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Comment by chrisco255 | Hacker News Reader

I'm one of the most skeptical people when it comes to these types of claims. I think the effects are being exaggerated. However, I've recently begun to replace all plastic containers and dishware from my kitchen with stainless steel and glass. Drinks taste better in glass anyways, and steel is a good non-fragile alternative. And I cook in cast iron. It's almost impossible to avoid plastic, and I'm not religious about it, but I figure I'm replacing fragile disposable junk with more robust alternatives anyways.

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Yeah, this is one of those cases where I think it's better to take the cautious route. Now that we know we're ingesting massive amounts of plastics and it's been found in every human organ, and in blood, and in breast milk, etc I think it's probably a good idea to take what steps we can to cut down on it until things are more clear about the harms.

Avoiding this exposure will be easy for me, because I was never very comfortable microwaving plastic. I've seen companies lie about their stuff being "microwave safe" too many times.

I thought cast iron would be too much work and got a decent carbon steel pan to replace the non-stick crap I was always replacing, and I don't mind the extra care. I'm not sure that cast iron would take any more effort than what I'm doing now.

Cast iron is not bad at all to clean if you have a chain link steel scrubber (The Lodge sells these, other companies too). Ideally you scrub it when the pan is still warm. If you've let something sit in there that hardens, like cheese, you may have to let it soak in some warm water for a bit and apply elbow grease with the scrubber. You can even fill it with water and set it on the stove to warm the water up a bit to break down anything that's hardened.

Most of the foods I cook are basic meats and veggies so it's usually quite easy to clean for those.

I wouldn’t soak a cast iron pan.

Just apply a little heat, then use a bamboo/wood spatula to scrape the stuck food, then rinse (if needed) and wipe clean.

For me, the biggest problem with Cast iron is the weight. I’m a big guy, with physical strength commensurate to my size, and cast iron pans are cumbersome to deal with. I have a 9” pan that I leave on the stove for daily use, but I don’t want to have cast iron cookware exclusively.

Carbon steel has much the same cooking properties as cast iron but is like half the weight. You can get a good pan very cheap if you want to try something more wieldy.

>For me, the biggest problem with Cast iron is the weight

Seek out better cast iron cookware. For example, Lodge brand stuff is very heavy and poorly balanced. Compare to a Wagner cast iron pan of similar size made a century ago: it is significantly lighter, and well-balanced. I'm sure there must be modern cast iron cookware that can offer the same experience, but probably not new for $30.

I have problems with my hands and those heavy Lodge pans are annoying (good value though). My old Wagner stuff is no more cumbersome than my nice stainless steel pans, and, for meats at least, is a pleasure to cook with.

Soaps that don't include detergents are safe for cast iron, too. Many people confuse carbon and crud buildup for 'seasoning'. The seasoning you want is a micrometer-scale carbonized oil on the surface of the steel, and possible some excess carbon buildup to fill in any surface pores. A mild soap won't affect this, at all.

You can definitely damage a pan leaving it wet, so of course make sure to heat it up on the stove after washing and drying to cook off any remnants of water. I'll usually put on a very thin layer of Crisco if I've used soap.

You mean soaps that don't include caustic lye. Just about every dish soap is a detergent and safe for use with cast iron as they are not caustic.

> Avoiding this exposure will be easy for me, because I was never very comfortable microwaving plastic.

Maybe this specific one, but microplastics are in everything you eat and drink, the presented article merely points out that this specific use case produces lost of micro plastics which are ingested by children.

If you avoid this and other easily avoided situations, like stop using soft plastic drinking bottles and stop reusing bottled water bottles, you would be a big step in the right direction though.

> stop reusing bottled water bottles

Can you elaborate? Like is it somehow worse to buy a bottle of water and refill it periodically over the course of a year, than to let the original contents sit in my house for a year and then drink it? If so, I'm guessing the extra handling (squishing, crunching) is the main culprit? Or does leeching occur more readily when the contents are refreshed, as opposed to static contents that already reached equilibrium? Or is the pH (or other characteristics) of the original contents less likely to cause leeching than arbitrary contents?

Not OP, but I'd imagine the extra handling is the concern here, as far as water bottles go. You do want to refresh water in water jugs routinely as 'preservatives' like chlorine dissipate.

The better wording of 'stop reusing bottled water bottles' to avoid plastics would be 'use glass or metal water bottles'.

I've heard that handling is the main issue with leeching and also shredding of micro/nano plastics into the water, heat and UV also degrade the plastic. It's worse the thinner the plastic bottle is.

I do drink a lot of bottled water, and while I don't reuse bottles I'm still considering how much just pouring the water from the bottles into a glass would help.

The biggest drawback I find with cast iron is the weight. The cleaning, as much as you are supposed to clean it, is generally simplistic. Either just hot water and a light brush or paper.

A good thing to know is that any surface that get hot enough will release a bit into the food. Cast iron generally leech iron, stainless steel leech iron, nickel, and chromium, and ceramic leech whatever coating it has similar to non-stick. There has actually been studies done on cast iron on people with iron deficiencies, with gains in haemoglobin concentration.

Carbon steel is similar to cast iron in that it gets "seasoned" over time, but is much lighter (and heats up more quickly and evenly).

the biggest appeal of cast iron is its large thermal mass, owing to the weight and material

I just think of it as a workout! But yea suckers are heavy.

On the exact same journey as well. Ceramic, glass and cast iron, but still avoiding non-stick coating. My partner has IBD, and various gastro issues. Probably not related, but doing what we can to avoid anything that can make things worse. Still end up nuking plastics though tbh, trying to form better buying + cooking habits, but takes time.

Can't you just use the ceramic or glass in the microwave?

What about the heavy metals that are part of the cast iron and steel though? What about the heavy metals in ceramics? The list is pretty endless, but very specific types of glass (boron silicate or pyrex) and titanium can be good to switch to, as long as you are very careful about not getting lead or uranium glass.

Or you could just not buy that lead testing kit or Geiger counter and live in ignorant bliss. People lived without them for quite some time.

But there isn't lead or other heavy metal in the cast iron itself. If there are heavy metals, they are found in the glazing, so the best thing to do is buy pure cast iron, not glazed cast iron. The same goes for ceramics, but you can't really buy ceramics without glazing, because the ceramic itself is porous - I personally replaced all ceramics with glass and stainless.

Just as a single data point, all our kitchenware today is:

glass, borosilicate glass, pyrex(the US made ones are not borosilicate),

stainless, titanium, cast iron (that we season ourselves),

wood (but not bamboo -- too much glue in there), silicone (for mats and mittens).

Almost no plastic anywhere.

Stainless does have problems leeching nickel (and sometimes chromium), especially after being cleaned by an abrasive, or cooking acidic foods, which is common. This happens to an extent to cause allergic reactions in people.

Also silicone products are commonly mixed with plastic fillers that have the same issues as normal plastics. Pure platinum cured silicone products are premium products and somewhat rare.

It's very hard to stay away from everything that is bad for you...We do use some stainless pots for cooking, because really there is no 100% good alternative: cast iron pots are waay too heavy, ceramic can contain heavy metals in the glazing, glass can explode if not handled properly...and there isn't a pot-like glass option anyway (something you need for a soup or stew).

Our cutlery and cooking utensils are stainless, but when possible we use plain wood spoons (not the kind that is glued).

Is there a good alternative to stainless for these things? let me know.

I am aware of silicone issues, it's usually not in contact with our food.

I assume titanium is better than stainless as far as leaching goes? With a quick search I could find titanium pots (actual titanium, not coated) up to 5L. I have a few on hand for backpacking, but I've never thought of using them for routine cooking... but this thread has got me thinking. I use cast iron for most purposes, but not for sauces or soups.

I can't imagine a stock pot size would be cheap.

I'm not an expert in metallurgy, but I think a cast iron pan is just made out of iron.

My wife pointed out that the 3 minutes at highest setting they used in this study is not something you'd ever do for baby food. The goal of microwaving it is to simply knock the chill off and get the food/milk up to room-body temp. You wouldn't go further cause baby's are sensitive and you don't want to risk hot spots or burns. This means the food is never heated for much more than 30 seconds at most.

> I think the effects are being exaggerated.

Are they?

The article points out that effects of nanoplastics on humans are still unclear.

Unclear means no one's got a plausible mechanism, which for the widespread existence of them being implied is a bit of a problem.

They're inert long chain polymers, and amongst other things you need to show bioavailability in the area t you propose would cause damage at sufficient concentrations.

In the current case: how efficiently do nanoplastics cross from the digestive system to the blood stream, how long do they persist before being filtered out by the kidneys, do they retain their structure in the blood stream unchanged, is their a lower limit on toxicity.

i.e. injecting someone with enough pure water will also damage their organs, exposing kidney cells to silica dust in solution in huge concentration would also kill them but there's no way for it to get there in vivo.

But micro plastic have been found in newborns, so why not avoid it until science isn't unclear? Seems to be the smart way but I'm no expert.

Here's the thing about that: lots of particles have been found in the placenta[1]. In the case of the study that found microplastics[2], they found 12 particles in 4% of the volume. 12 - total. So maybe 300 total particles. In about 600 total grams of placenta. It's difficult to put a scale on how few that actually is.

So the issue here is we're not really talking about a unique threat, just a vector of an existing one. In terms of bioactive compounds which could find their way to the placenta, metals and carbonaceous soot are going to be a lot worse then inert plastics (of note: the paper involved notes that the primary possible mechanism is the microplastic acting as a carrier delivering bioactive molecule - not the material itself).

It is also worth noting that in the same study, 2 of the studied placental samples showed no microplastic contamination. Which is to say, given the transport mechanism proposed - inhalation of particles - it's quite likely that the medium is not things ingested in the GI tract, but rather airborne contaminants.

Which would make a lot more sense, seeing as how if micro or nanoparticles were routingly migrating through the gut, we'd suffer serious problems with bacterial infection, or just dealing with something like soluble fiber (which is essentially a plastic - long chain cellulose - that isn't digested).

So the question isn't "why not avoid it?" it's, "are you even avoiding it?" The GI tract is a relatively robust system that's very good at rejecting the external world from it. Whereas your lungs are pretty much a direct link to the blood from the atmosphere.

[1] https://www.qmul.ac.uk/media/news/2020/smd/air-pollution-par...

[2] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S016041202...

Aren't there documented impacts of additives like bisphenol A as endocrine disruptors?

Same. I have some plastic containers left, but I make sure only cold food goes in there. Otherwise, SS/Glass cups, SS mixing and salad bowls, glass storage containers, SS sieves, ceramic coated pans.

Can you cook eggs or stir fry on cast iron? Or should I get ceramic pans? I’m wanting to get rid of my “forever chemical” Teflon coated pans. Anyone knowledgeable please chime in.

To-go food containers are impregnated with plastic lining, leeching all sorts of crap into heated, acidic food.

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