this post was submitted on 24 Sep 2023
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I'm not sure food blogs are the best choice for this. The article goes on to talk about BPA and phthlates, but neither of those exist in pure HDPE or PP.
BPA is found in polycarbonate plastics (~~acrylic~~) (Edit: brain lapse, acrylic is PMMA) and epoxy resins. Phthalates are in PVC (vinyl). Using the word 'plastic' as a ~~monomer~~ mononym (Edit: lol wrong mono) is dangerous for many reasons, and causation vs correlation is one reason why.
I mean, definitely go with glass if you have the choice, sure, but let's also actually try to be accurate if we invoke the scientific method.
I would also love for there to be really robust testing of food containers of all varieties direct at the manufacturers, with heavy fines involved if they're using additives but claiming it's a food-safe plastic.
Here's the study in question. Can't speak to the authenticity of it but off the top I don't see anything shady
It doesn't look shady, but I can only access the abstract which just says "plastics" and doesn't specify that part further, unfortunately.
For me, it has a picture where it specifies a "polypropylene container".
There's also this bit from near the end of the abstract:
So, they're, at least, discussing polypropylene and polyethylene.
From the method section of the paper:
Materials and Property Characterization. From a popular US chain store, two brands of baby food containers made of polypropylene and one brand of reusable food pouch with- out material information on the label were purchased. The selection of polypropylene containers was based on its widespread use in baby food packaging. These choices aimed to showcase diverse types of baby food packaging. The food containers and the food pouch were analyzed for their semicrystalline structure and thermal stability by DSC using a Q200 differential scanning calorimeter (TA Instruments, New Castle, DE). Briefly, a small sample weighing between 3 and 8 mg was taken from each container or pouch, placed in a DSC aluminum pan/lid assem- bly, and crimped with a press. The samples were heated and cooled at a rate of 10 °C/min under a nitrogen atmosphere, resulting in calori- metric curves that indicate the heat transfer to and from the polymer sample during the thermal cycle, which was used to monitor phase transitions. H u s s a i n e t a l . i n E n v i r o n . S c i . T e c h n o l . 5 7 ( 2 0 2 3 ) 5 Transmission wide-angle X-ray diffraction (WAXD) of the reusable food pouch was performed at the 12-ID-B beamline at the Advanced Pho- ton Source (Argonne National Laboratory), using incident X-rays with energy 13.30 keV and a Pilatus 300k 2D detector mounted 0.4 m from the sample. WAXD patterns of the two plastic containers were acquired in reflection geometry with a Bruker-AXS D8 Discover equipped with a Cu Kα lab source (λ = 1.5406 A) and a Vantec 500 area detector. In all cases, the acquired 2D patterns were radially averaged to produce 1D intensity (I) vs scattering vector (q) plots
3 brands, two of the same overall declared material, and no reference to manufacturer formulation safety data. If this is an American paper, the FDA requires substances that come into contact with food to be vetted, so the information should exist somewhere if these are legally sold. Which is obviously not guaranteed. This is not giving me much hope for this study.