SUMMARY
Plastics are nowhere near as safe as you might think. Under the 1976 Toxic Substances Control Act, the US EPA only tests chemicals when it is provided evidence of harm; the EPA has essentially allowed the chemicals industry to regulate itself for the other 60,000+ chemicals on the market. Even in the food industry, federal agencies don’t strictly regulate plastics; what is declared a “safe” plastic today may change tomorrow, and “BPA-free” plastic might be made with substances that are even worse than BPA (see below). I would suggest replacing all plastic in your life when reasonably possible. Sometimes there is no reasonable alternative, but often there is.
Why should we care that so many household items are made out of plastic?
On an environmental level, plastics are often made from crude oil. Politically, reliance on crude oil leads to twisted relationships with some of the world’s worst actors. Environmentally, there are direct negative impacts from drilling for crude oil on habitats and water quality due to leaks and other issues, as well as carbon dioxide emissions. Furthermore, many plastics degrade slowly and thus persist for a very long time in the environment and in landfills. There are huge swaths of relatively high-concentration plastic patches floating around the oceans. Birds often mistake colorful plastic for food and ingest harmful quantities of plastic. For instance, over 90 percent of Midway Island’s Laysan Albatrosses have plastic in their stomachs.1 That’s a remote island in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, so imagine what large-continent coastal wildlife goes through! The plastics can perforate animals’ vital organs and spread harmful toxins, among other things.
On a personal level, plastics have been linked to a wide variety of ailments, ranging from relatively minor impacts like increased blood pressure to major impacts like impacting children’s cognitive development.2 Sometimes you hear people reason that if plastic were so dangerous, big companies would not use it, because it would open them up to massive lawsuits.
This reasoning is faulty. First, our scientific understanding grows with time, so what was considered safe in the past might not be considered safe now.
Second, there have been numerous examples of big companies selling products that later turned out to be more dangerous than expected, such as Thalidomide (sleeping pills that turned out to cause severe birth defects)3 or lead paint].4 More recently, a substance called bisphenol A (BPA) has been connected with developmental problems in fetuses, infants, and children. BPA can leach out of polycarbonate plastic food and beverage containers, especially as temperatures rise. BPA is commonly found in shopping receipts and some canned food (the kind with white film lining the interior) as well. The Food and Drug Administration (FDA, the federal agency in charge of food and drug safety) has banned BPA in baby bottles and cups since 2012, after popular outcry.5 However, BPA is still found in some beverage containers, and drinking from them can cause blood pressure spikes.6
Worse, manufacturers have replaced BPA with similar substances that might be worse. If you can read only one article about plastics, read this one. (Yeah I know it’s MoJo which is known to be biased, but that doesn’t invalidate their arguments. They ran a followup article discussing some additional tests, and University of Calgary scientists have done studies that further strengthen the argument that some alternatives to BPA might be worse than BPA.) That’s right, we may have replaced BPA-laden polycarbonate jars, water bottles, and other such containers with “BPA-free” containers that are even worse than the BPA original! It doesn’t stop me from drinking green smoothies for breakfast, but I’d buy a stainless-steel Blendtec/Vitamix jar in a heartbeat if I could (and like Vitamix used to make). I already switched from plastic to stainless steel Nalgene water bottles.
Even innocuous fabric softener sheets can emit potential human carcinogens in the form of phthalates.7
The FDA is not necessarily of great help on these topics. The FDA is the agency that screwed up in allowing BPA into the marketplace for so many years in the first place, among their many other failures, such as: letting antibiotics be used for stupid purposes like fattening livestock (the vast majority of antibiotics used in US is for this purpose), which accelerated bacterial resistance; allowing fake olive oil (one study found that 2/3 of extra virgin olive oil on store shelves was not), fake wild fish (e.g., a large percentage of wild salmon isn’t), honey laundering, etc.; and approving Vioxx medication only to have to withdraw it due to heart attack and stroke risk. I’m not saying the FDA is all bad, but it’s far from perfect and not something you want to rely on too much.
I don’t think it’s productive to be paranoid about plastic, but I think the prudent thing to do is to ask oneself “are there alternatives to plastic? If there aren’t good alternatives to plastic, then do I need it at all?” For instance, my household does not stop buying frozen foods bagged in plastic. But we try to avoid plastic if there is a reasonable alternative. Oftentimes, there is. For instance, we don’t use microwaveable plastic rice cookers; instead we make rice on the stovetop. As another example, glass-exterior oil and vinegar dispensers often have internal plastic tubing, so I replaced them with all-glass dispensers (see table below).
Types of plastic
There are many types of plastic. Most plastic packages have a little recycling logo with a number code to identify the type of plastic.
Some plastics are safer than others, but why should we resort to plastic as a first choice rather than a last choice? Aren’t there alternatives?
Alternatives to Plastic
YES! There are alternatives to plastic:
- Glass (or ceramic or enamel; they are all variations of glass)
- Stainless Steel
Glass
Arguably the safest is glass as long it has not been mixed with heavy metals to give it color. Avoid colored glass.
Glass has been around for thousands of years and therefore has a very, very long track record of chemical inertness–it’s why chemistry laboratory test tubes are made out of glass. Glass is much less likely to react with chemicals than plastic. If glass can hold some of the most dangerous substances in a chem lab, it can surely hold your soy milk without leaching weird stuff into it.
Glass food storage containers may have plastic lids, but at least those lids are not touching food unless the containers are overly full. The most popular kind of glass used in food storage is soda lime glass, such as North American Pyrex. In contrast, borosilicate glass food containers are difficult to find in North America.
What’s the difference between soda lime glass and borosilicate glass?
- Soda lime glass is much cheaper and less able to absorb thermal shock than borosilicate glass, but more able to absorb physical shocks like dropping it a few inches onto a countertop (additionally, soda lime glass is cheap, so can be made thick more cheaply, and thicker glass can safely absorb more physical shock). Conversely, borosilicate glass is more expensive to produce, less resistant to physical shock, more resistant to thermal shock.
- When soda lime glass shatters, it disintegrates into many little pieces. When borosilicate glass shatters, it fragments into fewer, larger pieces. I have personally witnessed a soda lime glass (Pyrex or Anchor Hocking) baking dish spontaneously explode into hundreds of shards of glass at a baby shower, just from being moved from an oven to a countertop and resting for a minute or two. Nobody was touching or moving the dish when it shattered. (The food was ruined, but nobody was standing close enough to be injured.) Apparently years of stresses had built up, and the dish suddenly and unexpectedly gave in to those stresses. Others have reported the same. This is a relatively tame example where the Pyrex did not explode into as many pieces:
Pre-1980s USA-made Pyrex is made out of borosilicate glass. But it’s not worth trying to scrounge around for antique Pyrex that may have been abused/scratched/whatever, when there are unused borosilicate options. However, European-made Pyrex is still made out of borosilicate glass. But it’s hard to find since almost nobody imports them into the U.S. We mostly get regular Pyrex in the U.S.
Stainless Steel
I’ve already covered stainless steel (inox). Unless you have some extreme nickel allergy, stainless steel is very safe. The downside is that steel does react with food over long periods of time, especially salty/acidic food, which is why it is not used for long-term food storage. Nevertheless, stainless steel can be used for shorter-term food storage (e.g., a few hours) and for water bottles.
Alternatives to Plastic
| Item | Conventional | Alternative(s) |
|---|---|---|
| Baby bottles | Plastic | Glass bottles with silicone nipples (we used these with our own son; they come with newborn, slow, medium, and fast flow nipples depending on the model) |
| Bowls, Cups, and Dishes for Kids | Plastic | Semi-sippy glass mason jars with stainless straws ; Stainless Steel Dishes Bowls and Cups |
| Fabric softener | Dryer sheets (emits phthalates) | Don’t use it at all, or use 2 tablespoons of vinegar per load |
| Food storage | Plastic such as Tupperware | USA Pyrex (soda lime), EU-made Pyrex (borosilicate) |
| Lunch boxes | Plastic | Stainless Steel Lunch Box ; Stainless Steel Lunch Box (Tiered) |
| Oil and vinegar holder | Glass bottles with plastic guts/tubing | Glass Cruet Set, Glass Cruet |
| Ovenware/Bakeware | Soda Lime Glass Roasting Pan | Arcuisine Borosilicate Roasting Pans, Stainless Roasting Pan |
| Food Wrap | Plastic Wrap | Silicone suction lids |
| Shower Curtains | Plastic shower curtains | Cotton shower curtains |
| Sippy Cups | Plastic | Stainless steel sippy cups (We use these); if the kids are old enough for mugs but you want something unbreakable, try stainless steel mugs for kids |
| Sous Vide | Plastic | Canning Jars |
| Straws | Plastic | Stainless steel straws |
| Tampons and Pads | Cotton with traces of pesticides; plastic applicator | 100% Organic Cotton Tampons; Silicone Menstrual Cup (We use these ourselves; see our full review here) |
| Water Bottle | Plastic | Stainless steel water bottle (also available in double-wall insulated; Thermos is another insulated option) |
Conclusion
Plastic is almost unavoidable in modern life, but just because there is a baseline level of exposure that is difficult to avoid does not mean that we need to voluntarily expose ourselves and the environment to even more than that. Over time I will update this post with various other practical ways to minimize exposure to plastics.
Furthermore, I would treat silicone with care. I have no problem using silicone spatulas because they only come into contact with food briefly, but I would shy away from using silicone for long-cooking usage such as cooking food in water baths in silicone pouches. The chemicals that make silicone rubbery may leach out over very long periods of time.
FOOTNOTES