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according to the snopes article, it is not true that microwaving plastic is not safe.
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I just quickly browsed the snopes article so I probably missed something but There's a building body of literature supporting claims that endocrine disruptors are secreted into food microwaved in plastic containers...
The only thing on snopes i saw was mention of dioxins, but there are other contaminants. While the studies may not be out spelling out the dangers of xenoestrogens or something, it seems scary to me...
Here's a section from "developmental biology" by Gilbert:
Some estrogenic compounds may be in the food we eat and in the wrapping that surrounds them, for some of the chemicals used to set plastics have been found to be estrogenic. The discovery of the estrogenic effect of plastic stabilizers was made in a frightening way. Investigators at Tufts University Medical School had been studying estrogen-responsive tumor cells. These cells require estrogen in order to proliferate. Their studies were going well until 1987, when the experiments suddenly went awry. Then the control cells began to show the high growth rates suggesting stimulation comparable to that of the estrogen-treated cells. Thus, it as if someone had contaminated the medium by adding estrogen to it. What was the source of contamination? After spending four months testing all the components of their experimental system, the researchers discovered that the source of estrogen was the plastic tubes that held their water and serum. The company that made the tubes refused to tell the investigators about its new process for stabilizing the polystyrene plastic, so the scientists had to discover it themselves. The culprit turned out to be p-nonylphenol, a chemical that is also used to harden the plastic of the plumbing tubes that bring us water and to stabilize the polystyrene plastics that hold water, milk, orange juice, and other common liquid food products (Soto et al. 1991; Colburn et al. 1996). This compound is also the degradation product of detergents, household cleaners, and contraceptive creams. A related compound, 4-tert-pentylphenol, has a potent estrogenic effect on human cultured cells and can cause male carp (Cyprinus carpis) to develop oviducts, ovarian tissue, and oocytes (Gimeno et al. 1996).
I guess the jury is still out on the issue... whether or not it has much to do with fly cultures, I don't know. So mods feel free to delete my post if you feel it is not contributing to the topic...
~B
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