this post was submitted on 23 Jun 2025
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As a chemist, but without organics specialization (my specialty is rocks), I think that what we're seeing here is a collection of three main things, aside from polyethylene:
So, yeah, be afraid. There's a metric fuckton of shit in there, and literally no one knows what it all is, let alone how much of it made it through the manufacturing, use, recycling and manufacturing process without becoming prone to leaching. Virtually all plastic recycling is a scam perpetrated by the corporations to get us to blithely ignore how they are destroying the planet to save money, all while convincing us to blame ourselves.
Been a while since I was in a lab (I was mainly concerned with squishy, squidgy things like microbes, so not quite OChem either) but, this looks accurate to me with a minor bit of pedantry that I had to validate before mentioning. BPA is not actually a plasticizer but a monomer/co-monomer (it does frequently get incorrectly labeled as a plasticizer in retail products). Notably in polycarbonate, which is something like 90% BPA by mass.
A big issue with is the incomplete reaction of monomers, leading to things like room-temp leeching of unreacted BPA in polycarbonate (so glad that I took a Nalgene with me everywhere for years when I was younger /s).
Thanks! Edited to account for "and other additives"
You misspelled "a minor bit of pedantry". Sorry. It had to be done.
Thanks for that. No apology necessary - that was rather hilarious.