This is just an analysis of some cups on a campus in India so I agree that it's interesting and worth looking at but possibly not directly comparable with products which meet EU / UK / USA food contact regulations.
Sample B seems to have vastly mode copper and manganese leaching out than the other samples.
> Researchers in India reveal drinking coffee and other hot beverages from paper cups can release tens of thousands of potentially harmful plastic particles into your drink.
First of all bio-polymers is nothing new and revolutionary. The first plastics where bio-polymers like bakelite made from cellulose. The only reason we started making polymers from oil is because it's a rest product from the oil-industry and thus cheap but the inherent properties of polymers are the same whether they come from oil or plants and they typically don't break down in nature. The only positive thing with plant based polymers is that they could to some degree be considered carbon neutral.
But there seems to be a lot of misunderstanding that keeps spreading because we inherently think bio-polymers should be bio-degradable because they are made from organic material. There is one bio-based polymer in particular, PLA that is actually said to be bio-degredable and used in paper cups but this is in industrial facilities and not in nature where the degrading process is at lest 70 years under optimal circumstances.
And there are more problems with polymers then just the fact that they don't brake down in nature. They contain toxic and endocrine disrupting chemicals like BPA.
I don't understand the attractiveness of plastic for stuff when perfectly good alternatives exist. People have been using glass for hundreds of years and I'm not aware of any studies showing it's harmful.
We used glass bottles for milk when our kids were young. The only people to ever break them was us: around 3 total during the course of raising 3 kids.
That's some interesting calculus there. You don't want to wash 2 cups for a total time investment of 60 seconds, so you choose to generate extraordinary waste to save 30 seconds, damage the environment and your health. Makes complete sense to me.
Not to mention if you're using the cup for only water and you're the only user then you can easily get away with washing it once a week or less. Washing a water glass after every usage is extraordinarily wasteful.
Because perfectly good alternatives don’t exist? i.e. glass is far more expensive to produce and ship, it’s heavy and brittle etc.
Glasses are great, and have some wonderful properties, but so do the the various plastics–they’re responsible for raising living standards for millions of people.
Glass, ceramics, wood and metal are my preferred materials in the kitchen especially. I do have plastic containers for storage, but I try to avoid heating anything in them. I've also settled on stainless steel, carbon steel and (enameled) cast iron for cookware, rather than non-stick.
Wood and metal utensils just feel better in the hand than plastic ones.
I'm not sure whether the eureka moment you're talking about has already happened, with our discovery of just how prevalent microplastics are everywhere in the environment now.
For me, kitchen tools are mostly metal and wood, with a few silicone spatulas. Containers are mostly ceramics, with some glasses.
The only plastics in kitchen necessary for me are cling wraps. There are a few other hings out of my control: the nob of the pot lid and the dish soap container. But they all have viable alternatives if the manufacturers are willing.
Plastic cups, plates, bowls are unsafe close to heat sources, a lot harder to clean than everything else, and just feels cheap. I really don't get the popularity of plastics in kitchen.
Not really. it’s just harder to prove it means that this is not like asbestos.
When the harmful effects of asbestos were first learned, sick and dead people showed up and then a relationship between asbestos dose and illness was subsequently established.
The first time I was in India as a kid (7) these were how you got a cup of chai on the train, you could just chuck it out the window afterwards. When I went back 10 years later it was all plastic cups :(
>Researchers say these nearly-invisible microplastics are becoming a major threat to human health. They’re typically less than 0.2 inches across, but can be as small as one-fiftieth the width of a human hair.
Less than 0.2 inches across huh...technically true I suppose.
TIL, plastics degrade into millions of tiny pieces in only 15 minutes of exposure to coffee... and yet remain non-biodegradable for thousands of years.
"Fluorescence microscopy indicated the release of approximately 25,000 micron-sized microplastic particles into one cup of hot water in 15 minutes" is directly from the article. They claim it's not just the ions.
They listed a bunch of things, some of which are in fact bad (although "it's the dose that makes the poison"). But "ions" is pointlessly generic and makes the whole story suspicious (after all what are you drinking when you drink salt water? OMG ions!)
I'm not sure but it seems like biodegradable plastics are easier to degrade by design. Most won't degrade under ambient conditions (since you don't want your spoon dissolving into your soup...), but heat is one of the main ways to accelerate breakdown. I dunno if they might degrade into less-toxic compounds, though.
A big irony of course is that disposable cups were once good for your health. Since they are only used once, they're fairly sanitary, and were the great pandemic startup idea of 1918.
> Overall, the BfR tested 228 bamboo mugs for formaldehyde and 180 for melamine. In each case, more than 35% of the cups released harmful substances in amounts that surpassed safety limits. Moreover, the amount of melamine – but not formaldehyde – the mugs released increased with repeated exposure to hot and slightly acidic liquids.
There is no contradiction at all between the idea that something can be good for preventing the spread of germs and also basically poisoning you. These are two entirely different issues.
If you can avoid both at the same time, terrific! If you can only avoid one, avoid the germs. They will kill you faster.
(Ideally, you also work at reducing/limiting how much exposure you have to the thing poisoning you. Edit: One possible solution here is to drink your coffee cold, such as frappuccino drinks. Even in the same cup, it should be far less of an issue.)
I’ve been following the advice of a dr who studies estrogenation and how that’s bad for both man and woman. He has a list of alternative products/materials you can use:
https://www.ajconsultingcompany.com/whatiuse.html#
I’m no scientist, but this always seemed intuitive to me with the plastic-like lining inside disposable cups (BPA?). There’s just no way combining this with near-boiling liquid could be good.
Of course, none of that has prevented me consuming as much coffee from disposable cups as the average urban professional type...
I am asking this question out of true intellectual curiosity: Could someone please link me a study which shows strong evidence for micro-plastics being harmful to health, that goes beyond finding "potential" harm? – Thank you!
Seriously, I am looking. So far every study I have found — linking micro-plastics to physical harm done to multicellular organisms — had the phrase "potential" (or a derivative) in it.
I dislike plastic as much as the next guy, but I slowly get the feeling: the harmful effects of plastic have the same level of scientific proof as harm caused by radiation of mobile phones — inconclusive to likely _none_.
The label has a slit in it so you can avoid this. Wrap the string around the cup handle (or spoon if you don't have a handle) and slot it into the slit to fasten. It will never fall into the water again.
The question is VERY fair, and I don't want to undermine it. I just want to be the first to say that given the huge potential impact, "potential" is bad enough.
When dealing with probabilities there are two measures that need to be considered independently: probability and effect. Traditional statistics multiplies them into "expected utility" and works just with the aggregated value. But that's tricky, because effect is not a continuous function. Imagine a pebble falling on your head plotted based on its weight - there'll be sharp discontinuities at "hurts", "commotion" and "death".
At society's level there are also similar discontinuities. Something that may cause tens of million of cases of cancer over time should be in a separate category from a medicine that may suddenly kill a few hundred people, even though the latter has a bigger emotional impact.
As to why there has been only papers stating potential harm, I believe that is due to the long term study cycle. When can a researcher positively conclude confirmed harm?
In humans, that could take a lifetime, maybe two.
Other animals must also be studied, but doing that can be much more difficult and resource intensive. Here thinking about marine life primarily.
Point being, everything thus far learned points to harm in the long term. Long term studies have only begun in the last 10-20years I believe, and could be that we will be waiting for further still
Disrupting any part of a complex system is dangerous to the stability of the system. How can ocean life distinguish between food and small pieces of plastic?
I've seen so many photos of dead fish filled with plastic that it must be a concern to the food supply chain.
Most of the time, it is not plastics themselves, but the hundreds of chemical additives that each plastic has, like plastifiers, ph and surface tension modifiers.
The most important is hormone-like compounds like Bisphenol A (BPA) because hormones are chemical compounds that are used as signals and its effect cascade multiplied by billions in the body, so super small amounts can affect you enormously.
They are being replaced, but new compounds also have hormone like response.
Because biology works by "shape is function" lots of chemical compounds can affect your body because they resemble the one we need for our body's normal function, and the body receptors are confused.
This has extensively been proven that happens, what we don't know is what dose could be ok. For example, you can use(without problems) fleece outside clothing if there is not a big part of your skin in contact with the fleece, like what happened with kid's pajamas, that was very problematic.
Probing that on humans is something similar to covid vaccine testing. It is extremely expensive and bureaucratic process and only gives us statistical results. Knowing exactly what happened is extremely difficult or impossible in practice because there are hundreds of chemical compounds, and they interfere with each other creating factorial combinations. But we know it breaks havoc in your body for sure.
You also should avoid heat because it makes chemical diffusion exponentially higher. When you eat your soda can, the PET layer,is at ambient temperature. When you eat coffee or tea, it is hot.
You may try searching for the components present in certain microplastics that are harmful, e.g. (BPA) bisphenol A [0].
Microplastics that have been generated from plastics containing BPA that are then lodged into the food chain from a very low level will have serious consequences, as BPA is an endocrine disrupter, and shown to negatively affect many physiologial systems including human sperm [1].
In practice several plastics compounds are chemically too 'similar' to estrogen (the 'female' hormone).
The plastics with these estrogen like compounds typical either mechanically breakdown (microplastics) or leach due to chemical breakdown (e.g. caused by contact with high temperature liquids or acidic solutions).
Once absorbed it may confuse your body as a 'pseudo estrogen' hormone. This acts as an endocrine disruptor, potentially more so for Males of animal species because of their hormonal profile.
We’re in the grip of anti-plastic mania, to the extent that when heavy metals are discovered in a beverage container, the focus is inevitably on microplastics.
Since we’ve no idea who manufactured these containers, and since they contain heavy metals, I’m going to suggest that they didn’t come from the likes of Starbucks.
65 comments
[ 2.8 ms ] story [ 124 ms ] threadWhile it still a valuable discover, I think it's too early to make any conclusions yet due to fairly limited source.
Sample B seems to have vastly mode copper and manganese leaching out than the other samples.
In summary, paper is not the problem here.
First of all bio-polymers is nothing new and revolutionary. The first plastics where bio-polymers like bakelite made from cellulose. The only reason we started making polymers from oil is because it's a rest product from the oil-industry and thus cheap but the inherent properties of polymers are the same whether they come from oil or plants and they typically don't break down in nature. The only positive thing with plant based polymers is that they could to some degree be considered carbon neutral.
But there seems to be a lot of misunderstanding that keeps spreading because we inherently think bio-polymers should be bio-degradable because they are made from organic material. There is one bio-based polymer in particular, PLA that is actually said to be bio-degredable and used in paper cups but this is in industrial facilities and not in nature where the degrading process is at lest 70 years under optimal circumstances.
And there are more problems with polymers then just the fact that they don't brake down in nature. They contain toxic and endocrine disrupting chemicals like BPA.
Glass, silicone and plant-based materials are the logical solution here
We used glass bottles for milk when our kids were young. The only people to ever break them was us: around 3 total during the course of raising 3 kids.
At work I have a glass mug for coffee, but I still use paper cups for water. If I replace it with glass it means I will now have 2 things to wash.
What about the dish washer? Isn’t that convenient? If it is environmentally friendly or not that’s another question.
Glasses are great, and have some wonderful properties, but so do the the various plastics–they’re responsible for raising living standards for millions of people.
It's effects on people's hormones are just starting to be understood and known.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Endocrine_disruptor
Wood and metal utensils just feel better in the hand than plastic ones.
I'm not sure whether the eureka moment you're talking about has already happened, with our discovery of just how prevalent microplastics are everywhere in the environment now.
The only plastics in kitchen necessary for me are cling wraps. There are a few other hings out of my control: the nob of the pot lid and the dish soap container. But they all have viable alternatives if the manufacturers are willing.
Plastic cups, plates, bowls are unsafe close to heat sources, a lot harder to clean than everything else, and just feels cheap. I really don't get the popularity of plastics in kitchen.
When the harmful effects of asbestos were first learned, sick and dead people showed up and then a relationship between asbestos dose and illness was subsequently established.
https://www.aljazeera.com/gallery/2016/10/26/kolkatas-age-ol...
Less than 0.2 inches across huh...technically true I suppose.
Seems only one of these can be true.
https://www.fastcompany.com/90520298/how-dixie-cups-became-t...
If it's one of the recently trendy 'bamboo' cups, I'm fairly certain most of them are made of predominately with melamine.
https://www.chemistryworld.com/news/reusable-bamboo-mugs-lea...
> Overall, the BfR tested 228 bamboo mugs for formaldehyde and 180 for melamine. In each case, more than 35% of the cups released harmful substances in amounts that surpassed safety limits. Moreover, the amount of melamine – but not formaldehyde – the mugs released increased with repeated exposure to hot and slightly acidic liquids.
https://bluebottlecoffee.com/store/blue-bottle-x-ecoffee-cup
If you can avoid both at the same time, terrific! If you can only avoid one, avoid the germs. They will kill you faster.
(Ideally, you also work at reducing/limiting how much exposure you have to the thing poisoning you. Edit: One possible solution here is to drink your coffee cold, such as frappuccino drinks. Even in the same cup, it should be far less of an issue.)
Of course, none of that has prevented me consuming as much coffee from disposable cups as the average urban professional type...
Seriously, I am looking. So far every study I have found — linking micro-plastics to physical harm done to multicellular organisms — had the phrase "potential" (or a derivative) in it.
I dislike plastic as much as the next guy, but I slowly get the feeling: the harmful effects of plastic have the same level of scientific proof as harm caused by radiation of mobile phones — inconclusive to likely _none_.
When dealing with probabilities there are two measures that need to be considered independently: probability and effect. Traditional statistics multiplies them into "expected utility" and works just with the aggregated value. But that's tricky, because effect is not a continuous function. Imagine a pebble falling on your head plotted based on its weight - there'll be sharp discontinuities at "hurts", "commotion" and "death".
At society's level there are also similar discontinuities. Something that may cause tens of million of cases of cancer over time should be in a separate category from a medicine that may suddenly kill a few hundred people, even though the latter has a bigger emotional impact.
I've seen so many photos of dead fish filled with plastic that it must be a concern to the food supply chain.
And absence of evidence != evidence of absence.
The most important is hormone-like compounds like Bisphenol A (BPA) because hormones are chemical compounds that are used as signals and its effect cascade multiplied by billions in the body, so super small amounts can affect you enormously.
They are being replaced, but new compounds also have hormone like response.
Because biology works by "shape is function" lots of chemical compounds can affect your body because they resemble the one we need for our body's normal function, and the body receptors are confused.
This has extensively been proven that happens, what we don't know is what dose could be ok. For example, you can use(without problems) fleece outside clothing if there is not a big part of your skin in contact with the fleece, like what happened with kid's pajamas, that was very problematic.
Probing that on humans is something similar to covid vaccine testing. It is extremely expensive and bureaucratic process and only gives us statistical results. Knowing exactly what happened is extremely difficult or impossible in practice because there are hundreds of chemical compounds, and they interfere with each other creating factorial combinations. But we know it breaks havoc in your body for sure.
You also should avoid heat because it makes chemical diffusion exponentially higher. When you eat your soda can, the PET layer,is at ambient temperature. When you eat coffee or tea, it is hot.
Microplastics that have been generated from plastics containing BPA that are then lodged into the food chain from a very low level will have serious consequences, as BPA is an endocrine disrupter, and shown to negatively affect many physiologial systems including human sperm [1].
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bisphenol_A [1] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S08906...
edit for context:
In practice several plastics compounds are chemically too 'similar' to estrogen (the 'female' hormone).
The plastics with these estrogen like compounds typical either mechanically breakdown (microplastics) or leach due to chemical breakdown (e.g. caused by contact with high temperature liquids or acidic solutions).
Once absorbed it may confuse your body as a 'pseudo estrogen' hormone. This acts as an endocrine disruptor, potentially more so for Males of animal species because of their hormonal profile.
We’re in the grip of anti-plastic mania, to the extent that when heavy metals are discovered in a beverage container, the focus is inevitably on microplastics.
Since we’ve no idea who manufactured these containers, and since they contain heavy metals, I’m going to suggest that they didn’t come from the likes of Starbucks.