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FDA denies petition against use of phthalates in food packaging

fda.gov

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

#41

Post by OutOfHere »

tcoff91 wrote: post #19
OutOfHere wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wouldn't do it. The dust gets in the air, and also absorbs via the skin while walking. Not only would you be putting your own health at risk, but that of any family members and/or pets too.

Isn't most carpet made of synthetic fibers? i'm not sure how staying with carpet is any better. And I can't imagine that polyurethane finish on hardwood floors is good either.

To my knowledge, olefin synthetic carpet is not known to contain phthalates. I would however avoid the ones that claim to be stain-resistant, as they're more likely to contain iffy coatings.

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

#42

Post by lazide »

vundercind wrote: post #28
tcoff91 wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't most carpet made of synthetic fibers? i'm not sure how staying with carpet is any better. And I can't imagine that polyurethane finish on hardwood floors is good either.

Yeah, and I bet even the expensive wool stuff that only rich people buy is treated with scotch guard and flame retardants with questionable health effects.

Bonus - scotch guard == PFAS

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

#43

Post by balls187 »

OutOfHere wrote: post #30
balls187 wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think more people would get significant benefit from using sun block daily then obsessing over minutiae like this.

[flagged]

Arguing that an argument is bad simply due to logical fallacy is also a logical fallacy.

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

#44

Post by lazide »

vkou wrote: post #33
cabirum wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I do think this is heavily overblown to get more research grants financed.

I think the onus on proving safety should be on the people selling products, not on some third party to prove that those products are dangerous. Otherwise, we get vendors poisoning us for decades, and then whoopsie-daisies pleading ignorance. And even when they get held accountable (almost never), the value that remains in the vendor is insufficient to compensate for the damage inflicted on us. Heads I lose, tails th…

But how can anyone prove safety here? On anything? I’m unaware of any substance which isn’t dangerous or harmful in some context. Even sand!

What is the actual bar?

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

#45

Post by OutOfHere »

oooyay wrote: post #20
delichon wrote: post #3

I'm about to replace my carpet and linoleum floor with 8mm "vinyl planks" that are 80% PVC. So since I'll be scuffing the floor and breathing the emissions most of the day for up to the rest of my life, it's at least a little encouraging that the FDA doesn't find a basis to ban it in food packaging. It's not that I trust the FDA, but more that I can't really afford hardwood or tile, so it's what I want to hear.

You can have VOC testing done to determine if yours are off-gassing. That's the real test, not the FDA. Generally speaking Luxury Vinyl Planks are the way to go if you don't want to risk off-gassing.

A simple TVOC & HCHO meter at home should imho be a low-cost first step, indicating a need for improved ventilation, or for eliminating questionable sources of the gassing. The alcohol hand sanitizer sets off the TVOC reading though.

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

#46

Post by stouset »

spandrew wrote: post #29

I think it's pretty clear the microplastics fear-mongering doesn't have a lot of credible evidence to back it. Of course no one wants tiny plastic particles floating around the environment. But the claim here is... does it harm you? Is it toxic? How dense are the particulates per millilitre? Very little to suggest anything substantial. Just a reminder that the holistic and wellness industry that sells you detoxes for…

Evidence-based decisions matter, but so does extreme caution when considering the scale and widespread impact. There was no evidence against leaded gasoline… right up until there was, and by then everyone had been breathing exponentially-increasing amounts of lead.

So maybe 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 yeah?

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

#47

Post by Aurornis »

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 moving toward using fewer phthalate plasticizers already. More recent sampling efforts have actually found fewer or sometimes no phthalates at all in tubing, whereas decades ago it was ubiquitous.

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

#48

Post by afh1 »

austinkhale wrote: post #6

Feels like this is going to become one of those things we look back on in retrospect and regret. We should be full steam ahead on identifying what effects microplastics & phthalates more broadly are having on our health & adjust accordingly. Early indications seem... not great.

Which indications are those? Honest question. I don't know much about this. Since plastic is one of the most biologically neutral/non-interacting materials I've never been too concerned, though I suppose in certain forms and over certain amounts it could be harmful?

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

#49

Post by abeppu »

A bunch of comments here are roughly "there's not great evidence that these are harmful" -- but is that the right standard? Or should there be an obligation to provide evidence that something is "safe" in order to use it in some consumer applications (like food packaging)? It's tempting to say that we should conclusively establish that something isn't harmful before we use it absolutely everywhere ... but what standard of evidence would be both achievable and ethical?

Because generally people aren't getting acutely ill after eating food from a plastic package, we're left with the possibility that accumulative impacts over years might be harmful -- but it doesn't seem feasible to run long term studies where a treatment group is exposed to plastics for decades and a control group is not. It hardly seems achievable to do correlation studies, because you often don't know what's been in the packaging for all the food you've consumed, which may not even be in your control.

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

#50

Post by throwway120385 »

tcoff91 wrote: post #19
OutOfHere wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wouldn't do it. The dust gets in the air, and also absorbs via the skin while walking. Not only would you be putting your own health at risk, but that of any family members and/or pets too.

Isn't most carpet made of synthetic fibers? i'm not sure how staying with carpet is any better. And I can't imagine that polyurethane finish on hardwood floors is good either.

I would probably resin coat my floor instead of using urethane, but I would agree there. Even concrete floor contains silicates. I also wonder what kind of microparticles scuff off of a tile floor.

Shellac or traditional varnish are probably the only things you could put on your floor that aren't produced with an industrial process. Shellac in particular is the harvested secretions of a beetle that have been cleaned and dissolved in alcohol. But it's water-soluble and so probably not appropriate for use on a wood floor. You could also use tung oil or boiled linseed oil but you'd have to sand down to #0000 steel wool to get it to shine like urethane. Tung oil is a nice coating because it doesn't turn orange like BLO, but either one you will have to keep applying every few years or the floor will stop repelling water.

Obviously we'd end up with huge Tung plantations or Shellac plantations if we tried to replace all of our floor coverings with this stuff.

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