Environmentalism

Courtesy of Reddit user u/ElementreeCr0 Q: A baby bath was gifted to my family that we use for our infant daughter. It had a sticker label on it that left a residue when removed. We remove stickers with care and I've tried hard to get the residue off, but at a certain point I imagine I do more harm than good. How bad is it for a baby to bathe in a tub with adhesive residue on the interior, exposed to the bath water the child is bathed in? Water temperature is warm-hot but cool enough for a baby. Sticker adhesive is...who knows what! I can tell you that whatever adhesive remains will not come off with scrubbing, olive oil, dish soap. I haven't tried isopropyl alcohol but I try it on other adhesives and wonder the same about what tacky residue remains - is it hazardous? On the one hand, I get my spouse's point that whatever won't come off with effort, won't come off and affect baby. On the other hand, I can't help but think of the adhesive being...

Courtesy of Reddit user u/ElementreeCr0 Q: Cork is used as a healthier material than plastics in applications like flooring, yoga mats, etc. Yet cork itself has a lasting noticeable smell, which I take it means it is "offgassing" some smellable chemicals. Is the offgassing from cork a health concern for something used a lot like a yoga mat? What about for children using such mats? _______________________________________________________ A: Great question, you've sent me down a rabbit hole of reading about cork yoga mats. I'll need your help to answer that question. Does the mat smell like wood, rubber, or "chemicals?" If the mat smells like wood, then you have nothing to worry about. All plants, including cork trees, contain various oils that can evaporate over time to create characteristic smells. Smelling this is no more dangerous than walking through a forest where some trees have fallen. If the mat smells like rubber or "che...

Courtesy of Reddit user u/Blahblah987369 Q: What would be your top 5 best biodegrable materials to seek out to replace plastics, esp single use, like trash bin liners? I read your blog where you talked about returning to reuse where possible, which is deffo the aim, but in the cases we can’t, what would be your preferences or recs? _______________________________________________________ A: I'm not a big fan of rankings, because in my opinion the best choice in any decision comes down to a lot of an individual person's unique preferences and circumstances. For example, if a celebrity talks about their Top 5 fashion rules, in my opinion they're always either too vague to be useful to anyone or so specific to the celebrity's body or sense of style that they are useless to me as someone who doesn't have that body. Your circumstances and mine are probably different in terms of our finances, locations, preferences, and responsibilities, so I'm hesitant t...

  Courtesy of Reddit user u/ubet13 Q: How worrisome do you find astroturf artificial grass? It can be hard to find places to live without it in certain parts of the US but I’ve heard concerns from the microplastics dust it creates, the off-gasses and particularly the actual contact with it on your skin. I’ve read athletes playing on it have increased rates of specific cancers and it seems like it’s starting to be phased out in the EU? But not sure how worried to be. Thank you! _______________________________________________________ A: Honestly astroturf artificial grass does make me fairly uncomfortable. Dose makes the poison in most cases, and when people are constantly exposed to such a huge amount of plastic day in, day out there are bound to be health effects associated with it. All of the hazards you mention are real and accurate, so while I generally try to put hazards in perspective to avoid fearmongering, this is one space where I think the fear is somewhat ju...

  My main goal for my outreach is to improve general understanding of practical chemistry, and to put the relative hazard of various toxins into perspective for the average person. Sometimes if I clarify that a particular chemical is not as hazardous as a person might think, people get the impression that I'm saying that chemical is totally safe. That is not my intention, so I want to make it absolutely clear that the vast majority of synthetic chemicals are harmful to human health. As an analogy, imagine a spectrum of dangerous objects ranging from a pocket knife to a nuclear bomb. Most people don't have enough chemical literacy to put the relative hazard of a given chemical in context, so out of an abundance of caution they treat every chemical like a nuclear bomb-level threat. A big part of what I'm trying to do is to help people understand the actual threat level of the chemicals they're asking about. If someone comes to me asking whether a c...

Courtesy of Reddit user u/buttercup_mauler Q: I'm an environmental engineer working on my forensic toxicology MS! I have been interested in microplastics from a toxicology view, but I'm not far enough into my studies to have really delved deep. So far, I've learned mostly about the gen tox stuff like xenobiotic biotransformation, but it is largely focused on drugs, pesticides, that type of stuff. Do you know what kind of information and studies have been done on the tox side of microplastics? For whatever reason, it's harder for me to wrap my brain around the idea of attempting to metabolize a plastic vs a drug. I am really interested to learn more. _______________________________________________________ A:  Personal Comments: That's dope! I want to let you in on a little open secret actually. Despite the positive environmental work that I do, you and your peers are my personal heroes. I'm not actually a toxicologist by training, I...

Courtesy of Reddit user u/dscoZ Q: I’ve read that a lot of “biodegradable” plastics need special environments to break down which are not common in most cities, so it’s really just a greenwashing technique by companies selling their products. That being said, are there any materials that seem promising in terms of actual recyclability and biodegradability that are feasible for inexpensive packaging and things like that? _______________________________________________________ A: The greenwashing you're talking about is specifically about the "compostable" plastic PLA, which is the cheapest and most common alternative plastic available. PLA is an interesting case study, because it is a bioplastic that biodegrades completely into nontoxic products if it is exposed to bacteria and held at 60C (140F) for a week. In an industrial composting center, the fermentation from the giant compost heap can easily produce temperatures that high, but the average person's ...

Courtesy of Reddit user u/AngryBPDGirl Q: I was checking out plasticlist.org and noticed milk bottled in glass had higher counts of some of the chemicals of milk bottled in plastic (such as the Straus Organic Milk in glass), and I was confused why this was...can you explain like I'm 5 to me? _______________________________________________________ A: First of all, thank you for introducing me to this website! I had never heard of it before, but it rocks and I'm very glad to know about it now. All of the chemicals listed on this website are called "plasticizers." In scientific terms the word "plastic" just means "flexible," so a plasticizer is a chemical that is mixed into various materials to make them more flexible. As an example, water acts as a plasticizer in wood, and I'm sure you're already familiar with that. Dry wood is much less flexible than wet wood. As I'm sure you're also aware, there are many dif...

Courtesy of Reddit user u/oklevel3 Q: Could you talk about silicone ? It's presented as harmless but I've also heard that it's not. _______________________________________________________ A: Absolutely, this is a great question! That is because there are many different kinds of silicone, where some are harmless and others aren't. Silicone is a type of polymer, which means that it is made up of thousands of smaller molecules all chained together. Polymers come in all sorts of shapes and sizes depending on how many links are in the chain and how those links connect, but for simplicity here let's focus on just size. In some ways, the cells in our bodies are like teething toddlers. You wouldn't let a toddler play with Monopoly pieces, because the toddler would try to eat the pieces and choke. However, I'm sure you wouldn't hesitate to let a toddler play with a dollhouse, because a whole dollhouse couldn't possibly fit in their mouth. S...

Courtesy of Reddit user u/lunalovegood Q: For laundry detergent - which is the best option? I recently started using detergent sheets but have heard they release microplastics into the water. Thank you in advance for any info/advice you can provide - I really appreciate your post! _______________________________________________________ A: grrrrrrrrrr this is an issue that I feel very strongly about, so I'm going to have a bit of opinion in here. First as a bit of background, "plastic" and "polymer" aren't necessarily dirty words, there are plenty of natural and biodegradable plastics and polymers. Heck starch is a plastic, and so is cellulose which is what makes up wood and paper. DNA is technically a plastic too, which I think is pretty neat. Anyway, the main plastic used in detergent pods and sheets is called PVA (polyvinyl alcohol), also known as PVOH. PVA is a plastic with a mountain of reputable research showing that it is totally bi...

Courtesy of Reddit user u/Avalanc89 Q:  It's that true you shouldn't heat up ANY plastic container because stuff that made plastics bonds breaks up and contaminate food?   ________________________________________________________ A: Technically yes, but practically no. Any two materials that touch each other will rub off on each other to some extent. If you cut your food on a wooden cutting board with a metal knife then eat it off a ceramic plate, then your food is technically "contaminated" with wood, metal, and ceramic when you eat it. Of course that isn't a problem because all of those materials pass through your body harmlessly. You might notice in the news surrounding microplastics that lots of fearmongering articles talk about how we have microplastics in all different parts of our bodies, but those articles usually don't have anything to say about whether the presence of plastic in our bodies actually causes any problems. I am absolute...

Courtesy of Reddit user u/cheerful_altruist Q:  I have a similar background, so my first and off-topic question would be whether you have any tips on finding a job within environmental chemistry. In my country, at least, there don't seem to be many opportunities outside academia. ________________________________________________________ A:  That depends on what your specialty and goals are, but depending on how picky you are, there are a decent number of options out there. The areas with the most jobs for environmental chemists surround efforts to prevent and mitigate pollution. Environmental Safety Officer: In most countries it is required for any company that handles chemicals to have a dedicated safety officer on site whose job is to ensure that chemicals are handled and disposed of safely. Some companies also hire outside chemical safety consultants who handle that stuff for them, so you can seek to be hired directly by a company or by a consultin...

Courtesy of Reddit user u/That_Boysenberry4501 Q:  I am very interested in algae bioplastic and I've been experimenting with my own for art. What do you think of bioplastics (algae and other) current potential to replace the worlds plastic? Is it mostly political/laws that are needed to even get plastic replacements and restrictions going? Why are we not more urgently finding/implementing plastic replacements?   ________________________________________________________ A: Bioplastics are actually my main field of expertise and I hold a few patents on new bioplastics, so as a disclaimer I am very knowledgeable on this topic, but also very biased. I am very much in favor of bioplastics. The short answer to your question is that bioplastics have a lot of potential, and I am confident they will safely replace a huge portion of plastic products, but they shouldn't replace all plastic, because most of the products we make out of plastic now shouldn't be made o...

  Courtesy of Reddit user u/That_Boysenberry4501 Q:  So I'm an artist and want to make more works about overconsumption and plastic pollution. I really love how melted/heated plastic works as a medium and its cool that I could put some of my own waste to use--but I know melting/heating it releases toxins. Do you know of any way that I could neutralize those toxins so as not to release them into the air?   If not, I feel it would go against my message to be melting them, so I'll have to find other ways to work with them.   ________________________________________________________ A: There isn't any practical means to neutralize the toxins released by heated plastic, particularly because different plastics are so different from each other chemically. The degree of hazard from plastic fumes varies wildly from plastic to plastic, so without specialized knowledge and equipment, melting plastic always carries some risk. That said, I think it is also importan...

  Courtesy of Reddit user u/Emergency_Bet_7090 Q: When brands write "recyclable" or something similar..do they greenwash us?  ________________________________________________________ A: Good question! The answer is sort of. As I'm sure you already know, just because something can be recycled doesn't mean it ever will be, so writing "recyclable" on their packaging can be an easy way for companies to appear green without actually changing anything about their products or practices. However, there are still some benefits to this. Some packaging types such as metallic foil-lined plastic are difficult or impossible to recycle, because separating the material back into its constituent parts is not realistically viable. So while the best option would be to minimize packaging or make the packaging biodegradable, making the packaging recyclable is still an improvement over having non-recyclable packaging. I think it's important to celebrate small impr...

Conversations surrounding the environmental crises that we face today can often feel confusing and muddled--as though Expert A's recommendation is directly at odds with Expert B's recommendation, even though they are both billed as environmental scientists. This is because after the past few hundred years of human-caused environmental destruction we are actually facing multiple simultaneous overlapping environmental crises that need to be addressed all at once. Although average exposure to toxic substances has declined for typical people in the developed world due to regulations on chemical usage and disposal, even waste that is disposed of responsibly can affect the environment at large once enough builds up. To solve the problems we face, we need to not only stop causing further damage, but also repair the damage that was ignorantly caused over the past few hundred years. That is humanity's unpaid debt--it isn't fair that we need to clean up the messes our ancestors l...

Courtesy of Reddit user u/binders4588 Q: Drinking water. Is tap water better than bottled? What’s the best way to get drinking water with the least amount of harm? I lived in a developing country as a Peace Corps volunteer and after that experience came back to U.S. with such an appreciation for our “clean” tap water. But after Flint and the rising studies on microplastics, drugs, etc in tap water I’m again back to thinking my daily water intake from the tap is going to slowly give me cancer or other issues. A: Tap water is totally safe basically everywhere in the US, with a few exceptions like you mentioned in Flint. If you get your water from a municipal system then it has been thoroughly filtered and cleaned by your local government before it reaches your home, and they generally do a very good job. If you get your water directly from a well, then it depends more on your area, but you can still clean it up plenty with a typical well filtration system. Either way if you...

Courtesy of Reddit user u/elizajaneredux Q: How bad is non-stick/teflon coating for the consumer and the environment? How about ceramic? Thanks! A: Teflon is pretty bad, and it is currently going through the process of being banned in several rich countries, but that said I don't think you should throw away your pans if you have them, just don't buy more. Teflon is a very tough material, which is part of why it became so popular. I'm sure you've heard not to use metal utensils on teflon pans, and that is because it can scrape the teflon off and cause it to get into your food. Also if the teflon is scratched up already it has a higher chance of leaching into the food. That said though, if your pans are scratch-free, since teflon is so tough it leaches a negligible amount. So if you have scratch-free teflon pans, I suggest you continue using them until you start to see scratches, then throw them out.   For the environment teflon is pretty bad because it cannot...

Courtesy of Reddit user u/moonflower311 Q: I’m a sewist and have noticed a majority of the more affordable fabrics are synthetic (rayon, polyester, etc.). Is there a “better” synthetic to use in terms of long term effects? Also in your opinion does the affordability of synthetic fabrics make up for any health or environmental drawbacks they may have? A: Cool! I do leatherworking as a hobby, although I'm not very good at it, so I have a ton of respect for what you do! So I have kind of mixed feelings about rayon and viscose specifically. Both of those synthetics are made from wood, and can even be made from even more renewable materials like bamboo. They are both also totally biodegradable and break down into nontoxic materials. Overall from an environmental perspective they're pretty good. The problem with them however, is that to make them it requires some forms of sulfur that are extremely toxic to human health. In a properly run factory though, those sulfur mater...

Courtesy of Reddit user u/swimThruDirt Q: What needs to be done to prevent companies from engaging in, "regrettable substitutions"? (subbing out a problematic chemical for a similar but less studied alternative) Like BPA is replaced with BPF and a "BPA Free" sticker A: Smarter regulatory agencies. Innovation often happens faster in industry than regulators can keep up, so when a company presents a new chemical to government regulators to ask for approval the regulators don't always know what they're looking at. So in cases like that the regulators will ask to be educated on the new chemical and its effects by the company that invented it. On some level this makes sense because presumably the inventor knows more about it than anyone, but of course the inventor is also incentivized to omit or lie about the danger of their invention. Similar molecules don't always carry the same risks, so if a company tells the government regulators that BPF is...

Courtesy of Reddit user u/springreturning Q: Are there any cases where plastic is better for the environment than a similar non-plastic alternative? For example, I’ve heard people say tin foil is worse than plastic wrap. A: This answer varies case by case depending on the particular material. Tin foil vs plastic wrap is a good example, so I'll use it to illustrate my point. Plastic wrap isn't very recyclable because plastics break down a little bit every time they're recycled until they are no longer usable. Plastic wrap also isn't biodegradable, so it can remain hazardous to ecosystems for millennia. On the other hand, tin foil is extremely recyclable because it can be melted back down and remolded an infinite number of times with no adverse effects on quality, and when tin foil ends up in the environment it's just a mineral, no more dangerous than having a rock lying around. From those factors it might seem like tin foil is overall better than plastic...

Courtesy of Reddit user u/Grandemestizo Q: How worried should I be about plastic in the environment? Because I’m pretty worried about it. Also, what is the most environmentally friendly way to dispose of materials which are not biodegradable and cannot be recycled? A: The history of humanity is a story of us getting gradually better at not poisoning ourselves and our ecosystems. I expand on this idea in my article here . If you look back in time we went from pooping in the same rivers we drank from and wondering why people kept getting sick, to using mercury in hat manufacturing and breathing soot without masks which gave us mad hatters and black lung, to using lead in gasoline and paint which caused generations of cognitive problems particularly for children. In the modern era we know about and mostly avoid the dangers of bacterial infections, mercury, smoke inhalation, and lead poisoning, because we have grown smarter and more responsible about pollution very slowly. The mo...

Courtesy of Reddit user u/lunalovegood Q: Is it possible to come up with a better/economically feasible process for recycling plastic? A: Yes, but there will always be serious limitations to recycling. Plastics are made up of chain-shaped molecules called polymers, and the recycling process involves unweaving those chains, then reweaving them into something else. As an analogy, if you think of a plastic as a sweater, with some effort you could unweave a sweater back into being yarn so you can make a new sweater from it, but you're bound to cut or break some of the fibers in the process. Each time you unweave and reweave the sweater, the fibers will gradually get shorter and shorter until the yarn you get from it has such short fibers that you can't make a decent sweater out of it. That is the problem of recycling plastic, no matter what you do the quality of the plastic goes down a little bit every time it's recycled until its performance is so bad it's unus...