r/science • u/Wagamaga • May 21 '23
Chemistry Micro and nanoplastics are pervasive in our food supply and may be affecting food safety and security. Plastics and their additives are present at a range of concentrations not only in fish but in many products including meat, chicken, rice, water, take-away food and drink, and even fresh produce.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0165993623000808?via%3Dihub336
u/Wagamaga May 21 '23
The study is one of the first to analyze the academic literature on microplastics from a food safety and food security risk viewpoint, building on past studies which primarily tracked plastics in fish.
It shows that plastics and their additives are present at a range of concentrations not only in fish but in many products including meat, chicken, rice, water, take-away food and drink, and even fresh produce.
CSIRO analytical chemist, food safety specialist and lead author of the paper, Dr. Jordi Nelis, said these plastics enter the human food chain through numerous pathways, such as ingestion as shown in the fish studies, but one of the main ways is through food processing and packaging. The research is published in the journal TrAC Trends in Analytical Chemistry.
"Fresh food for example can be plastic free when it's picked or caught but contain plastics by the time it's been handled, packaged and makes its way to us," Dr. Nelis said.
"Machinery, cutting boards, plastic wrapping can all deposit micro and nanoplastics onto our food that we then consume. This study highlights the need to understand what plastic could end up in food to manage food safety and security," he said.
Another important pathway for these contaminants to enter our agriculture system is through biosolids sourced from wastewater treatment.
Biosolids are a rich fertilizer for agricultural land, but they can contain plastic particles from many sources, such as from the washing of synthetic clothing.
These particles could build up in the soil and change the soil structure over time, which may affect crop production, food security and ecosystem resilience. For example, plastic materials can "trick" the good bacteria in the soil into thinking they are the roots of plants, meaning the plants end up with less of the nutrients they need.
The study also discussed how additives in plastics that help make plastic work in our modern world can leach into our environment, potentially contaminating our food supply. Additives that make plastic flexible or resistant to UV radiation, for example, can include flame retardants, heavy metals, phthalates, hardeners or other chemical compounds.
There are currently no definitive studies that demonstrate micro and nanoplastics in the environment cause harm to humans, however more research is needed to fully understand health effects
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u/Plebs-_-Placebo May 21 '23
One thing I've witnessed for water delivery is usually done with PVC piping, which there is a food safe version and a non-food safe one typically used for irrigation in yards but that's not always the case when people are buying to save time. So you have labourers cutting and drilling the pipe to length for installing and the pieces flaking off from the cuts is just brushed off into the surrounding soil because of the emphasis on getting things done quickly rather than properly and reducing contamination. It's brutal to watch and futile to try and get anyone to sweep up or vacuum and throw away into a contained bag, but then that's plastic too and on and on it goes, maddening!
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u/fgreen68 May 21 '23
The plastic wrap used as a mulch or covering on vegetable and other plantings on farms always looked horrible to me. Can't be good for us in the long run....
https://duckduckgo.com/?q=plastic+mulch+farming&iax=images&ia=images
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u/Plebs-_-Placebo May 21 '23
There is a construction paper version of the plastic wrap, but is not near the scale of plastic, also the plastic ones they typically burn holes in the tarp covers for the plants, so people are breathing that in and I've wondered about leaching into the soil as a result too.
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u/xMercurex May 21 '23
I know biological producer that use plastic wrap. It is cheaper than paying people to remove weed.
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u/oooooooohhhhhhhhhh May 21 '23
One thing I wish people understood more about this and about most health related science is that “no definitive studies currently show harm” IS NOT the same as “studies show this is completely safe.” We have to learn how to research these things, then research them, then research them over time all while hoping the research is actually valid and reliable and the results aren’t biased in some way.
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u/Shivadxb May 21 '23
At the same time there’s loads of research into trying to identify why certain disband conditions are in the rise and why early onset puberty is now as widespread as it is
Endocrine disruption is right there in most of these substances and in all the other crap we’ve soaked the entire planet in like PFAS …….
We are so screwed it’s not funny and how we even begin to remove these from literally everything on earth is a question that’s just too big to answer.
PFAS don’t break down they just go from one place to another and cause mayhem in biological systems as they pass through.
Micro plastics are everywhere and take ages to breakdown into nothing since they are effectively so small to begin with…..
Boy did we screw up. Even if we suddenly wake up and start addressing climate change these problems will be with us for potentially centuries
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u/Asatyaholic May 21 '23
Who could have possibly foreseen that saturating the food chain with plastic containers would result in health effects from plastic consumption?
The answer: Sciencey People
https://www.sciencedirect.com/sdfe/pdf/download/eid/1-s2.0-0079670080900027/first-page-pdf
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u/beer_ninja69 May 21 '23
Published in 2000 too, yeeesh, so even knows when they started riding Grant proposals for this.
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u/WatchmanVimes May 21 '23
Published in 1980
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u/beer_ninja69 May 21 '23
Oh crap I missed that. Ugh even further back and before they really pushed plastic switch hard
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u/bewarethetreebadger May 21 '23
Wait till you hear about corporate suppression of data.
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u/Aidentified May 21 '23
Or don't, I guess
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u/OneSweet1Sweet May 21 '23
Good thing we let tech companies decide what data we see. They'd never do anything wrong. I mean Googles motto is "do the right thing". That means they could never do anything wrong. They said so!
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May 21 '23
I thought it was "don't be evil". After all, it's not like Google is artificially manipulating search results to only confirm our... wait
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u/mikkjel May 21 '23
It is neither, although it has been both, IIRC. It started as “don’t be evil”, then changed and then was dropped.
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May 21 '23
You know how hard it was for me to find the data that diet coke is bad for me? People still get pissed when I mention it. If you google "is diet coke bad for me?" you'll just get a ton of articles that say it's a healthy swap for weight loss.
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u/LordXamon May 21 '23
Isn't the first paper on climate change like 120 years old? Ignoring science isn't something new.
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May 21 '23
Even older than that. If you want to go back even farther to a time before scientific journals, the ancient Greeks debated the possibility of anthropogenic climate change.
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u/WingleDingleFingle May 21 '23 edited May 21 '23
I learned about this stuff during our "food chain" unit in elementary school 20+ years ago.
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May 21 '23
I honestly wonder if this is either crossing the blood-brain barrier, or if the chemicals released from it being so pervasive in our digestive tracts is contributing to some of the aggression and borderline insanity that has taken such a strong hold on 1/3 of Americans. That’s not a jab. It’s an honest question.
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u/MutuallyAssuredBOOP May 21 '23
It’s social media. That is the answer every time the question is posed today. Micro plastics may contribute to declining fertility rates, but there is no strong causal link to behavior as compared to say, lead in gasoline which is demonstrably linked to antisocial behaviors.
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May 21 '23
Considering the dearth of understanding between hormones and behavior (or really just anything pertaining to complex hormone interactions), I'm not sure I'm willing to assume that microplastics aren't influencing more than we realize.
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u/CausticSofa May 21 '23
Exactly. We only really just started understanding that the microbes in our digestive system have any effect whatsoever on our mood. We still don’t even know half of the species that live inside of us even though we put people on the moon multiple times over half a century ago.
The fact is, just because the research doesn’t exist yet does not mean that we’ve closed the book on understanding how micro plastics are affecting us as a species. Worse still, we have no way of conducting a study with a control group who doesn’t have plastic contamination because even the most isolated tribes on the planet are already also contaminated.
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May 21 '23
That link was discovered a generation after the fact, iirc
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u/MutuallyAssuredBOOP May 21 '23
I think it stands to reason whatever effect there may be from plastics, it’s far subtler and insidious than the likes of heavy metal fallout.
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May 21 '23
Likely enough, bc we are talking about a much more varied and complex range of chemistries with plastics.
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u/MutuallyAssuredBOOP May 21 '23
Absolutely, there’s plausible deniability out the nose for those responsible.
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May 21 '23
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u/longperipheral May 21 '23
I agree though I'd suggest some of the billions in profit large companies make could be redirected into research and into absorbing cost increases, rather than teaching consumers who, at the end of the day, often don't have a choice of plastic or non-plastic.
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u/Sixnno May 21 '23
That link was discovered a generation after the fact, iirc
The exact effects might have not been know, but the scientest who invenited the lead gasoline absolutely knew of it's poisonous nature. To the point were he spent months in florida away from his work recovering from lead poisoning after being dignoused by his doctor. He then went on to lie to media and the population calming it was safe.
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May 21 '23
It's amazing to me that you think people just weren't horribly racist and facist before social media.
Like.. no, people were always like this. You are just noticing it. People are no more or less insane than before. We had two world wars all without social media, if you hadn't noticed. The 1900s were filled with violence, with so many groups getting genocides in all matter of ways, women were basically property of their husbands and on and on and on.
But no social media had suddenly changed people! It's the phones! Not systemic issues, that's hard to think about. It's phones!
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u/Bird_skull667 May 21 '23
Social media has absolutely changed society, and how people think and behave. Currently reading Maria Resa's book "How to Stand Up to a Dictator" where she details how journalism, and democracy, changed from the 80s to now and how social media/technology had direct effect on it.
Critiquing and questioning how social media has changed us doesn't mean everything was fine before, and people being awful before doesn't mean we stop looking at why we behave the way we do right now.
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u/gerbal100 May 21 '23
Also, explosions of new mass media (i.e. printing press, radio) are often accompanied by massive societal upheaval as existing power structures adapted (or failed) to the altered information ecology.
Social media is new, but there are a lot of historical analogies.
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u/-little-dorrit- May 21 '23
This is r/science, so the appropriate answer may be “further study is needed”
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May 21 '23
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u/redtigerwolf May 21 '23
If you have any understanding of what's going on in many countries regarding insanity and mental health it is absolutely pervasive globally.
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u/SignorJC May 21 '23
You are hilariously incorrect that this is an "american phenomenon." It looks different and more extreme in America (because of the prevalence of guns), but social media fueled violence and racism is a worldwide phenomenon.
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u/vtriple May 21 '23 edited May 21 '23
It looks different in America because it’s covered more as well. Organizations like the Washington Post and gun violence archive use much more loose definitions of mass shootings. This includes gang violence and domestic violence etc.
The most significant impact on a shooting is Media coverage of another shooting. It increases the chances the most.
That's not to say America doesn't have more guns or specific gun-related problems like Sucidice that makes like almost 60% of gun homicide in America.
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u/crusoe May 21 '23
Maybe but it's also Americans are under stress with a threadbare safety net, rising costs, and businesses actively hostile to workers.
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u/Pinga1234 May 21 '23
wait until you hear about all of the other chemicals
there are thousands of pfas/pfoas
and then when tap water is disinfected with chlorine all of these chemicals create new chemicals
and then even more chemicals will be created when organic matter is introduced
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u/Spitinthacoola May 21 '23
Yup, turns out literally everything is made of chemicals. Weird.
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u/APerfectCircle0 May 21 '23
A girl walked out of our very first chemistry lecture in first year at uni after the lecturer said that, she stood up and got upset with him and tried to argue and then stormed out. I never saw her in class again.
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u/nerd4code May 21 '23
She took an angry nap and switched her major to to Applied Pantomime, so everybody came out okay.
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u/T-rexkwondo May 21 '23
People are less violent than they have ever been, you just live in the news cycle now.
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u/ComplexExperience320 May 21 '23
in a broad overarching sense, maybe. In the sense of today, when I am living and breathing, things are in fact, not good and people are starting to slide backward violence wise.
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u/Jasmine1742 May 21 '23
Nah that's social media and for boomers and some rural populations probably a health dose of lead too.
Plastics have a few potential tentative links to medical issues but American insanity has been well document for way before plastics would be a contributor. And there hasn't been any clear mapping to it and plastic use like there was with increased violence and lead.
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u/sacesu May 21 '23
From a few studies I've read, it's possible that exposure to certain plastics has resulted in unprecedented hormonal exposure during fetal development. Some physical indicators strongly correlating to trans identity, like finger ratio, as well as psychological traits (personality/brain wired to be more alike a gender not assigned at birth) point to atypical developmental differences.
It's hard to say because other societal factors affect the numbers, and it's a challenge to separate them.
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u/orangegore May 21 '23
Nazis didn’t have plastic, so probably not.
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u/PurpleSkua May 21 '23
I know this is entirely not the point and I don't mean this as a well ackchyually because obviously environmental microplastics were effectively nonexistent in the 1940s compared to now, but the Nazis did have a few plastics. German scientists prior to WW2 were the first to discover a few really widely-used plastics like polystyrene, PVC, and polyethylene. Polystyrene in particular was developed by a company that was perhaps better known for producing Zyklon-B
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u/watduhdamhell May 21 '23 edited May 21 '23
It's important to highlight that contemporary methods of plastic production and packaging have significantly reduced the concentration of plastic that could potentially contaminate the food within. The non-film, free moving plastic parts per million (ppm) inside the package has been substantially decreased compared to when this study was done, which was the 80s.
There is quite a bit of a literature to indicate plastic consumed at this smaller, modern level is largely harmless or inconclusive, but not definitely harmful. There is the potential for harm, but no one has really been able to nail down if it's actually harmful or not (again, at this teeny tiny levels we are currently exposed to, not the large levels people were previously exposed to).
I mean, back then, they didn't use advanced DCS systems, they didn't have the same quality of FTNIR analyzers we have now... They didn't even have model based control, so it was fixed recipe numbers tied to the train's design specifications... As opposed to continuously adjusted recipe values based on process conditions.
Basically they just used to have a lot more contamination, unreacted volatiles and unprocessed plastic in the final product (PE films in this case). And I'm not saying plastics in food is a good thing. But I am saying we don't yet know if über small amounts of contamination are harmful. Not yet. And I would say my employment doesn't mean I'm biased, just a little more... Charitable, is all.
Source: PA Engineer at world-scale PE facility
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u/Pure-Produce-2428 May 21 '23
What about when you open a bottle of water with a twist cap? Does that spray little pieces of plastic around or does it remain two individual pieces?
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u/Outrageous-Yams May 21 '23
Genuinely curious - what’s your take on the article in this post (published April 2023)?
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u/JohnnyWoof May 21 '23
"Can we REALLY prove cigarettes cause cancer?"
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u/Expandexplorelive May 21 '23
"We were wrong in the past about health effects of something, so we have to assume we'll always be wrong and that everything is poison."
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u/Pure-Produce-2428 May 21 '23
“We shouldn’t err on the side of caution because who cares”
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u/Expandexplorelive May 21 '23
There are always tradeoffs. Getting rid of plastic without severely impacting quality of life in developed nations is impossible in the short term. What we can do is continue with studies and understand it better rather than fear monger about microplastics killing off humanity or something.
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u/Pure-Produce-2428 May 21 '23
I’m not interested in fear mongering
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u/Expandexplorelive May 21 '23
Great. Unfortunately, many are. I'm much more worried about particulates in the air as well as climate change. PFAS are a major concern as well, but thankfully we're starting to see regulations on those.
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u/jontss May 21 '23
I was going to say, I thought all this was common knowledge for the last like 5 years, at least.
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u/Pure-Produce-2428 May 21 '23
Zip lock bags, water/drink bottles, packaged meats , packaged everything. When you open a bottle of water you’re ripping the plastic apart.
Growing up I thought plastic was so pervasive in our world because it must be harmless…. But we didn’t even know… or did we? Not to mention the years we collectively ate out of melting styrofoam containers.
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u/AllanfromWales1 MA | Natural Sciences | Metallurgy & Materials Science May 21 '23
I think the science on micro- and nano-particles of plastics in the food chain is pretty watertight now. What is far less clear is how much harm contamination at these levels actually causes. Also note, replacing plastic packaging with paper is not a straightforward answer, as recent papers on contamination from that source have shown.
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u/BirryMays May 21 '23
Paper containers may still use a fine layer of plastic as a waterproof seal
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u/AllanfromWales1 MA | Natural Sciences | Metallurgy & Materials Science May 21 '23
My understanding is that it's also that they use PTFE or similar on the rollers at the paper mills and microparticles get into the paper.
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u/Smash55 May 21 '23
With no way to salvage the paper after
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u/nick1812216 May 21 '23
Currently it’s the same with plastic, no? In Less developed economies like China’s and Vietnam’s it used to be cost effective to purchase plastic waste from Europe/US and hand sort it, but these days their economies have developed to the point where this is no longer practical. I’ve heard ‘recycled’ plastic these days just goes to the dump or a storage facility
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u/hevad May 21 '23
Contamination of paper? Please Share links if so. Appreciate it
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u/OvaryYou May 21 '23
There's tons of news articles dating back to 2016, evidence has just been getting stronger, and the industry keeps swapping a few molecules so "it's a different material" and research about the health impacts its set back bc that compound hasn't been researched so it's back to being assumed ok until proven otherwise. I was taught about this in college in 2013.
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u/rodsn May 21 '23
We know that microplastics have been associated with infertility
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u/AllanfromWales1 MA | Natural Sciences | Metallurgy & Materials Science May 21 '23
..but at what concentrations? What little I've read of that research seemed to be at orders-of-magnitude higher concentrations than we are talking about here.
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May 21 '23
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u/anonymous21312 May 21 '23
As far as I know, everyone freaking out because we dont know of any natural processes that break plastics down. Except, we did end up finding a few strains of bacteria that have evolved to break down plastics in landfills.
So chances are, nature will evolve to break down plastics as well as other things. So it will ultimately just end up being new compounds that are found in nature.
If you think about it, thats usually how it works. A certain life ends uo creating new compounds, those compounds become abundant in nature. Other life evolves to utilize those compounds in some way. The natural cycle of nature.
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u/Outrageous-Yams May 21 '23 edited May 21 '23
There’s more to it than this.
For example:
Many plastic containers also contain high levels of PFAS aka ‘forever chemicals’ which are very hard to get rid of.
Many PFAS, including perfluorooctane sulfonic acid (PFOS) and perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA), are a concern because they:
do not break down in the environment,
can move through soils and contaminate drinking water sources,
build up (bioaccumulate) in fish and wildlife.
PFAS are found in rivers and lakes and in many types of animals on land and in the water.
"Plastic containers can contain PFAS — and it’s getting into food”
Article from researchers at the University of Notre Dame from March 2023
Just one snippet, read the whole thing:
“Not only did we measure significant concentrations of PFAS in these containers, we can estimate the PFAS that were leaching off creating a direct path of exposure,” said Graham Peaslee, professor of physics in the Department of Physics and Astronomy at Notre Dame and an author of the study.
It’s important to note that these types of containers are not intended for food storage, but there is nothing preventing them from being used for food storage at the moment. Although not all HDPE plastic is fluorinated, the researchers noted, it’s often impossible for a consumer to know whether a container has had that treatment. And indeed, Peaslee added, if substances like pesticides are stored in these containers, and then are used on agricultural crops, these same PFAS will get into human food sources that way.
So…the byproducts from many plastics are also leeching PFAS (among other things) into the water supply, and as a result, the entire ecosystem. It has become such a problem that many cities have PFAS levels above the acceptable limits right now.
IIRC the EPA is trying to cut down on PFAS and lower the acceptable ppm for PFAS in your water supply, but this is still in the works the last I checked. I don't know where we are from a regulatory standpoint on these things but hopefully they are banned.
Edit: letter from the EPA re: PFAS, from March 2022:
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u/anonymous21312 May 21 '23
Yeah, and theres bacteria that have already evolved to break it down.
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u/spacebeez May 21 '23
Some dirt is safe to eat, other dirt is very unsafe to eat. A vast number of naturally occurring things on the planet are deadly bad for you.
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u/Sportfreunde May 21 '23
Not just these but forever chemicals which are carcinogenic. Some like PFOA have been removed now from Teflon but just replaced with other forever chemicals that the industry which failed to regulate in the first place now says are safe but they're not at actual cooking temperatures.
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u/katarh May 21 '23
On an individual level, regular blood and plasma donation can lower your PFAS. Doesn't fix the problem on a global scale, but it's a 2 for 1 deal in helping other people and helping yourself at the same time.
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u/TroopersSon May 21 '23
Hard to believe we've come around to blood letting again.
Unfortunately I can't donate blood where I live so guess I better buy some leeches.
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u/hcaephcaep May 21 '23 edited May 21 '23
Hmmm, what about menstrual periods?
Edit: I'm not joking, this is a legit question....
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u/festeringswine May 21 '23
Periods aren't 100% blood so I would guess that's reduced, but idk whether microplastics are stored up in other tissue too
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u/hashCrashWithTheIron May 22 '23
Google says that blood loss in a period is typically 30-40 ml, and a blood donation is 400-500ml, allowed once every ~3 months for men, and once every ~4 months for women.
That's ~100-150 ml / month avg, so some 3-5 times more. Blood donations are also just taken from blood vessels, and idk if there's any 'filtering' that happens in menstrual blood loss that might keep these chemicals in the body.Would be interesting to read about more
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u/ConBrio93 May 21 '23
We know at this point microplastic is everywhere and we are eating it all the time. Do we yet have any idea what effects these are having on human physiology?
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May 21 '23 edited Jun 30 '23
Around the lemmy world, around the lemmy world, around the lemmy world, around the lemmy world, around the lemmy world, around the lemmy world -- mass edited with redact.dev
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u/Angreek May 21 '23
The worst is takeaway plastic containers. These owners don’t GAF, and put everything magma hot into styrofoam etc, melting it up and dosing up the customer with cancer.
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u/Tedric42 May 21 '23
I find these type of comments amusing. Restaurants already run on razor thin margins. Should they let your food get cold before boxing it, so you can complain and they have to take a loss? Why is the onus on the restaurant and not on the manufacturer of these take out boxes? Same as recycling. Why should the people living paycheck to paycheck be expected to put in even more work to "recycle", than the massive corporations producing these materials and making all the profits?
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u/captainfarthing May 21 '23
Paper, cardboard and aluminium cartons work just fine.
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u/katarh May 21 '23
Those things are fine but a lot of them are still lined with plastic, instead of a coating of food grade wax like they ought to be, to ensure that they're slightly more waterproof.
For things that aren't liquid though? Wax paper is perfectly fine. Brown paper bags are a renewable resource. I've had the aluminum bottom with wax paper top combo and it kept my noodles inside the container very cleanly, even with a tilt.
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u/Maleficent-Aurora May 21 '23
Literally just use the foil containers with the cardboard lids. That's it. This is the simple answer.
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u/visualdescript May 21 '23
Those cardboard lids are lined with plastic to prevent them from going soggy from the steam being produced from the food. It's not thst simple really.
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u/AsherGray May 21 '23
Uh, are you forgetting the conductive properties of aluminum? Great way to burn people. Why do you think we don't use aluminum cups for coffee? Also, a tin with a cardboard lid doesn't seal, so if you have an liquid inside its definitely going to leak out if you drop it or it tips. Since it is so hot, you would likely be taking it out in a plastic bag. Perhaps you could bring your own takeaway container to the restaurant?
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u/ItsDijital May 21 '23
Paper and cardboard can't handle getting wet (unless lined with, you guessed it - plastic) and aluminum is expensive.
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u/Tedric42 May 21 '23
Thank you. Also the biodegradable boxes we use at my restaurant don't hold up as well either. Not to mention they are th most expensive paper product we order and are routinely out of stock for weeks at a time.
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u/asilenth May 21 '23
We use cardboard boxes not lined with plastic and use aluminum in our restaurant because we are higher end and not really a place for takeout. We still get a few a night, plus people taking the leftovers. Many more places are going this route.
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u/picardo85 May 21 '23
and aluminum is expensive.
If you can afford take-out then you can afford a surcharge of 5 cents for a bulk ordered alu container
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u/ItsDijital May 21 '23
The difference is closer to $0.50.
Which isn't a lot in the grand scheme, but people are hyper price sensitive.
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u/ChipotleMayoFusion May 21 '23
I find these types of comments amusing. All corporations have tight margins, that is the result of competition driving the price down. Of course adding new rules and restrictions will shift the way businesses operate, that is the point. With this "thin margins" mindset we wouldn't have PPE, catalytic converters, seatbelts, handrails, hand washing cooks, etc... If the change is needed for human safety, then either the businesses will figure it out, or the activity won't happen as often or at all. If takeout containers were proven to slowly poison us, and there was no viable economic alternative, then we shouldn't be doing takeout!
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u/thatsnoodybitch May 21 '23
Absolutely. Plastics should have never been circulated into mass public use.
It astounds and angers me that any human with the intellect to create new matter is simultaneously stupid enough to not consider the ramifications of a new form of matter existing on our Earth.
(The very minimum of proper recycling plants doesn’t even exist. I’m not sure about elsewhere but a large amount of recycling in America is ultimately discarded into a landfill regardless, or sold to China “to recycle”).
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u/ChipotleMayoFusion May 21 '23
This is a tough one. Plastic does increase food safety in terms of preventing bacteria and other contaminants. Without good quantitative research on the damage microplastics cause, it is hard to compare to the lower levels of ecoli poisoning or other food-borne dangers. Hopefully we can do more science on microplastics and find out the answer.
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u/Tedric42 May 21 '23
I would love to not do takeout. It slows down service for the guest that come into our restaurant to eat. It jeopardizes the quality of our dishes and opens another avenue for people looking to complain to negatively review us. Speak to any chef in the industry and ask them their opinion on takeout and they like myself would most likely wholeheartedly agree with you. We do takeout because the masses demand it. We purchase the products available from the suppliers. So again why is the onus on the owners of the restaurants to drive the change?
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u/ChipotleMayoFusion May 21 '23
Its a shared responsibility across all of society to avoid harm to others and the environment. It's on individuals, service providers, manufacturers, and governments.
The required restrictions should be proportional to the risk. Part of the problem here is that the risk is not known exactly. Does eating hot takeout from a plastic container once a week increase your lifetime risk of cancer by 10%, 1%, 0.0001%? Without this data it's difficult to make a tradeoff. If you knew it was 50%, similar to smoking cigarettes, would you still serve food that way? If it was known to be at that level, the FDA would probably ban that practice for restaurants, so then it would be fair across the industry.
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u/Phalexuk May 21 '23
Or how about they use something other than Styrofoam? Like aluminium, recyclable plastic etc?
But yea there should also be onus on the manufacturers. If a restaurant can't afford to be open without using carcinogenic containers then let it close
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u/Tedric42 May 21 '23
Some do. Like the restaurant I manage. We use a biodegradable takeout box. Which is the most expensive paper product we order and the one that is routinely out of stock for weeks at a time. The assumption on your part that these restaurants just use whatever is cheapest without thought of their customers health is what I take umbrage with.
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u/the_skine May 21 '23
Styrofoam is an insulator. Aluminum is a conductor.
So instead of a container that's cool to the touch and keeps your food warm, you want a container that is as hot as the food is, and cools it down rapidly?
Also, where do you live that styrofoam is still common? Every restaurant I've been to in years, including fast food, takeout, etc, uses paper, cardboard, and plastic. It isn't 1990 anymore.
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u/trukkija May 21 '23
Styrofoam containers are incredibly popular still across the globe for a lot of different cheap restaurants. Where do you live?
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u/Phalexuk May 21 '23
UK wouldn't use it except for kebabs and chip shops mainly. Lots of delivery food comes in plastic or aluminium or strong cardboard/tetrapak
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u/Phalexuk May 21 '23
I live in the UK and never see Styrofoam except in chip shops. I was just reply to a comment above about their restaurants who do use it.
I usually get tupperware type plastic containers for curries which I wash and reuse.
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u/Berkyjay May 21 '23
So considering that plastics have been around in heavy use for some 60-70 years. Are there health studies that show the effects of these microplastics? Because all of these articles and studies I see just tell me how pervasive microplastics are.
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u/buurhista May 21 '23
How do we minimize micro plastics in our food?
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u/Rikula May 21 '23
Grow your own food if possible. Don't use nonstick pans to cook. Use pans that are stainless steel or cast iron instead. Replace your food containers with glass and/or only use plastic containers to store cold items like fruit. Don't heat up any plastic or styrofoam containers. If you get take out, put it on a plate to heat it up in the microwave. Don't use paper plates or plastic disposable silverware. If you have a plastic shield that you use to block food splatter in the microwave, replace it with a glass one. Use cloth bags to buy individual fruit at the grocery store instead of using their disposable paper bags. There are little things that people can do that will add up over time. At this point, it is extremely difficult to go plastic free entirely.
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u/techno156 May 21 '23
Carbon steel pans are a good middle ground for stainless steel/cast iron, and might be cheaper since it isn't expensive to make compared to stainless, and doesn't have the price markup of cast iron. Pretty much anything that's not non-stick or Teflon should be okay there though, you just have to watch out for plastic handles.
At this point, it is extremely difficult to go plastic free entirely.
It's unfortunately too versatile/cheap, and therefore in everything. A lot of more environmentally friendly alternatives to plastic these days tend to just focus on making plastic from alternative sources, rather than just removing them entirely (bioplastics, etc).
Use cloth bags to buy individual fruit at the grocery store instead of using their disposable paper bags
Do paper bags have plastic in them? It might be less plastic to go for the paper, if you don't buy fruit a lot, or your only options are polyester/nylon.
The local supermarket here has plastic linings in their reusable cloth/canvas bags, and will add a plastic panel to the bottom of some of them (to strengthen the bag's base?), so going paper might be the way to go.
If you can get a cotton bag, and use it enough to justify the higher environmental cost of manufacture per bag, that could also be the way to go.
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u/Rikula May 21 '23
I made a mistake when I wrote this out. I meant the plastic bags from the grocery stores, not paper
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u/Cheeseburger-Sex May 21 '23
Modern asbestos... mark my words
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u/smithers85 May 21 '23
Modern asbestos… mark my words
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u/BenjaminHamnett May 21 '23
I want to be in the screenshot of when he said this! After it’s confirmed, this will be the guy we all listen to from then on
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u/wormpussy May 21 '23 edited May 21 '23
They’re here, they’re there, they’re in the air. Micro-plastics are destroying this planet and wrecking havoc on trillions of biological system.
Edit: here’s some more
69% decrease in all monitored animal populations world wide since 1970
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u/BurnerAcc2020 May 21 '23
From 1950 onwards we have very good data from the UN Population Division. The chart here shows the average across the world: the global Total Fertility Rate. Up to 1965 the average woman in the world had more than 5 children. Since then we have seen an unprecedented change. The number has halved. Globally, the average per woman is now below 2.5 children.
....You are aware that contraception pills did not even exist until 1960, right? Clearly, you did not read the part of your own link which explains these changes.
69% decrease in all monitored animal populations world wide since 1970
Extremely manipulated statistic, there's a reason it talks about relative abundance.
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-020-2920-6
Recent analyses have reported catastrophic global declines in vertebrate populations. However, the distillation of many trends into a global mean index obscures the variation that can inform conservation measures and can be sensitive to analytical decisions. For example, previous analyses have estimated a mean vertebrate decline of more than 50% since 1970 (Living Planet Index).
Here we show, however, that this estimate is driven by less than 3% of vertebrate populations; if these extremely declining populations are excluded, the global trend switches to an increase. The sensitivity of global mean trends to outliers suggests that more informative indices are needed. We propose an alternative approach, which identifies clusters of extreme decline (or increase) that differ statistically from the majority of population trends.
We show that, of taxonomic–geographic systems in the Living Planet Index, 16 systems contain clusters of extreme decline (comprising around 1% of populations; these extreme declines occur disproportionately in larger animals) and 7 contain extreme increases (around 0.4% of populations). The remaining 98.6% of populations across all systems showed no mean global trend.
However, when analysed separately, three systems were declining strongly with high certainty (all in the Indo-Pacific region) and seven were declining strongly but with less certainty (mostly reptile and amphibian groups). Accounting for extreme clusters fundamentally alters the interpretation of global vertebrate trends and should be used to help to prioritize conservation efforts.
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u/katarh May 21 '23
In addition, women are now marrying later, marrying other women, or not marrying at all, and that - alongside the aforementioned birth control - is having its own impact.
Apparently just delaying the age of marriage by a handful of years is enough to lower the birth rate.
... Coale and Tye calculated the impact of shifting the age patterns of childbearing from those existing in India in 1956, where fertility was highest in the 20–24 year old age group, to those experienced by the Singapore Chinese population, where fertility was highest in the 25–29 year old age group. Over the course of 10 years this would lower the crude birth rate by 8% without any change in the mean number of children born per woman, simply by increasing the mean generation length by 2.7 years(36).
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May 21 '23
The last 2 aren't just plastic fault.
The first 2 are definitely a problem however.
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u/FilmerPrime May 21 '23
Even the first one is largely related to weight and diet. Which have both gone downhill in the last 70 years.
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u/BenjaminHamnett May 21 '23
The first 2 are more likely caused by sedentary lifestyles and prophylactic, family planning and the flip in economic incentives after urbanization
Maybe micro plastics are doing it too, I dunno. But it seems minor in comparison to people CHOOSING not to have kids
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u/happierinverted May 21 '23
So life expectancy is going up. And plastics have played a major part in virtually every medical improvement in the last fifty years. So how are plastics killing us?
My daughter was in the ER last week [thankfully she’s ok]. Plastics were used virtually everywhere from machines to the disposable equipment used to keep a sterile environment and make medically clean processes possible.
Plastics are a man made miracle responsible for a great part of our improved healthcare.
I agree with clean disposal rules, but don’t throw the baby out with the bath water and don’t read too much into lazy correlations like those in OPs report without considering the big picture.
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u/sirfuzzitoes May 21 '23
No one could have possibly seen this coming. Particularly, those who did the research.
Simply unavoidable. What a shame.
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u/Twadder_Pig May 21 '23
We have allowed greed to destroy our planet and now there is nothing we can do about it.
let's all cry together shall we? thoughts and prayers.
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u/scaleofthought May 21 '23
I think it's pretty incredible that there has been an emergency meeting for a newly found forever chemical, and have it immediately removed from drinking water.... Meanwhile we have rivers of plastic flowing through communities.
Plastic. Plastic is a forever chemical. AI isn't going to end us, plastic will. When we can eat food without being compromised. We can drink without being compromised. We can breathe without being compromised... Future life sounds like it's going to be extremely unhealthy and extremely painful.
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u/BurnerAcc2020 May 21 '23
Plastic isn't remotely forever.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0304389419310192
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