Hot & Cold Running Dioxin?

[Don Rearic]

A few months back, about the end of Summer '06, I heard a news story, not an E-mail about heating plastic and freezing plastic and the release of Dioxins. As a result, I limited the amount of microwave cooking with plastic like Tupperware and Hefty Brand food storage containers and stopped freezing water bottles from Auqafina, Deer Park and my Nalgene bottles.

Apparently, a lot of the information was a hoax and it made it from the hoax world of spam-like "warning" E-mails and jumped species to the more ravenous news services of, IIRC, CBS Radio (AM).

The thread in here this morning on boiling water in various strange vessels made me think of this and I went digging and found this incredible piece of information that I think you all will find most valuable.

Don't heat up plastics unless they were designed to be heated.

All of the rest of the "warnings" about release of Dioxins is bunk and the good Doctor also states that Dioxins are not manmade and we are not to blame for them - much like global warming is not our fault but a cycle we are going through and have gone through long before the invention of the internal combustion engine.

Here you are: http://www.jhsph.edu/publichealthnews/articles/halden_dioxins.html

 

[mete]

The term 'plastics' includes a huge number of different types .Also within one type there may be different grades made differently and having different additives !! If you want to use food in a container get FDA 'food grade' types.The mention of phthalates reminded me that Saran wrap has a plasticizer which goes into the food , while something like Glad Wrap has no plasticizer !!! Most plastic containers will leach out chemicals .The best I find is polycarbonate.

 

[lambertiana]

Yeah, one of the beauties of the internet is that myths and fables spread around the world even faster. Virtually all of the e-mails that get passed around warning of some insidious danger are not actually based on fact. They use the normal buzzwords associated with medical or chemical knowledge, but do not have any substance. For a perfect example of how anything can be made to look very dangerous, look at this:

http://www.dhmo.org/

Everything they say in their faq is factually correct, and would lead many people to want a total ban on DHMO. When they finally find out what DHMO is, they are rather embarassed that they got all worked up over it. This is a good example of how various groups use "facts" and "statistics" to scare people into supporting their cause. And the current stir over global warming is not an exception to this.

As Terry Goodkind so succinctly describes the Wizard's First Rule: People are stupid. They will believe anything, either because they hope it's true or they're afraid it's true.

 

[GibsonFan]

OK, lambertina, ya got me! :thumbup:

I'm just barely smart enough to admit that I don't know much; so I do my cooking in stainless steel or glass. Seems pretty safe to me. Canteen water always tastes like, well, a canteen so it must be leaching something... guess I should get into nalgene water bottles?

 

[SkunkWerX]

The term 'plastics' includes a huge number of different types .Also within one type there may be different grades made differently and having different additives !! If you want to use food in a container get FDA 'food grade' types.The mention of phthalates reminded me that Saran wrap has a plasticizer which goes into the food , while something like Glad Wrap has no plasticizer !!! Most plastic containers will leach out chemicals .The best I find is polycarbonate.

Yes, agree with mete on this one.

I had never heard about "Dioxins" being associated with plastics, but, had read it has been proven that plastics will leach chemicals into food and water.

In terms of water containers, which is what we discuss 95% of the time:

Most commercial store bought water bottles are a type of lexan.
They will degrade over time and leach into the water, especially when frozen, exposed to UV, or washed out and re-used.

Nalgene's downfall is mostly due to simply aging and Mostly washing.

This is one of those cumulative effect issues. It's not going to kill you over your weekend outing. But, over decades, your system will abosrb and "fill up" with whatever leaches out of your containers.

The main reason they talk about rotating stored water, is not germs, it's the fact that the container will leach into water. That's why we always hear 6 months as a rule of thumb.

Simple experiment: Buy a case of bottled water. Drink some now, note how it tastes. Store some for a year, then see how it tastes.
Also, put a few out in the sun (warm day) and let them sit all day long, then take a swig. yuck.

So, with the Dioxin topic aside, there is still reason to show just a little bit of sense when storing and using plastic containers.

I think more about the life-long effect it may have on my kids, sicne they are from the first generation to be "brainwashed" only good water comes from a plastic bottle. At our house we drink well water, out of the tap, and use real glass. We call them "glasses".

Aluminum also leaches.

 

[kr1]

Yeah, one of the beauties of the internet is that myths and fables spread around the world even faster. Virtually all of the e-mails that get passed around warning of some insidious danger are not actually based on fact. They use the normal buzzwords associated with medical or chemical knowledge, but do not have any substance. For a perfect example of how anything can be made to look very dangerous, look at this:

http://www.dhmo.org/

Everything they say in their faq is factually correct, and would lead many people to want a total ban on DHMO. When they finally find out what DHMO is, they are rather embarassed that they got all worked up over it. This is a good example of how various groups use "facts" and "statistics" to scare people into supporting their cause. And the current stir over global warming is not an exception to this.

As Terry Goodkind so succinctly describes the Wizard's First Rule: People are stupid. They will believe anything, either because they hope it's true or they're afraid it's true.

That was great. I figured out what it was before I looked but still, excellant. I will have to send the "MSDN sheet" my co-workers on the fire department.

:thumbup:

KR

 

[Don M]

Most commercial store bought water bottles are a type of lexan.

The bottles of water you buy at the store, along with soda bottles, use polyethylene terephthalate (PET), usually with some additives to make it tougher. The bottles you buy to put water in, like Nalgene, use high density polyethylene (the opaque bottles) or Lexan - polycarbonate (the clear hard ones).

All plastics, including food grade, will leach small amounts. It's just a question of how much and how bad the leachate is.

 

[hollowdweller]

Dioxins are produced in small concentrations when organic material is burned in the presence of chlorine, whether the chlorine is present as chloride ions or as organochlorine compounds, so they are widely produced in many contexts. According to the most recent US EPA data the major sources of dioxin are:

Coal fired utilities
Metal smelting
Diesel trucks
Land application of sewage sludge
Burning treated wood
Trash burn barrels
These sources together account for nearly 80% of dioxin emissions.
Dioxins are also in smoke from typical cigarettes, those with chlorine-bleached paper and residues of many chlorine pesticides. Dioxin in cigarette smoke was noted as "understudied" by the US EPA in its "Re-Evaluating Dioxin" (1995). In that same document, the US EPA acknowledged that dioxin is "anthropogenic" (man-made, "not likely in nature"). Dioxin cannot come from the tobacco or any natural plant. Since then, the USA classified dioxin as a Known Human Carcinogen, and the USA signed the Stockholm Convention on Persistent Organic Pollutants(POPs) to globally phase out dioxin and 11 other of the worst industrial pollutants, though the treaty has not been ratified by the Senate. Nevertheless, chlorine tobacco pesticides and chlorine-bleached cigarette papers remain legal, with no warning required to consumers.

In incineration, dioxins can also reform in the atmosphere above the stack as the exhaust gases cool through a temperature window of 600 to 200°C. The most common method of reducing dioxins reforming or forming de novo is through rapid (30 millisecond) quenching of the exhaust gases through that 400°C window.[5] Incinerator emissions of dioxins have been reduced by over 90% as a result of new emissions control requirements. Incineration is now a very minor contributor to dioxin emissions.


A chart illustrating how much dioxin the average American consumes per day.Dioxins are also generated in reactions that do not involve burning — such as bleaching fibers for paper or textiles, and in the manufacture of chlorinated phenols, particularly when reaction temperature is not well controlled. Affected compounds include the wood preservative pentachlorophenol, and also herbicides such as 2,4-dichlorophenoxyacetic acid (or 2,4-D) and 2,4,5-trichlorophenoxyacetic acid (2,4,5-T). Higher levels of chlorination require higher reaction temperatures and greater dioxin production. See Agent Orange for more on contamination problems in the 1960s. Dioxins may also be formed during the photochemical breakdown of the common antimicrobial compound triclosan. [6]

Dioxins are present in minuscule amounts in a wide range of materials used by humans — including practically all substances manufactured using plastics, resins or bleaches. Such materials include tampons, and a wide variety of food packaging substances. The use of these materials means that all modern humans receive (at least) a very small daily dose of dioxin—however, it is disputed whether such exceptionally tiny exposures have any clinical relevance. It is even controversially discussed if dioxins might have a non-linear dose-response curve with beneficial health effects in a certain lower dose range, a phenomenon called hormesis.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dioxin

http://www.epa.gov/ncea/pdfs/dioxin/nas-review/

 

[Don Rearic]

I don't base my life decisions on what I read in E-mail. That crap goes into the Killfile. One of the points I wanted to make is, I heard this on CBS Radio News. It had to be that because I'm fairly sure that all of the stations I listen to have the CBS Radio News, are affiliates that run their hourly news from CBS.

The insidious nature of this happening is, someone in a news room received the E-mail and then it spread like a fecal virus through "legitimate" news channels.

Basically, you have to be Ronald Reagan about everything now, "Trust...but verify..."

 

[TLM]

The plastic that would most likely cause Dioxins is PVC and even then when burned at the wrong (low) tempererature. Very little PVC is used nowadays outside the specialized uses.

TLM