April 18, 2015
Toxic Chemicals in Your Coffee Cup?!
Looking to reduce your daily toxin exposure? Start by taking off the lid on your coffee cup!
If you look closely, the plastic lid has a little 6 in a triangle indicating that it is made of unknown plastics! What’s worse is the hot liquid causes the plastic to leech chemicals into your morning coffee and can have long-term health consequences that we have yet to fully understand. While this exposure once and a while will not kill you, coffees add up quickly.
This doesn’t just apply to coffee cup lids, but any plastic that you use to store your food and drinks!
Look for recycling codes on the bottom of your containers:
#1: poses low risk of leaching breakdown products, but intended for single uses only. This applies to plastic water bottles, avoid using water bottles more than once! Better yet carry around a glass water bottle instead of plastic!
#2, 4 & 5: low risk of leaching and appear to be safe.
#3, 6, & 7: AVOID at all costs! May leach many chemicals into foods and may pose higher cancer risk.
But wait there is more…
In addition to the lid leaching harmful chemicals into your coffee, some scientists speculate that coffee beans are the most significant source of these toxins in the North American diet. eeep!
And! Drinking decaffeinated coffee isn’t any better than drinking regular coffee, as it can contain large concentrations of trichloroethylene, infused into the coffee in an attempt to draw the caffeine out. This is a chemical that’s also used as a degreasing agent in the metal industry and a solvent and dry-cleaning agent in the clothing industry. Trichloroethylene is also related to vinyl chloride, a chemical in plastic that’s been linked to certain types of liver cancer (ahhhh!).
Scary stuff, so keep this in mind on your next trip to Starbucks! So choose organic coffee and drink it out of a REAL mug next time.
If you look closely, the plastic lid has a little 6 in a triangle indicating that it is made of unknown plastics! What’s worse is the hot liquid causes the plastic to leech chemicals into your morning coffee and can have long-term health consequences that we have yet to fully understand. While this exposure once and a while will not kill you, coffees add up quickly.
This doesn’t just apply to coffee cup lids, but any plastic that you use to store your food and drinks!
Look for recycling codes on the bottom of your containers:
#1: poses low risk of leaching breakdown products, but intended for single uses only. This applies to plastic water bottles, avoid using water bottles more than once! Better yet carry around a glass water bottle instead of plastic!
#2, 4 & 5: low risk of leaching and appear to be safe.
#3, 6, & 7: AVOID at all costs! May leach many chemicals into foods and may pose higher cancer risk.
But wait there is more…
In addition to the lid leaching harmful chemicals into your coffee, some scientists speculate that coffee beans are the most significant source of these toxins in the North American diet. eeep!
And! Drinking decaffeinated coffee isn’t any better than drinking regular coffee, as it can contain large concentrations of trichloroethylene, infused into the coffee in an attempt to draw the caffeine out. This is a chemical that’s also used as a degreasing agent in the metal industry and a solvent and dry-cleaning agent in the clothing industry. Trichloroethylene is also related to vinyl chloride, a chemical in plastic that’s been linked to certain types of liver cancer (ahhhh!).
Scary stuff, so keep this in mind on your next trip to Starbucks! So choose organic coffee and drink it out of a REAL mug next time.
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