Plastic containers made in different countries?

[kenny1999]

I have been shopping around and looking at the label on different home products carefully.
I am especially concerned about plastics. There are tons of different plastic products but most of
them only state what it is made and where it is made without other chemical details. For example,
Polypropylene storage containers, most of them are made in China, some of them are made in Thailand, but some of them state that they are made in England or Japan.

Something made in England or Japan sounds good but by my logical thinking, it has been a long history in manufacturing plastics products and so every technology should be already very sophisticated and shouldn't make much difference in terms of technology. However, could it be
that one bad brand reduces cost and use less ingredient or addictives so that their plastic products are more likely to leach??

 

[jim mcnamara]

What is your application here? My lab relied for years on good scientific research suppliers like Aldrich (Millipore-Sigma), Carolina Biological, etc. If this for home use all bets are off, IMO.

Unless you can perform sophisticated tests, you have to rely on vendors who are willing to stand behind their products.

You cannot do this at home but it will give you an example of one type of QA testing for polypropylene:
http://jpdb.nihs.go.jp/jp14e/14data/General_Test/Test_Methods_for_Plastic_C.pdf

There are lot of plastic-is-bad sites out there that, IMO, are scary, maybe too scary, and I'm not qualified to state whether they have merit.

If you can't figure it out, use glass. If it is for cooking use borate glass (Pyrex brand cookware is no longer boro-silicate glass).

See: https://www.quora.com/Are-Pyrex-dishes-oven-safe

 

[kenny1999]

What is your application here? My lab relied for years on good scientific research suppliers like Aldrich (Millipore-Sigma), Carolina Biological, etc. If this for home use all bets are off, IMO.

Unless you can perform sophisticated tests, you have to rely on vendors who are willing to stand behind their products.

You cannot do this at home but it will give you an example of one type of QA testing for polypropylene:
http://jpdb.nihs.go.jp/jp14e/14data/General_Test/Test_Methods_for_Plastic_C.pdf

There are lot of plastic-is-bad sites out there that, IMO, are scary, maybe too scary, and I'm not qualified to state whether they have merit.

If you can't figure it out, use glass. If it is for cooking use borate glass (Pyrex brand cookware is no longer boro-silicate glass).

See: https://www.quora.com/Are-Pyrex-dishes-oven-safe

My purpose is the plastic storage box for books and other non-food stuff. I avoid plastic for food.

However, they are often used up to many many many years normally, unless they are broken but it's unlikely. That's why I am thinking if I am putting more plastic box of unknown brand home I am putting myself at higher risk.

Thanks for any comment

 

[chemisttree]

Probably best to store things in nothing but carved granite! Well, there’s the radon thing...

 

[BillTre]

For any given product, the mold can be filled with different material from different sources with different additives or quality of the main material.
Some manufacturer will use only high quality plastic, others will use where they can get away with.

I used to run a zebrafish research facility. We had a lot of products in contact with the fish water and did a lot of bioassaying of the different plastics on embryonic fish development (very sensitive). Some products have lot to lot variation in how the plastics affected the developing fish. This was not differentitated on the packaging (by lot number), unless they were products for labs or some other serious use.

These are more like considerations for food contact use (or better), rather than for just as non-food containers. But if you are concerned about possible chemical exposure, they are somewhat relevant.

Food grade plastics, medical products, and lab materials most often passed our tests.

Some rules of thumb for selecting plastics/rubbers for use with aquatic organisms:

• polypropylene is usually better than polyethylene (cost more, higher melting point)
• plastics that don't smell and usually better than those that smell badly
• blue and black plastics for outdoor use usually have UV blockers that can leach out (bad).
• flexible plastics often have chemicals added to give them those properties. These chemicals can leach out (bad).
• there are several kinds of silicon rubber
• wash plastics before initial use to remove chemicals left over from the manufacturing process (such as mold release compounds)

 

[kenny1999]

For any given product, the mold can be filled with different material from different sources with different additives or quality of the main material.
Some manufacturer will use only high quality plastic, others will use where they can get away with.

I used to run a zebrafish research facility. We had a lot of products in contact with the fish water and did a lot of bioassaying of the different plastics on embryonic fish development (very sensitive). Some products have lot to lot variation in how the plastics affected the developing fish. This was not differentitated on the packaging (by lot number), unless they were products for labs or some other serious use.

These are more like considerations for food contact use (or better), rather than for just as non-food containers. But if you are concerned about possible chemical exposure, they are somewhat relevant.

Food grade plastics, medical products, and lab materials most often passed our tests.

Some rules of thumb for selecting plastics/rubbers for use with aquatic organisms:

• polypropylene is usually better than polyethylene (cost more, higher melting point)
• plastics that don't smell and usually better than those that smell badly
• blue and black plastics for outdoor use usually have UV blockers that can leach out (bad).
• flexible plastics often have chemicals added to give them those properties. These chemicals can leach out (bad).
• there are several kinds of silicon rubber
• wash plastics before initial use to remove chemicals left over from the manufacturing process (such as mold release compounds)

Hi. Thanks for the advice. A few more questions

Is PolyPropylene "flexible plastics" or not?
Is PP without color (i.e. transparent) the best, which would not leach or leach very little?
How to wash plastics?? Soak it in water for a night or just wipe it with a wet towel is enough?
Do I need to wash it with detergent or just pure water is fine??

Thanks !

 

[BillTre]

Is PolyPropylene "flexible plastics" or not?

Normally, it is not flexible. If it flexible, it probably has something added to it to make it flexible.

Is PP without color (i.e. transparent) the best, which would not leach or leach very little?

It can be colored, but its natural "color" is is translucent white-greyish.
There are a lot of products used in molecular biology that are colored. I would guess these colored materials don't leach much or they would not be good for doing molecular biology. However, there may be products with leachable colors.

How to wash plastics?? Soak it in water for a night or just wipe it with a wet towel is enough?
Do I need to wash it with detergent or just pure water is fine??

We used to wash new plastic materials with detergent and then rinse with water (or better first a weak acid then water). Done properly this was a fish safe solution and would probably be human food safe as well. It was our assumption that many contaminants would not be easily water soluble.

Depending on your intended uses, I would try to come up with a test for the materials you use, if possible.

 

[kenny1999]

Normally, it is not flexible. If it flexible, it probably has something added to it to make it flexible.It can be colored, but its natural "color" is is translucent white-greyish.
There are a lot of products used in molecular biology that are colored. I would guess these colored materials don't leach much or they would not be good for doing molecular biology. However, there may be products with leachable colors.We used to wash new plastic materials with detergent and then rinse with water (or better first a weak acid then water). Done properly this was a fish safe solution and would probably be human food safe as well. It was our assumption that many contaminants would not be easily water soluble.

Depending on your intended uses, I would try to come up with a test for the materials you use, if possible.

Hi. Did you mean washing with water alone is usually not enough to remove the contaminants and
should be cleaned and washed with detergent? Is the generic detergent for kitchen good enough?

How to test the PP container and what to test?

Because I am going to buy the same model of plastic containers in a lot...the merchant has little knowledge on this because they are just retailer...

 

[BillTre]

Hi. Did you mean washing with water alone is usually not enough to remove the contaminants and
should be cleaned and washed with detergent? Is the generic detergent for kitchen good enough?

Yes. Usually.

How to test the PP container and what to test?

It depends upon your intended use.
We tested on baby fish since our intended use was with fish and the baby fish are particularly sensitive.

For "home use", it would depend upon what your uses and concerns are (which are unstated).
Since I can breed ZF fairly easily, and I expect the baby ZF bioassay to be somewhat reflective of possible bad effects on humans (or pets) that would probably be my personal choice of a test. However, its seems unlikely this approach would work for many others.
The simplest things to do would be to use food grade, lab grade, or medical grade products and forget about testing. However, this would not always work since some lab gloves in contact with fishwater for about 1 second would be enough to kill baby fish. Others were fine.
If it does not smell bad and you or others are not going to eat or drink out of it, chew on it, otherwise have intimate contact with it then you might not want to worry about it so much.

Lot-to-lot variability:
We also tested fish nets for their resistance to autoclaving because that is how we sterilized them between uses. There was a lot of lot-to-lot variability in the nets from a single supplier. Persumably they would get plastics from different sources to make different lots of nets. Since it had no effect on the normal use of the fishnets, the suppliers did not usually care about it, but for us some lots of nets would melt if autoclaved. We would arrange to get samples of a lot from a supplier and when we found a good lot order a few thousand nets.
Similar results were occasionally found using the baby fish test.