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Study finds billions of nanoplastics released when microwaving containers

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Re: Study finds billions of nanoplastics released when microwaving containers

#161

Post by refurb »

NovaDudely wrote: post #49
productizeme93 wrote: post #2

It's surprising to me how much we don't understand about plastic still. Years ago I was in a kitchen shop with an out of town friend and we saw some Sous Vide equipment. I told her that we had one and that you could either plastic bags or vacuum sealed bags to cook in the water. Her reaction was an immediate "absolutely not." That's when I realized that she worked in a lab that focused on plastics. Her big call out w…

The more chemists I have spoken to over the years, the more I hear warnings about polymers in general. Seems as though, that in general structure simply cannot be manufactured in a way that is innocuous to our health. It is plausible that plastic will be the next tobacco/leaded gasoline. Time will tell however.

I'm a chemist and I'm not sure what the problem with polymers is? Many of them are some of the most inert substances we know of.

Maybe you could share what these chemists told you?

Re: Study finds billions of nanoplastics released when microwaving containers

#162

Post by Omin »

mrob wrote: post #146
Aurornis wrote: post #35

> Rather than introduce just the number of particles released by one container, the researchers instead exposed the cells to particle concentrations that infants and toddlers might accumulate over days or from multiple sources. > After two days, just 23% of kidney cells exposed to the highest concentrations had managed to survive So they used concentrations that they believe toddlers might accumulate over two days an…

It's bad reporting. The actual numbers from the abstract are "22.1 ng/kg·day" for the worst case ingested dose, and "1000 μg/mL" for the tested toxic concentration. If you assume the solvent is water (solvent isn't specified in the abstract but water is the obvious choice) and convert the units to make it easier to compare, that toxic dose is "1,000,000,000ng/kg". There's no plausible way a toddler is going to accumu…

1,000,000,000ng is 1kg, so that'd would be as much plastic as solvent by mass.

Re: Study finds billions of nanoplastics released when microwaving containers

#164

Post by Dah00n »

calf wrote: post #134
productizeme93 wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

First off there weren't silicon Sous Vide bags back then and the general attitude was "stick it in a plastic bag" and it will be fine. Second, this is coming from someone that works in a research lab in plastics. So pretty well educated. Anything else you want to be condescending and dismissive about? I'm sure we'd all appreciate hearing more about how you know better than the rest of us and please - make sure you le…

I'll bite, your friend may be a professional scientist, but their response was simply "absolutely not". I had a biologist friend who had the same attitude toward eating raw eggs. The fact is the science has not looked at risks of sous vide plastics. There's maybe no money for such research, unless like in this article the professor became a father and had to microwave food for his newborn baby. In their research, the…

But wouldn't it be fair to say "these results of microwaving plastic containers and using soft plastic bottles show concerning results, so we'll say this other thing that is in the same ballpark needs to be researched and until then carry a warning"? I mean, it seems like guilty until proven innocent is the safe way for items used in producing or containing food, etc, no? Or would that cause too many problems?

Re: Study finds billions of nanoplastics released when microwaving containers

#165

Post by mda »

Omin wrote: post #162
mrob wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's bad reporting. The actual numbers from the abstract are "22.1 ng/kg·day" for the worst case ingested dose, and "1000 μg/mL" for the tested toxic concentration. If you assume the solvent is water (solvent isn't specified in the abstract but water is the obvious choice) and convert the units to make it easier to compare, that toxic dose is "1,000,000,000ng/kg". There's no plausible way a toddler is going to accumu…

1,000,000,000ng is 1kg, so that'd would be as much plastic as solvent by mass.

1,000,000,000ng = 1g

Re: Study finds billions of nanoplastics released when microwaving containers

#166

Post by Dah00n »

defrost wrote: post #104
scotty79 wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think if you work for 25 years in construction you are bound to wreck your body regardless of what you do. It's hard to not wreck your body in that span of time even if you only do yoga and meditate for that long.

I know many people with 30+ years in construction that are physically fine (I'm ~ 60 ATM). A good technique and steady approach goes a long way and there are many jobs in construction that don't break the body - crane operator, bobcat | front end loader | etc. operator. Push up slab building have been around for decades now, if you can avoid being squashed under a giant mass of concrete (not that common) you're not g…

Nothing you said is untrue, but I'm pretty sure that wasn't the point of the post. Doing the same over and over again is very hard on the body.

Re: Study finds billions of nanoplastics released when microwaving containers

#167

Post by rlpb »

andrewstuart wrote: post #163

Do people actually do this - do people really hear up food in plastic containers? I suppose people generally aren’t concerned about this sort of stuff. People still eat off Teflon cookware, which I would never use.

Bottle fed babies are often fed using plastic bottles that are steam sterilised in the microwave.

Re: Study finds billions of nanoplastics released when microwaving containers

#168

Post by robertlagrant »

coldtea wrote: post #133
Aurornis wrote: post #35

> Rather than introduce just the number of particles released by one container, the researchers instead exposed the cells to particle concentrations that infants and toddlers might accumulate over days or from multiple sources. > After two days, just 23% of kidney cells exposed to the highest concentrations had managed to survive So they used concentrations that they believe toddlers might accumulate over two days an…

> Given that we’re not seeing toddlers around the world have kidney problems We're not seeing them having severe kidney problems - easily detectable ones. They could still have damage or accululated crap on their kidneys. In any case, the article doesn't say kids kidneys die in 2 days. It says lab kindey cells die when exposed to such microplastics, and microwave setups produce those microplastics. Meaning: kids are…

> Meaning: kids are exposed to kidney damaging microplastics through this mechanism

This is still the problem, then. The damage is based on the amount.

You could demonstrate that kidney cells die when exposed to cyanide, and apple pips have cyanide in them, and you might say "kids are exposed to kidney damaging cyanide through this mechanism. The extent of the damage remains to be seen".

If someone challenged that by saying that kids who eat apples aren't all dying of cyanide-induced kidney failure, you could also say we're just not seeing easily detectable ones.

But you'd be absorbing (and re-emitting) entirely the wrong impression without the supporting contextual info that genuinely links the two together. We don't create more and more unusual hypotheticals to explain a belief in things or effects that we don't know exist. We demonstrate why we think they should exist and go from there.

Re: Study finds billions of nanoplastics released when microwaving containers

#169

Post by andersrs »

staunton wrote: post #87
andersrs wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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.

> 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.

Re: Study finds billions of nanoplastics released when microwaving containers

#170

Post by chaxor »

devjab wrote: post #143
parentheses wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The article is only presenting that: 1. nano/microplastics kill kidney cells in a lab environment 2. nano/microplastics come from microwaving containers Regardless of whether you agree with the conclusion _you_ are drawing from reading the article, the article is saying those things. In order to make a real-world-ish experiment, we'd have to start experimenting on children. I feel that while you're expressing outrage…

You wouldn’t have to experiment on children as such. You can follow children who were Brest fed and children who were bottle fed and compare the two. It’s sort of a worrying study for me personally. Because bottle feeding only really works so well because you can microwave, both for cleaning and for heating, modern bottles so easily. If you have to go back to glass containers it’ll be a literal nightmare for most par…

If only there was some model, something like a human, preferably smaller, that maybe doesn't live quite as long. Perhaps it would be ideal if we could even hold it in our hands, and have a small space to contain many of these models.

Pfft who am I kidding, what an insane idea. People would just complain that the model has some unknowable flaw, and is therefore entirely useless.

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