I am, in a different life, a consumer of compost and I have started looking very carefully at the compost products for sale in the bay area.
On the urban consumer side of things I see compost collection bins which cannot possibly be decontaminated of all manner of plastic pieces which will, inevitably, be ground up into the compost product.
On the rural side of things I see miles of plastic baling twine and weedeater string - and other plastic meshes and grid - used throughout pastures year after year and then collected back up again with loads of hay and manure which also end up in the compost stream.
These truckloads of soil/compost/fill have to be significantly contaminated and the rural end users are pouring them right back on their fields.
It's funny how the same people that dump whatever trash they feel like into the compost bins because it's convenient turn around and say "Wow, free compost! Let me spread that all over my garden!" Like, didn't I just see you yesterday putting a compostable takeout container into the bin with ketchup packets still inside? You think the municipal composting fairy just magics that stuff away?
Microplastics impact endocrine hormones and potentially are carcinogenic.
Lifespan growth has stagnated although technology has improved. Quality of life has declined as number of temperate days with good air quality declines with climate change.
I’m usually less worried about microplastics than many (human lifespan is at the longest it’s ever been, and people are healthy at older ages than ever - things can’t be that bad overall), but weed eater string is a pet peeve of mine. We’re just spewing nylon microplastics everywhere, and I can’t understand how it’s not at all controversial!
I've spent some time thinking about this and it's a difficult problem for two reasons:
First, while we use metal blades on our ranch it's not easy - you need to educate workers on the extra safety issues involved with the blade and you need to be very careful about fire safety due to sparking. There are only a few months where we use the trimmers at all due to fire risk.[1]
Second, operators of trimmers don't like the performance of the blades and how they cut. With a bit of practice it is fine and as an employer I can dictate the tools I choose ... but convincing homeowners or small property owners to switch to blades is going to be hard. Further, there are some techniques (like trimming up to landscaping features or house siding without destroying them) that are impossible with the blade.
But yes ... if you see a row of workers mowing a big field with string ... somebody isn't putting two and two together and it's a shame to see pristine fields being plasticized.
[1] I have looked into a short metal cable made of non-sparking metal as a replacement for the blade ... not an easy thing to put together ...
Plastics were really only introduced ~1950 and usage/production has been increasing since, which means that we'll only know the lifetime effects of current exposure levels 80 some years from now. Human lifespan statistics are currently based on people born before 1950.
In Columbus we have, "The Compost Exchange" and as a small farmer I get their compost delivered.
It is now so full of plastic contamination it's just not worth it anymore. Its disgusting what I find in there, countless grocery bags, Keurig cups, people don't care and I don't save enough money to be worth picking out plastic.
Because they tell you to do this like this. Food container? green waste. Dogpoop bag? green waste. Its less about giving you good compost and more about getting the local landfill to emit a little bit less methane by not having as much organic matter rotting in there.
I know that some wastewater treatment plants will sell biosolid sludge (the filtered and partially treated solid output of the treatment process). Do you know what, if anything, that does to the plastics?
I think it's mostly mechanical settling and then sitting in piles on the ground. Not sure if that UV exposure from the sun is enough to meaningfully degrade the plastic into something else.
> "On BPA in particular, just 10 years ago, the US EPA and the EU EFSA had the same limit. Then the EFSA lowered their limit several times, resulting in a 250,000x difference in the limits. But the EPA Iris site to this day says that, no, the limit they last revised in 1988 is still correct. This is an important difference if you want to interpret PlasticList results. Remember the Boba Guys tea that contains 1.2 years of safe BPA consumption according to the EFSA? According to the EPA, it’s well under the limit."
How the heck can the limits established by the EPA and EFSA vary up to 250,000x ??? That's several orders of magnitudes...
Really hoping this study blow up so more research gets funded. The testing is supposedly cheap and there's definitely enough public interest at this point.
It's hilarious how McDonalds ends up being the safest premade meals you can get (outside a big tech company cafeteria) at least from a scary plastic chemical standpoint. They actually have the resources and a big enough PR problem to spend the money to send their stuff to labs and get it tested. Everyone else solves the PR problem by just labeling their food organic and healthy instead. https://justine.lol/tmp/healthy.jpg This is all of course assuming no one discovers anything horrible about DEHT in the future, which is the new chemical they're leaning into. I get maybe 10% as many Google Scholar hits on DEHT compared to its terrifying well-studied cousin DEHP.
It is ironic. Amazing how if you don't go looking for it, there is no bad news!
I see the same in people who visit developing countries and talk about how "fresh and organic" the food is. They comment "you don't read about the food safety issues like you do in developed countries".
Yeah, of course you don't, the developing countries don't test!
Having lived in a developing country for a decade: they don't speak the local language and don't read local news that's why they don't hear about it. The local news and gossip is always full of it.
Not gonna lie, the meat I had in some European countries without preservatives and processing went through me so cleanly and easy I’m convinced we are the ones dropping the ball in this whole discussion somehow.
That's partly true, but on the other hand less intensive, less industrialized food production will end up with safer food. The apple or tomato from your grandma's backyard in Eastern Europe will have less chemicals than the one grown in the Dutch monoculture farm.
Looking forward to more testing like this. I've been trying to consciously avoid anything combining "hot" with "plastic" though there's only so much you can do.
Fish are aggregators of this stuff so that's not surprising. Spam and other processed meats and prepared foods also not too surprising (though what's with the Annie's organic mac and cheese being so full of it? Maybe it's the sauce?)... I think the tap water was the scariest one to me. Sure, you expect some but ... wildly unsafe levels?!
Are you looking at the results in the table on the main page? That is tap water treated with some purifying tablet, not straight tap water. There is plain tap water in the full database but it doesn't seem to have levels of anything in excess of established limits.
My mistake, I didn't see that part. I thought the tablet treatment was just something they did to prepare it for testing. Maybe the tablets kill the microfauna via microplastic overdose.
Manufacturers are putting more and more plastic into things to cut costs it seems.
My favorite pour over coffee maker almost entirely had water in contact with metal and glass during brewing. Glass reservoir, glass decanter, metal grounds basket - only rubber tubes going from reservoir to heating element.
When it died (your average coffee maker only lasts 5 years) all of their newer more expensive models had mostly plastic everything except for the decanter.
Also, is there an aggregate plastic danger metric? It would be great to develop an aggregate metric that combines the different types of plastics and multiplies them by their known potential dangers to the human body. I realize the multiples will change over time as more research comes in, but right now, there's no way to quantify BPA vs DEHP dangers.
The PlasticList site explores safety levels, including a discussion of aggregate levels across products and chemicals. It’s an interesting but frustrating read.
Initial data says they're at least bad for sea life. Doubtful it's good to have such durable micro materials bouncing around our lungs and digestive tracts. Stopping pollution is also much easier than cleaning up after the fact.
It's interesting that everyone is talking about boba tea instead of things they regularly consume like milk and beef, also featured in dedication sections of TFA.
Either because they didn't scroll past the first chart or it's more convenient to focus on a food item they don't eat daily.
Edit: I was randomly on NewRepublic's website and saw this relevant article about how farmers using 'biosolids' (sewage) on their land multiplied the PFAS in their livestock/dairy/water: https://newrepublic.com/article/187106/pfas-milk-maine-texas... ("One State’s War on Forever Chemicals in Milk")
Great read and amazing initiative.
Relevance of findings seems to 90% depend on whether you believe the EFSA BPA intake thresholds over the FDA.
Love how transparent they’re about it instead of doing what most do.
The world needs more of this.
This research by these non academic background folks is simply astounding and exceptional. How did they get the funding to run $500k of independent lab testing? Can we donate to the cause?
This stuff is on my mind all the time eating out or from plastic-impregnated cardboard food packaging lining, etc. I’m worried about reproductive impact on future generations and overall personal health, etc.
Nat Friedman leads the project. He was GitHub's CEO, among many other things. He funds many interesting ambitious projects, such as the Vesuvius Challenge (https://scrollprize.org/)
It seems noteworthy, but not commented that I can see (in the article), that the different samples of "Boba Guys Black Tea Pearls" have 20x variation in measured amount.
So what's up with that? (I have uninformed ideas...)
Further down, they explain the measurement errors involved:
"
If you buy the same product twice, how much will chemical levels vary?
When we bought two samples of the same product, plastic chemical levels differed on average by 59%, calculated as Relative Percent Difference (RPD).
To test whether completely identical samples would show different levels of chemicals, we sent about 10% of our products in triplicate. This means we sent three copies of the product from the same batch – with matching lot number and expiration date – bought at the same store on the same day. We found that the triplicate samples differed less – on average by 33%.
Our lab’s quality control methodology lists 20% RPD as an acceptable margin of measurement error for duplicate samples, meaning if you tested the exact same sample twice, you could see up to a 20% difference purely due to measurement noise. Taking that into account, the RPD for two samples of the same product (not necessarily from the same lot) ranges from 39-59%. For samples with the same lot number and expiration date, the RPD narrows to 13-33%.
Within-product variability appears high, possibly because we are dealing with very small chemical concentrations measured in nanograms."
In Taiwan, there was a huge scandal decade ago about this exact same issue — people discovered vendors were using plasticiser to make the boba jelly like.
Im sure most of the boba shops in the US import ingredients from Taiwan, so its not surprising here
my fam loves boba w zero sugar added... all the places we go to here in san diego let you adjust (e.g. omomo [0]). basically a fresh milky fruit or avocado smoothie with chewy tapioca pearls. it's a fun treat that seemed a lot healthier than an ice cream or something. these findings make me sad :-|
I like the texture of the tapioca balls and like milk tea. I’d only get the milk tea plus tapioca (and choose the lowest sweetness possible, “no sugar” if offered)
I mean I get not liking it. I like it. I’d have it maybe once every three months as a little treat
Readit News
On the urban consumer side of things I see compost collection bins which cannot possibly be decontaminated of all manner of plastic pieces which will, inevitably, be ground up into the compost product.
On the rural side of things I see miles of plastic baling twine and weedeater string - and other plastic meshes and grid - used throughout pastures year after year and then collected back up again with loads of hay and manure which also end up in the compost stream.
These truckloads of soil/compost/fill have to be significantly contaminated and the rural end users are pouring them right back on their fields.
Lifespan growth has stagnated although technology has improved. Quality of life has declined as number of temperate days with good air quality declines with climate change.
First, while we use metal blades on our ranch it's not easy - you need to educate workers on the extra safety issues involved with the blade and you need to be very careful about fire safety due to sparking. There are only a few months where we use the trimmers at all due to fire risk.[1]
Second, operators of trimmers don't like the performance of the blades and how they cut. With a bit of practice it is fine and as an employer I can dictate the tools I choose ... but convincing homeowners or small property owners to switch to blades is going to be hard. Further, there are some techniques (like trimming up to landscaping features or house siding without destroying them) that are impossible with the blade.
But yes ... if you see a row of workers mowing a big field with string ... somebody isn't putting two and two together and it's a shame to see pristine fields being plasticized.
[1] I have looked into a short metal cable made of non-sparking metal as a replacement for the blade ... not an easy thing to put together ...
Dead Comment
It is now so full of plastic contamination it's just not worth it anymore. Its disgusting what I find in there, countless grocery bags, Keurig cups, people don't care and I don't save enough money to be worth picking out plastic.
I think it's mostly mechanical settling and then sitting in piles on the ground. Not sure if that UV exposure from the sun is enough to meaningfully degrade the plastic into something else.
> "On BPA in particular, just 10 years ago, the US EPA and the EU EFSA had the same limit. Then the EFSA lowered their limit several times, resulting in a 250,000x difference in the limits. But the EPA Iris site to this day says that, no, the limit they last revised in 1988 is still correct. This is an important difference if you want to interpret PlasticList results. Remember the Boba Guys tea that contains 1.2 years of safe BPA consumption according to the EFSA? According to the EPA, it’s well under the limit."
How the heck can the limits established by the EPA and EFSA vary up to 250,000x ??? That's several orders of magnitudes...
Really hoping this study blow up so more research gets funded. The testing is supposedly cheap and there's definitely enough public interest at this point.
There can also be very different appetites for risk.
Dead Comment
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I see the same in people who visit developing countries and talk about how "fresh and organic" the food is. They comment "you don't read about the food safety issues like you do in developed countries".
Yeah, of course you don't, the developing countries don't test!
Fish are aggregators of this stuff so that's not surprising. Spam and other processed meats and prepared foods also not too surprising (though what's with the Annie's organic mac and cheese being so full of it? Maybe it's the sauce?)... I think the tap water was the scariest one to me. Sure, you expect some but ... wildly unsafe levels?!
My favorite pour over coffee maker almost entirely had water in contact with metal and glass during brewing. Glass reservoir, glass decanter, metal grounds basket - only rubber tubes going from reservoir to heating element.
When it died (your average coffee maker only lasts 5 years) all of their newer more expensive models had mostly plastic everything except for the decanter.
This would make the main giant aggregate list: https://www.plasticlist.org a lot more useful.
Edit: I see they appear to be using the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) intake limits for most of their tests.
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10151227/
I doubt the BPA in fish originates from the fish themselves. It's more likely from the can linings used to package the fish.
Either because they didn't scroll past the first chart or it's more convenient to focus on a food item they don't eat daily.
Edit: I was randomly on NewRepublic's website and saw this relevant article about how farmers using 'biosolids' (sewage) on their land multiplied the PFAS in their livestock/dairy/water: https://newrepublic.com/article/187106/pfas-milk-maine-texas... ("One State’s War on Forever Chemicals in Milk")
This stuff is on my mind all the time eating out or from plastic-impregnated cardboard food packaging lining, etc. I’m worried about reproductive impact on future generations and overall personal health, etc.
So what's up with that? (I have uninformed ideas...)
" If you buy the same product twice, how much will chemical levels vary?
When we bought two samples of the same product, plastic chemical levels differed on average by 59%, calculated as Relative Percent Difference (RPD).
To test whether completely identical samples would show different levels of chemicals, we sent about 10% of our products in triplicate. This means we sent three copies of the product from the same batch – with matching lot number and expiration date – bought at the same store on the same day. We found that the triplicate samples differed less – on average by 33%.
Our lab’s quality control methodology lists 20% RPD as an acceptable margin of measurement error for duplicate samples, meaning if you tested the exact same sample twice, you could see up to a 20% difference purely due to measurement noise. Taking that into account, the RPD for two samples of the same product (not necessarily from the same lot) ranges from 39-59%. For samples with the same lot number and expiration date, the RPD narrows to 13-33%.
Within-product variability appears high, possibly because we are dealing with very small chemical concentrations measured in nanograms."
Dead Comment
Im sure most of the boba shops in the US import ingredients from Taiwan, so its not surprising here
[0]: https://www.omomoteashoppe.com
I mean I get not liking it. I like it. I’d have it maybe once every three months as a little treat