Will microwaving food in plastic give you cancer?

A few weeks ago, after coming home from a night out, I set out to make a meal from scratch. To help me with this, I had a fantastic cheat in the form of a plastic microwave rice cooker. All I had to do was slam the grains into the microwave for 12 minutes, and at the end of this process, there would be perfectly cooked, perfectly formed rice. Until that night, I had never even cooked rice on a hob, a fact I had grown to become immensely proud of. And yet, on this occasion, my rice cooker did not in fact produce fluffy, golden rice. Instead, it caught fire.

As the flames filled my microwave, briefly, before my thoughts were drowned out by the twin, shrill screaming of my smoke alarm and my roommate, I didn’t panic. Inhaling the choking, acrid smell of burning plastic, all I could think of was a rebuke that I’d received on many occasions from my mother: “Don’t heat that up in the plastic container, it’ll give you cancer.” Later, whilst trying to chisel carbonised grains out of the ruins of my cooker with the back of a spoon, the thought wouldn’t leave my mind. Was that true? When considering how much the diet of the average student centres around meal-prep dumped into plastic tubs, how doomed would that leave all of us?

Since the 1990s, experts have been aware of the uncomfortable truth that plastic containers have a habit of leaching

Well, unfortunately, the science really isn’t great. Since the 1990s, experts have been aware of the uncomfortable truth that plastic containers have a habit of leaching –especially when subject to the extreme conditions found inside of a microwave. Bisphenol A (BPA), a chemical synonymous with plastic food containers, may well be considered synonymous with humans as well. Studies have detected it in over 90% of Americans. The compound, whose properties mimic that of estrogen, is now thought to disrupt hormones in the body, metabolism, fertility, and – yes – even the progression of cancers. Thankfully, it’s no longer used in baby bottles, and now looks set to be finally banned outright by the EU. But is that too little, too late? BPA was a key chemical in the inside coating of canned goods, for instance, and given cans last forever, who knows how long its chemical-laden produce will be kicking around?

Of course, it doesn’t stop with BPA, and nor do the possible effects. The laundry list of potentially hazardous chemicals populating your containers is so long, in fact, you begin to wonder how on earth anybody could have let this happen. Phthalates, for example, a substance used to make plastic bendy, may cause premature births. Although, that won’t particularly be an issue because as it turns out, they may also wreck your libido. PFAs, the so-called ‘forever chemicals’ (reassuring) seem to play havoc with the liver, may delay the onset of puberty in girls, and could actually reduce the density of your bones.

The world of today is so swarmed with plastic, that attempting to cut down your consumption in any meaningful capacity would quickly dominate your life entirely

All in all, it’s thought that the total number of different food packaging substances making their way into the human body could be somewhere in the realm of 3,600, according to a Swiss study published last month. And with such an impressive array of different chemicals, we naturally don’t have anything close to resembling a complete picture of what might be happening to the human body as a result. Professor Joseph Braun, a researcher at Brown University, Rhode Island, summarised the picture in a grim interview with Popular Science: “We’re exposed to a chemical soup of these things.” He added that scientists know even less about what happens when these various assorted chemicals mix, but that initial research does seem to suggest they worsen one another’s effects.

If, by this point, you’re only still reading in the desperate hope of a positive ending, here’s the closest approximation of one. Popular Science lists a range of ways you can attempt to limit plastic exposure in your life: avoid storing meals in plastic containers while still hot, and generally try to stay clear of foods with a high surface area — think grains or soup. High-fat and high-acid foods, like vinegar, oil, and cheese, are particularly reactive with plastic’s various chemicals, so you can shun purchasing these products when they’re stored in plastic containers. However, I’d like to venture my own radical solution: don’t bother!

Make peace with the fact that, at this point, each of us is probably at least a little bit plastic

The world of today is so swarmed with plastic, that attempting to cut down your consumption in any meaningful capacity would quickly dominate your life entirely. Phthalates, case-in-point, are found in plastic containers, but are also a common agent in shampoos and conditioners. Studies have noted their harm on the body and have observed that women tend to have a far higher phthalate doses than men because they use hair products more frequently. When you drink water from a plastic bottle, cut vegetables on a plastic chopping board, or boil water in a plastic kettle, you’re almost certainly consuming trace amounts of plastic particles called microplastics, and these never leave your body. The implications of that are terrifying: microplastic particles have been found absolutely everywhere, from bone marrow to reproductive organs, to blood samples, to even the placenta (meaning they’re present before birth). A study of brain tissue samples in August, came to the astonishing conclusion that as much as 0.5% of our brain is made up of microplastics. There’s no way to know what that’s doing to us, and frankly, there’s nothing we can do about it either

If I could offer any advice, it would be to make peace with the fact that, at this point, each of us is probably at least a little bit plastic. I fully intend to buy a new microwave rice cooker – apart from anything else, it turns out I’m incapable of actually cooking rice. If I’m ingesting a little bit of plastic on every occasion, so be it! At the end of the day, we are what we eat, and today, that rings truer than ever.