[VLM]

The devil is mostly in the details, and enough pigment is in the PLA to somewhat alter printing characteristics. I believe different color PLA has different smells but that is right on (or past) the detection border.

Raw "natural" uncolored PLA is probably about as toxic as a corn cob or piece of wood, in other words it can probably mess up some embryos but its not a serious problem. Its polymerized lactic acid, not exactly biochemically exotic, we're not talking about organometallics here or arsenic chemistry or something exotic like that. It "should" be very biochemically boring.

On the other hand there is a VERY long history of pigments in general being toxic. Add in legendary Chinese safety standards and I would not be surprised if there is a problem with chromium-VI tinted orange PLA. Or white lead pigment in white PLA. Oh I'm sure the press releases will say its all lead free and gluten free and organic free range plastic, but on the other hand I'm sure we all know strange things get shipped and they're not using FDA approved food dye for everything over there.

I was very displeased with the tone of the article claiming ABS (which stinks) and PLA (which is nearly odorless) are very superficially both dangerous and only later in the article do I read that PLA's effect was barely statistically measurable although the other plastic is a highly effective mass murderer. Oh just a slight bias in the article until it comes time to report results, just a tiny little bit of bias. Perhaps they patented that too.