Is Microwaving Food in Plastic Actually Dangerous?

For years and years it has been said that microwaving your food in any plastic containers can be harmful to one’s health. Causing cancer,reproductive problems, and other ailments. Hearing it time and time again, over and over with no real direct explanation as to why causes me to wonder if it is actually truth, or myth. Is heating your food in plastic actually a danger to your health?

According to Harvard health, while there is some truth to this, a lot of it is misinformation. The earliest warnings stated that microwaved plastic releases cancer-causing chemicals into food, known as dioxins. Although the problem with this warning is that plastic does not contain dioxins, as they are only created when the material is burned. Therefore unless you are burning your food, no dioxins will be present. This articles also stresses the fact that there is no single substance called “plastic” because the term covers many materials made from an array of compounds. Substances such as bisphenol-A (added to make plastic clear and hard) and phthalates (added to make plastic soft and flexible) are two plasticizers that are believed to be “endocrine disrupters”, which means these substance mimic human hormones (not in the good way). Therefore it is said that when food is wrapped in plastic or placed in a plastic container, BPA(the worse offender) and phthalates could potentially leak into the food. Although the FDA realizes this and thus regulates each container before it can pass. If and when the container does, the microwave safe label is placed onto it (meaning no chemicals will migrate into your food). As for containers that do not have the microwave safe seal, the FDA has said they aren’t necessarily unsafe, it just has not yet been determined.

Wall Street Journal seems to be more against the heating of plastic, and emphasizes the importance of knowing when to toss a container in the trash. Dr. Halden, the director for the center for Environmental Security at the Biodesign Institute at Arizona State University, says that the amount of chemicals “leeching” into your food not only depends on the type of plastic, but the condition of it.  If the container is old, cracked, and has been washed hundreds of times, it will often give off more toxins when heated. Therefore any deformities or signs of discoloration means its better off in the garbage.

This topic is still up for debate as to whether heating food in a microwave can be considered as a culprit for later illnesses, such as cancer, later in life. Although a new series of studies from NYU Langone Medical Center suggests that two increasingly used chemicals (di-isononyl phthalate and di-isodecyl phthalate) have been linked to a rise in risk of high blood pressure and diabetes in children and adolescents. DINP and DIDP are ironically replacements for another chemical, di-2-ethylhexylphthalate (DEHP),which the same researchers proved to have had similar adverse effects. In their most recent study (on the replacements), the investigators reported a significant association in study subjects high blood pressure and DINP and DIDP levels. For every ten fold increase in the amount of phthalates consumed, there was a 1.1 mm of mercury increase in the blood. Researchers then tested blood and urine samples of a diverse group of 356 children and adolescents to evaluate for phthalates and glucose (also measured blood pressures). Taking diet, physical activity, race, gender, ethnicity, and income as factors independently associated with insulin resistance and hypertension as factors also. Although the results of this study are not emphasized, the takeaway is that families should limit their exposure to phthalates.

Overall, while this question is still under debate, I feel it is better to be safe than sorry. Instead of microwaving your food in plastic, it is probably better to just get a glass container, or use a glass plate to heat up your foods. That way you won’t have to worry that you could be consuming phthalates, which could be harmful to your body.

 

2 thoughts on “Is Microwaving Food in Plastic Actually Dangerous?

  1. Alana Marie D'agnese

    I was microwaving the food I brought back from parents weekend in and noticed that the plastic started to melt in some places. I found this odd because the container was supposed to be “microwave safe.” I have also heard that drinking out of plastic water bottles puts you at risk for developing cancer. I wonder if its from the same reasons as the container. But correlation does not always equal causation. So both the container and the water bottle studies could be flukes.

  2. Kelly Elizabeth Bare

    This post is very interesting to me because whenever I heat something up in a tupperware container my grandmother always says that I am going to get cancer from it, and I always just nodded my head, but never really understood why. This article cleared it up for me, but I do not feel as though I have seen enough evidence to believe that heating up food in plastic containers causes cancer. They are correlated for sure, but as we hear almost every class; correlation does not equal causation.

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