If you microwave your consumables in plastic that is on you. Microwavable plastic is a marketing myth. Put your food on a plate or bowl and cover it with a wet paper towel.
It is absolutely not on you. In order to function as an adult you need to be able to have some level of trust in your family, your society, and your government (depending on where you live, I guess). That doesn't mean blindly believing everything you hear, but it does mean not having to do novel scientific research to confirm everything you were ever taught.
The majority of people alive on Earth today grew up in a world where plastic packaging and containers were a common, completely accepted part of life. Research suggesting this is harmful is very new, and still not settled. You cannot blame anyone for not picking this random ubiquitous aspect of modern life and avoiding it because it might be bad for them. Home microwaves themselves are no older than home plastics - why do you trust them?
It is likely that most people do not pay much attention to whatever chemistry they learn in school, but at least I would have never trusted any plastic object to be in contact with food inside a microwave oven, even decades ago, when I was much less careful about contact between plastic and food at room temperature.
There has never been any reason to not trust microwaves themselves with food, because any undesirable effects caused by them cannot be worse than when heating food is done using traditional methods, at temperatures that are normally higher and much less controlled.
On the other hand, anyone who has some idea about the components of any usual plastic can see that it is practically certain that at temperatures not much above room temperature some of the garbage fillers included in any plastic besides the base polymer will degrade and leak.
There may be a few plastics that could really resist in a microwave oven without degradation, e.g. PEEK, but those are very expensive and they will never be used for a cheap article like a food container.
Already since a few decades ago, since I have first used a microwave oven, I have never used anything else but glass vessels covered with glass lids and I have always been astonished whenever I have seen or heard somewhere that there exist people who have the courage to put food in microwave oven in plastic containers, even if their vendor has the guts to say that this should be safe.
There is really no excuse for using plastic for heating food, as the only supposed advantage is being able to dump the plastic container without washing it, but the glass vessels used for heating food in a microwave oven are very easy to wash, much easier than washing vessels that have been used for traditional cooking or food heating.
What did you learn in high school chemistry that made you suspicious of plastic? I did pay attention and I don't think I remember us covering plastic at all.
> On the other hand, anyone who has some idea about the components of any usual plastic can see that it is practically certain that at temperatures not much above room temperature some of the garbage fillers included in any plastic besides the base polymer will degrade and leak.
How do you know this? Even as someone actively looking into this topic I'm not sure whether this is true. I'm not challenging you, I'm genuinely asking where to learn about this.
They also grew up in a world that was skeptical of plastics and chose to ignore the skepticism because not being skeptical and blindly trusting your family, society, government is a fools errand. The exact issue is people promoting this “well I shouldn’t have to think/research” way of life. That’s just nonsense and the reason we’re here. It’s a cute dream but ignorance will just kill you.
I am open to being convinced otherwise, but I don't agree that there was any widespread skepticism of the health impacts of plastic until very recently, maybe the last 5 years. There has certainly been broad concern about plastic trash and environmental pollution for a long time, but that's a different topic.
I stand by my claim that you and I should not have to research the health impacts of, for example, microwaves. We should have to think about it, but if you have a basic understanding of how they work and how to use them safely, and you listen to people who might tell you if there were an issue (friends, the news, the FDA, etc.), then that is enough. And when I say "how to use them safely", I don't mean doing your own experimentation to find the limits of the device. I mean being told not to put metal in it, maybe watching a video to see what happens if you do, and accepting that it's a bad idea and you won't do it. It is not possible for me to do a medical study on the impacts of eating microwaved food, but I have enough societal trust that I continue to use them anyway.
I guess it depends on what segment of society you exist in. I (born in the early 90s) was raised in a plastic-free lifestyle, and many of the people my family associates with are the same. We are staunch environmentalists though, so I guess my experience is not typical. So, I don’t know about “widespread”, but the current of thought has been present in the zeitgeist for decades.
Was that about health concerns, or pollution and environmental concerns? Obviously health and the environment are very related, but what I mean is that even the term "microplastic" didn't exist when you were born, and I thought the idea that consumption of or close contact with plastic could cause individual health problems was relatively new. Not that literally nobody had thought of it, but my impression is that pushback against plastic for most of its history was driven by giant piles of trash that don't biodegrade, turtles getting stuck in soda packaging, stuff like that.
Plastic is made from oil, you’d have to be pretty ignorant to believe people never were skeptical of plastics and that skepticism wasn’t covered up by lobbying.
Yes of course, and lobbyists can be very effective. They covered up climate change and the harms of smoking too. I'm sure there are things that (almost) nobody knows today because of corporate cover-ups that we'll discover in 10 years. Climate change didn't enter the public consciousness until the late 80s, decades after the basic science was well-established, and it took more decades for it to become something that "everyone" knew about. That's the fault of corporations and lobbyists, not individuals that were too lazy to do their own climate modeling.
It is obvious to me that smoking is bad for you, it feels like an intuitive fact that nobody should have to be taught, but that's because I grew up in a culture absolutely saturated with that idea, and I didn't know anyone that smoked. Somebody who grew up 70 years ago in the complete opposite culture can't be blamed for not knowing at the time that smoking causes lung cancer. How could they know? Nobody can follow cutting-edge research from every field on the planet and adjust their life accordingly. Even if you could it wouldn't help - cutting edge science is often contradictory and it takes time for a consensus and convincing body of evidence to build up. I'm sure both of us hold intuitively obvious beliefs that we'll realize are wrong in 20 years.
What is the solution? It's not helpful to wait until after a coverup is exposed and then blame every individual who didn't somehow figure it out on their own. You also can't just believe the opposite of everything you've ever been told - you'll have the same problem. Some things that corporations produce are actually good for you, lobbyists are occasionally paid to promote something useful and true. Your parents were probably right about a lot of stuff they taught you. You can and should ask questions and learn as much as you can, but life is complicated, nobody can be deeply educated about every single thing they touch.
We have a set of reusable silicone lids. They can withstand high temperature on stove or microwave and just rinse off. Hopefully they aren't found to release anything.
Instead of a paper towel, we throw food on a plate or bowl and drop a lid on it. This also works in the fridge; one less thing to wash and nothing disposed.
I'm sure they are good, but you and I have quite different levels of "very affordable." On Amazon, they seem to average around $10 each depending on size. Contrast with mason jars at a little more than $1 each at my local Menards plus a bit more for reusable lids or silicone gaskets.
