Both are made from Polyethylene, which is the exact same stuff oil (including food), gas, wax, natural gas, etc is made off. i.e. you body handles that all the time.
- polyethylene oil?
- gas?
- natural gas?
- wax (I'm assuming candle wax)?
I understand you don't mean "drink" when you say our body "handles" it, but you do realize we don't make food from PET, nor do we usually "handle" gas and natural gas in any form of direct contact?*
* with the fun exception of a brief craze in my high school years where people would mix hard alcohol with gasoline to make cocktails "stronger". That's another story though
It's the same way that, even though you shouldn't drink it, acetone is barely toxic, because your body knows how to process it.
I should remind you that there are other plastics, but polyethylene is not one of the toxic ones.
(Gas, as in gasoline, has benzene which is a different category. Note also that many plastics have plasticizers which are also a different category, although polyethylene rarely has any, it's possible that it could.)
Common wisdom is "there is no safe level of lead".
If that was such an obvious problem, they wouldn't have put the lead pipes in the first place...
I am not advocating for lead or copper soldered water pipes, but I am conservatively skeptical about PVC being totally safe for the same timeline existing lead pipes have been in use. In July the EPA proposed raising the priority rating of vinyl chloride on its toxic substances list. It doesn't seem implausible to me that in 50 years we'll be taking about PVC pipes the same way were talking about lead pipes today.
I am not claiming that PVC water pipes are dangerous just that I am skeptical there is enough historical data to claim they are totally risk free. I am not a scientist or expert on this subject
1.https://penelope.uchicago.edu/encyclopaedia_romana/wine/lead...
Edit: added source
Regarding PVC: It already is not used in almost any new construction for water supply lines, at least in the US. It's used for drains, but the leeching concern isn't really an issue for drain pipes. No water pressure, and no continuous immersion typically. Issues about BPA/vinyl compounds are
As per PEX, I can't say for certain that it's 100% risk free, but overall there is increased scrutiny on drinking water and contaminates and PEX right now seems to be the best choice.
How much lead is permissible before it’s bad? The answer is, very very very little.
In comparison, you get copper contamination from copper pipes (especially if the water is too acidic), however the body handles a little copper just fine. It doesn’t build up in the body unlike lead.
Then you’re left with plastics: PEX or PVC. As of yet, there’s some potential concerns with microplastics in general… but that is from all the tiny plastic particles found everywhere, not solid pieces of pipe. And there hasn’t really be any evidence that it causes any specific known issue. If it was some giant problem (like lead in drinking water!) then the magnitude of effect would be much more obvious.