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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

#182
post #176

I'm one of the most skeptical people when it comes to these types of claims. I think the effects are being exaggerated. However, I've recently begun to replace all plastic containers and dishware from my kitchen with stainless steel and glass. Drinks taste better in glass anyways, and steel is a good non-fragile alternative. And I cook in cast iron. It's almost impossible to avoid plastic, and I'm not religious about…

What about the heavy metals that are part of the cast iron and steel though? What about the heavy metals in ceramics? The list is pretty endless, but very specific types of glass (boron silicate or pyrex) and titanium can be good to switch to, as long as you are very careful about not getting lead or uranium glass. Or you could just not buy that lead testing kit or Geiger counter and live in ignorant bliss. People li…

But there isn't lead or other heavy metal in the cast iron itself. If there are heavy metals, they are found in the glazing, so the best thing to do is buy pure cast iron, not glazed cast iron. The same goes for ceramics, but you can't really buy ceramics without glazing, because the ceramic itself is porous - I personally replaced all ceramics with glass and stainless.

Just as a single data point, all our kitchenware today is:

glass, borosilicate glass, pyrex(the US made ones are not borosilicate),

stainless, titanium, cast iron (that we season ourselves),

wood (but not bamboo -- too much glue in there), silicone (for mats and mittens).

Almost no plastic anywhere.

Re: Study finds billions of nanoplastics released when microwaving containers

#183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://blog.mambaby.co.uk/feeding/how-to-self-sterilise-the... Popular milk bottle brand instructing users how to sterilize their product with the microwave. Boiling milk bottles is a very common way of sterilization as well.

They probably don't advise serving the water that you used for sterilization to your child.

Well yes, but whatever milk/water you serve in it right afterwards will still taste and smell of burnt plastic. I take it as something inevitable because no one's going to be giving a glass milk bottle to an infant.

Maybe I should dump every single child plastic drink/dinnerware for 18/10 stainless steel.

Re: Study finds billions of nanoplastics released when microwaving containers

#185
post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Sure, but in any hard graft manual labour industry that's why you have young guns.

Anybody that stays in such an industry for 20+ years has (generally) worked smarter and not destroyed their body - they're still in the industry but moved onto machine operations, management, supervision, health and safety, etc.

Re: Study finds billions of nanoplastics released when microwaving containers

#186
post #172
post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1,000,000,000ng = 1g

@Omin, @mda, just a side note: I recommend using the (centuries old, I guess) established typography rule and putting a space between the number and the unit symbol. See [1] for additional info. [1] SI Unit rules and style conventions, https://physics.nist.gov/cuu/Units/checklist.html

It is specifically:

#15 Unit spacing

There is a space between the numerical value and unit symbol, even when the value is used in an adjectival sense, except in the case of superscript units for plane angle.

Re: Study finds billions of nanoplastics released when microwaving containers

#187

Reading this thread, I didn't know so many people use microwaves. I've never owned one, traditional cooking, food taste better and insert other conspiracies...

Reheating food and defrosting things are much faster in a microwave.

Re: Study finds billions of nanoplastics released when microwaving containers

#188

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?

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 partic…

> My body is very good at incorporating the substances that it finds useful and ignoring (or killing) the ones that it doesn't

What are you basing this off of? From my perspective, the body is decidedly not good at ignoring substances. There are thousands of poisonous or cancerous chemicals. Things like mercury or lead build up in the body to the point of causing severe harm. Anything that can be made small enough will enter your body, and the body was only “designed” to tolerate a narrow band of substances that are encountered in the natural world.

Re: Study finds billions of nanoplastics released when microwaving containers

#189

> 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…

I don't have access to the paper, but just reading the abstract it gives these numbers: > Exposure modeling results suggested that the highest estimated daily intake was 20.3 ng/kg·day for infants drinking microwaved water and 22.1 ng/kg·day for toddlers consuming microwaved dairy products from polypropylene containers. > Furthermore, an in vitro study conducted to assess the cell viability showed that the extracted…

So it seems that a concentration of microplastics that's 50 million times higher than a toddler would get still leaves 20% of cells alive? To me this implies that normal exposure levels to microplastics are likely completely harmless.

Re: Study finds billions of nanoplastics released when microwaving containers

#190
post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 partic…

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 oth…

Nanoplastics are 1nm - 1 micrometer. So that is smaller than a bacteria.
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