Any lexan food safety issues?

[politicat]

Our local restaurant supply shop sent out 20% off coupons and I'd been thinking about replacing all the plastic with lexan since a lot of plastics have issues with artificial estrogens and aren't good in the microwave.

Should I skip the lexan and go for glass, or is lexan non-reactive enough?

I use it for my water bottles, our french press and some other stuff and haven't noticed a problem, but maybe yall know something I don't.

[Warpy]

1. Glass is best

but Lexan is second best, much more inert than most other plastics, although all oil based materials will leach chemicals into oily foods no matter what. The Lexan containers will leach far less and are a huge improvement over the plastic ones you have, so go for them if you're getting a good price.

Lexan is great stuff for people like me who need light weight and unbreakable more than we need 100% chemical free. I do transfer vegetable oil out of any type of plastic bottle and into an old wine bottle I keep for the purpose as soon as I get it home, though, if I can't find it in glass.

There are a number of alarmist articles out there that would indicate that washing Lexan items in harsh detergents and in a dishwasher also leaches chemicals into whatever you next put into them, something that makes sense to this ex chemist and yet another reason to avoid squandering money on a dishwasher. One such article is at http://www.mercola.com/2004/apr/7/nalgene_water.htm

[politicat]

4. Mercola is, forgive me, something of a twit.

He advocates against sunglasses (while totally disregarding the fact that ocular cancers and disorders are worsened by overexposure to UV radiation), claims that people who wear sunglasses are liars, advocates EFT, is against fluoridation.... He's the kind of practitioner that I have very little trust in, and the fact that the FDA has issued citations against him on more than one occasion makes me discount most of what he's saying. While I'm not trying to turn this into a skepticism thread, I guess I need to see some peer-evaluated research before I'm willing to give him the benefit of the doubt.

Since the plastics research on rubbermaid etc is peer reviewed, I'm okay with using lexan.

Thanks!

[Warpy]

10. Hey, I said that was an alarmist article

and it was the only one that didn't USE A LOT OF CAPITALS AND EXCLAMATION POINTS TO HIDE THIN DATA!!!!!

I use Lexan food storage for everything but oils. Those go into glass.

[politicat]

11. yikes... glad I didn't google...

sorry, it's been a bad couple of days - okay, week - when it comes to BS, voodoo science and other such crap.

(Did you know that even police stations are given to investing our hard earned tax dollars on voodoo devices made out of laptop computers and bad oscilloscope software with 10x5th power markup? And that these devices are called lie detectors and have a 47% accuracy rate... yes, that's right - flipping a coin is more accurate than these POSes.)

I'm so glad I'm not easily intimidated by people pretending to have authority....

[Stinky The Clown]

2. Lexan is prolly okay

As said, above, its second to glass in being inert. Most plastic (like rubbermaid shit) in commercial kitchens was replaced with lexan years ago. Its far more color stable than other plastics (it stays nice and clear). It is dishwasher approved. Carries the NSF label. Pretty much unbreakable.

[politicat]

3. Unbreakable is good...

I keep dropping stuff. Light is good, too.

Forgive me for being stupid - it's been many years since I worked in the industry - but does NSF means that the National Science Foundation approved it, or is it something else?

[NMDemDist2]

5. NSF is National Sanitation Foundation IIRC

they rate products for sanitation and food safety

NSF.org is different than NSF.gov the science people

[Stinky The Clown]

6. Yer keee-rect

National Sanitation Foundation

Not part of the government, headquartered in Ann Arbor, MI. They establish all sorts of standards and guidelines and certify for food safety much as UL does for electrical and related stuff.

While most local and state governments have adpoted their standards as the criteria for food safety in their own jurisdictions, they are not related. NSF charges them for the right to use their standards. They also charge for testing products to meet those standards.

[NMDemDist2]

7. i knew that $400 two day "Food Safety Certification" seminar would

pay off one day :rofl:

[politicat]

8. Wow... the fee went up!

(I took that one in 1994 or so... $150. And in the 11 years since, I've used the knowledge not nearly enough...)

[NMDemDist2]

9. ok now that i think about it, it was $329 (which included the county fee)

and you're right, it was incredibly informative