History repeats itself

Glass is the best food container. Leaves no residue or chemicals, easily recyclable, and even in a landfill it just turns into sand.

Fun fact: the darker the glass is, the less energy it takes to produce and recycle because the additives that make it darker reduce the glass's melting point significantly. Dark coloured glass is also preferred for beverage storage and preservation as they block sunlight, which is why the more expensive wines almost always come in dark glass bottles. Only issue is dark bottles don't let you see inside, which consumers don't tend to like, and a clear glass bottle is more likely to draw attention on the shelf.
- Isn't most red wine commonly sold in tinted glass bottles? White also seems to be sold in more transparent bottles.
Breaks more easily, being the downside
- Glass is glass and glass breaks.
- Also requires 100x thicker walls for the same integrity as plastic, meaning the same volume container weighs much more and requires more fossil fuel to transport. Glass makes sense for reusable containers in local economies, but in the case of global distribution, glass puts much more CO2 in the atmosphere than plastic.
- Skill issue. Just don't drop it noob.
- Put a foam cover around it to make it drop proof
How do aluminium cans compare?
- Aluminum cans are actually coated in plastic to avoid corrosion.

Fun fact: the Romans knew that lead was toxic from their own observations, but still chose to use it because it was just so useful, and because the health effects are chronic so do not manifest for a long time, meaning it could be much more easily ignored until it was too late.

Sound familiar?

It's not as uf they could easily solder copper pipes either.
Lead was immensely convenient. It's no wonder it's still called plumbing (plumbum is lead, in case you missed that bit).

Fun fact, lead is delicious and counts itself among the most historically accepted forbidden snacks. Wine, in veggies absorbed through fertilizer, dissolved in solution, lead can be, and has been, enjoyed many ways.

See also: sugar of lead.
- It is believed that Ludwig van Beethoven died of lead poisoning as the port he used to drink was supposedly adulterated.

The US still has a lot of lead pipes and I think that kind of explains a lot.

Many parts of Europe also do. What's your point?
- Europe actually has about 3x more households with lead pipes (per capita) than the US
Everything and anything for the corporations to profit and squeeze every ounce of economic power out of the people.
because they're safe.
running water covers them with a layer of stuff

not just plastic bottles / containers,
we literally have teflon cookware

Teflon cookware is mostly a non-issue during cooking because PTFE starts melting only at temperatures largely higher than cooking temperatures.
The problem is when it gets discarded and incinerated and it emits residues, and during its fabrication.
- The problem is when the surface gets damaged, which is always. Just throw away all of your Teflon and use cast iron pans. They're almost as easy to clean, and they don't have the same health risks. Sure, DuPont claims their new Teflon is safe, but they're the same company that knowingly lied about their first Teflon, fought in court about it for 30 years, and even bribed health authorities.
- No way it doesn't degrade and emit PFAS occasionally during normal use. There's a reason nobody who keeps birds will keep that shit in their house.
  The risk:reward ratio is so skewed it's stupid.
  Risk: if you heat it slightly too much a class of chemicals literally called "forever chemicals" because of how long they stay in the body will enter your lungs and your food
  Reward: food no sticky
- Ever seen a well used Teflon pan that wasn’t scratched or chipped? All of that goes into your food.
- 327°C
- Teflon-coated pans start giving off harmful gasses at around 400°F, temperatures you're going to exceed on the stovetop if you're doing pretty much anything other than boiling water.
My current research is about pfas and how bad it is. You wanna know yhe most fun part? It probably is in your drinking water. Current testing methods are only for specific compounds and many manufacturers just use a slightly different chemical structure, whose effects can be the same in a biological system...
- Can you share the negative health effects of ptfe consumption? I would have assumed that it would be inert in humans considering it's extraordinarily inert properties. Obviously it breaks down at temperatures over 315c, but that's not really relevant with ptfe in the water.

Would you crosspost this (or give me permission to crosspost) to RoughRomanMemes and HistoryMemes? This is perfect!

For some extra context for those not in the know - the Romans boiled down wine in lead pots to make sweetener, because the lead made it even sweeter. Not because they didn't know that lead was bad - they understood it full well, and even associated certain forms of lead poisoning with lead cosmetics.

But sweetener? Just a little tasty sweetener on your bread and in your wine? What could go wrong!

Be my guest!
I keep finding memes like this and was wondering if we had a fediverse equivalent for it yet.
Subbed to the historymemes one just now, but roughromanmemes doesn't seem to be visible to me for whatever reason.
- You may be the first RoughRomanMemes visitor from your instance.
- Lol, read that as RoughRoManMemes and thought it was a scooby-doo meme spot. It was not.
That would boil the alcohol right off though... Alcohol-free wine??? Proof that they were their own biggest consumers.
- Well, that's kind of the point. It was to reduce the wine to a kind of jelly which wasn't meant to be alcoholic, just sweetener.

That lead pipes are still around is even funnier: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-67585011

Even funnier(?), the Romans knew that lead pipes could leech lead into the water, but also knew how to counteract it (allowing calcium buildup in the pipes and ensuring a certain distance the water traveled to ensure that buildup); but this method doesn't work with modern pipe systems because the water remains in the pipes for longer, allowing the lead to seep into the water even when there is buildup. Huzzah for worse lead piping problems than the Ancient Romans?

Same with cars. But don't worry, they'll be electric soon!

i love electric cars bc i can feel like im helping the environment, without riding public transport with the poors
/s
- I mean in most cases it's someone who doesn't live in a place with adequate public transport to even be riding with the poors to begin with

Do we know microplastics to be toxic?

Not as bad as lead but definitely not good.
Maybe not in small enough quantities, but what happens when your body accumulates enough of it? Maybe its completely inert but it will build up inside us like dust builds up on devices and eventually it might start clogging something critical, like extremely small bloodvessels or maybe some badly understood cleaning mechanism on brains.
Yes, we know the chemicals in plastics are toxic.

Most of USA still use lead pipes for tap water

Not most. Some parts.
Regardless, I still cannot wrap my head around that.
- Money, it's expensive to replace with a safer solution so we don't spend money on it. You can't make them spend less on war and surveillance of us though
At least the lead pipes are coated on the inside with calcium from the water.
The issue is, when the water becomes acidic this calcium coating dissolves as well as some lead beneath it.
That's not even remotely accurate. Only ~7% of US households have lead service lines.
In Europe that number is ~25%

Yummy, I love eating garbage

i know im gonna get hated for this, but: fluoride tap water

God forbid we... checks notes... prevent tooth decay!
- if only there were something we do twice a day to prevent that... oh well.
  if you wanna protect your teeth that much then use fluoride mouthwash after you brush your teeth. you can even swallow it if you like.
Science says no
Fluoride is literal poison that everyone knew about until the chemical industry infiltrated the government to install politicians and university leaders to add it into drinking water to certain municipal water supplies without public knowledge
- Ethanol is literal poison that everyone knew about. We still know ethanol and fluoride are poison, but we knew it too. /Hedberg>
  To be consistent, we better stop drinking beer and using mouthwash!
- I'm surprised that I think there's a small chance this isn't satire
- I think you sound stop watching Dr Strangelove

We don't have enough data to know whether plastic is actually harmful to humans long-term. A better comparison would be lead paint or leaded gasoline.

This is absolutely untrue.
We absolutely have enough data to know that microplastocs are effecting us
- Really? BPA is an issue for sure but I've not seen anything about Microplastics specifically. It has to do something...
We have studies showing that sperm count is lowered by microplastics. We might actually have a reproductive crisis on our hands in the future. But, hey, its cheap, so why not right?
- Fortunately reproduction is going to be the smallest of our concerns when the planet starts boiling.
- Could you link those studies then?
- I think it has been shown that certain plastic softeners (e.g. phatalates) cause fertility issues, some of that might be included in microplastics but plastic itself I have not seen anything (And these specific softeners can be banned and are already mostly banned in the EU).
- I see this as an absolute win.
You know that science gets further the more evidence we can observe right? Please look up your sources and date them for me, will you? Then do another search and pay attention to recent studies on the effects of plastics on the human body.
- You’re asking me to prove a negative. Why don’t you post your sources?