Foamed plastic lunch boxes are still widely used.
In May, 200 1, OrderNo. 130 "Notice on Stopping Using Disposable Foamed Lunch Boxes in Catering Industry", this white pollution source was finally banned. But in fact, foamed lunch boxes are still common in the catering market, and some vendors are greedy for their low prices and still sell or use them after buying them. The reporter interviewed Xiao Liu, a student at school. She said that she usually buys lunch boxes, fried noodles and fried rice in the street at noon, and most of them use foamed lunch boxes. Although she knows that the foamed lunch box is not good, she will not decide whether to buy it because of the problem of the lunch box. It can be seen that foamed lunch boxes cannot be called old times. Associate Professor Guo Yuhua said that disposable styrofoam lunch boxes are also called disposable styrofoam snack boxes. Among them, the harmful hidden dangers of raw materials such as polystyrene, foaming agent and photosensitizer used to degrade foamed plastic snack boxes to human body should not be underestimated. When polystyrene is used as raw material, if the free monomer styrene in the product is released by heating, it will be harmful to the central nervous system, kidney and liver, and even cause cancer, so if it is used for a long time, it will increase the risk of illness.
Not all degradable lunch boxes are qualified.
So is the lunch box marked "degradable" necessarily degradable? Is it hygienic and safe? In fact, the reporter learned from many sources that there are many kinds of degradable lunch boxes on the market, and the price is not small, from 8 cents to 3 cents, a difference of two or three times. When I asked the merchants, they all said that the lunch boxes were almost the same, and they were all marked with the word "degradable". They don't know the difference. Guo Yuhua, an associate professor, said that the price difference is so great that it is probably due to raw materials. In the process of making degradable lunch boxes, additives, such as molding agent, water repellent and sizing agent, need to be added. The standard lunch box should choose non-toxic chemical additives without side effects. If some industrial reagents are added, the same effect can be achieved and the cost can be reduced, but it will pose a certain threat to human health. Some merchants even ignore the national regulations, shoddy, add a lot of industrial-grade calcium carbonate, paraffin and other substances in the production process, and even add waste plastics from irregular sources. If it is used for a long time, it will easily lead to indigestion, gallstones and kidney calculi, which will seriously lead to heavy metal poisoning, nervous system disorder, harm human hematopoietic system and induce organ cancer.
Seeing the quality of lunch boxes with naked eyes
-Color Most people think that white lunch boxes are clean and hygienic, but degradable lunch boxes are not. Generally, degradable lunch boxes are made of paper or plants, but their colors are not white, and the paper we use every day has also been bleached. The lunch box made of starch will be gray, and other lunch boxes will be slightly darker than pure white. Some qualified lunch boxes may also add edible additives in the post-production process to improve their aesthetics.
-A lunch box with a bad smell will have a pungent smell, because some harmful chemical reagents or industrial additives are added during the processing.
-a qualified lunch box itself will have a certain degree of "toughness", not very brittle, and it will break with a poke, and it must have high strength.
Expert reminder
1. Use disposable lunch boxes sparingly at ordinary times. It is better to bring your own lunch box, which is both sanitary and economical.
2. Don't use disposable lunch boxes for microwave heating, which will make some additives in the lunch boxes enter the food, pollute the food and do harm to human health.
3. The styrofoam lunch boxes used by vendors should be rejected.
Use it as little as possible.