<story><title>Chemicals used in packaging may play role in 100k US deaths a year – study</title><url>https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/oct/14/phthalates-deaths-older-americans-study-chemicals</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>frazbin</author><text>Let&amp;#x27;s not fall all over ourselves defending the manufacture of plastics.. it&amp;#x27;s a self-justifying dinosaur industry. We can go a lot farther with cellulose and chitin and friends,  polymers made in factories aren&amp;#x27;t particularly special from a chemical structure&amp;#x2F;function standpoint-- unlike PFAS type stuff, their bioincompatibility is just due to our laziness. The big advantage with plastics is that we&amp;#x27;re good at making&amp;#x2F;shaping&amp;#x2F;customizing them quickly and cheaply.  It can very much all be done with biocompatible&amp;#x2F;harmless chemicals.  That it isn&amp;#x27;t, is an accident of history: the early Chemistry research that produced the synthetic polymers used today made no attempt whatsoever to be biocompatible.. everything since has built on that, and not enough collective fuck has been given to dismantle and rebuild that infrastructure.&lt;p&gt;And just to get out ahead of it-- can we also not blame plastic consumers, who after all are just trying to eat, and probably don&amp;#x27;t want to poison themselves.</text></comment>
<story><title>Chemicals used in packaging may play role in 100k US deaths a year – study</title><url>https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/oct/14/phthalates-deaths-older-americans-study-chemicals</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>sokoloff</author><text>This makes me wonder how many deaths the widespread use of plastics in packaging has saved over the years from improvements in nutrition (reduced spoilage lowers net food costs and increases food availability) and reductions in food-borne illnesses.&lt;p&gt;The death rate from food-borne illness is pretty low now (with advances in processing, transportation, packaging, phase-change refrigeration, and surveillance of outbreaks).&lt;p&gt;We might be able to have our cake and eat it to with better&amp;#x2F;different packaging, of course.</text></comment>