> If he “was on a deserted island and [plastic] was all that was available,” Rogers says he’d opt for types two [High-Density Polyethylene] and five [Polypropylene]. These are both higher density formulas, used to contain liquids and manufacture items like the rigid plastic forks dispensed at your local takeout restaurant. They have a higher melting point, “and they also don’t tend to chip or shatter as much,” says Rogers. (Still, Hussain’s team found these types of containers shed plenty of microplastics when heated.)
This the part I feel should be focused on. HDPE is notable for being safe to handle during its entire lifecycle, from production to use to recycling. Even when pushed well past its softening point, it does not create any hazardous fumes. A sustainable future does not mean avoiding the use of plastics entirely, it means identifying which are the most useful in the long-term.
Nalgene make HDPE water bottles now. They’re really durable. I’ve had two as my daily use bottles for about 4 years and they’re as durable or more durable than the hard plastic Nalgene bottles I used before.
They've made HDPE bottles for a while. When I was guiding canoe trips 20 years ago, the wisdom among the guides was that the HDPE ones will float, even if you fully submerge them with the cap off, whereas the Lexan ones will sink.
probably fine just don't drink hot soup/coffee out of it. I've long since switched over to a glass lined beverage container after I found out about microplastics.
HDPE is very stiff, MDPE is kinda stiff and LDPE is flimsy. Same monomer just cross linked differently with a different production process. Plastic is chemistry magic.
Most jails and prisons only have plastic containers for microwaving your food, because anything else would be a "security risk."
When I was inside the only "cup" you could buy was a plastic storage container that was not food- or microwave-safe but was used for everything from drinking coffee to cooking noodles.
> “Personally, I avoid heating food in any plastic with an automatic default to glassware.” Beyond never microwaving food in plastic, Vandenberg hopes people simply stop using it. She says, “The market will provide us with alternatives if we just don’t buy plastic.”
I find really astonishing how the article demonizes plastic and ends recommending glassware use, placing a product referral that have PLASTIC lids. Shouldn't we stop using it?
In the wild, most of the glass food storage containers that I see have silicone lids, not plastic lids.
In any case, the problem here is when food comes into contact with plastic, which is not happening regularly with lids unless you store your food upside-down.
That's why I'm surprised there isn't more of a push for Corningware. Have we all forgotten? Porcelain containers with glass lids, everyone in the 80s has them. They last forever unless you manage to shatter them.
Mechanicisms matter. The article talked about plastic HEATING allowing it to leach into food that it’s TOUCHING. If you’re lids are not heating or touching food, maybe it’s fine?
Counter example could be condensation on lid heating,leaching, then dripping on food.
Or have you considered the more likely possibility that it’s simply their site policy to place ads wherever they can, which is not necessarily the original author’s intention? Most likely the site just wants to make whatever they can from possible places to insert affiliate links regardless of the article, and that’s it. For all we know it might well even be an automated process to some extent.
Having an affiliate link is unfortunate and very much not smart on their end I would say, but automatically drawing the conclusion that the whole article must have the single purpose of serving as a Trojan horse for this one random link that they also know only a small amount of people will click on is another logical fallacy, and IMO resorting to attributing to malice when things can be explained otherwise.
I opted for Ikea glass containers partly for wanting to avoid plastics (except the lids) and partly to not have to deal with tomato sauces staining the pristine white plastic containers after a single use
Micro/nanoplastics are a secondary consideration overall, primary was just to reduce my usage of plastics a bit, even how infinitesimal it really is. I only realized how much plastic packaging I go through once I moved to an apartment with plastic "recycling", I still separate out most plastics but not everything.
I personally am not really swayed towards ditching whatever plastics I still have, given how ubiquitous it is and I am already happy with my Ikea glassware.
They're expensive, too. At least when epicurious ran a similar article, they also recommended wide-mouth ball jars.
The biggest problem for me is cabinet space. The jars don't stack compactly, and the glass lock tend to live up to their name if you try to stack them.
I once got a brandy snifter wedged into a Pyrex measuring cup (don't ask, I don't remember what I could have possibly been doing to arrange this).
I filled the brandy snifter with ice, water, and salt, and dunked the outside of the measuring cup in hot water. It loosened the assembly enough to get it apart without destroying the brandy glass.
I have a set of pyrex bowls that I bought in 1987, and still use today. I wouldn't bother with wide mouth jars, although I guess they have advantages when storing food in the fridge.
you can find a slew of papers about not using plastic in the microwave, for a couple decades now. I mean you can believe what you want, but if you think microplastics in your food is bad then you should be able to find plenty articles in how they leach into your food, especially when they're hot.
Why on earth would you use a microwave emitter for heating rather than some sort of resistive heating wire? The latter is way simpler and is orders of magnitude more compact.
As others mention already, the problem is the plastic, not the microwave, even the article ends with "Go with glass".
There have to be many alternatives but I happened upon cookanyday and never looked back. I almost never used the microwave oven before but these make it not only convenient, I actually like the results. Well, most times.
Like many products (pressure cooker, air fryer) they want you to just do _everything_ in your new toy, but everything has its sweet spot. I use all at least once every week.
Startling number of people who either don't know how to or reject on principle actually cooking food (as opposed to merely reheating it) in their microwave, too.
And a few classist remarks and at least one usage of "white trash".
There's only one recipe I semi-regularly use that I'd count as cooking in the microwave. The main reason being that the "classic" way of cooking it takes a whole day, where it only takes 20 minutes in the microwave.
I've legitimately never even considered there might be recipes that center around the microwave! Now that I know they exist I will definitely need to try one. Any recommendations?
It’s important to keep health articles like this in context.
Sure, try to mimimize risk, but if you’re feeling too anxious remember that human beings are, currently, living longer, healthier lives than they ever have.
Also, given what we know about human physiology, if you want to live longer and healthier, the biggest ROI is not on changing your cookware, but on eating healthy foods and getting regular cardiovascular exercise.
Eat some vegetables and go for a run or a bike ride. We know what works for improving health.
Not microwaving plastic is an insanely easy lifestyle adjustment that virtually anyone can do starting immediately without effort. Changing diet or exercising may be much more impactful, but they require significant time and effort - gargantuan amounts compared to just changing from plastic to glass lunch boxes.
And I am sure a future study might also say : one risk factor for healthy and long life is reading about various health risks and worrying about them all the time :)
> living longer, healthier lives than they ever have.
This is not true in America. Life expectancy has dropped significantly after COVID and several types of cancer are on the rise (notably, pancreatic and liver). Americans are more obese than ever with significant all-cause mortality and lifestyle impacts.
While the impact of COVID may eventually even out, it is just not the case that health and life expectancy is monotonically increasing.
People are living longer, but anecdotally it seems like almost everyone I know has at least one chronic health issue, and many have multiple. And medical science’s answer to most chronic issues is “We don’t know what causes it or how to help you. Come back if you get a disease I can see in a microscope.”
Netherlands: besides one friend of a friend with an autoimmune disease, I'm not aware of chronic health issues in anyone else under 70 years old. Unless you count things like obesity, autism, or often having a headache at the onset of menstruation. Only among my grandparents (>70yo by now), it's indeed common to have something like a wound that doesn't heal or memory issues.
Maybe my value is under the statistical average, but "almost everyone I know"? That sounds very odd as well. Do you know of a genetic-related issue in the family, or do you live in a place where vaccinations are not available or mistrusted or so?
Yeah exactly. I probably have some form of rheumatism and fertility issues. Since forever I have avoided my country’s traditional bread based lunch and instead microwaved leftovers in plastic containers. I feel bad about that. I also heated baby formula in plastic bottles. No bpa but it turns out: still bad.
Maybe. But the other day I also read a news article about a research that says cancer rates (edit: of people below 60 years old) have risen 80% in the past 30 years, and are expected to rise another 31% by 2030. One suspected cause is the consumption of processed food, which contains additives such as preservatives that are harmful long-term. Another possible reason is microplastic accumulation.
Pesticide/herbicide exposure is also plausible, either via direct mechanisms or by disruption of gut microbiota (e.g. glyphosate and the shikimate pathway). It seems likely that these and other factors could interact, too.
I always wonder about whether such comparisons take into account the 50% increase in global population between 1990 and 2019. This BMJ charts do not appear to do so.
This is a terrible piece of ignore-the-facts advice. The emerging facts about the health impacts from plastics are significant and irreversible. Anxiety is a healthy human response to a threat.
I have my doubts that microplastic/nanoplastic exposure is something that the average person in industrialized countries can individually lifestyle-choice their way out of. This is just one vector out of dozens (if not hundreds), most of which haven't been studied so closely. Plastic pollution is a systemic problem, and has been for decades.
This falls into the category of "the tiny bit of extra safety I may gain is not worth the huge amount of inconvenience that it causes."
Even if I were to stop putting stuff in the microwave, that won't account for all the other foods I eat outside the home that may have had microwaving as part of their preparation process. I mean, I'll take a frozen package of ribs out of the freezer and microwave it for a minute so the surface softens enough for me to cut the plastic and peel it off before thawing or brining the meat.
No, I think I'll just take my chances and not have yet one more thing to stress out about.
I feel like there is a bit of a cultural divide here. Microwaving is here (central europe) not part of food preperation and if it is used stuff is filled into glass containers instead of plastic packaging?
>This falls into the category of "the tiny bit of extra safety I may gain is not worth the huge amount of inconvenience that it causes."
Could also be "the high adverse effects we pay for with extra cancers, higher inflammation, even lower fertility maybe, but were too preoccupied with some received idea of convenience to notice and attribute to such bad habbits".
>Even if I were to stop putting stuff in the microwave, that won't account for all the other foods I eat outside the home that may have had microwaving as part of their preparation process
Whether at home or "outside the home", microwaving is just not seen in a good light in most of Europe I know, and is seldom a thing except as a low-class convenience when you're like a student or something. Though most fellow students I knew would never go for it either, and would start to cook simple but proper food themselves after the 2nd year or so.
You (the average person) can't choose your way out or really be safe - but you can at least avoid doing the equivalent of putting your head in the lion’s mouth. At least most of the time. It's not that difficult to use non-plastic kitchenware, or learning to not put plastic in a microwave (or come to think of it: any cooking) at least 99% of the time.
>can individually lifestyle-choice their way out of
>Plastic pollution is a systemic problem, and has been for decades.
Sorry, this gets uncritically repeated so much that it's bordering on propaganda. Like it's just doing free work for oil companies at this point. This kind of stuff is exactly what I'd say as someone working for an oil company's social media team after realizing that individual choice is not something that happens in a vacuum. Corporate propaganda on the personal-carbon-footprint issue backfired - they thought they would be able to demoralize people, but it slowly grew into a movement that continues to grow. It's honestly kind of funny they thought people wouldn't attach their morality to decisions about environmental destruction.
"individual lifestyle choices don't cause systemic change" is a bastardization of the original concept. And it's actually doing the original intent of corporations - to demoralize people about seeking an oilless future.
The original concept was that one should not feel guilty if they can't make an individual lifestyle choice because something is preventing them from doing so. It was never meant to demoralize people from using their own moral compass to decide not to participate in certain behaviors. I don't get why "I want to use less petroleum-derived products and eventually none at all" is exempt from spreading through the social network as a worthwhile idea when literally everything else does.
Again, people aren't individually responsible for the systemic results of their choices, but their individual choices do create signals that result in systemic change. Our choices don't operate in a vacuum, our peers, friends, and family all look at what we do; their peers, friends, and family do the same.
This objection is obviously rote, and is entirely misplaced.
Not microwaving plastic isn't a moral failure, it's a safety hazard due to the plastic falling apart. But if everything you consume is full of microplastics, then worrying about these microplastics is likely a waste of time.
Saying that the environment is so full of microplastics that conscious efforts to avoid them will be a waste of time is the opposite of excusing companies for filling the environment with microplastics. It's saying that the only thing that will be effective is to attack the sources rather than lifestyling your way out of it.
You've confused health for morality, then gone on to give a lecture about it.
Why so binary? Are you one of those people who, during wildfire smoke, goes outside and smokes cigars because "well the air's already smokey so what's an extra cigar?". Yeah, and now you're breathing in wildfire smoke in addition to that cigar, that doesn't make it better.
I intentionally use stainless steel cookware, a stainless steel thermos (although there's plastic in the cap/spout), and glass containers for meal prep/food storage. I use this stuff on a daily basis, so any bio-accumulation will add up. Just because I can't 100% lifestyle-choice my way out of microplastics contamination doesn't mean I can't 20 or 40% lifestyle-choice my way out, and it's 99% as convenient.
I think I've said it on this site before in similar context, but:
A good friend of mine who used to do hazardous waste disposal said the industry developed a winning mantra: mitigation, not elimination. Or to put it in more familiar terms, don't let perfect be the enemy of good.
I quit smoking about 20 years ago though I’m living in the city next to a major road. I don’t see your point.
I cook at least 50% of my warm meals myself and I learned to prepare meals in advance and to freeze or sterilize them. Not so much to save money but because I prefer good food with known ingredients.
I don’t see why I shouldn’t be able to reduce my intake of microplastics by further phasing out the plastic containers I usually use and use relatively cheap glass containers.
I think OPs argument is that tackling microplastic exposure through personal choices like microwave use, etc, may be unlikely to make a significant dent in overall microplastic consumption, if it's in all the food, all the water, the soil, the air, the bedsheets, the flooring, etc etc.
What size/impact does personal choice have. Plastics are so prevelant is the impact 1% or 50%. If the former your choices don't really matter that much, the latter they might.
I'm sure there's some set of lifestyle choices that would lead to a measurable reduction, but whether that reduction matters practically is a different question.
The article suggests that heating certain plastics to the softening point significantly increases the amount of plastic shed into the food. Despite being only one vector, it could be a very high magnitude. So if you were to make any choice about it, this would be a good candidate, if the claim is true.
You can significantly reduce it easily. Don't heat things in plastic, don't buy hot food or beverages served in plastic or "bamboo / paper," stop using K-cups, etc.
What I am surprised about is that (please confirm if you know otherwise) microplastic contamination from microwaving plastics wasn't investigated decades ago. In the 80's we all knew that some plastics get soft in the microwave, it seemed exceedingly likely to the layman that it would leach out.
Microplastics, were they unobservable in the 80's? Were there no scientists interested in this? I am decidedly anti-conspiracy when I look for explanations on phenomenon, but I am having a bit more trouble avoiding it on this one. Or is this the case that the research existed, but the media finally cared?
> it seemed exceedingly likely to the layman that it would leach out
It seemed exceedingly likely to scientists too. I've been reading about the dangers of microwaving stuff in plastic containers, or using plastic wrap in the microwave, as long as I can remember. Here's a study from 1990, citing several others that go back to 1988.
I'm pretty sure there were earlier ones as well. What's important here is not to conflate leached chemicals with micro- or nano-particles. Scientists and consumer advocates (and many consumers) have been well aware of the former for a long time, while awareness of the latter is relatively new.
> Microplastics, were they unobservable in the 80's?
Sort of. The term is sometimes attributed to Richard Thompson in 2004.
Prior to that (or thereabouts) nobody knew to look for whole plastic particles as opposed to individual chemical components. Therefore tools to quantify or analyze them were not well refined, and likewise for methodologies. The specific issue of microplastics in microwaves is even newer than that. It's evolving science, which is practically redundant because that's what science always does. Cases of zero awareness to high awareness overnight are rare. More often it's increasing awareness, and correspondingly increasing sophistication in measurement or analysis, as each study takes years and someone to fund it.
Don’t put plastic in the microwave,” has been common advice in my circle for over a decade, maybe three or more? I feel like it either finally stopped getting suppressed, or it finally hit an emergent “critical mass” and broke through (probably the second one).
I mean we're talking about it here, and health hipsters have been talking about it for a long time, but are we actually at the point where enough people know/care that concerted society-wide effort is being made to fix it?
besides companies selling water bottles as "BPA-free", not as far as I can see
yeah, in terms of public opinion, but I am specifically curious about what research was conducted in the 80's or 90's. I tried a few searches on Google Scholar this morning but their UI controls are heavily skewed toward finding new research, not old..plus the long issue of pre electronic publications. I bet there are publications, but probably skewed to particular contexts. e.g. I found a study examining leaching of plastic chemicals into blood plastic pouches used in hospitals. Medical device research probably doesn't tend to "leach" into other research fields
It should be noted in context that the labels and text "microwave safe" refer to the safety of the product, not the human. The label is added to products that will not melt in the microwave - there is no testing of volatiles emitted.
"Why'd you heat empty containers?" That's not what the label suggests you do. It's like the 'dishwasher safe' label: you don't put food in your container and then stick the container in the dishwasher for heating and expect to be able to eat the food afterwards. (Would be a fun experiment, though.)
"that's what the label is saying" I never took it that way, also because there is either no research on the type of plastic used and so we don't know that it's toxic yet (because which ethics committee is gonna approve a proposal to «let people eat a bunch of plastic and see what happens to them»), and if there is some amount of evidence that it has some side effects but is not precisely problematic in moderate doses, then why would a manufacturer care if they sell individual drink bottles or some such? It's not like they know that the patient, ahem, customer already got into contact with the chemical a thousand times in the past three months. (See: BPA. I just checked Wikipedia and it says that marketed-as-BPA-free products replaced it with BPF and BPS, and the sentence has references to ~recent studies that say they're equally bad or worse! The more you know about plastics...)
The plausible deniability means they never had to care, so I don't expect a product labeled "microwave safe" to have invented the miracle plastic that doesn't break down into micro/nanoplastics. That would have been world news, not a footnote on an ordinary box.
Another one to keep an eye out for: "made with 100% organic x" doesn't mean "only contains organic x" but rather "contains organic x (and also maybe other kinds of x)".
Readit News
This the part I feel should be focused on. HDPE is notable for being safe to handle during its entire lifecycle, from production to use to recycling. Even when pushed well past its softening point, it does not create any hazardous fumes. A sustainable future does not mean avoiding the use of plastics entirely, it means identifying which are the most useful in the long-term.
They are NOT very stiff, tho.
When I was inside the only "cup" you could buy was a plastic storage container that was not food- or microwave-safe but was used for everything from drinking coffee to cooking noodles.
Dead Comment
Definitely Do Not trust what you read when there is a referral link.
I find really astonishing how the article demonizes plastic and ends recommending glassware use, placing a product referral that have PLASTIC lids. Shouldn't we stop using it?
In any case, the problem here is when food comes into contact with plastic, which is not happening regularly with lids unless you store your food upside-down.
Counter example could be condensation on lid heating,leaching, then dripping on food.
Having an affiliate link is unfortunate and very much not smart on their end I would say, but automatically drawing the conclusion that the whole article must have the single purpose of serving as a Trojan horse for this one random link that they also know only a small amount of people will click on is another logical fallacy, and IMO resorting to attributing to malice when things can be explained otherwise.
Micro/nanoplastics are a secondary consideration overall, primary was just to reduce my usage of plastics a bit, even how infinitesimal it really is. I only realized how much plastic packaging I go through once I moved to an apartment with plastic "recycling", I still separate out most plastics but not everything.
I personally am not really swayed towards ditching whatever plastics I still have, given how ubiquitous it is and I am already happy with my Ikea glassware.
The biggest problem for me is cabinet space. The jars don't stack compactly, and the glass lock tend to live up to their name if you try to stack them.
I filled the brandy snifter with ice, water, and salt, and dunked the outside of the measuring cup in hot water. It loosened the assembly enough to get it apart without destroying the brandy glass.
For some reason the idea didnt catch on, anyone know why not?
There is a reason microwaves are boxes.
If I had to guess, the suits were actually infrared heating elements
And a few classist remarks and at least one usage of "white trash".
There's only one recipe I semi-regularly use that I'd count as cooking in the microwave. The main reason being that the "classic" way of cooking it takes a whole day, where it only takes 20 minutes in the microwave.
Sure, try to mimimize risk, but if you’re feeling too anxious remember that human beings are, currently, living longer, healthier lives than they ever have.
Eat some vegetables and go for a run or a bike ride. We know what works for improving health.
This is not true in America. Life expectancy has dropped significantly after COVID and several types of cancer are on the rise (notably, pancreatic and liver). Americans are more obese than ever with significant all-cause mortality and lifestyle impacts.
While the impact of COVID may eventually even out, it is just not the case that health and life expectancy is monotonically increasing.
Maybe my value is under the statistical average, but "almost everyone I know"? That sounds very odd as well. Do you know of a genetic-related issue in the family, or do you live in a place where vaccinations are not available or mistrusted or so?
https://www.nu.nl/gezondheid/6279697/aantal-kankergevallen-w...
https://bmjoncology.bmj.com/content/2/1/e000049
Not in the US, where life expectancy is plunging.
https://www.wolframalpha.com/input?i=us+life+expectancy
Even if I were to stop putting stuff in the microwave, that won't account for all the other foods I eat outside the home that may have had microwaving as part of their preparation process. I mean, I'll take a frozen package of ribs out of the freezer and microwave it for a minute so the surface softens enough for me to cut the plastic and peel it off before thawing or brining the meat.
No, I think I'll just take my chances and not have yet one more thing to stress out about.
Could also be "the high adverse effects we pay for with extra cancers, higher inflammation, even lower fertility maybe, but were too preoccupied with some received idea of convenience to notice and attribute to such bad habbits".
>Even if I were to stop putting stuff in the microwave, that won't account for all the other foods I eat outside the home that may have had microwaving as part of their preparation process
Whether at home or "outside the home", microwaving is just not seen in a good light in most of Europe I know, and is seldom a thing except as a low-class convenience when you're like a student or something. Though most fellow students I knew would never go for it either, and would start to cook simple but proper food themselves after the 2nd year or so.
>Plastic pollution is a systemic problem, and has been for decades.
Sorry, this gets uncritically repeated so much that it's bordering on propaganda. Like it's just doing free work for oil companies at this point. This kind of stuff is exactly what I'd say as someone working for an oil company's social media team after realizing that individual choice is not something that happens in a vacuum. Corporate propaganda on the personal-carbon-footprint issue backfired - they thought they would be able to demoralize people, but it slowly grew into a movement that continues to grow. It's honestly kind of funny they thought people wouldn't attach their morality to decisions about environmental destruction.
"individual lifestyle choices don't cause systemic change" is a bastardization of the original concept. And it's actually doing the original intent of corporations - to demoralize people about seeking an oilless future.
The original concept was that one should not feel guilty if they can't make an individual lifestyle choice because something is preventing them from doing so. It was never meant to demoralize people from using their own moral compass to decide not to participate in certain behaviors. I don't get why "I want to use less petroleum-derived products and eventually none at all" is exempt from spreading through the social network as a worthwhile idea when literally everything else does.
Again, people aren't individually responsible for the systemic results of their choices, but their individual choices do create signals that result in systemic change. Our choices don't operate in a vacuum, our peers, friends, and family all look at what we do; their peers, friends, and family do the same.
Not microwaving plastic isn't a moral failure, it's a safety hazard due to the plastic falling apart. But if everything you consume is full of microplastics, then worrying about these microplastics is likely a waste of time.
Saying that the environment is so full of microplastics that conscious efforts to avoid them will be a waste of time is the opposite of excusing companies for filling the environment with microplastics. It's saying that the only thing that will be effective is to attack the sources rather than lifestyling your way out of it.
You've confused health for morality, then gone on to give a lecture about it.
I intentionally use stainless steel cookware, a stainless steel thermos (although there's plastic in the cap/spout), and glass containers for meal prep/food storage. I use this stuff on a daily basis, so any bio-accumulation will add up. Just because I can't 100% lifestyle-choice my way out of microplastics contamination doesn't mean I can't 20 or 40% lifestyle-choice my way out, and it's 99% as convenient.
A good friend of mine who used to do hazardous waste disposal said the industry developed a winning mantra: mitigation, not elimination. Or to put it in more familiar terms, don't let perfect be the enemy of good.
I cook at least 50% of my warm meals myself and I learned to prepare meals in advance and to freeze or sterilize them. Not so much to save money but because I prefer good food with known ingredients. I don’t see why I shouldn’t be able to reduce my intake of microplastics by further phasing out the plastic containers I usually use and use relatively cheap glass containers.
Deleted Comment
Microplastics, were they unobservable in the 80's? Were there no scientists interested in this? I am decidedly anti-conspiracy when I look for explanations on phenomenon, but I am having a bit more trouble avoiding it on this one. Or is this the case that the research existed, but the media finally cared?
It seemed exceedingly likely to scientists too. I've been reading about the dangers of microwaving stuff in plastic containers, or using plastic wrap in the microwave, as long as I can remember. Here's a study from 1990, citing several others that go back to 1988.
https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/Migration-testing-of-p...
I'm pretty sure there were earlier ones as well. What's important here is not to conflate leached chemicals with micro- or nano-particles. Scientists and consumer advocates (and many consumers) have been well aware of the former for a long time, while awareness of the latter is relatively new.
> Microplastics, were they unobservable in the 80's?
Sort of. The term is sometimes attributed to Richard Thompson in 2004.
https://www.plymouth.ac.uk/discover/are-microplastics-a-big-...
Prior to that (or thereabouts) nobody knew to look for whole plastic particles as opposed to individual chemical components. Therefore tools to quantify or analyze them were not well refined, and likewise for methodologies. The specific issue of microplastics in microwaves is even newer than that. It's evolving science, which is practically redundant because that's what science always does. Cases of zero awareness to high awareness overnight are rare. More often it's increasing awareness, and correspondingly increasing sophistication in measurement or analysis, as each study takes years and someone to fund it.
Q: Are biodegradable plastics create more microplastics than more durable plastics?
As a side note,
besides companies selling water bottles as "BPA-free", not as far as I can see
> Overall Migration Limit (OML) of 60mg/kg food, or 10 mg/dm2 of the contact material.
- https://food.ec.europa.eu/safety/chemical-safety/food-contac...
"Microwave safe" container labels are not labelled so because it is safe to heat food in them in Microwaves?
Why would anyone just heat empty containers in a microwave? Because that's what the label is saying otherwise isn't it?
"Why'd you heat empty containers?" That's not what the label suggests you do. It's like the 'dishwasher safe' label: you don't put food in your container and then stick the container in the dishwasher for heating and expect to be able to eat the food afterwards. (Would be a fun experiment, though.)
"that's what the label is saying" I never took it that way, also because there is either no research on the type of plastic used and so we don't know that it's toxic yet (because which ethics committee is gonna approve a proposal to «let people eat a bunch of plastic and see what happens to them»), and if there is some amount of evidence that it has some side effects but is not precisely problematic in moderate doses, then why would a manufacturer care if they sell individual drink bottles or some such? It's not like they know that the patient, ahem, customer already got into contact with the chemical a thousand times in the past three months. (See: BPA. I just checked Wikipedia and it says that marketed-as-BPA-free products replaced it with BPF and BPS, and the sentence has references to ~recent studies that say they're equally bad or worse! The more you know about plastics...)
The plausible deniability means they never had to care, so I don't expect a product labeled "microwave safe" to have invented the miracle plastic that doesn't break down into micro/nanoplastics. That would have been world news, not a footnote on an ordinary box.