Interesting Links for 14-06-2015

[andrewducker]

• The Surprising Downsides of Being Clever
  • (tags: iq intelligence happiness )
• The creation of Protestantism, as told through Facebook updates
  • (tags: Facebook protestant catholicism history )
• Amazon commits to Terry Gilliam's 'lost' Don Quixote film
  • (tags: Amazon TerryGilliam )
• Generating Magic cards using deep, recurrent neural networks
  • (tags: ai magic

Comments

sous vide b s

[apostle_of_eris]

eek! chemicals!!
and not a single number
bull

Re: sous vide b s

[andrewducker]

Please do some research

Re: sous vide b s

[steer]

The worry is linked with an article that is about things which don't leech BPAs but can leech Estrogenic Chemicals in some circumstances in small amounts

RE: Re: sous vide b s

[andrewducker]

Gah! LJ ate my response! (Well, more likely, the hotel WiFi did).

But, swiftly, you seem to be indicating the BPA isn't a risk, and I could have sworn the evidence was strongly on the side of it definitely being an endochrine disruptor with likely unpleasant effects from long-term exposure to it (see contents of most of my response above), and that leeching from plastic containers into hot water was a great way to get it into people's systems.

Am I misunderstanding something here? (If that Wikipedia page has been twisted out of recognition then I'd like to know that...)

RE: Re: sous vide b s

[steer]

But, swiftly, you seem to be indicating the BPA isn't a risk

No, I was indicating that the article starts talking about how dangerous BPA is then quickly moves to the fact that the stuff typically used doesn't have it. Then starts talking about how other chemicals are quite like BPA backs it with an article that shows that some plastics can leech chemicals that are like BPA.

I quickly read the BPA wikipedia page and came to the conclusion that I am not at all worried about BPA. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) also holds the position that BPA is not a health concern. In 2011, Andrew Wadge, the chief scientist of the United Kingdom's Food Standards Agency, commented on a 2011 US study on dietary exposure of adult humans to BPA,[96] saying, "This corroborates other independent studies and adds to the evidence that BPA is rapidly absorbed, detoxified, and eliminated from humans - therefore is not a health concern."You know what -- these people are generally very very conservative people. They know that these statements will

RE: Re: sous vide b s

[andrewducker]

Ok, that's somewhat relieving. Sounds like most plastic items aren't affected, so I'll just keep an eye on what ones I buy are made from.

I'm not convinced that the evidence is in on BPA yet - but it looks like a lot of the major worries come from mouse research - and mice process it differently from humans. I'll keep an eye out.

(There's new stuff I've bumped into a few times recently like http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/08/140805090945.htm)

Re: Re: sous vide b s

[steer]

It should be pointed out that this is also the "in pregnancy" part and that the lowest level used in the experiment here corresponded to the highest level seen in any of the human children tested.

As a precaution I'm going to not boil my water cooler if I'm pregnant.

(Sorry, flippant -- actually, you're correct, I agree that the evidence is not fully in here and if something new turns up then perhaps things need to be done -- but manufacturers it appears are already moving away from those chemicals.)

RE: Re: sous vide b s

[andrewducker]

Oh, and I took "Plastic Island" as a reference to the Mid-Pacific Garbage Patch.

Re: Re: sous vide b s

[steer]

Yes -- but someone referring to low concentration particulate pollution as an island is clearly pretty damn clueless. (Not to say it's not a problem but it's not an island).

Alas my go to site for such things "deep sea news" is down for some reason

This is a reasonable summary:

http://marinedebris.noaa.gov/info/patch.html

Or https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Pacific_garbage_patch

"Despite its enormous size and density (4 particles per cubic meter), the patch is not visible from satellite photography, nor is it necessarily detectable to casual boaters or divers in the area, as it consists primarily of a small increase in suspended, often microscopic particles in the upper water column."

(Not helped by people posting pictures of polluted harbour entrances and claiming they are the garbage patch.)

RE: Re: sous vide b s

[apostle_of_eris]

I said nothing about the dangers of BPA, phthalates, or endocrine disruptors in general.
A scare article with no numbers is bunk. What fraction of a potentially damaging dose is present? How much is being ingested in the first place? What is a threshhold dose, and how confident should we be about that number? The article lacks even the most basic information necessary to begin to assess risk.
"The dose makes the poison."

Re: Re: sous vide b s

[andrewducker]

Aaah! If you'd said that more clearly in the first place then we could have saved around 30 comments in the thread underneath!