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Household Storage Containers: Is Plastic Safe For Household Storage?

Nowadays most household storage containers are made of plastic. This brings an important question – which containers are appropriate for storing food and which are dangerous. Before plastic became popular in a household, there had been no problem in determining what material had been appropriate for food storage. In most cases metal containers were something dangerous (excluding tins), while porcelain was generally safe.

Things have changed since the plastic become more popular. There are kinds of plastic that are used to create household food storage containers and the government claims that some of them are perfectly safe (I totally doubt that!). There are a few types of plastic that are definitely not advised for food storage. Kinds of plastic used in containers:

All types of plastics are similar to each other – all of them are made from hydrocarbons derived from petroleum (or, in some cases, of natural gas) and formed into chains, called polymers. The kind of plastic depends on how the hydrocarbon molecules were combined. It is a good idea to check if household storage containers you’re going to buy are made from food-grade plastic or not. While it’s quite rare to use buckets for keeping food, other kinds of storage containers are much more universal and it’s good to know if you can keep food in them, even if you’re not planning it right now.

Food-grade plastics:

All plastic household storage containers have a symbol of plastic they were made of. Food-grade plastics include: PETE (or PET), HDPE, V, LDPE, PP and PS. Just keep in mind that while supposedly all of them are absolutely non-toxic and safe, each one is best for a different kind of food. If you have any problem in determining whether your household storage containers are good enough for keeping food, just take a look at the American Plastics Council website. They claim to be unbiased ... but how can that be? Their existence depends on folks buying plastic, so why would they say anything negative about it?

Personally, I only store food in glass containers instead of plastic household storage containers and I advise all prudent people to do likewise. Glass certainly isn't dangerous, although the jury is out on plastic. I expect that a decade or two from now some agency will discover they're been toxic all along.

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