Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Plasticlist Report – Data on plastic chemicals in Bay Area foods

plasticlist.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

141–150 of 212 posts

Re: Plasticlist Report – Data on plastic chemicals in Bay Area foods

#141

Post by [deleted] »

kristofferR wrote: post #87
conorh wrote: post #67

My wife is a doctor dealing with (part of) the endocrine system and for years she has had us avoiding heating anything up in a plastic container and avoiding food/liquids+plastic where we can. She believes that these endocrine disruptors are very likely much worse for us than we currently realize, and that the research is eventually going to show that.

Microwaving the food in the food containers reduced the plastic chemicals on average, it didn't cause any leakage according to the results. Weird.

[deleted]

Re: Plasticlist Report – Data on plastic chemicals in Bay Area foods

#142

Post by OutOfHere »

hedora wrote: post #108
block_dagger wrote: post #84

I've been using a reverse osmosis water filter at home to reduce microplastics and other contaminants from my drinking and cooking water for the past few years. I am using the #1 recommended product on Buyer's Guide[1] for others who are interested. [1] https://buyersguide.org/countertop-reverse-osmosis-system/t/...

Reverse osmosis leaches microplastics (because of the membrane): https://www.pbs.org/newshour/science/scientists-find-about-a... I guess it’s possible to distill the water and add clean minerals back in. (Not sure if “clean minerals” are something that you can obtain though.)

After the RO layer should exist another activated charcoal layer. This should block most of the leaked polyamide from the RO layer. My filter is this way.

Re: Plasticlist Report – Data on plastic chemicals in Bay Area foods

#143

Post by praveen9920 »

gregwebs wrote: post #113

Paint is a huge source of microplastics that many are unaware of [1]. But also consider how you are wearing clothing made with plastic and the fact that it’s not hard to find 100% cotton shirts. Start figuring out how to have less plastic in your life. It’s not hard if you can be content to do it gradually. [1] https://www.e-a.earth/plastic-paints-the-environment/

True. Also, no one is talking about tyres. They shed lot of micro plastics in their life time

Re: Plasticlist Report – Data on plastic chemicals in Bay Area foods

#145

Post by tlhighbaugh »

Well if I love the Bay Area, native to the East Bay and no matter how hard I try to escape, I always find myself crawling right back to San Francisco's sweet embrace, but in case it isn't clear to the people just arriving and driving the cost up higher than London, Paris or Berlin, its never been anything less than an excellent example of the horrible things people will do to each other and the planet to satisfy their impulse for either money or power. Superfund sites abound in the six counties around the bay, plastic in your food is probably the least of your actual worries.

> Mattie came from far away, from New Orleans into the East Bay. He said, 'this is a Mecca!' I said, 'This ain't no Mecca, man. This place is fucked!' Six months go by, he has no home, he has no food, he's all alone. Mattie said, 'fool me once, shame on you.' Didn't fool him twice, he moved back to New Orleans!

- "A Journey to the End of the East Bay", Rancid

Re: Plasticlist Report – Data on plastic chemicals in Bay Area foods

#146

Post by modeless »

rsync wrote: post #74

I am, in a different life, a consumer of compost and I have started looking very carefully at the compost products for sale in the bay area. On the urban consumer side of things I see compost collection bins which cannot possibly be decontaminated of all manner of plastic pieces which will, inevitably, be ground up into the compost product. On the rural side of things I see miles of plastic baling twine and weedeater…

It's funny how the same people that dump whatever trash they feel like into the compost bins because it's convenient turn around and say "Wow, free compost! Let me spread that all over my garden!" Like, didn't I just see you yesterday putting a compostable takeout container into the bin with ketchup packets still inside? You think the municipal composting fairy just magics that stuff away?

Re: Plasticlist Report – Data on plastic chemicals in Bay Area foods

#147

Post by thatcat »

lazide wrote: post #137
jcims wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As long as it actually makes it out the other end. Bits of undigestable matter the size of smoke particles is a relatively new phenomenon.

Uh, smoke particles and mineral dusts are generally non digestible - and we’ve been eating smoked/cooked meats and slightly dirty things for at least as long as recorded history?

isnt smoked/charred food associated with colon cancer?

Re: Plasticlist Report – Data on plastic chemicals in Bay Area foods

#148

Post by iAmAPencilYo »

gertlex wrote: post #19
rtpg wrote: post #2

The boba tea result alone makes me want to never drink that again. Was a fun little treat while it lasted…

It seems noteworthy, but not commented that I can see (in the article), that the different samples of "Boba Guys Black Tea Pearls" have 20x variation in measured amount. So what's up with that? (I have uninformed ideas...)

Further down, they explain the measurement errors involved:

" If you buy the same product twice, how much will chemical levels vary?

When we bought two samples of the same product, plastic chemical levels differed on average by 59%, calculated as Relative Percent Difference (RPD).

To test whether completely identical samples would show different levels of chemicals, we sent about 10% of our products in triplicate. This means we sent three copies of the product from the same batch – with matching lot number and expiration date – bought at the same store on the same day. We found that the triplicate samples differed less – on average by 33%.

Our lab’s quality control methodology lists 20% RPD as an acceptable margin of measurement error for duplicate samples, meaning if you tested the exact same sample twice, you could see up to a 20% difference purely due to measurement noise. Taking that into account, the RPD for two samples of the same product (not necessarily from the same lot) ranges from 39-59%. For samples with the same lot number and expiration date, the RPD narrows to 13-33%.

Within-product variability appears high, possibly because we are dealing with very small chemical concentrations measured in nanograms."

Re: Plasticlist Report – Data on plastic chemicals in Bay Area foods

#149

Post by lazide »

thatcat wrote: post #147
lazide wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Uh, smoke particles and mineral dusts are generally non digestible - and we’ve been eating smoked/cooked meats and slightly dirty things for at least as long as recorded history?

isnt smoked/charred food associated with colon cancer?

Many of the chemicals in smoke particles cause cancer with extended contact.

But not new. At all.

Re: Plasticlist Report – Data on plastic chemicals in Bay Area foods

#150

Post by DoingIsLearning »

OutOfHere wrote: post #142
hedora wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reverse osmosis leaches microplastics (because of the membrane): https://www.pbs.org/newshour/science/scientists-find-about-a... I guess it’s possible to distill the water and add clean minerals back in. (Not sure if “clean minerals” are something that you can obtain though.)

After the RO layer should exist another activated charcoal layer. This should block most of the leaked polyamide from the RO layer. My filter is this way.

You point to the membrane as a leakage source, but most RO systems also use flexible hosing in the assembly and from past work in medical devices it seems that flexible hosing is also a huge source of phthalate leakage.

Is that something that is also taken into account in higher end RO systems?

Post reply on HN