I'd long since noted that as the jar emptied the grinders were increasingly ineffective. Thinking on why that might be ... I realised that this was because as you grind the pepper, you're also grinding plastic directly into your food.

There's surprisingly little discussion about this that I can find, though this 5 y.o. Stackexchange question addresses the concern:

<https://cooking.stackexchange.com/questions/103003/microplas...>

Seems to me that plastic grinders, whether disposable or sold as (apparently) durable products, are a class of products which simply shouldn't exist.

Searching, e.g., Walmart for "plastic grinders" turns up five listings presently, though it's not clear whether it's the body or the grinder itself which is plastic. In several cases it seems to be the latter.

<https://www.walmart.com/c/kp/plastic-grinders>

(Archive of current state: <https://archive.is/yIIX4>

Sometimes conveyor belts would be left running for days or even weeks in the test area. After a while, you would start to see very fine dust on and around the conveyor belts. This was finely ground POM plastic. On some occasions, there were actually heaps of that stuff forming beneath the conveyor belts.

In the factories, everything gets washed down with pressure washers at least once per day, so very little of this stuff goes into the food, but it definitely gets washed away out to sea.

I think that there is probably a wide-spread misunderstanding on how the micro-plastics enter the food. It does not seem very likely that it would come from the packaging or your tupperware (unless your tupperware is so old that it has actually started to disintegrate). It seems much likelier that the plastics were in the food before it was packaged.

So am I reading this right you're probably an order of magnitude below the 'safe' limit even if you subsist solely off of RXBars and Sweetgreen? Which is not so far from me at one point in my 30s...

I didn't expect to open this chart and feel _better_ about my plastic consumption, maybe I'm just misunderstanding the chart. It seems even if the limits are 10x too high, you're still probably fine.

It's very hard to maintain a mental ranked list of health things to be worried about when hypothetical concerns get more attention/coverage the confirmed ones.

My only question is was the cow milked by hand or by machine? The tubing in a milking machine almost certainly contains plastic.

https://www.plasticlist.org/product/29

For example, the cocoa powder from the 1920s https://www.plasticlist.org/product/990

Can anyone comment on the methods used here? Seems they don't have the same issues.

https://www.plasticlist.org/product/65

What are they grazing on, plastic lawn turf?

Think of it as democratizing PlasticList's methodology: you choose what gets tested, we handle the logistics of sample collection + lab work, and results are published openly to pressure companies toward cleaner supply chains.

It should clearly state the container (when multiple are possible) as that's likely the origin of 99.9% of the microplastics, as well as temperature. Prime example: "Starbucks Matcha Latte". I bet there are orders of magnitude difference in microplastic content between getting a hot one in a plastic (coated, if not fully) takeaway cup vs an iced one in a mug.

In general, containers and the way they're used generally make the difference, but all the focus here is only on the food item.

Don't research the poison of the plastics that wash out of those volatile fibers whiilst in the laundry machines. Oh, did you think that the only source of the micro-plastics in the water supply was water bottles?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42525633

I was originally inspired by PlasticList, and actually made a quiz on my website based off their data for people to assess their plastics exposure (quiz.neutraoat.com)

> If you chop something on a plastic cutting board (because wood cutting boards are outlawed in commercial kitchens, apparently), test before and after chopping.

Who banned wood cutting boards from kitchens and for what purpose? I did some digging and some sources cite that neither FDA nor USDA strictly ban wood cutting boards, but individual state health departments are often strict on commercial kitchens that use wood instruments. I get concerns of wood being porous and all, but with the alternative being I have to ingest shavings from the plastic cutting board with every meal... Maybe it's time for a paradigm shift.

  > COLLECTION LOCATION:
  > eBay, sold by littlebitoeverythingjoe

  > SHIPPED IN:
  > Original packaging inside Ziploc bag
  > 
  > SHIPPING METHOD:
  > UPS Overnight

Independent efforts like PlasticList are probably going to be more and more important as research funding gets slashed and health-related data is suppressed or manipulated.

https://www.plasticlist.org/product/754

http://plastic.food/

Also the negligible levels of plastic detected in plastic water bottles is surprising. I was under the impression, based on other reports, that water in plastic bottles is something we should avoid.

- Korean War-era sugar ration

Vs.

- store-bought sugar

Your most dangerous plastic or microplastic is the PFAS. And the biggest source of PFAS is the water you drink. Does it run through plastic tubing? A pfas filter at any point? Sit in a plastic jug?

The most effective way to deal with this is to distill your water. Distilled water is nearly pfas free, and also removes bpas, lead, mercury, and any bacteria.[1]

https://learn.pfasfreelife.com/research/distillers-remove-pf...

Any web dev type can tell me what framework, if any, is that done with?

I mean I already have exposure to lead and asbestos, and the random particulates I breathe in aren’t going away. I feel like this is getting attention because it’s a new issue, not that all other concerns pale in comparison.

Separately, I always knew there was a reason those RXBars taste like plastic. /s

I've avoided Shakeshack ever since.

There is a story in Hindu mythology about churning of the milk ocean, by gods and demons in cooperation, using a mountain as the churning rod, with an objective of extracting the nectar of immortality. After a great amount of churning, a great poison comes out which must be consumed, otherwise it ends the universe. Lord Shiva consumes it, but keeps it in his throat, to save himself and the universe. When the Nectar finally comes out, somehow gods trick the demons, to keep the nectar to themselves.

Sometimes it occurs to me that this story foretold the extraction of oil from ocean deeps, giving the luxuries to the developed world and pollution to the third world.