mobileexpert6 months ago
The Boba Guys result is a real kick in the nuts. Using a shitty paperish straw for the environment but the core product being so high in these tests.
(I feel like I'm still seeing plastic straws for boba everywhere in San Jose; but I'm far from a frequent consumer)
Wow
Ideally the "% Limit" column would: 1. Be right-aligned 2. Have consistent formatting (i.e. same number of digits after the dot) 3. A little bar underneath each number showing relative scale (i.e. top entry is full width, last entry is 216.7 / 32571.4 = 0.00665307601, though maybe on a log scale for confusion? ;)
Salmon, Chicken breast, Beef (ribeye), Rice, Pasta, Tomatoes, Cow Milk, and a Stanford University Dining Meal (Beans, Chicken, Rice, Cauliflower)
I punched in all the stuff I ate this week and almost none of it is in their test. It's very skewed to weird processed stuff, there's only a few items from real produce markets.
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?!
Edit: I see they appear to be using the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) intake limits for most of their tests.
Having odd things in your lungs is bad. Having things bouncing around in your digestive tract means nothing. The whole point of the digestive tract is that you put untrusted materials into it.
But not new. At all.
And the last decades we’ve had a new unknown cause of colon cancer increase in young adults.
My money is on plastics, but will be hard to prove.
[1] HPV16 and HPV18 being the variants most often identified in HPV-associated colorectal cancers[2], and which are targeted by HPV vaccines as they're the variants primarily responsible for cervical and anal cancers.
[2] See, e.g., https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC1479314/ and https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9610003/
Perhaps inappropriate to ask, but are you thinking the implication is anal sex, or the ‘eating ass’ cultural element, or something else?
This would make the main giant aggregate list: https://www.plasticlist.org a lot more useful.
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.
I doubt the BPA in fish originates from the fish themselves. It's more likely from the can linings used to package the fish.
How can I test for effects from endocrine-disrupting chemicals on my children? Are there blood tests that check for this?
But I agree, would be interesting to know.
I've been switching my stuff over to glass when possible. But, unfortunately unless I become a full-time farmer there's no escaping the fact that my food comes wrapped in plastic that's wrapped in plastic and further wrapped in more plastic. Single use plastics for food should be heavily restricted.
[1]: https://www.eea.europa.eu/publications/microplastics-from-textiles-towards-a
[1]: https://uk.help.huskee.co/en-US/what-does-end-of-life-cups-refer-to-316667
"They certainly did not advise putting deli containers in the microwave or dishwasher. Warner puts it simply: “The more you reuse them, the more they would be likely to leach chemicals because of the repeated washing and exposure to acidic things and soap, and scouring them in cycles. "
tl;dr -> if you care about your health with regards to plastic ingestion, just use glass or metal.
We switched out plastic containers for glass and silicone for the most part some time back. Personally I was just routinely disappointed with the quality of the tupperware-type things, so why not spent a few bucks more once and get something that lasts? It still will have a plastic top or parts but you can at least heat it up in the glass part.
I wonder if enough people care for this to be a viable business model.
I just want a ballpark on the orders of magnitude between alternatives so I can make simple swaps.
The most popular three brands of each food category (canned black beans, soy milk, hummus, etc.) would be a nice start.
On the other hand, it also seems like the wrong fixation for most people. Most people should probably be making swaps away from things like junk food and saturated fat before they invest energy in minmaxing the nanograms of pfas in their butter. It would suck if it introduced more chaos and confusion into health/food discourse.
I put in a quote request with the lab OP used, the economics might work out but we'd run into the problem of people sharing the insights/outliers on social media?
Also side note, this test seems exorbitantly expensive in India. $1100 for 1 kit! https://www.amazon.in/Phthalates-Test-Bus-Days-Schneider/dp/B077G6GWC6
The salmon in the first table shows BPA levels at 500-1000% the safe level, with salmon near the top of the range of all tested products, but in the separate "Results" page, if I search for "salmon", the same products show up but the BPA levels are only around the 20th percentile of tested samples.
It's basically impossible to find cheap natural products for cleaning consumables, for example, and it's really hard to find trustworthy global brands.
Plastic is entering absolutely every aspect of our lives and I really fear it's a "lead in gasoline" and "asbestos" moment for our generation :-( and it's going to be much harder to undo that either of those.
(I also avoid these things but only because I feel paranoid about it.)
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.
Just curious, is it possible for the acid to break them down completely? Like, poof, no more harmful plastic monoester, it's now just plastic-adjacent goop?
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 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.
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 ...
Google confirms they are available here in New Zealand but I have only ever seen them in American YouTube videos.
Over here, you can’t just dictate tools. Health & Safety regulations and agencies use highly punitive measures to ensure employers do everything possible to avoid employee injury.
Even if you hurt yourself at home you are required to disclose who your employer is if you are claiming universal accident insurance.
I am sure they keep an eye on if employees of a particular organisation are having the same type of accident “at home”.
I think this is probably why they are uncommon.
I Can’t comment on the laws in New Zealand, but I live in California, which is, relatively, Progressive with worker protections.
The dangers associated with the Trimmer blades are a subset of the dangers associated with the chainsaws we (safely) use.
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 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.
When I lived in Asia I was amazed how skinny everyone was! Most people ate street vendor food which was mostly carbs and very little vegetables or protein.
The answer was...portion sizes! Even manual labor workers ate a lunch that was maybe 500 kcal. Total daily caloric intake rarely went over 2,000. While Americans average 3,600.
(search "microwave)
[1] https://buyersguide.org/countertop-reverse-osmosis-system/t/best
I’m reading their “review” but I don’t see anything other than common ChatGPT affiliate link blog spam. The “review” is just generic filler content about water filtration, not even about this product. These websites just collect products with profitable affiliate links, run the description of the product through an LLM to get it into a standard format, and then drive traffic to their list to collect affiliate revenue.
This website hasn’t reviewed anything. They’re just tricking people into clicking links to buy expensive products that will give them affiliate ad revenue.
Please don’t encourage the proliferation of these website by linking to them or endorsing their rankings.
This isn’t a real review site. It’s an SEO trap for affiliate revenue. I thought HN readers could spot these affiliate spam sites, but I guess not everyone is on to this scam.
I guess it’s possible to distill the water and add clean minerals back in. (Not sure if “clean minerals” are something that you can obtain though.)
Is that something that is also taken into account in higher end RO systems?
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!
Regarding the EU vs. US food debate I would generally expect to find higher quality produce in the EU countries, and that is not because things a pushed under the rug. That is just more regulation.
It’s like the GP indicates - I think the concern is more for yield than safety.
My experience as a tourist was that some fruit reeked so strongly of chemicals that I just kept away from it.
But my comment was more about government inspections and news about violations, not news about food poisoning outbreaks.
In the developing country I was in, plenty of food products are never tested, but once you've visited a factory it's clear it would be shutdown in any developed country.
But also consider how you are wearing clothing made with plastic and the fact that it’s not hard to find 100% cotton shirts. Start figuring out how to have less plastic in your life. It’s not hard if you can be content to do it gradually.
No one that goes through the trouble of cooking their own baby food feeds their babies as much as when they feed jar food, that foes right through them.
> "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.
Ok
> Here's a complete list of all the presently-available food samples (excluding vintage foods) we tested that exceeded a published daily intake limit for any of the chemicals we tested:
41 samples in table
> That said, with the 24 exceptions above,
What, what? There are 41 exceptions in that table, and still more than 24 even if you deduplicate.
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-biosolids-sewage ("One State’s War on Forever Chemicals in Milk")
I love the Bay Area, native to the East Bay and no matter how hard I try to escape, I always find myself crawling right back to San Francisco's sweet embrace, but in case it isn't clear to the people just arriving and driving the cost up higher than London, Paris or Berlin, its never been anything less than an excellent example of the horrible things people will do to each other and the planet to satisfy their impulse for either money or power. Superfund sites abound in the six counties around the bay, plastic in your food is probably the least of your actual worries.
> Mattie came from far away, from New Orleans into the East Bay. He said, 'this is a Mecca!' I said, 'This ain't no Mecca, man. This place is fucked!' Six months go by, he has no home, he has no food, he's all alone. Mattie said, 'fool me once, shame on you.' Didn't fool him twice, he moved back to New Orleans!
- "A Journey to the End of the East Bay", Rancid
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.
* Can you source low plastic baby food, or low plastic food to process into baby food? Seems like large quantities of the food supply are contaminated.
* How can you comparatively advertise your low test results compared to the competition without being the victim of lawsuits? Lawsuits from established companies feels inevitable, but being involved in a lawsuit can harm funding rounds for startups, even if it’s baseless.
* Would brick & motor stores want to deal with you if you are essentially calling the rest of their products poison?
* Will you need special tools for processing the food that introduces minimal plastics?
Why do we continue down that path, are we that stupid collectively? We know the fertility of men is falling year after year, we know this, yet things go on as if it's not important.
We could calmly debate the amount on the limit, but at this point we know the job we have to do.
If it turns out that it is a serious health threat, then pretty much anyone alive today is f*ked. and given the build up of it, will be for quite a while.
But we also have climate change, AI apocalypse, global thermonuclear war, mcDonalds, and all other things at the same time.
And we wont know if whatever it is replaced with, if will be replaced will turn out any better for humanity in the long term.
Also T2 is on the rise in young people. Have their genetics changed dramatically in the past few decades? Or has food?
https://www.cdc.gov/diabetes/data-research/research/young-people-diabetes-on-rise.html
[1] https://www.thediabetescouncil.com/link-epigenetics-type-2-diabetes/
[2] https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10258626/
We like to think that our (positive) behavior comes from our own self-made character traits rather behavior that is genetically determined.
Many genetic predispositions are behavioral, it's not all pure metabolic effects.
The "ate like shit your whole life and are now overcorrecting in your 40s because you got consequences for the first time" energy is big in this thread.
[0]: https://www.omomoteashoppe.com
It’s okay if something isn’t for you!
That is, like, the definition of nutritional benefit.
Boba has ~14g per 100g, depending on the type.
Coca Cola has ~11g sugar per 100g.
In other words, ice cream has 1.8x more sugar content than boba and 2.3x more sugar content of Coca Cola.
If you’re concerned about the tapioca, that’s literally just starch. You know what else contains starch? Potatoes and rice.
Nothing at Boba Guys weighs 100g. That's the difference! 100g really is a typical cup of gelato or ice cream.
Most Boba Tea cups I’ve seen are far bigger than the typical ice cream.
You can’t use per-100gm doses this way. You have to look at sugar in the product as ordered.
People don’t order and eat their food in neat 100gm increments.
Either way, a little 16oz carton of Ben and Jerry's that people smash in one sitting is 1200 calories. So it's still more sugar- and calorie-dense than boba tea.
I don't really see the point in bickering over calorie-dense junk foods though. Both of them are displacing healthier foods in your diet that you could've eaten instead. Neither should account for more than a small fraction of your calorie intake.
What did you expect me to do, bash out a 5x10 multi-company matrix so you can compare perfectly across servings?
The state of nutrition science is so bad that I wouldn't believe most any study, though.
I mean I get not liking it. I like it. I’d have it maybe once every three months as a little treat
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."
Perhaps plots would be better/less alarming than easy-to-cherry-pick tables, but I'm not expert on conveying this sort of data either...
Im sure most of the boba shops in the US import ingredients from Taiwan, so its not surprising here