Maybe there’s only 80 chemicals in a pellet, as in, 80 very long molecules.

Thanks! Edited to account for “and other additives”

That’s almost fair. The difference is: a banana is a living organism, and very few synthetic materials are supposed to have 80 differently-identifiable chemicals in them. This melange of death here is shit like dioxins, plasticizers, decomposition products, dyes and other additives, as well as the reaction products of all of THAT shit mixing at high temp in the melted plastic. If you aren’t afraid, then I don’t know how to help you, child.

Brushing this off with some trite banana comparison is just making a Robert Kehoe out of yourself.

Thanks for that. No apology necessary - that was rather hilarious.

There isn’t a biologically significant difference between clothing made from various grades of nylon, polyester, polypropylene, spandex, Lycra, acrylonitrile, etc. You probably wear clothing made from each of these families or similar, related materials, each comprised of dozens of “chemicals”.

But you’ll turn up your nose at the thought of several of these materials combined into a single pellet?

After it’s been exposed to use and light for who knows how long, and after being melted together at high temperatures, inevitably higher than the decomposition temperatures of at least a few of the dyes and additives in there, because precisely zero effort has been put in to purify it before being slagged? Yes I will turn my nose up, and you should too. No self-respecting chemist sniffs chemical cocktails of unknown provenance.

ETA: Also, your clothing note is a completely false equivalence, because the chemical at issue here is polyethylene, which has a far greater range and prevalence of additives than those polymers you named for use in clothing.

I dont know why you got downvoted, you are very right!

“We identified common plastics chemicals, including UV-stabilizers and plasticizers, as well as chemicals that are not used as plastics additives, including pesticides, pharmaceuticals and biocides. These may have contaminated the plastics during their first use phase, prior to becoming waste and being recycled.”

a banana is a living organism

So what? So is poison ivy. I wouldn’t recommend eating it.

very few synthetic materials are supposed to have 80 differently-identifiable chemicals in them

I’m sorry but - what the fuck are you talking about? Who is deciding how many different chemicals should be in any given material? What sort of of ridiculousness is this?

This melange of death here is shit like dioxins, plasticizers, decomposition products, dyes and other additives, as well as the reaction products of all of THAT shit mixing at high temp in the melted plastic.

Which is my point - the NUMBER of items in a given material is just scare-mongering BS. The actual ingredients is what matters.

If you aren’t afraid, then I don’t know how to help you, child.

If you don’t understand that the count of the number of chemicals in a thing doesn’t relate to that thing’s toxicity then I can’t help you either kid.

It’s to highlight how common and widespread the contamination is.

You could say “We found 80 chemicals across a dozen facilities”, but showing how all 80 chemicals were in a single pellet highlights how widespread the contamination is.

Just people deciding that divorcing a statement from its context (plastics manufacturing) is sufficient to say that no alarm need be raised. As I said: Robert Kehoe.