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FDA denies petition against use of phthalates in food packaging
- hermannj314 2y agoThis is dated from July 2023. What is making this trend today?
- krunck 2y agoMaybe this: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40637089 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40637089
- Dig1t 2y agoYeah that was my comment at the bottom of that thread. But generally this was kind of a big deal and it mostly flew under the radar. I don’t think most people who care about endocrine disruptors knew that the FDA did this, and 2023 is not very long ago IMO.
- delichon 2y agoI'm about to replace my carpet and linoleum floor with 8mm "vinyl planks" that are 80% PVC. So since I'll be scuffing the floor and breathing the emissions most of the day for up to the rest of my life, it's at least a little encouraging that the FDA doesn't find a basis to ban it in food packaging. It's not that I trust the FDA, but more that I can't really afford hardwood or tile, so it's what I want to hear.
- OutOfHere 2y agoI wouldn't do it. The dust gets in the air, and also absorbs via the skin while walking. Not only would you be putting your own health at risk, but that of any family members and/or pets too.
- balls187 2y agoI think more people would get significant benefit from using sun block daily then obsessing over minutiae like this.
- jf22 2y agoI find it ironic when overweight people with an empty, sugary iced coffee drink next to them complain about the scary-sounding ingredients in processed fast food they eat. The scary ingredient is not your biggest health concern...
- OutOfHere 2y ago[flagged]
- Karunamon 2y agoThat is not the correct label for this argument. The argument is that there are a limited amount of hours in the day and that there are different amounts of risk. The optimal amount of risk is probably not zero.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- balls187 2y agoArguing that an argument is bad simply due to logical fallacy is also a logical fallacy.
- Aurornis 2y agoUnfortunately, questioning sunscreen use has become a popular topic among health communities that obsess over (and misinterpret) studies about chemicals. Even Andrew Huberman, who was held up as the most science-y podcaster before people caught on that he doesn't know what he's talking about on many topics (not to mention, it turns out he's kind of a bad person) made a big deal about sunscreen for a long time. At one point he said he was "as scared of sunscreen as melanoma", which triggered a lot of his listeners to start reducing their sunscreen use and debating the merits of sunscreen. Combine this with other podcasters like Joe Rogan pushing Vitamin D as a miracle mineral and a lot of people who think they are science-driven in their health choices are eschewing sunscreen. It's a maddening turn of events. EDIT: Aaaand of course I'm getting downvoted for calling out Huberman. This is a good time to remind everyone that he has numerous positions like this one, such as avoiding Bluetooth headphones due to "heating effects" of their wireless signal. It's impossible for Bluetooth headphones to even emit enough power to warm your skin, but it's something he believes is true. He's very charismatic and charming, but he frequently strays from the science when he senses a good story that will engage his listeners.
- oooyay 2y agoYou can have VOC testing done to determine if yours are off-gassing. That's the real test, not the FDA. Generally speaking Luxury Vinyl Planks are the way to go if you don't want to risk off-gassing.
- OutOfHere 2y agoA simple TVOC & HCHO meter at home should imho be a low-cost first step, indicating a need for improved ventilation, or for eliminating questionable sources of the gassing. The alcohol hand sanitizer sets off the TVOC reading though.
- macNchz 2y agoI’m not convinced that the TVOC sensor included on consumer air quality monitors does much beyond give people anxiety. Maybe it’s useful if it prompts people to open their windows more often, but mine is so impacted by daily activity and subject to calibration drift to the point I wish it wasn’t part of my sensor unit. Opening a single bottle of beer will spike the levels for hours. It’s a super effective fart detector. I’ve had one for four years but I don’t know how I’d use it to determine whether some new product was harming the air in my home, the readings are just too noisy.
- OutOfHere 2y agoWith regard to a new product, I would try seeing the reading first thing in the morning before any human activity.
- hanniabu 2y agoWhy would LVP be any different?
- oooyay 2y agoThey aren't made of PVC so they don't contain phthalates
- bottom999mottob 2y agoI know it's the lesser of two evils but I'd rather have quality vinyl off-gassing PVC than carpet emitting PFAS and trapping dirt.
- lazide 2y agoIf it’s any consolation, even old wood floors will typically shed plastic particles when worn as they get refinished/sealed with polyurethane. Some really old school folks will use boiled linseed oil, which isn’t a man made plastic - but does polymerize into a type of plastic when it dries.
- bufferoverflow 2y agoDon't do it. PVC should not be inside your house in large quantities.
- karaterobot 2y ago"Though we obviously recognize that this is the thing that will make us look really, really bad in a few years, we're not going to do anything about it proactively."
- OutOfHere 2y agoFor many years now, the FDA has been actively working against the public interest. They won't do anything until a court forces them to act. It's not just about being proactive; the data is already out there to show harm.
- doe_eyes 2y agoI know this is going to be unpopular on HN, but I think there's this "environmentalist inertia effect" on display when it comes to stuff like that. A lot of the early industrial chemistry was pretty terrible for you and deserved public attention and regulatory crackdowns. Leaded gasoline and paint, organochlorine pesticides, mercury catalysts in rubbers, and so on. But then, the negative publicity then continued for substances that were a lot more ambiguous. For example, DDT saved millions of lives, and the backlash against it was probably overblown. Still, you know, good riddance - at least until malaria comes back in the developed world due to climate change? And now, we're in this place where any accusation of substances being artificial and cropping up somewhere at parts-per-billion or parts-per-trillion levels is enough to cause outrage, even if we can't demonstrate serious adverse effects on humans or most other life. Microplastics seem to be the most egregious example of this. But the panics around phthalates and BPA are another interesting case where, if you look closely enough, there just isn't a whole lot of good science to back any of it. I'm kinda torn about this, because I think we should be working toward reducing plastic waste, and I'd rather see phthalates replaced by safer plasticizers, such as benzoates. But the amount of alarmist headlines in this space is pretty wacky.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- snapcaster 2y agoIsn't this progress? It sounds like as we advance we can afford to have more and more high standards for things we couldn't afford to before
- kragen 2y agoprohibiting more and more things is, in my book, the diametrical opposite of progress; progress is when you can do more and more things, not less and less
- mightyham 2y agoOnly if your definition of progress is maximal technological advancement at all costs. Prohibiting dangerous chemicals or processes is progress in terms of human living conditions.
- austinkhale 2y agoFeels like this is going to become one of those things we look back on in retrospect and regret. We should be full steam ahead on identifying what effects microplastics & phthalates more broadly are having on our health & adjust accordingly. Early indications seem... not great.
- cabirum 2y ago[flagged]
- c22 2y agoWhy worry about man-made nuclear weapons when we've always had the sun?
- John23832 2y agoBecause plastics are not natural and are a relatively recent invention in human history. A bonus is that there has been a exponential increase in usage in the last 30 years. We do not have a long history of its effects, and what we do have doesn't look good. So showering plastic particles everywhere seems like an ill-advised idea. As a society we have very few options to collectively decide to do something "better". Our government and oversight agencies are supposed to be one of those options. This is a disappointing development.
- mint2 2y agoWhile people are aware of the chemical element lead, are people aware there’s also a hundred or so other chemical elements?
- arghwhat 2y agoJust think of dihydrogen monoxide. Instantaneous addiction, and withdrawal is fatal!
- triyambakam 2y agoA teaspoon of dihydrogen monoxide can kill you and it covers the entire earth. It is probably in your bathroom and kitchen right now.
- Beijinger 2y agoUgo Bardi: Are Plastics killing us? https://senecaeffect.substack.com/p/are-plastics-killing-us https://senecaeffect.substack.com/p/are-plastics-killing-us
- cabirum 2y agoDid the petitioners try not to eat the packaging?
- OutOfHere 2y agoWhen the packaging rubs off against the food, particulates from the packaging mix into the food.
- cabirum 2y agoI do think this is heavily overblown to get more research grants financed.
- vkou 2y agoI think the onus on proving safety should be on the people selling products, not on some third party to prove that those products are dangerous. Otherwise, we get vendors poisoning us for decades, and then whoopsie-daisies pleading ignorance. And even when they get held accountable (almost never), the value that remains in the vendor is insufficient to compensate for the damage inflicted on us. Heads I lose, tails they win.
- lazide 2y agoBut how can anyone prove safety here? On anything? I’m unaware of any substance which isn’t dangerous or harmful in some context. Even sand! What is the actual bar?
- vkou 2y agoGenerally safety is evaluated based on intended use. The intended use of leaded gasoline is burning it and putting lead in the air. The intended use of asbestos is as an inert fire-retardant layer. It's safe in that context. Where it's not safe is in all the work that goes into building, or tearing down that layer. The intended use of BPA was putting it into 'microwave safe' plastic containers, where it leeched into food. Bleach is safe to handle (carefully), but not safe to drink.
- raverbashing 2y agoI'm all for evolving our knowledge of substances and their effects, but as other accounts are saying, we have more questions than answers And here's my problem with it: ok we figure out substance X has problems and we go and replace it with Y (which has less research on it than X). Are we sure this is a better replacement? We're talking about food packaging, what happens if we replace substances and end up with a lower product shelf life (which might be acceptable or not)? Or with other issues?
- lolinder 2y agoNeeds (2023) in the title. This is a nearly-one-year-old response to a petition for the FDA to reconsider its now-two-years-old denial of a previous petition.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- spandrew 2y agoI think it's pretty clear the microplastics fear-mongering doesn't have a lot of credible evidence to back it. Of course no one wants tiny plastic particles floating around the environment. But the claim here is... does it harm you? Is it toxic? How dense are the particulates per millilitre? Very little to suggest anything substantial. Just a reminder that the holistic and wellness industry that sells you detoxes for this stuff is worth 4.5 trillion dollars (more than big pharma, even). They are incentivized to drum up fear; plastics are killing you, aspartame is killing you. I've heard them claim even fresh fruit is killing you. Evidence-based decisions matter.
- tedajax 2y agoAlso most microplastics in the environment are from rubber tires grinding away on road surfaces so the food packaging stuff is a little forest for the trees imo.
- AnimalMuppet 2y agoI don't lick the road, though. In terms of it's ability to get into my body, food packaging has a much better pathway than tires.
- kragen 2y agofood packaging doesn't produce microplastics, and you inhale tire dust
- AnimalMuppet 2y agoDoesn't it? Got any evidence for that claim?
- kragen 2y agono, it doesn't. no, i don't have any evidence it doesn't. if you go looking for evidence that it does, though, you won't find any evidence for that, either
- blackeyeblitzar 2y agoMy personal experience is that food is overpackaged. I find a lot of produce are unnecessarily bagged in plastic containers (mushrooms, cucumbers, corn, asparagus, berries etc. in my local grocery store). I always feel weird not just about low quality plastic films touching the food, but also that I am constantly throwing out plastic that cannot be recycled.
- AnimalMuppet 2y agoI wonder if it's to control the spread of mold/fungus. If I have a bunch of berries in a bin, and one of them has mold, I could lose a big chunk of the bin. But if they're in little plastic containers, I only lose that one container. (Yeah, I know, the mold may have spread before they were put in the containers. It still limits the spread, even if it doesn't totally eliminate it.)
- blackeyeblitzar 2y agoI don’t think so because all the berry containers have holes in them. But the other produce don’t have holes and either have a harder but flexible plastic top, or plastic film, or just shrink wrap around the package.
- Aurornis 2y agoI was surprised to learn that some of the highest concentrations of phthalates can be found in alcoholic beverages in glass bottles (Table 3: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7460375/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7460375/ ) This occurs due to the plastics used in producing the alcoholic beverages combined with ethanol (alcohol) acting as a solvent to liberate the phthalates I was equally surprised to learn that the food industry was already moving toward using fewer phthalate plasticizers already. More recent sampling efforts have actually found fewer or sometimes no phthalates at all in tubing, whereas decades ago it was ubiquitous.
- ActionHank 2y agoInsurance companies already track whether you smoke, drink, or do recreational drugs. I wonder how long until they start to ask questions that indicate your risk based on chemical \ microplastic consumption.
- drjasonharrison 2y agoPerhaps the blood tests will/already do include this analysis. Asking people about their behaviours/habits/diets is usually a very poor data source. Not only do people have poor memories, but they are motivated to recall only positive behaviours, etc. Many studies on health interventions (diet, exercise, sleep) have had to handle these problems and usually have to resort to much more controlled studies to demonstrate the effect beyond the "very large numbers, very long time" post-hoc analyses.
- dfxm12 2y agoIn this specific case, I doubt a significant number of people would have any idea what would be "positive" in the context of risk related to phthalates...
- wil421 2y agoThis reminds me of a banking software company I used to work at. One of their products was assessing risk for loans, too many purchases for fast food or restaurant categories on your bank statement could cause you to not get a loan. I could see insurance companies purchasing your rewards accounts from data brokers to see what your habits are.
- abeppu 2y agoA bunch of comments here are roughly "there's not great evidence that these are harmful" -- but is that the right standard? Or should there be an obligation to provide evidence that something is "safe" in order to use it in some consumer applications (like food packaging)? It's tempting to say that we should conclusively establish that something isn't harmful before we use it absolutely everywhere ... but what standard of evidence would be both achievable and ethical? Because generally people aren't getting acutely ill after eating food from a plastic package, we're left with the possibility that accumulative impacts over years might be harmful -- but it doesn't seem feasible to run long term studies where a treatment group is exposed to plastics for decades and a control group is not. It hardly seems achievable to do correlation studies, because you often don't know what's been in the packaging for all the food you've consumed, which may not even be in your control.
- Aurornis 2y agoHow do you propose proving a negative?
- mrcode007 2y agoWith modus tollens https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modus_tollens https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modus_tollens
- esoterae 2y agoI think the civil burden of proof should apply here. Upon the preponderance of the evidence. Given so many studies that exhaustively show correlative effects of phthalates with metabolic and endocrine disruption, especially strongly during developmental stages, I think even that burden of proof is met. Sure, you can't prove something doesn't exist, but you can make a reasonable determination that given exhaustive study, given correlative negative effects can be ascribed to no other known cause, and given that this is natal and pediatric health especially at stake, we should say until such time as a causative link is proven to lie elsewhere these chemicals should not be used in consumer goods out of an abundance of caution. The redirection of that claim would be "these profits are more important than moving to protect bodily health especially for those unable to protect themselves, given what we currently know." Honestly, no knowledge is perfect, but upon the balance we must rest our sacrosanct right to health.
- deepnotderp 2y agoFDA rejects MDMA and allows phthalates- what an agency :(
- OutOfHere 2y agoAt what point do we just come and say that the FDA is corrupt. The study of MDMA showed benefits for PTSD: https://icer.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/PTSD_Revised-Report_For-Publication_05142024.pdf https://icer.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/PTSD_Revised-Rep...
- loceng 2y agoI think we need to move fully to glass surfaces that any food comes in contact with; add vacuum seal to help slow decay. Until or unless we do mass studies, not just observational, and over a 20-30 year period - where many other known health factors will have to be kept track of accurately-thoroughly as well.
- CodeWriter23 2y agoJust so you know how the FDA works, they evaluate what Industry tells them to create their “Guidance”, subject to an open comment type of process. They’re not superheroes of science working in a perpetual adversarial stance against industry. They inspect companies to ensure regulated companies comply or are in the process of complying with the official Guidance. Should industry players break rank and come up with science contradictory to the status quo, which challenges the Guidance. They’ll either start to notice and incorporate learnings into future Guidance revisions, or write up a Deficiency order against the company. The company can then defend itself by engaging further studies and/or litigation. AKA what the big players say is what goes.
- johnmorrow 2y agohttps://shaperhealth.substack.com/p/b8c75383-6899-4cab-88c6-999228329177 https://shaperhealth.substack.com/p/b8c75383-6899-4cab-88c6-... There's a ton of evidence that these substances might be bad for you. Among human study cohorts they have been shown to have a serious impact on reproductive health and infertility, metabolic and oxidative stress, cancer risk, cardiovascular health, the immune system (including children’s asthma), and neurodevelopment. Exposure risks extend from more controllable areas such as consumption of packaged food to less controllable areas such as environmental and household dust. Moreover, the impacts seems to be more pronounced in children. While most research on these effects in human subjects are more recent, people have noticed the link between plasticizers and hormones/fertility in male rats since the late 1980s. Thirty-five years of results make it less likely that human results shown are a result of p-hacking or similar statistical legerdemain. With half of the world’s plastics produced in the last 15 years - we'll probably see the research become more conclusive as the effects of those plastics are seen in further human studies
- Dig1t 2y agoAnyone who doubts that these chemicals are actually causing harm to the general population should read the book “Count Down”. It goes into great detail on the evidence for harm and the details of how these chemicals work. https://www.amazon.com/Count-Down-Threatening-Reproductive-Development-ebook https://www.amazon.com/Count-Down-Threatening-Reproductive-D...