Adapt a toxic-free lifestyle by upgrading your kitchenware from harmful plastic chemicals to healthier alternatives.
Keep your food fresh by eliminating plastic storage containers and kitchen supplies. Swapping plastic with silicone has become increasingly popular in recent years. But is silicone safe?
Sustainable Swaps: Silicone vs. Plastic
Plastic is engineered with chemicals that mimic our hormones, like BPA, BPS, and BPF. Silicones contain the elements silicon, carbon, hydrogen, oxygen.
Upgrade to silicone kitchen because, unlike plastic [1]:
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Silicone doesn’t sweat high temperatures.
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Silicone is like Wakanda, its durability lasts forever.
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Silicone gets under burnt cookies with ease due to its flexibility.
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Silicone flips pancakes without sticking to the batter.
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Silicone doesn’t release microplastics.
While silicone is a healthier option, it might not be the most sustainable. Both plastic and silicone are human made materials.
As plastic breaks down, it leaves behind chemicals that destroy the planet and our hormones. Silicone doesn’t do this, because it’s chemically stable.
Stabilize the environment by recycling silicone. Most recycling programs don’t accept silicone in receptacles. Please bring all unused silicone products to a local recycling center.
But, Is Silicone Toxic?
Channel your master chef safely by adopting silicone kitchen supplies. Most silicone products are considered nontoxic due to their stability [2]. Small molecular weight silicones (which are commonly found on cosmetics and personal care products) may be considered toxic because of their impurities. Moreover, there are low quality and high quality silicones.
Lucky for you, we have found a loophole: ‘The Pinch Test’. The first test consists of pinching and twisting the product. If this can be done and there is no color change, then silicone is high quality.
While large sturdy silicone chemicals are nontoxic, tiny ones typically found in cosmetics/personal products are not. Keep an eye out for silicones named with a letter (“L” or “D”) and a number, such as D4, D5, etc.
Studies have shown that D4:
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Can disrupt hormones and act like estrogen [3].
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Can cause cancer and is toxic to reproduction [4].
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Is persistent in the environment [5].
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Causes fetal loss in rats [6].
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Leach from baby bottle nipples into infant formula [7].
These reasons are why the European Chemicals Agency has called to phase out D4, D5, and D6 as ingredients in products [8]. Phase them out of your life, too with Million Marker’s Kitchen Detox Starter Kit.
Protect food freshness and your health. Store your goods with silicone food storage bags, beeswax food wraps, organic cotton muslin produce bags, and more!
Cook Healthy, Live Healthy
So, is silicone safe for food storage? The comparison between plastic and silicone makes silicone the preferred all-purpose material for food storage.
There are still more sustainable choices than silicone that have fewer potential health concerns.
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Indulge in a healthy meal by using Ecozoi Reusable Bamboo Drinking Straws and Bamboo Cutlery Set.
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Preserve your lunch and the planet with Etee Organic Reusable Beeswax Sandwich Bags.
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Store your leftovers in U-Konserve Stainless Steel Round Food Container (9-oz.).
Browse even more non-toxic silicone, glass, and metal products on our list of Million Marker Approved Products!
Sources
[1] https://www.forbes.com/sites/kateharrison/2015/06/18/1874/#5f31268471f4
[2] https://www.mindbodygreen.com/articles/is-silicone-toxic
[3] https://academic.oup.com/toxsci/article/96/1/145/1657568
[4] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0378427417300103
[6] https://toxicfreefuture.org/the-problem-with-d4/
[7] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22575024