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by rendaw
261 days ago
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Is cyclic siloxanes the same as cyclosiloxane? I thought silicone was recommended over plastics/nonstick/etc because it's inert and chemically simple. The wikipedia says that cyclosiloxane is volatile, often used as a solvent, and evaporates. Since it declines over time, it doesn't seem to be the result of normal wear/tear of the bakeware which does suggest it's something added during the manufacturing process. I've heard of doing an initial bake of silicone bakeware to remove factory stuff... So is silicone as a cooking material actually fairly complex, new, and not as well understood as I thought (similar to plastics)? Or is this an avoidable manufacturing thing. Also they mention "concerns", but I couldn't find any known health risks. Is this similar to microplastics, where it could be an issue but it isn't clear yet? Or are they known to be harmful? |
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They were nice enough to provide repeat experiments in 3.5, figure 2. It shows the release of c-siloxane drops of dramatically after the first baking. Then it tapers off.
That suggests to me this is not a structural component, but a solvent, softener, coating or similar that sits between the structural silicone. Otherwise, I'd expect reports of the silicone molds degrading after baking. Though I guess it could be material that simply didn't mate with a polymer chain. But that doesn't jive with the (sparse) Wikipedia article [1].
This doesn't say anything about whether they are inert. If they are inert and not meant to be bound to anything, then it makes sense they'll be washed away, and that doesn't matter (in the PFAS sense, where it turns out it does eventually matter :).
The EU is looking at D4-6 because it's bioaccumulative. Canada (where this study is from) looks at D4 [2].
Overall, this looks like a very comprehensive study. Many aspects covered. I'd like to also complain that mixing "cyclic siloxane" with "c-siloxane" makes it much more difficult to search through the paper. Why not stick with one name?
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyclosiloxane
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siloxane#Safety_and_environmen...