kaijutegu:

its-just-a-phage:

sunfish-exotics:

kaijutegu:

incarniunknown:

God, I already regret making that snakes n tubs post cause now I get countless of reblogs from people who agree with the user who said “oh no tubs are fine”

They are not. Plastic. Is. Poison. Get a wooden or glass terrarium or don’t get a fucking animal.

Not all plastic is created equal- there’s a bunch of different types of plastics, and chemically they vary widely. In particular, sterilite– the big bins nearly everybody uses for snakes- are made out of polypropylene plastic. Self-styled “health gurus” who are afraid of radio waves are fine with polypropylene plastic- which I’m gonna call PP from here on out because that’s a long word.

In order to get PP plastic to leach harmful chemicals, you basically have to soak it in alcohol. The chemicals it leaches also pretty much require direct brain exposure- this study was only done with exposed brain material, not a living animal with an intact blood-brain barrier.   

But what are these harmful chemicals and how do they get into the system? The harmful chemicals in plastic aren’t poisons like arsenic or something like that. The one people really worry about is estrogen-mimicking chemicals, of which BPA is the most famous. BPA is known to affect reptiles- but not because they’re kept in tubs, but because a great deal of the groundwater is already contaminated*. Ingestion is how it gets into their systems. In in vitro studies on caimans, BPA at high concentrations caused developmental effects (male animals’ gonad structure changed to that of a female), which is what you’d expect to see when exposed daily to high quantities of estrogen**. While the BPA-exposed females had slower gonadal development than the untreated females, dissection did show the formation of oocytes, suggesting future fertility. 

So! That’s what people worry about when they talk about the harmful effects of BPA and other plastic toxins- the chemicals in them can disrupt the endocrine system. Which is not good- so how is it that someone can argue that sterilite is safe for snakes? 

Simple. The stresses of keeping a snake in sterilite won’t cause it to leach anything. One of the advantages of PP is that it’s a very chemically stable plastic; it doesn’t just leach chemicals for no reason. It requires quite a lot of stress to be even a little harmful! In this paper, independent chemists (so, not being paid by a plastic manufacturer) looked at 455 types of food containers and put them through various stresses and solvents. In order to get estrogenic-mimicking chemicals to leach out of PP, they had to use industrial solvents and put the plastic through stresses like boiling- stresses that wouldn’t happen during usage as a snake enclosure. In another independent test, PP and several other types of plastic were soaked in water that had Daphnia magna swimming around in it; the PP didn’t leach anything to cause acute toxicity***. From the article: 

“Neither of the monomers (propylene and ethylene) used to produce PP and polyethylene are hazardous. Which type of substance that caused the toxicity in the watering can (made of HDPE)[my note- not PP] is unknown. However, the present study shows that also plastic products based on polymers made from nontoxic or low toxic monomers (e.g., ethylene) can leach enough additives to cause acute toxicity. The monomers needed to produce ABS are acrylonitrile, butadiene, and styrene. ABS products may release both toxic residual monomers and/or additives, but in this study, possible releases were not high enough to cause acute toxicity.” (Which again, not PP, not what sterilite is made from.) In fact, PP is considered so safe, it’s used as a surgical mesh. As far as safety goes- and again, I’m only using independent studies that don’t have an industry angle- PP isn’t going to be bad for an animal contained in it. Unless you feed it to them. (Also, as far as heat goes- all heat, no matter what kind of habitat you use, requires a thermostat for safety. Appropriate heat won’t melt sterilite or cause it to outgas anything.)

The reason people agree with tubs being fine is because they are fine. I know in the last post you said you had no intention of being more open-minded- but to other people who see this and might get scared, well. Here’s the hard science behind sterilite toxicity.

Unlinked sources (these are behind paywalls, but I can get them for anybody who wants them, just drop me a line):

* Bandhari, R. et al. Effects of the environmental estrogenic contaminants bisphenol A and 17α-ethinyl estradiol on sexual development and adult behaviors in aquatic wildlife species. General and Comparative Endocrinology
214 (2015) 195–219.
** Stoker, C. et al. Sex reversal effects on Caiman latirostris exposed to
environmentally relevant doses of the xenoestrogen bisphenol A. General and Comparative Endocrinology 133 (2003) 287–296.
***Lithner et al. Comparative acute toxicity of leachates from plastic products made of polypropylene, polyethylene, PVC, acrylonitrile–butadiene–styrene, and epoxy to Daphnia magna. Environmental Science and Pollution Research 19(5) (2012) 1763–1772.

Bless you @kaijutegu

Id just like to voice my support for everything kaijutegu mentioned in her response. I actually do research on major endocrine disruptors for a living (currently we are utilizing three diets containing: BPA, Phytoestrogens, or EE compared to a control diet). Because the work is heavily focused on the developmental and reproductive effects of these compounds we actually house the animals in sterilite containers since many modern laboratory rodent cages contain BPA or BPS that we couldn’t confidently account for otherwise.

An important addition from somebody who actually works with the chemistry behind this!