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FDA denies petition against use of phthalates in food packaging

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Re: FDA denies petition against use of phthalates in food packaging

#161

Post by kragen »

Tade0 wrote: post #154
kragen wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

oh, sure, they can produce microplastics after you take the food out. but you aren't going to get plastic dust in your lettuce the most common plastics used in packaging are pet, polypropylene, and polyethylene, which have exceptional elongation at break. when you scratch them, you don't produce microplastics; you produce a burr on the surface

You're gonna get it in your yoghurt and food packed in tupperware though, as metal utensils can and will scrape some of the plastic off. Anyway, they're already present in tap water, so your lettuce is also already infused with microplastics.

that's a good point about the tap water, and you're probably right about polystyrene yogurt cups and tupperware, though i still think you won't find any evidence of it unless you do the experiment yourself

Re: FDA denies petition against use of phthalates in food packaging

#162

Post by akira2501 »

aidenn0 wrote: post #152
akira2501 wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Can we reasonably run such a study to prove that wax paper is safe? We don't need to. We have a "Generally Recognized as Safe" standard that is well known and widely applied. > widely used in some significant (think 5%) portion of the industry then we allow it How about we just label things so consumers know whether or not the packaging contains phthalates? That way the market can decide if they want it in their pa…

Labeling isn't bad, but it doesn't scale. It works for e.g. allergens because people who are allergic are aware of the rather rapid harm done if/when they consume allergens.

> but it doesn't scale.

Why not?

You don't even necessarily need to put all disclaimers directly on the package. Just put some kind of reference number on there, like an MSDS number, and let users go look up all the packaging information online if necessary.

The manufacturer has this information. They must in order to produce the product. The requirement would be they just have to publish it now when used to wrap food.

How does that not "scale?"

Re: FDA denies petition against use of phthalates in food packaging

#163

Post by red_trumpet »

kragen wrote: post #100
lopis wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Source on flax seeds and soybeans being endocrine disruptors?

check the sources cited in https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phytoestrogen#Food_sources

That article also contains the phrase

> As of 2020, there is insufficient clinical evidence to determine that phytoestrogens have effects in humans.

Re: FDA denies petition against use of phthalates in food packaging

#164

Post by kragen »

mightyham wrote: post #155
kragen wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

that's like saying 'the obvious reason she died was that my hammer hit her in the head, not that i swung my hammer at her head' i'm not sure what you mean by 'modern liberal attitudes' but in any case i think it's irrelevant

By "modern liberal attitudes", I mean exactly that. Liberal beliefs held by the general public that came about in the modern era (post enlightenment), which is simply a more rigorous description for what you seem to be referring to when you say that the world took a break from conservatism "during the 19th and 20th centuries". All that to say, it's extremely relevant to the discussion. If, as you claim, conservatism…

i wasn't talking about conservatism in general. i was talking specifically about stouset's form of conservatism: 'extreme caution when considering the scale and widespread impact ... let's be conservative when considering compounds that live permanently in the environment, are damn near impossible to remove, and are spreading widely to every part of the ecosystem'

such extreme caution is entirely compatible with liberal post-enlightenment beliefs, but not with technological progress, which was indeed largely driven by shifts in public attitudes about technical innovations, including but not limited to novel materials. when newton was inventing modern physics he had to keep his chemistry experiments secret because chemistry was illegal, and the catholic church specifically prosecuted people (via the inquisition) for practicing chemistry: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/30134775/

this problem continues to the present day, where it continues to retard technical progress in many places; and, of course, hatred and even legal prosecution of chemists in particular has returned in places like the usa. but the problem is much broader than this; for example, william kamkwamba relates in his autobiography how his neighbors believed the windmill he had built in malawi was causing a drought through witchcraft, after having ridiculed him as a lunatic for years when he was hanging out in the junkyard to salvage the parts to build it

Re: FDA denies petition against use of phthalates in food packaging

#165

Post by kragen »

red_trumpet wrote: post #163
kragen wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

check the sources cited in https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phytoestrogen#Food_sources

That article also contains the phrase > As of 2020, there is insufficient clinical evidence to determine that phytoestrogens have effects in humans.

yes, and that's also true of phthalates at normal exposure levels, which is why hospitals still use vinyl tubing; see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Endocrine_disruptor#Phthalates for more detail

also, though i didn't realize this, natural sources of phthalates include coconuts, poppy seeds, grapes, and kidney beans. see https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8310026/ and https://pubchem.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/compound/Phthalic-acid#sect...

Re: FDA denies petition against use of phthalates in food packaging

#166

Post by jjk166 »

deciplex wrote: post #114
jjk166 wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can't prove things are safe, at best you can say harm hasn't been observed under these test conditions. In particular things with accumulative impacts may not show any signs of danger until millions of people have been using them for years. The only valid approach is to collect data as we go and make iterative changes as our understanding improves, we can not count on getting things right at the outset.

> You can't prove things are safe, at best you can say harm hasn't been observed under these test conditions. Are we doing that?

Yes.

Re: FDA denies petition against use of phthalates in food packaging

#167

Post by [deleted] »

lifeisstillgood wrote: post #158
lotsofpulp wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> what do others do with our information - and I think the best answer is the medical ethics answer - nothing unless it is in the individual’s best interests. How is saving money not in an individual’s best interest? You have person A who chooses to consume known carcinogens and excess carbohydrate, and person B who abstains from them and exercises control for their diet. Why is it ethical for person B to have to sub…

None of us are perfect. But we have this perfect expectation of how we should and could be in our heads - thinner, fitter, more sensible with money, happier with friends. But we all fail. We just tend to fail in different ways. Some of us are luckier, their satiety levels are lower, their kidney disease markers are low, no bowel cancer, no mental illness. Those people won’t need high insurance premiums. But the point…

[deleted]

Re: FDA denies petition against use of phthalates in food packaging

#168

Post by Dig1t »

Aurornis wrote: post #47

I was surprised to learn that some of the highest concentrations of phthalates can be found in alcoholic beverages in glass bottles (Table 3: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7460375/ ) This occurs due to the plastics used in producing the alcoholic beverages combined with ethanol (alcohol) acting as a solvent to liberate the phthalates I was equally surprised to learn that the food industry was already m…

Do you have a source for the tubing thing?

Re: FDA denies petition against use of phthalates in food packaging

#169

Post by [deleted] »

s1artibartfast wrote: post #143
__MatrixMan__ wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because we exist. Admittedly, "healthy enough to procreate" is not a high bar, but it's pretty good in comparison with no bar at all. Yeah, there are cases where they were unaware of the harm--like lead. We should absolutely be finding better ways to identify and mitigate harms of that sort. But in the absence of reliable information from such efforts, natural==safe is a viable heuristic. And I'd say that our scienti…

I think natural==safe is a terrible heuristic for the exact reason you said. Healthy enough to procreate is a low bar, and many natural things provide a benefit in terms of procreation but detrimental to health. Almost everything in nature is a trade-off between how much it'll harm you and how much it'll help you procreate. This reminds me of how whales get the Bends from diving despite 50 million years of evolution.…

[deleted]

Re: FDA denies petition against use of phthalates in food packaging

#170

Post by Dig1t »

Anyone who doubts that these chemicals are actually causing harm to the general population should read the book “Count Down”.

It goes into great detail on the evidence for harm and the details of how these chemicals work.

https://www.amazon.com/Count-Down-Threatening-Reproductive-D...

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