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Nat Friedman
@natfriedman
Advice for Food Companies Since we launched PlasticList, we’ve been heartened to have quite a few food companies reach out and ask for help interpreting their results and tracking down and eliminating their contamination. I’ve had calls with a bunch of these.
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I am happy to report that no food company wants this stuff in their food and they are all eager to figure out what’s going on and how to remove it. After a while I noticed the advice we were giving was pretty similar for every company, so I thought it would be useful to write it down and share publicly. So, here are some notes: 1. To track down the source of your contamination, don’t just test a few samples of your product with varied production processes. Instead, test every single one of your inputs: every ingredient and input in the form you receive it before any processing steps, including water and any other consumables. 2. Then, test the food before and after every step in your production process. If you boil something in tap water, test before and after boiling. If you chop something on a plastic cutting board (because wood cutting boards are outlawed in commercial kitchens, apparently), test before and after chopping. 3. You may have to go deep into your supply chain to figure out the source of your contamination. One food company founder we spoke to said that some of the fruit they include in their product is picked, put into plastic bags, and then steamed in the bags before the bags are cut open and the fruit is transferred into another plastic bag, while still warm, for shipping. Whoops. 4. Run at least three samples of every test due to sample-to-sample variation. You can see in our report and in our data that sample-to-sample and lot-to-lot variation should be expected: plasticlist.org/report 5. You should also test any intermediate or final packaging that your product ships in, as leaching can also occur post-production. 6. There are a lot of steps that you need to carefully follow to prevent contaminating your samples during collection and transportation. It’s really easy to miss one of these and mess up your data. We describe many of these on our methodology page: plasticlist.org/methodology 7. You should consider running longitudinal tests, maybe quarterly, as we have heard that there can be seasonal variation in contamination from suppliers, due to things like summer heat, suppliers switching their processes, and suppliers switching their own backend suppliers for their inputs. 8. And most importantly: PICK A GOOD LAB. Unfortunately not all labs are good, and we think many ISO-certified commercial labs will not give reliable results. We rejected many certified labs because we weren’t confident in their work; all-in-all, we spent about 10 weeks finding a lab that we trust for our tests. You can see our lab’s internal methodology here: docs.google.com/document/d/1pc Our lab has recently permitted us to identify them publicly, and they are IEH: iehinc.com We also worked with Light Labs to produce this study and they can be a big help: lightlabs.com And Million Marker is able to work with food companies to debug their supply chains as well: millionmarker.com 9. You should consider hiring an analytical chemist as a consultant to validate that the testing methodology is accurate and to double-check the lab’s results. We hired John Brock to do this and it was well worth it; we would not have been confident in our choice of lab or our results without John. 10. We couldn’t find a lot of evidence that the phthalate substitutes are bad; if you have high-percentile detections in phthalates or bisphenols, though, it’s probably worth figuring out how those chemicals are getting into your products.
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Nat Friedman
@natfriedman
I haven't looked into it, but that's what a few industry insiders told me. If they're not actually illegal, they're practically illegal because health inspectors hate them or something.
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Nikita Sokolsky
@nsokolsky
Is there any data that these plastics are actually harmful? How much microplastic do you have to feed to mice before you start seeing issues in them, for example?
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Jordan Ross
@jordan_ross_8F
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Misha
@MishaGX
My kid's food at daycare is delivered hot in plastic containers. I want to do the same tests you did in this lab. Which test should I choose to replicate your testing?
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Yek Noda
@yeknoda
Ever heard of design of experiments? You can minimize the number of tests to find the culprits rather than testing at every step and input/output.
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Jordan Ross
@jordan_ross_8F
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Charles Moses
@Catallaxy33
Unpopular observation: man-made chemicals and micro-plastics are flush through the entirety of earth's ecosystem In the global rain, surface water, soil, groundwater And thus the living food chains Micro testing and abetting, while admirable, might ultimately be fingers in the
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🐐QuirkyLlama
@quirkyllama
This advice seems wrong? Why not use a binary search process? Test for contamination after 50% of production steps and iterate on that?
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Eito Miyamura | ♨️
@Eito_Miyamura
This is amazing, thank you, I'd love to move to SF after this is done Food contamination has always been a part of the US that turned me off despite loving basically everything about SF + US
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Daniel Kwak
@dnlkwk
Is there a way you can track the progress of these companies to reduce the contaminants vs feigning concern?
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MrLogistics
@MisterLogistic
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Adam Locklin
@AdamLocklin
Very awesome to read! This is exactly what good Governance, ya know that last letter in the ESG acronym. Companies being PROACTIVE, asking questions, that is good Governance. Companies that are actively asking their lawyers how to suppress and silence, its governance, but...not
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Cormac
@cormachayden_
Thanks for lifting the bar on product transparency. Integrating all the lab data from independent studies and brand reports into
@oasiswaterapp
Will soon have real-time ratings on all products.
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Jonathan Slotkin, MD
@slotkinjr
but seriously, what was the deal with the toothbrush?
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Jonathan Slotkin, MD
@slotkinjr
Replying to @WillManidis
yeah it was a super helpful study because I learned that if I want to eat the items lowest in plastic content I should eat Sour Patch Kids, granulated sugar, or especially a Colgate 360 toothbrush
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✨ Constellation Hathaway Capital
@NotMarkLeonard
It is sad that these food companies are so surprised about this fact… I don’t believe that they don’t test for these things (all within regulations right!) Some at all companies likely knew about it. But at least its importance is being recognized. Awesome job sir!
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Hummingbird
@HMNBRDNetwork
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🌱Simon🌱
@simoarcher
Its so amazing that the companies have reached out. Kind of want you to give them a shoutout, or maybe not. Curious what your thoughts are on this?
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BG
@BoomBapBlake
I design and manufacture food processing systems here in the US 🇺🇸 for many big food manufacturers . Solving equipment issues at each production stage (#2) is complex. Many automated lines with dozens of interconnected parts. But when companies take a proactive approach like
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Dog Playing Piano
@DogPlayingPiano
Is there any indication problems trace to a few suppliers? A few causes, like heated plastics? Specific types of plastics that could be identified by recycle numbers?
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Dmitry Lyalin
@LyalinDotCom
Fantastic work Nat if you folks plan to continue I’d be glad to donate towards the cause. I’d suspect many of us want this effort to keep pushing for change.
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Alex Kennberg
@akennberg
Can’t find a law that says wood cutting boards are outlawed in commercial kitchens. Just much harder to meet health standards.
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Reem 🤖 AI
@reemk_ai
Thanks for this update! Happy to hear that food companies were proactive in trying to remedy this issue. 🎉
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Kevin Sekniqi 🔺
@kevinsekniqi
Awesome to hear! Looks like this is basically going to happen naturally
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Kevin Sekniqi 🔺
@kevinsekniqi
Replying to @natfriedman and @F_Vaggi
Nat, have you thought of getting this effort to establish labels on foods? Have food producers come to you and certify their plastic exposure, and in return they get to place a trademarked logo on their packaging. Would be a big mentality change for people
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Jeremy Rudy
@JeremyRudy
Surely Whole Foods / Amazon could lead the way with testing and transparency across their supply chain. It's the right move and message for this unique moment.
@JeffBezos
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Jordan Ross
@jordan_ross_8F
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Natural Immunity FTW
@NaturallyFTW
There’s animal data already that phthalate substitutes are awful. Including bad effects on liver, testes, kidneys. This is the Typical whack-a-mole that companies + the FDA do..replace something toxic w/something else toxic. Til data eventually proves it was just as bad.
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ckj
@ckj71008738
Major sources of microplastics are paints and tires. Tires: ~15% of their weight turns into microplastics over time. Paints: ~40% of their weight ends up as microplastics. Other sources, like packaging, pale in comparison. In farming, heavy equipment contributes significantly to
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The Patriarchy
@PeesInSinks
Question: why are we focused on using vegetable-based plastics in long-term use cases like wiring that attracts rodents, yet not pushing it for food packaging? It makes no sense that bottled water and soda is made with plastic instead of biodegradable plant products.
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Richard Decal
@bae_theorem
Nat, did y'all test polystyrene foam/EPS takeout containers? I couldn't it in your tables. My go-to Mexican spot dumps the food in hot and the foam bubbles up. Makes me wonder what leaches into the food.
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Peter Müllermann
@MullermannPeter
Testing sounds like a good first step to identify problems, but I believe it's too expensive in the long run. You'd probably need a good process, including detailed documentation and every part of the supply chain has to live by that process. Like something an ISO norm could do.
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Benjamin Stern
@itsbenjyyy
I ran a factory for a decade and saw everything coated in plastic. Even glass packaging had wrap around it. We also used liquid polymers in tank maintenance. Hopefully a new “gold standard” polymer family emerges, one that performs but has a less concerning phthalate profile.
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j
@n01zero
The fact none of this is federally regulated is disheartening. I appreciate the work yall do and wish it wasnt just upon these manufacturers “good will” to fix this. Unfortunately for every company that actually tries to fix their products, there are 100’s willing to cut corners
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Briac Marcatté
@briacm
This is great. Kind of crazy that it requires individuals like you to shed some light on what’s going on! A third party label is probably the way to go for companies who want to show that they did their homework, I guess someone needs to create it first
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KV
@kayvee_x
A very good advice to follow, I’m curios if this also applies to bottled/sachet water.
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Joey Porter
@j0eyv3
This was cool to read! I saw what I thought was an oscilloscope, learned it's a chromatogram, learned how it was used, how to read the result, science. So much, all in one place.
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w0lf
@0x_bruh_
can you do some kind of binary search testing on inputs / process and figure out where the largest jump in contamination comes from? just as a way to remove the overhead from so much testing?
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melo
@carmelo1up
Re "4. Run at least three samples of every test due to sample-to-sample variation." FWIW I used to work at a 24h/day tomatoe soup factory. We would sample test from each line every half hour. Then throw away the outuput or pause production when anomalies were detected.
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