Re:How Plastics Are Poisoning Us
by semi-extrinsic on Wednesday June 28, 2023 @11:07AM
(#36507567)
Oh this is a very good point. Type and amount of additives is very rarely specified, although you can find some info in the academic literature.
As a person completely naive to the finer points of plastics manufacture-do these additives tend to be drawn from a fairly small and well-understood universe of chemicals and combined in predictable ways, or is it a bit more DIY at the level of a specific manufacturing plant or product spec or batch run?
I guess my mind is instinctively reaching for the ways FDA attempts to ensure food safety by compelling manufacturers to publish ingredient lists, and by maintaining registries [0] of hopefully-well-understood additives (and banning the rest, in historically dangerous categories like colorants).
Sure from time to time agitators take that information out of context to whip up a scare about one ingredient or another, and sure some of the food that comes in from overseas has after-the-fact labeling that’s a little sus. But at least there’s an expectation that the information must exist and be legible.
[0] https://www.fda.gov/food/food-ingredients-packaging/determin...
I'm not asking to play 'gotcha' with your comment, but because when I've attempted to do my own research on this, I find it easy to get information on the polymer itself, but the polymer is never used by itself in a product. As far as I can tell, most polymers are not actually useful without a cocktail of additional chemicals added to them to change their physical characteristics. From my research, raw polymers tend to be extremely brittle and frangible, completely unrecognizable when compared to the products we use made from them.
And those additional chemicals are extremely difficult to find information on. Like when they're used, what they are, etc.