. https://cancer.ca/en/cancer-information/reduce-your-risk/myths-and-controversies/should-i-put-plastic-containers-in-the-microwave https://cancer.ca/en/cancer-information/reduce-your-risk/myt... https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9134445/ https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9134445/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/35134716/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/35134716/
- mapt 2y ago
  It could easily turn out to be a not very severe problem, like "Use rayon instead of polyester for your clothing" or "No more styrofoam, because styrene monomer offgassing in your lungs"; The issue is that without a lot of dedicated study (probably animal studies into the millions of individual-exposure-years) we wouldn't even know. These things are too ubiquitous in modern life to readily separate them from us with careful non-experimental study design.
- Cthulhu_ 2y ago
  Is autism actually on the rise, or is it just more diagnosed thanks to advances in and availability of diagnoses and general awareness in the population? A lot of people that get a fresh autism diagnosis these days recognize the same symptoms in their (grand)parents. Anyway, RFK does seem to focus on food stuffs, by banning certain food dyes (no more lurid froot loops for you (https://www.npr.org/sections/shots-health-news/2025/04/22/nx-s1-5372637/food-dyes-ban-fda-rfk-kennedy https://www.npr.org/sections/shots-health-news/2025/04/22/nx...) but also by relaxing food safety laws (https://www.yahoo.com/news/usda-withdraws-plan-limit-salmonella-203952779.html https://www.yahoo.com/news/usda-withdraws-plan-limit-salmone...).
  - 2y ago
DebtDeflation 2y ago
On a similar note, we had the big push towards "BPA-free" plastic a few years ago. Manufacturers just replaced the BPA with related bisphenols like BPF which is probably just as bad as BPA and BPS which is probably worse than BPA.
- tmaly 2y ago
  My neighbor, a retired chemist, said it is just a game of whack a mole.
  - NewJazz 2y ago
    This is what happens when you allow companies to dump unvetted, novel, synthetic chemicals into products and packaging. Especially when the audience for those products has substantially less information than the companies who produce them en masse.
    - euroderf 2y ago
      Expect no improvement in the short-to-medium term.
      - dennis_jeeves2 2y ago
        I would also add long term. Often one dangerous substance is replaced with another.
        sorcerer-mar 2y ago
        And it doesn't help that our only practical lever for improvement was recently eliminated by SCOTUS. Under the Chevron Doctrine, Congress could pass a law that broadly bans all chemicals like these and then the agencies could react to new studies like this and push out new rules as we learn more and as companies attempt workarounds. But with that tool gone, there's basically no chance of this ever getting fixed. Congress will probably have to pass laws that ban each specific individual compound. Good luck with that!
unstyledcontent 2y ago
It's extremely difficult to avoid exposure to these plastics. I started buying "pthalate free" bath products only to learn there if the bottle that holds them is plastic, then you're still getting exposed to pthalates. Most foods are exposed to these plasicizers as well, especially meats and dairy.
- chneu 2y ago
  It's pretty crazy how bad for us meat/dairy is in a huge variety of ways yet people hand wave away most of the issues. Antibiotics usage is still a huge issue in beef/dairy. Environmental destruction is still a huge issue in beef/dairy. Hormone exposure thru beef/dairy is still an issue. Etc. Etc.
  - MarcelOlsz 2y ago
    How else am I supposed to get swole? I buy my meat from local butchers. Getting 200g of protein from vegetables and lentils and stuff would be impossible.
    - iamacyborg 2y ago
      You probably don’t need to be getting 200g of protein a day, to start with.
      - MarcelOlsz 2y ago
        I'm 6'6 and 120kg, so better safe than sorry. Are you knowledgeable about bodybuilding?
        porkloin 2y ago
        "Need" and "want" are different things.
        MarcelOlsz 2y ago
0xbadcafebee 2y ago
> In their new analysis, the authors estimated that DEHP exposure contributed to 368,764 deaths, or more than 10% of all global mortality from heart disease in 2018 among men and women aged 55 through 64. lol what
SomaticPirate 2y ago
I've tried hard to remove phthalates from my life. The biggest change that I feel is sustainable is looking for "hard" plastics. Usually phthalates are found in flexible, soft plastics. So hard plastics typically have less of them.
hammock 2y ago
>Heart disease deaths worldwide linked to chemical widely used in plastics First thing I thought of is how much DEHP is used is the hospital, including for medical devices implanted in the heart. Such as pacemakers, catheters, stents and valves. DEHP as a component is something like 30% of flexible tubing used in a hospital setting. Phthalates leach because they aren't integrated with the base plastic by design - that's how they work. Phthalates sit in between the polymer chains (such as PET), rather than being bonded to them, which is precisely what affords that material flexibility, and also why they leach so easily.
0xDEAFBEAD 2y ago
If you want to get a sense of which foods could be high in DEHP, you can go here https://www.plasticlist.org/ https://www.plasticlist.org/ and sort by the "DEHP" column. If I understand correctly, an RXBAR could have up to 1% of your tolerable daily intake for DEHP, and most foods are well below that. Based on the OP, it seems like DEHP might be a bigger issue in developing countries.
- gamblor956 2y ago
  For a lot of the foods on the list, the DEHP, BPA, etc., come from the packaging materials. So, for example, Whole Foods organic grass fed beef appears to be very high in DEHP...if you get it in the plastic wrap container, but would have almost none if wrapped in wax paper (note: not the same thing as parchment paper). Similarly, a lot of restaurant to-go orders will test high for endocrine disruptors because they come in plastic containers, but would be low in these chemicals if tested at the restaurant.
- Exuma 2y ago
  I remember when this link went around that this 1% column didn't really quite make sense. 1% makes it sound like it's well within the limit, even if you ate 10 in-n-out cheeseburgers a day. I guess the question is, at what percent of the "tolerable daily intake" of DEHP do very bad side effects (like the heart issues in this post) start to occur?
  - 0xDEAFBEAD 2y ago
    I mean yeah, the creators of PlasticList explicitly stated that they didn't change their eating habits based on their findings. Perhaps plastic contamination of food just isn't a huge issue in developed countries.
dekhn 2y ago
"linked" does not mean what most people think it means.
klevertree 2y ago
Reports like this on the dangers of DEHP is exactly why I started work on NeutraOat (https://neutraoat.com/ https://neutraoat.com/), a modified oat fiber supplement designed to trap plasticizers in your gut before they can get into your bloodstream. The idea is to give people an easy, safe way to avoid absorbing plasticizers that you've ingested. Link above has a form to sign up for the mailing list. I also have a Substack post summarizing what we know about the dangers of plasticizers (https://trevorklee.substack.com/p/the-evidence-on-plasticizer-health https://trevorklee.substack.com/p/the-evidence-on-plasticize...) .
- fellowniusmonk 2y ago
  I just use my microwave to boil and drink a couple tablespoons of ground barley with a sweetener, beta glucan is amazing and hulled barley is awesome, cheap and higher in beta glucan than oats. Solved every gastro issue I've ever had, humans co-evolved with barley and it's awesome. No modifications needed.
  - mysticllama 2y ago
    interesting, how often do you drink it?
    - klevertree 2y ago
      We're still prototyping and testing, but you'll probably have to eat it twice a day to get complete coverage. It needs to be in the gut at the same time as the plasticizer to have any effect.
  - klevertree 2y ago
    Not a bad idea for your health, but it won't trap plasticizers. We're modifying the beta glucan to have many tiny, "sticky" pores to trap the chemicals in the gut, so they go out with the rest of the beta glucan. Pure beta glucan, whether from oats or barley, won't have much effect.
    - 2y ago
Hnrobert42 2y ago
Given the US VP's concern about low domestic birth rates, Maybe there is a way to link this to stuff conservatives care about enough to override big business' interests. Probably not though. Sigh.
KurSix 2y ago
This is both disturbing and sadly unsurprising. Phthalates have been on the radar for years, but seeing a number like 365 000 deaths in one year really drives home the scale of the issue. What's frustrating is that these chemicals are everywhere: in stuff we touch daily, often without even realizing it.
marsven_422 2y ago
[dead]

256 points by amichail 2y ago

WithinReason 2y ago

DEHP has been known to be harmful for at least 30 years

kurthr 2y ago
Yeah, most of the comments here are crap. The regulation for this stuff (and there are so many it's stupid) started in "the west" around 1999 and is pretty complete post 2022. Remember when polycarbonate water bottles were a thing, when they took chemicals out of kids toys and couches? That was all bad, but virgin PET, PP, silicone, and HDPE don't really leach plasticizers. That's WHY they're used. Really, this borders on a 25 year human clinical trial on South America, Africa, and SE Asia... well maybe we can measure reintroduction to the US now that corruption is a thing and regulation or rule of law is out the window. Thanks, Obama.
- 0xbadcafebee 2y ago
  > Remember when polycarbonate water bottles were a thing They're... still a thing... https://www.google.com/search?q=polycarbonate+water+bottles https://www.google.com/search?q=polycarbonate+water+bottles
  - kurthr 2y ago
    Yeah, they have "BPA Free" polycarbonate now, since that's what was regulated. I still wouldn't use it, there's many better cheaper alternatives, unless you're just importing it without testing? At least they're labeling it as PC?!? Mostly, don't get your polycarbonate hot. To be clear, if you're really worried about plastic, you can't use paper or aluminum containers either since they're coated. It's glass only, but no mason jars or screw caps since those have silicone seals. Seal it with wax/cork. Silicone is likely one of the safest, though.
    - yborg 2y ago
      Aren't steel food cans usually lined as well?
      - hollerith 2y ago
        Yes, most cans are lined with plastic, but some are lined with tin, which I consider safe enough. And cans of pineapple are often lined with zinc, which I consider safe enough. Unfortunately, the only way to tell which cans have these tin and zinc linings is to buy one, open it, empty it and look at the lining. Also, Eden Foods uses cans linings free of phthalates: https://www.edenfoods.com/about/values.php https://www.edenfoods.com/about/values.php
    - horsawlarway 2y ago
      There's been some interesting pushes to use glass linings here. Ex Chico in the baby bottle space (glass lined plastic bottles) Purist in the adult bottle space (glass lined stainless steel). You can also get plenty of unlined aluminum/stainless cups/bottles (amazon is full of them). No idea how that idea is going to play out long term.
      - ntonozzi 2y ago
        Purist has some cool plastic bottles with a glass liner: https://www.specialized.com/us/en/purist-watergate-water-bottle/p/161979 https://www.specialized.com/us/en/purist-watergate-water-bot... They are lightweight and flexible and supposedly have minimal plastic contact with water.
        timschmidt 2y ago
        > features an amorphous silicon dioxide coating that's infused into the inner-wall of the bottle. Essentially, this forms a glass-like finish that provides a totally natural, and completely inert, solution to the problem "glass-like" != glass Dollars to doughnuts that coating is spray lined. Which means some sort of solvent, at a minimum. And I'm unaware of any way to fuse silica at temperatures under which plastic would survive, so it's a coating with a binder (dissolved in the solvent) which can still be damaged, scratched, leach or flake off into the water. I wouldn't touch it with a 10 foot pole. Glass, stainless steel (316 please), or ceramics for me.
- hammock 2y ago
  >virgin PET, PP, silicone, and HDPE don't really leach plasticizers. True but most people don't know what those are, and they also don't/can't currently cover all plastic in the household / daily life.
- gamblor956 2y ago
  Obama's administration passed regulations on the most well-known endocrine disrupters in 2016. They wanted to include more on the list of regulated chemicals, but the chemical industry's GOP buddies blocked that. So basically you're blaming Obama for not managing to do something perfectly. Are you part of the "all or nothing" camp of policymaking?
  - kurthr 2y ago
    No I'm blaming the decline of American Civilization on Obama, because he didn't run for a 3rd term. Easily, the best Republican candidate since Nixon.
    - rawgabbit 2y ago
      If Michelle Obama ran for election, I believe she would have/ will win the presidency easily.
    - gamblor956 2y ago
      The U.S. Constitution, as amended in the wake of FDR, does not permit someone to run for a 3rd term. As a constitutional scholar, Obama had no interest in creating a constitutional conflict that could tear this country apart. It's nonsensical to blame him for something he couldn't, and wouldn't, do.
  - leptons 2y ago
    They should have included "/s" at the end of that, to avoid confusion. It was a joke.
    - gamblor956 2y ago
      Based on his followup comment, and other comments in this thread, it doesn't appear to have been a joke.
      - leptons 2y ago
        The follow-up comment definitely was a joke, and if you didn't think so, then you really don't understand sarcasm.
- rawgabbit 2y ago
  The PDF from NIH suggests that PP number 5 in the recycling code is the safest? https://www.niehs.nih.gov/sites/default/files/research/supported/translational/peph/resources/assets/docs/phthalates_the_everywhere_chemical_zero_breast_cancer_508.pdf https://www.niehs.nih.gov/sites/default/files/research/suppo... Another article says vinyl flooring including luxury vinyl may also leach off plasticizers? https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4540696/ https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4540696/
- Eisenstein 2y ago
  FYI: "These recent regulatory measures reflect a growing awareness of the harmful effects of DEHP. However, it is notable that many of these regulations were not in place at the time of data acquisition for the present study and their effect is not reflected in our results." (pg 11) We are seeing results from pre-regulation era in this data.

RansomStark 2y ago

the chemicals are phthalates, in this case di-2-ethylhexyl phthalate (DEHP)

Havoc 2y ago

Much like asbestos well probably spend the next 200 years sorting the consequences of plastic out

steve_adams_86 2y ago
It seems like 200 years could be an extremely optimistic timeline without major improvements to our technologies used for removing plastic from the environment. At the moment those technologies hardly exist
- conorjh 2y ago
  there are fungi that have evolved to eat plastic with no human intervention. we'll be fine.
  - MDGeist 2y ago
    There was a recentish David Cronenberg movie about humans evolving to eat plastic so we'll be fine. Can't wait to chow down on plastic.
    - tomaytotomato 2y ago
      I have a nice piece of aged nylon from the 1940s, very mature flavours, free range. Goes well with a Chianti red wine pairing.
  - metalman 2y ago
    many organisms are eating plastics, but that is not good for us at all in the short term. A study ? bedford institute? from a while back reported that plastics that they were collecting from the ocean, were full of holes from bieng eaten by something, and if you think about plastic as a widly distrubuted, easily broken down substance with very high intrinsic energy content, that it's no surprise at all that things are eating it. But back to us, thats bad, because all.of those things eating plastic, are then eaten, and passed up the food chain to us, at the top. So what we need to know, is how far advanced the process of filling the food chain with, undesirable for us substances, is, and what the future looks like if we just shrug, or how long will the system take to clear itself out. ie: is the biosphere "saturated" or not. If not, what is the max concentration that we can expect, and when

jiggawatts 2y ago

Link to the paper: https://www.thelancet.com/action/showPdf?pii=S2352-3964%2825%2900174-4 https://www.thelancet.com/action/showPdf?pii=S2352-3964%2825...

seper8 2y ago

People will look back in 50 years and say "You know they used to say that packaging all food in plastic was fine? Even though the science said otherwise?"

netdevphoenix 2y ago
Like with tobacco
ChrisMarshallNY 2y ago
I used to work as a bench tech at a defense contractor (microwave equipment). Every tech had a little bottle on their bench, with a special lid, that would have a small amount of liquid always in it (you'd pump it, to bring up more liquid). These bottles are still used, today. This was for removing solder flux. Worked great. At the end of each row of tech benches, was a red bucket, full of the same stuff. We'd use that to wash entire boards. If you got the liquid on your skin, it made the skin turn white, and flake off. Smelled like acetone had a one-night-stand with gasoline. The liquid was trichlor[0] (not the pool kind). Our management swore that it was perfectly safe, and that we could even drink it. This was in the early 1980s. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1,1,1-Trichloroethane https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1,1,1-Trichloroethane
- kurthr 2y ago
  The industry started with carbontet (CTC), they replaced it in the 70s with the perchlor stuff you're describing (PCE) in the 80s, then with Trichlorethylene (TCE) in the early 90s, which in turn was replaced with (TCA) Trichlorethane and now all the chlorinated stuff is gone (along with the PCB industry). There's still isopropyl and GBL butyrolactone (which is regulated as a precursor to GHB) for degreasing. Back in the 60s carbontet was used everywhere (dry cleaning and industrial) and there are superfund sites in Happy Tx and Alabama. Everyone has seen the walk through dry cleaning right? https://youtu.be/WbkfkcSiYcI We're literally 60 years since the first regulation. And your local dry cleaner was leaking chlorinated solvents into the 80s. Now the cleanup for old gas stations is mostly complete, but the new MTBE stuff is nasty!

bhouston 2y ago

My suspicion is that the use of plastics with food is also the main contributor to the fertility crisis (declining sperm counts, etc) we have. Wouldn't be surprised that this then also contributes, through sperm quality degradation, to the increase in autism. And it isn't just my suspicion, see links below, but we haven't yet forcefully moved away from plastics around food. If RF Kennedy could do one thing, I would ask him to focus on plastics and food, rather than the more nutty stuff. Side bonus: it may help raise the low fertility rate that Trump and Elon are so concerned about as well. https://cancer.ca/en/cancer-information/reduce-your-risk/myths-and-controversies/should-i-put-plastic-containers-in-the-microwave https://cancer.ca/en/cancer-information/reduce-your-risk/myt... https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9134445/ https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9134445/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/35134716/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/35134716/

mapt 2y ago
It could easily turn out to be a not very severe problem, like "Use rayon instead of polyester for your clothing" or "No more styrofoam, because styrene monomer offgassing in your lungs"; The issue is that without a lot of dedicated study (probably animal studies into the millions of individual-exposure-years) we wouldn't even know. These things are too ubiquitous in modern life to readily separate them from us with careful non-experimental study design.
Cthulhu_ 2y ago
Is autism actually on the rise, or is it just more diagnosed thanks to advances in and availability of diagnoses and general awareness in the population? A lot of people that get a fresh autism diagnosis these days recognize the same symptoms in their (grand)parents. Anyway, RFK does seem to focus on food stuffs, by banning certain food dyes (no more lurid froot loops for you (https://www.npr.org/sections/shots-health-news/2025/04/22/nx-s1-5372637/food-dyes-ban-fda-rfk-kennedy https://www.npr.org/sections/shots-health-news/2025/04/22/nx...) but also by relaxing food safety laws (https://www.yahoo.com/news/usda-withdraws-plan-limit-salmonella-203952779.html https://www.yahoo.com/news/usda-withdraws-plan-limit-salmone...).
- 2y ago

DebtDeflation 2y ago

On a similar note, we had the big push towards "BPA-free" plastic a few years ago. Manufacturers just replaced the BPA with related bisphenols like BPF which is probably just as bad as BPA and BPS which is probably worse than BPA.

tmaly 2y ago
My neighbor, a retired chemist, said it is just a game of whack a mole.
- NewJazz 2y ago
  This is what happens when you allow companies to dump unvetted, novel, synthetic chemicals into products and packaging. Especially when the audience for those products has substantially less information than the companies who produce them en masse.
  - euroderf 2y ago
    Expect no improvement in the short-to-medium term.
    - dennis_jeeves2 2y ago
      I would also add long term. Often one dangerous substance is replaced with another.
      - sorcerer-mar 2y ago
        And it doesn't help that our only practical lever for improvement was recently eliminated by SCOTUS. Under the Chevron Doctrine, Congress could pass a law that broadly bans all chemicals like these and then the agencies could react to new studies like this and push out new rules as we learn more and as companies attempt workarounds. But with that tool gone, there's basically no chance of this ever getting fixed. Congress will probably have to pass laws that ban each specific individual compound. Good luck with that!

unstyledcontent 2y ago

It's extremely difficult to avoid exposure to these plastics. I started buying "pthalate free" bath products only to learn there if the bottle that holds them is plastic, then you're still getting exposed to pthalates. Most foods are exposed to these plasicizers as well, especially meats and dairy.

chneu 2y ago
It's pretty crazy how bad for us meat/dairy is in a huge variety of ways yet people hand wave away most of the issues. Antibiotics usage is still a huge issue in beef/dairy. Environmental destruction is still a huge issue in beef/dairy. Hormone exposure thru beef/dairy is still an issue. Etc. Etc.
- MarcelOlsz 2y ago
  How else am I supposed to get swole? I buy my meat from local butchers. Getting 200g of protein from vegetables and lentils and stuff would be impossible.
  - iamacyborg 2y ago
    You probably don’t need to be getting 200g of protein a day, to start with.
    - MarcelOlsz 2y ago
      I'm 6'6 and 120kg, so better safe than sorry. Are you knowledgeable about bodybuilding?
      - porkloin 2y ago
        "Need" and "want" are different things.
        MarcelOlsz 2y ago

0xbadcafebee 2y ago

> In their new analysis, the authors estimated that DEHP exposure contributed to 368,764 deaths, or more than 10% of all global mortality from heart disease in 2018 among men and women aged 55 through 64. lol what

SomaticPirate 2y ago

I've tried hard to remove phthalates from my life. The biggest change that I feel is sustainable is looking for "hard" plastics. Usually phthalates are found in flexible, soft plastics. So hard plastics typically have less of them.

hammock 2y ago

>Heart disease deaths worldwide linked to chemical widely used in plastics First thing I thought of is how much DEHP is used is the hospital, including for medical devices implanted in the heart. Such as pacemakers, catheters, stents and valves. DEHP as a component is something like 30% of flexible tubing used in a hospital setting. Phthalates leach because they aren't integrated with the base plastic by design - that's how they work. Phthalates sit in between the polymer chains (such as PET), rather than being bonded to them, which is precisely what affords that material flexibility, and also why they leach so easily.

0xDEAFBEAD 2y ago

If you want to get a sense of which foods could be high in DEHP, you can go here https://www.plasticlist.org/ https://www.plasticlist.org/ and sort by the "DEHP" column. If I understand correctly, an RXBAR could have up to 1% of your tolerable daily intake for DEHP, and most foods are well below that. Based on the OP, it seems like DEHP might be a bigger issue in developing countries.

gamblor956 2y ago
For a lot of the foods on the list, the DEHP, BPA, etc., come from the packaging materials. So, for example, Whole Foods organic grass fed beef appears to be very high in DEHP...if you get it in the plastic wrap container, but would have almost none if wrapped in wax paper (note: not the same thing as parchment paper). Similarly, a lot of restaurant to-go orders will test high for endocrine disruptors because they come in plastic containers, but would be low in these chemicals if tested at the restaurant.
Exuma 2y ago
I remember when this link went around that this 1% column didn't really quite make sense. 1% makes it sound like it's well within the limit, even if you ate 10 in-n-out cheeseburgers a day. I guess the question is, at what percent of the "tolerable daily intake" of DEHP do very bad side effects (like the heart issues in this post) start to occur?
- 0xDEAFBEAD 2y ago
  I mean yeah, the creators of PlasticList explicitly stated that they didn't change their eating habits based on their findings. Perhaps plastic contamination of food just isn't a huge issue in developed countries.

dekhn 2y ago

"linked" does not mean what most people think it means.

klevertree 2y ago

Reports like this on the dangers of DEHP is exactly why I started work on NeutraOat (https://neutraoat.com/ https://neutraoat.com/), a modified oat fiber supplement designed to trap plasticizers in your gut before they can get into your bloodstream. The idea is to give people an easy, safe way to avoid absorbing plasticizers that you've ingested. Link above has a form to sign up for the mailing list. I also have a Substack post summarizing what we know about the dangers of plasticizers (https://trevorklee.substack.com/p/the-evidence-on-plasticizer-health https://trevorklee.substack.com/p/the-evidence-on-plasticize...) .

fellowniusmonk 2y ago
I just use my microwave to boil and drink a couple tablespoons of ground barley with a sweetener, beta glucan is amazing and hulled barley is awesome, cheap and higher in beta glucan than oats. Solved every gastro issue I've ever had, humans co-evolved with barley and it's awesome. No modifications needed.
- mysticllama 2y ago
  interesting, how often do you drink it?
  - klevertree 2y ago
    We're still prototyping and testing, but you'll probably have to eat it twice a day to get complete coverage. It needs to be in the gut at the same time as the plasticizer to have any effect.
- klevertree 2y ago
  Not a bad idea for your health, but it won't trap plasticizers. We're modifying the beta glucan to have many tiny, "sticky" pores to trap the chemicals in the gut, so they go out with the rest of the beta glucan. Pure beta glucan, whether from oats or barley, won't have much effect.
  - 2y ago

Hnrobert42 2y ago

Given the US VP's concern about low domestic birth rates, Maybe there is a way to link this to stuff conservatives care about enough to override big business' interests. Probably not though. Sigh.

KurSix 2y ago

This is both disturbing and sadly unsurprising. Phthalates have been on the radar for years, but seeing a number like 365 000 deaths in one year really drives home the scale of the issue. What's frustrating is that these chemicals are everywhere: in stuff we touch daily, often without even realizing it.

marsven_422 2y ago

[dead]