[conorh]

My wife is a doctor dealing with (part of) the endocrine system and for years she has had us avoiding heating anything up in a plastic container and avoiding food/liquids+plastic where we can. She believes that these endocrine disruptors are very likely much worse for us than we currently realize, and that the research is eventually going to show that.

[asdff]

I think when people act like this they get a little irrational even if they have credentials and education. For example, the concern is limiting plastic intake. the solution is to limit it at home apparently, because this is within our realm of control. It's a fallacy though.

However, if this was approached scientifically, we might ask ourselves to identify where these plastics are most likely to come from when we get in contact from them. Are these few levers in our control really having any effect compared to the levers we have no control over that probably also contribute significant plastic in our lives? That is the first question to be asked before any action IMO. It is humbling I am sure to know of a problem but also subconsciously at least know there isn't anything you can do about it. Like most other pollution I guess; you have to breathe that air at the end of the day. And your only salve is the scientific community gathering evidence of these effects so that regulation might be written to target them specifically. Individually, we are powerless.

[metadat]

Why does she believe this? What data is it based on?

(I also avoid these things but only because I feel paranoid about it.)

[conorh]

From my understanding she feels that the mechanisms for these endocrine disrupters are there, that they act similarly to BPA, which is better understood, and that over time as research is done we will find more ways that they interact. The research is hard to do and takes a very long time, and quite a lot of it is not definitive because it is difficult with so many confounding factors, but there is a lot of it and more over time.

[hi_hello]

Specifically on heating plastics:

https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acs.est.3c01942

[Maxion]

My wife is a researcher that has looked in to human breast milk, and blood metabolites. She has colleagues who have looked in to similar things. They all avoid plastics as much as possible.

[kristofferR]

Microwaving the food in the food containers reduced the plastic chemicals on average, it didn't cause any leakage according to the results. Weird.