How We Ingest Plastic Chemicals While Consuming Food (washingtonpost.com)
- Reference: 0180411811
- News link: https://science.slashdot.org/story/25/12/17/1738215/how-we-ingest-plastic-chemicals-while-consuming-food
- Source link: https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/interactive/2025/food-plastic-chemicals-pfas-bpa/
The chemicals enter food through multiple pathways. Black plastic utensils and trays often contain brominated flame retardants because they're made from recycled electronic waste. Nonstick pans and compostable plates frequently contain PFAS. One California study found phthalates in three-quarters of tested foods, and a Consumer Reports analysis last year detected BPA or similar chemicals in 79% of foods tested. According to CDC data, more than 90% of Americans have measurable levels of these chemicals in their bodies. A 10-fold increase in maternal levels of brominated flame retardants is associated with a 3.7-point IQ drop in children.
[1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/interactive/2025/food-plastic-chemicals-pfas-bpa/
All these 20th century cancers (Score:2)
Still a mystery...news at 11
Re: All these 20th century cancers (Score:2)
I havnt forgotten about you
Re: (Score:2)
More to the point, Autism and Transgenderism can be directly linked to BPA being an endocrine disruptor. Prostate, Breast and Ovarian cancers are a direct result.
For Autism, there is significant evidence that BPA prevents the brain from forming the structures that normally develop in a male brain.
Like Transgenderism is a huge topic just because there's at least three distinct paths that lead to it, one of them being the "hormone disruption in-utero", one being SRY-gene translocation (basically XX Male and X
Intersex Re:All these 20th century cancers (Score:1)
> Like Transgenderism is a huge topic just because there's at least three distinct paths that lead to it, one of them being the "hormone disruption in-utero", one being SRY-gene translocation (basically XX Male and XY Female, and likely the only possible way for FTM to exist), and one being intersex Androgen insensitivity (aka PAIS/CAIS which is when a XY has little or no androgen response, thus their body defaults to female, but may not have working ovaries or testes at all.)
Not to take anything away from what you said, but you are describing some forms of biological inter-sex-ness, in which the body is neither wholly male nor wholly female.
Transgenderism, at least with respect to people who are not biologically intersex, is more of a psychological or possibly spiritual phenomenon, at least as far as we know today. I say "as far as we know" because there is a lot about the physiology of the brain and possibly the rest of the body that we don't know. Hopefully, future research
IQ drop (Score:3, Insightful)
> Americans are actually eating when they prepare food in their kitchens. Of those 16,000 chemicals, more than 5,400 are considered hazardous to human health by government and industry standards, while just 161 are classified as not hazardous. ...
> A 10-fold increase in maternal levels of brominated flame retardants is associated with a 3.7-point IQ drop in children.
This actually explains a lot of election results.
Older than IQ tests (Score:3, Insightful)
We were never terribly great at democracy. There is a little bit of an observation bias, because historians tend to quote literate and intelligent people (both good and evil). And rarely do they share quotes of the barely literate rabble.
Initially democracy was for land owners. Implicitly men, and specifically white men.
Next we opened it up and any white man could vote. Even if they didn't own land.
Then we eventually we decided that black men are men too and they could vote, somewhat. They weren't allowed m
Re: (Score:2)
> when it was once Great
So, when there were only native Americans present, the occasional Viking excluded? ;-)
Re: (Score:2)
Perhaps it was never great, but people certainly romanticize various periods of greatness.
It's related to the problematic romanticization of war in our culture. War always sucks. Even when you're winning the war, it can be pretty terrible at an individual level. Turns out that having blood in your hands doesn't feel all that great to the vast majority of non-psychopaths in this world.
Re: (Score:2)
> Would you prefer we simply sit back
I would prefer several types of people sit back and let the adults run things for a bit.
> There is a growing shift with women who want to return to the proverbial kitchen.
Got any data? I suspect you're influenced by social media covering an imaginary trend that is exists because it's great click bait.
Re: (Score:1)
"everyone that disagrees with me is stupid!" .... actually explains more.
Maybe assume that reasonable people can look at facts and disagree, and that's normal, with out assuming you have a magically-endowed monopoly on truth or morality?
Just saying.
Re: (Score:2)
That's not a very nice thing to imply about vice president biden.
You are what you eat. (Score:3)
Do they still teach that simple warning in schools?
These results are not surprising, almost every bit of food we consume comes into contact with some form of plastic. Even if it's just in a plastic bag. Even a glass bottle has a plastic seal under the metal cap. If you use a plastic cutting board even your home grown veggie is exposed. To take this to the extreme a wooden cutting board is usually a glue up of many smaller strips of wood to get the 'butcher block' look. That glue is wood glue - most likely a PVA wood glue. Yep it too has plastic in it.
Where's the lie? (Score:5, Insightful)
Today in "Where's the lie?", notice the language used in the article:
> One California study found phthalates in three-quarters of tested foods, and a Consumer Reports analysis last year detected BPA or similar chemicals in 79% of foods tested. According to CDC data, more than 90% of Americans have measurable levels of these chemicals in their bodies.
So we have "measurable levels", which means anything from "just above what can even be measured with extremely accurate modern equipment" to "he'd dead". This is then followed by the scare:
> A 10-fold increase in maternal levels of brominated flame retardants is associated with a 3.7-point IQ drop in children.
Are we observing anything near that level? No. But if we did, it would be scary.
This is essentially the same thing we have with everything: in sufficient amounts, everything is poison. Did you know that to get dihydrogen monoxide poisoning you need to drink less of it than is currently found in humans for example? It's true, and it's a great headline. It's also an obvious lie by misdirection, just as the journo piece in the OP.
Bonus points for article having these cool animations where red dots all neatly arrange into a big red ball that is headlined "hazardous". Like dihydrogen monoxide.
Re: (Score:3)
Some people really do consider anything with a chemical name scary. Seemingly blissfully unaware everything has a chemical name.
Re: (Score:1)
The article's writer uses this exact tactic liberally. Only the dangerous red things are referred to as "chemicals".
Re: (Score:1)
Article doesn't talk about "non stick coating on your pan", it talks about "chemicals" and gives chemistry-specific short names. Notably only using that word for "bad things described by evil looking red dots that neatly arrange into "hazardous" bubble in the animation we helpfully provide".
So I used the exact same tactic in my post.
It sucks when your side's propaganda is thrown right back in your face, doesn't it?
Letâ(TM)s take a guess (Score:2)
Where do we think autism comes from?
Re: (Score:2)
> Where do we think autism comes from?
Smart (read: humble) people admit "We don't 'think we know where autism comes from,' we know that we don't know where it comes from. Anyone who says otherwise is either right and on his way to a Nobel-or-similar prize, or much more likely he's a liar and he knows it or he's deluding himself and anyone foolish enough to listen. If you really want humanity to discover where autism comes from, fund responsible research. Maybe, just maybe, in a few decades we will begin to have an answer. And oh by the way, l
Re: (Score:2)
I read online that you get it from thylenol. Must be true then.
How hazardous? (Score:1)
Just how hazardous are these chemicals?
Some things, like lead and mercury, are considered hazardous in any measurable amount . That still begs the question: What if the amount of the material in my body is so low that it's infeasible to measure? Is it reasonable to extrapolate "down to near zero" and assume it's hazardous, or is it more reasonable to say "we don't know if it's hazardous or not at those too-low-to-detect levels"? I strongly suspect that as you get really close to zero, say, 1 molecule (or
We eat many chemicals also from "natural" food (Score:2)
I don't want to argue against reasonable regulations regarding food safety and what belongs into food and what does not. But the way the article sensationalizes the fact that, of course, there are tens of thousands of chemicals in our food that we do not exactly know of what they could do to our bodies (and in what dosage) is too simplistic. As [1]some have so wonderfully illustrated in the past [wordpress.com], "natural" food items also contain a vast variety of such chemicals with largely unknown biological properties.
If y
[1] https://jameskennedymonash.wordpress.com/2014/07/19/ingredients-of-all-natural-cherries/
Re: We eat many chemicals also from "natural" food (Score:2)
I also don't like sensationalized claims, but for many 'chemicals' being found in our food we do know the dosages in our foods cause problems.
Beyond that there was such a steep decline in the nutritional content of US crops that the USDA stopped publishing their nutritional analysis about a decade ago, something they'd been sharing since at least the 50s.
I'm not for generally one for regulations, but since there are regulations preventing me from farming myself, and our land and water is vulnerable to t
Use cast iron (Score:2)
I do not understand why people are still using non-stick pans. That they poison the food cooked in them is far from fresh news.
Re: Use cast iron (Score:2)
Cooking with bare aluminium pans isnt exactly hazard free. Iron is fine but boy does it take some cleaning.
Its a mystery! (Score:1)
We ingest them in the usual way, I presume. Unless some people have taken to butt-chugging their meals.
PUSH !!!!!! PUUUUSSSHSHHHHHHH! !!!!! (Score:2)
This whole manufactured fear of plastics is wild. Anyone notice now there's always some big thing to fear being pushed every few years? Once something starts to burn out and people don't pay a whole lot of attention to it, there's already a new big fear in the pipeline to exploit. The simple way to know this one is pretty much fear mongering is it is non-specific. 'Plastic' covers an incredibly wide range of materials with wildly different properties, but we're being catfished into fearing 'plastics' generi
Measurable levels vs. toxic levels (Score:2)
> According to CDC data, more than 90% of Americans have measurable levels of these chemicals in their bodies
Toxicity is always a function of concentration. Always. Even water is toxic if ingested at high enough levels.
What is the spread between "measurable" and "toxic" for these plastics?
And what health *benefits* do we sacrifice if we give up plastics?
Sealed plastic containers are highly effective at controlling bacterial growth, for example. Flossing your teeth with plastic (nylon) is universally recommended by dentists for dental health. Plastic tubing is universally used in IVs. Many of these health-*positive
i've got a great idea (Score:1)
Great time to be cutting and rolling back regulations, then! can't be standing in the way OF DAT MONEY