A single pellet of recycled plastic can contain over 80 different chemicals. A new study with researchers from University of Gothenburg and Leipzig shows that recycled polyethylene plastic can leach chemicals into water causing impacts in the hormone systems and lipid metabolism of zebrafish larvae.
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:
decomposition byproducts: plastics break down under heat, stress and in light. It’s not surprising that some of their breakdown byproducts might be found in plastic that has been melted into a new shape.
dyes: plastic is dyed with different additives, and there are a LOT of different colors of plastic being recycled. They usually try to keep the colors generally consistent among batches for recycling, but the dyes that make a sprite bottle green are different from the ones that make a dasani bottle teal.
Plasticizers: the things the corporations add to their plastics just to eke out that 1 cent of savings from thinner, more durable plastic, or to get the texture just right, are insane. These are things like BPA. There are loads of them, and every plastic has different types. Some of them also have different heat tolerances, but it’s not like the recyclers are keeping track.
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 but 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).
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 but 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).
You misspelled “a minor bit of pedantry”. Sorry. It had to be done.