Everytime I've seen something about plastics being a health risk, it's not the main polymer (eg. PET, LDPE, HDPE, etc.) that's pointed out, it's the plasticizers. Because plasticizers are not chemically bound to the polymer, it does make sense that they are more likely to have a biological effect than the polymers, as the polymer is generally a fairly stable molecule chain.
The polymers themselves can degrade, though. Especially with plastic items that have been exposed to the sun for long periods of time, the polymers can break down. I wonder if this degradation could also be a health risk, as many polymers are hydrocarbons, which do have known health risks.
I wonder if this degradation could also be a health risk, as many polymers are hydrocarbons, which do have known health risks.
Would you consider wax and vaseline as "health risks? Or mineral oil? Those are basically polyethylene but at much lower molecular weights. The hydrocarbons you're probably thinking of (octane and below) are even lower, but e.g. propane and butane aren't actually particularly toxic.
> Would you consider wax and vaseline as "health risks? Or mineral oil?
I would consider anything we didn't have in our environment until very recently a health risk, simply because it's a form of "testing previously untested inputs in production"
Edit: To be clear, in the context of evolution, I would eyeball "very recently" at about 100,000 years.
Mineral oil does have some health risks (potential endocrine disruption and carcinogen).
Waxes are a huge category. I would guess some do and some don't. Beeswax for example has 300 chemicals in it, some may be beneficial and some could be harmful.
Vaseline is supposed to be largely safe. There are various grades of petroleum jelly, some of which could be carcinogenic.
Exactly. A person today could eat honey and use beeswax in food every day if they wanted to. This would not have been available to anyone 10k years ago.
Many substances have been in our environment for millions of years. Lead has been around for ages. A substance being "natural" or having been around for 100,000+ years does not necessarily correlate to safe.
I would far more trust a new substance that has been tested thoughtfully.
This sounds an awful lot like asking job candidates for 10 years of experience in a technology that is only 2 years old. Nothing new will ever be created again.
People have burned peat or used lead for centuries, which is horrible for your health. Just because humans have had something in the environment historically doesn't mean it's safe.
I don't think centuries is long enough. We don't seem to have finished evolving our coping strategies for alcohol and lactose and it is probably 20,000 years since those were added to our environment. And in both cases, we already had a head start - there has been trace amounts of alcohol in overripe fruit and lactose in breast milk, basically forever.
Evolution only corrects as much as is required for reproduction; and as far as reproduction is concerned, avoidance is just as good of a response as tolerance.
Humans have evolved to cope with lactose and alcohol. Getting sick is that response. This is the same in how we've evolved to live with fire. Not because evolution can magically make us invincible to chemical combustion -- instead we have pain receptors and learn to avoid it.
A minor quibble, though I agree with your point overall: lactose intolerance is not an adaptive response to something harmful in lactose (the way getting sick from alcohol is), it's more of an efficiency hack: since mammals normally only consume lactose as babies, our bodies stop producing the lactase enzyme around the time we stop breast-feeding, so we stop being able to digest this type of sugar, which we would normally never encounter again (or no more than trace amounts).
Some 20k years ago, some of our ancestors started consuming milk even in adulthood, and it turned out a few of them had a mutation that allowed them to continue producing lactase even in adulthood. Since milk is actually a very nutritious substance if you can farm it, these people thrived and passed on their genes, in some areas.
Yes, but it's interesting to contrast with alcohol sickness. The reason people without lactase get sick from lactose is because the lactose passes most of their digestive tract intact, and is then broken down by bacteria in their intestines, releasing gas, causing mechanical pressures on their intestines that are perceived as pain and other symptoms.
In the case of alcohol, our body detects the alck of balance and other neural impacts, classifies this as a poisoning, and it tries to provoke vomiting to eliminate as much as possible of the poison. It's explicitly an adaptive response that we developed to survive consumption of poisonous substances.
It's a different biological means to the same evolutionary ends. Maybe the additional involuntary processes associated with alcohol were evolutionarily necessary because humans also experience other feelings which induce the consumption of alcohol. I mean, milk is fine, but we don't call it happy-hour when we drink milk. :)
Rubber is similar to plastic in many regards. Here's how chemicals in rubber car tires find their way into water supplies and kill salmon. Lots of salmon. Most of this stuff we don't find out about for like 50 years, and usually on a fluke discovery. We trusted the science at the time.
Good to see this study coming out. There's surprisingly little research like this considering how ubiquitous pthalates and plastics are in our food/drink and physical environments.
In the late noughties everyone switched off BPA to other plastics that, as far as I can tell, are just less studied.
The average consumer also needs to be aware that the bar for a 'new' substance is actually fairly low depending on the country's regulations.
Very often they just have to prove that the substance is not bio-toxic, which roughly translates to "we injected X into the subdermy or blood stream of 20x bunnies and none of them died".
> Those laser printed receipts that virtually every business hands you when you buy anything, are dusted with BPA to help the print develop.
Not in the EU anymore, as of 2nd January of 2020[0]:
> As of the 2nd of January 2020, thermal paper (commonly used to make till receipts) with a Bisphenol A (BPA) concentration equal to or higher than 0.02% can no longer be sold in Europe, effectively banning its use.
I'm hoping that they're not just switching to BPB/BPF/BPS etc.
Unfortunately, I'd eager that they're doing exactly that.
>BPS in thermal paper
The receipts we receive when we buy groceries, prescriptions, gas, clothing, restaurant meals, and much more are generally printed on thermal paper coated with either Bisphenol-A (BPA) or its chemical cousin Bisphenol-S (BPS)
We've known about cholesterol and cardiovascular risks and how to reduce them for decades. The problem isn't access to information, it's false information creating incorrect or purposefully conflicting narratives which confuse and debase science.
Dietary cholesterol is actually pretty weakly correlated with cardiovascular disease, and yet people have significantly changed their behaviors (for the worse, most likely) in the years since this mistaken science proliferated - the infamous replacement of high-fat diets with high-sugar ones.
You're working on old research. All newer research points to no correlation. Even worse, all attempts to reduce CVD by reducing blood cholesterol have completely failed as well, in several large scale clinically controlled trials.
> For years, dietary cholesterol was implicated in increasing blood cholesterol levels leading to the elevated risk of CVD. To date, extensive research did not show evidence to support a role of dietary cholesterol in the development of CVD.
Anyone know what I as a consumer what can I do to reduce my risk? Not use plastic water bottles? Not use plastic food containers? Not use plastic knives and forks? Plastic bags? Plastic storage containers?
Learn what PP, ABS, PET, HDPE and LDPE are (the safest plastics), how to spot/identify what items are made out of it, and avoid literally everything else plastic that isn't one of these.
Everything you mentioned are actually mostly polyethylene (PE), polypropylene or PET with the exception of plastic utensils which are sometimes made from a hard form of polystyrene, and some takeout food containers.
Besides a general reduction in plastic use, one thing to consider is that plasticizers are more prone to escape the bulk plastic via liquids and under heat. Try to avoid heat and try to use plastics when they will remain dry.
It’s actually easier than you think to mostly cut out plastic from food and drink. If you mostly cook at home— use paper/cloth bags at the grocery store, buy unprocessed foods, get meat, fish, deli, cheese etc paper wrapped, get drinks in aluminum or glass bottles, use only glass to store and drink water with at home. Some plastic use on processed foods is unavoidable but I’m trying to reduce exposure as much as possible. Another thing is to switch out your shampoo, soaps, dish washing liquid etc. for EWG certified products with no pthalates, parabens etc. Also vinegar instead of disinfectants to clean surfaces in the home.
Lots of 'paper' wrapping use a thin coat of plastic to keep the paper from leaking, at least where I live. Glass bottles are pretty rare for drinks these days, though avoiding sugary drinks and drinking tap water instead of bottle water fixes much of that (well, that and alcohol, I suppose).
Also, not sure why you would recommend vinegar instead of alcohol. Vinegar is barely a disinfectant, and often leaves residue of its own.
Any recently-built home probably has plastic water supply pipes throughout. They're crazy easy (so, less and less-skilled labor required, so cheaper) to install, and the material's cheap. Unless you custom-build and pay a lot extra for copper, that's almost certainly what you're getting.
Most anything canned in aluminum or steel is in contact with the plastic liner that ~all cans have. Veggies, beans, sauces, beer, et c.
> Glass bottles are pretty rare for drinks these days
You pay extra for it, but you can still easily find mineral water in glass. Soda, too, at least for Coca Cola and a bunch of alternative brands, is easy to find in glass. Beer and wine, obviously, though, at least for wine you pay a premium to get low-end wine in glass rather than in a plastic bag ("box wine").
Because phthalates are ubiquitous, it's good to take a "best bang for your buck" approach when it comes to reducing your exposure to them. The two major things to watch out for are making sure to never heat plastic containers, as other commenters have pointed out, but the second is to very closely watch what you put on your skin. Many cosmetics contain phthalates, and many phthalates are readily absorbed by the skin.
It's also important to note that the systemic effects of phthalates include endocrine disruption, and the consequences of the endocrine system being disrupted are potentially severe. There's evidence to link declining testosterone levels in males to plasticizers.
* Avoid the use of plastic containers for food/drinks if you can.
* If you must use a plastic container, definitely don't heat it up, don't use it for oily foods, wash it before putting your food in it, and try to avoid mechanical stress/deformation while your food is in it.
* Avoid canned food if you can, unless you know that the can doesn't have an endocrine-disrupting liner.
* Avoid touching receipts if you can.
* If you must touch a receipt, make sure your hands are dry while you're touching it, and wash your hands afterward.
* Don't buy a new car (outgassing plasticizers are what give it that new car smell).
You are joking from my typo but it is actually true. All those computer cables are heavily impregnated with phthalates and usually sitting in warm areas. Do not put them in your mouth, and wash your hands after touching.
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[ 3.2 ms ] story [ 123 ms ] threadThe polymers themselves can degrade, though. Especially with plastic items that have been exposed to the sun for long periods of time, the polymers can break down. I wonder if this degradation could also be a health risk, as many polymers are hydrocarbons, which do have known health risks.
I wonder if this degradation could also be a health risk, as many polymers are hydrocarbons, which do have known health risks.
Would you consider wax and vaseline as "health risks? Or mineral oil? Those are basically polyethylene but at much lower molecular weights. The hydrocarbons you're probably thinking of (octane and below) are even lower, but e.g. propane and butane aren't actually particularly toxic.
I would consider anything we didn't have in our environment until very recently a health risk, simply because it's a form of "testing previously untested inputs in production"
Edit: To be clear, in the context of evolution, I would eyeball "very recently" at about 100,000 years.
If it takes a long time to have an effect and is linked to many other comorbidities (as will be the case for obesity at least).
Waxes are a huge category. I would guess some do and some don't. Beeswax for example has 300 chemicals in it, some may be beneficial and some could be harmful.
Vaseline is supposed to be largely safe. There are various grades of petroleum jelly, some of which could be carcinogenic.
I would far more trust a new substance that has been tested thoughtfully.
I would prefer older substances that have a large battery of testing. This time also allows some group-think or other new product bias to dissipate.
Humans have evolved to cope with lactose and alcohol. Getting sick is that response. This is the same in how we've evolved to live with fire. Not because evolution can magically make us invincible to chemical combustion -- instead we have pain receptors and learn to avoid it.
Some 20k years ago, some of our ancestors started consuming milk even in adulthood, and it turned out a few of them had a mutation that allowed them to continue producing lactase even in adulthood. Since milk is actually a very nutritious substance if you can farm it, these people thrived and passed on their genes, in some areas.
I was thinking more generally: "someone drinks milk, they get sick, they don't drink it, don't die".
In the case of alcohol, our body detects the alck of balance and other neural impacts, classifies this as a poisoning, and it tries to provoke vomiting to eliminate as much as possible of the poison. It's explicitly an adaptive response that we developed to survive consumption of poisonous substances.
Our evolutionary ancestors could’ve involuntarily consumed alcohol way before 20k BC.
https://www.science.org/content/article/common-tire-chemical...
In the late noughties everyone switched off BPA to other plastics that, as far as I can tell, are just less studied.
Very often they just have to prove that the substance is not bio-toxic, which roughly translates to "we injected X into the subdermy or blood stream of 20x bunnies and none of them died".
https://www.epa.gov/sciencematters/are-bpa-substitutes-any-s...
Those laser printed receipts that virtually every business hands you when you buy anything, are dusted with BPA to help the print develop.
Not in the EU anymore, as of 2nd January of 2020[0]:
> As of the 2nd of January 2020, thermal paper (commonly used to make till receipts) with a Bisphenol A (BPA) concentration equal to or higher than 0.02% can no longer be sold in Europe, effectively banning its use.
I'm hoping that they're not just switching to BPB/BPF/BPS etc.
[0] https://planetark.org/newsroom/archive/4892
>BPS in thermal paper The receipts we receive when we buy groceries, prescriptions, gas, clothing, restaurant meals, and much more are generally printed on thermal paper coated with either Bisphenol-A (BPA) or its chemical cousin Bisphenol-S (BPS)
BTW these should never be placed in with other paper for recycling as the chemicals in the thermal paper will contaminate the rest of the paper.
https://ehp.niehs.nih.gov/doi/10.1289/EHP9262
This is exactly what I'm talking about - the opposite of what you say is actually true.
Here is an example of such a modern study:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6024687/
> For years, dietary cholesterol was implicated in increasing blood cholesterol levels leading to the elevated risk of CVD. To date, extensive research did not show evidence to support a role of dietary cholesterol in the development of CVD.
That's why. New "research" is mostly paid-for industry propaganda, and you've found a piece of it.
Everything you mentioned are actually mostly polyethylene (PE), polypropylene or PET with the exception of plastic utensils which are sometimes made from a hard form of polystyrene, and some takeout food containers.
Also, not sure why you would recommend vinegar instead of alcohol. Vinegar is barely a disinfectant, and often leaves residue of its own.
Most anything canned in aluminum or steel is in contact with the plastic liner that ~all cans have. Veggies, beans, sauces, beer, et c.
> Glass bottles are pretty rare for drinks these days
You pay extra for it, but you can still easily find mineral water in glass. Soda, too, at least for Coca Cola and a bunch of alternative brands, is easy to find in glass. Beer and wine, obviously, though, at least for wine you pay a premium to get low-end wine in glass rather than in a plastic bag ("box wine").
Glass isn’t all that uncommon and aluminum is ubiquitous.
Alcohol works too, just make sure it has no methanol that kids and pets might lick.
Otherwise, definitely don’t heat or use hot stuff in plastics.
Unfortunately many non-plastic containers food comes in have linings that can be plastic
It's also important to note that the systemic effects of phthalates include endocrine disruption, and the consequences of the endocrine system being disrupted are potentially severe. There's evidence to link declining testosterone levels in males to plasticizers.
* If you must use a plastic container, definitely don't heat it up, don't use it for oily foods, wash it before putting your food in it, and try to avoid mechanical stress/deformation while your food is in it.
* Avoid canned food if you can, unless you know that the can doesn't have an endocrine-disrupting liner.
* Avoid touching receipts if you can.
* If you must touch a receipt, make sure your hands are dry while you're touching it, and wash your hands afterward.
* Don't buy a new car (outgassing plasticizers are what give it that new car smell).
* Don't use scented candles/soap.
* Clean up dust in your house regularly.
Edit: DCHP (a phthalate) not DHCP
https://newatlas.com/environment/microplastics-blood-brain-b...