People Are Tossing Their Ziploc Bags After a Disturbing New Class Action Lawsuit
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Ziploc has been a brand we all know and trust for all of our resealable plastic bag needs. But a recent class-action lawsuit against the company might have us rethinking everything we thought we knew about Ziploc bags.
Earlier this month, it was announced that Ziploc's parent company, S.C. Johnson & Son Inc., was being sued by Linda Cheslow, a California resident, for misleading packaging on Ziploc products. The products in question, made from polyethylene and polypropylene, have been medically and scientifically proven to have the potential to release microplastics when subjected to extreme temperatures.
The problem — beyond the fact that microplastics are potentially dangerous — is that these bags are marketed as microwave- and freezer-safe. That means that we've all been microwaving and freezing in Ziploc bags and containers, unknowingly releasing microplastics into our food.
How dangerous are microplastics? Well, according to Dr. Alex LeBeau, a toxicologist and certified industrial hygienist, it depends on a lot of factors. For example, the size of the particles and how the body is exposed to them, be it ingestion, inhalation, or through skin contact, and how much of the substance interacts with the body. But the short answer is yes, although there isn't enough research yet to conclusively say just how dangerous, microplastics are harmful to the body.
'There are some recent studies suggesting that microplastics have been found to contribute to strokes,' says Lebeau. 'However, critiques of other vascular-related studies have indicated a lack of associated health effects from the presence of microplastics.'
He explains that in the science community people tend to think that associations are not causal, which means that even though something was found it doesn't mean it caused a specific problem. The bottom line? 'More research is necessary to identify an actual cause of harm,' Lebeau adds.
However, a spokesperson for S.C. Johnson told USA Today in a statement: 'We believe Ziploc products are safe when used as directed and the claims in this lawsuit are without merit.'
If you're worried about whether or not your Ziploc products have been impacted by the potentially misleading marketing, here's a list of all of the products that have been mentioned in the complaint.
Ziploc Freezer Bags (pint, small, quart, & gallon sizes)
Ziploc Slider Freezer Bags (quart, & gallon sizes)
Ziploc Slider Storage Bags (quart, & gallon sizes)
Ziploc Containers
The complaint also contains a number of photos of the products in question with the term 'microwave-safe' printed on the packaging.
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What Is Relationship Anarchy? Psychologists Explain This Non-Traditional Relationship Style
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10 hours ago
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Can Celibacy Unlock Heightened Levels of Pleasure?
"Hearst Magazines and Yahoo may earn commission or revenue on some items through these links." What if abstaining from sex and romance wasn't a retreat from intimacy but a pathway to deeper self-knowledge, creative clarity, and radical autonomy? In The Dry Season, writer Melissa Febos chronicles a year of intentional celibacy—an experiment that began in the wreckage of a devastating breakup and transformed into a radical reclamation of self. What started as a 90-day pause from sex and dating in 2016 extended into a full year of disentanglement from romantic attachment. But rather than deprivation, Febos discovered joy, clarity, and sensual fulfillment on her own terms. Her celibacy was not an escape but a deep inquiry into desire, intimacy, and autonomy—a way to interrogate how socialized narratives of love and devotion had shaped her identity as a queer woman. Abstaining from romance didn't mean denying pleasure—it meant redefining it. Through solitude, Febos reconnected with neglected friendships, deepened her creative life, and uncovered new modes of intimacy outside the bounds of romance or sex. Using what she describes as a '12-step-style inventory' of her romantic past, she traced how her relationships had often been marked by performance, self-erasure, and dependence. Far from isolating, her celibate year became rich with connection. Seeking models beyond the cultural obsession with coupledom, Febos turned to a lineage of women who embraced solitude as a source of power, from 11th-century mystic Hildegard von Bingen and the beguines of medieval Europe to 20th-century icons like Virginia Woolf and Octavia Butler. These figures served as both companions and intellectual ancestors, helping her situate her experience within a feminist tradition of resistance to conformity and the marriage-industrial complex. 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We consider our sex life and our home life and our work life as separate, but they're not; we're the same person in all of those parts of our lives, and they're deeply intertwined. I had designated sex and love as the area where I experienced some sensual pleasures of being human and living in a body, and it's where I had also located emotional intimacy. And when I sort of shut down that category, those experiences started to surface in so many other areas of my life. I had erotic experiences eating watermelon that summer that I was celibate; I had incredibly romantic experiences with dear friends of mine that were not sexual but that had a similar quality. I realized that I had been dramatically limiting myself and narrowing the aperture of my own experiences by only looking for the erotic or the sublime in lovers, when actually there were opportunities for it everywhere I looked. I also went dancing more that year than any other year of my life. 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After the first few weeks [of celibacy], I started to understand how deeply entrenched and embedded in my consciousness the issues in my relationship to love and sex were, and if I really wanted long-term change, I had to take a more active role in it. For me, because I had a lot of experience [with the] 12-step [program] and because I love making lists, I thought, okay, let me start by really taking stock and seeing what I've actually been up to. It was becoming clear to me that the story I had about myself and relationships was probably not true, because there was a common denominator among them all, and it was me. If I was the romantic, devoted partner that I had always thought myself to be, why was I bottoming out in such an ugly way? And why were all my relationships ending on similar grounds? So I started making a list of everyone I had ever been in a relationship with: major crushes, entanglements, one-night stands, everybody. I was looking for patterns, and they very quickly emerged. I found when I really committed to an honest accounting of my own behavior and relationships, it started to become really clear to me that I hadn't been honest with my partners and that, in fact, the behavior that I've characterized as devoted and self-sacrificing and accommodating of other people had actually been a form of manipulation. My project of celibacy had almost everything to do with the emotional part of it. The sexual symptoms that I wanted to change were consequences of the emotional dynamics more than anything else. Not having sex with other people for a year was not very hard. There were only a couple of times where I felt tempted and I clicked back into my old operating system, but for the most part, I was incredibly relieved to set down those preoccupations and all of the energy and the inner conflicts that I experienced around them. The emotional part of it was a lot harder. Making a conscious decision to change your own orientation to a part of life for which we have really, really strong cultural stories is challenging. If I'm honest, a huge part of that work has happened since my celibacy. It wasn't until I engaged in relationships with other people that the rubber really hit the road, and I got to learn how to actually practice those things. My marriage has been the greatest education of putting ideals into practice, and I got really lucky to have a good collaborator in that. The emotional rewards of doing that work has made it entirely worth it, and nothing has brought me closer to other people. I started doing research during my celibate year because once I was celibate for a while and I started to change my ideal for who I wanted to be in relationships, I realized that I needed some new role models. Before that, I had looked to women who had been artistically fulfilled but had also been really messy and chaotic in their love lives, like me. I wanted to find some people whose behavior, not just in their romantic lives but in their lives, was really aligned with what they believed. I wanted my actions and my beliefs to be more congruent. I started by reading about women who were voluntarily celibate, and almost immediately I got deeply obsessed with a lot of nuns and spiritual ladies, especially those living in medieval times, like Hildegard von Bingen, who was a naturalist and a politician and an artist and wrote a language for her nuns to speak. This lady was tied to the Catholic Church, and she lived in a stone room for 35 years and managed to do all of that after she got out. I also became super obsessed with the set of religious laywomen called the Belgian beguines, who flourished in Europe in the 13th century. They lived in separatist communes and were financially independent and made art, wrote poetry, preached; they did a lot of service in their communities. They worked as nurses and teachers and performed last rites for the dying. It was unheard of at the time for women to be living that independently. It was actually illegal in multiple ways. And eventually, a lot of the beguines were burned as heretics. At a time when it's so easy to feel discouraged by the erosion of civil rights in our country and other countries, I am so grateful to have the touch of these women who were living against the grain and leading these incredibly brave, self-actualized, joyful, fulfilled lives at a time when their lives were in danger because of it. If they could do it in the Middle Ages, I can muster the gumption today to enjoy so many of the freedoms that they didn't. After the first three months, I extended it, and then I extended it again, and when I got past the nine month mark, I was so happy and so disinclined to re enter that world that I stopped counting. I just thought, I am deeply uninterested in being in a relationship with another person. 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16 hours ago
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Scientists Say The Earth's Core Is Literally Leaking Gold
"Hearst Magazines and Yahoo may earn commission or revenue on some items through these links." Here's what you'll learn when you read this story: Precious metals are leaking out of Earth's core into the mantle, a new study suggests. Scientists identified a particular isotope of ruthenium (Ru) in volcanic rock samples—a form that typically only occurs in Earth's core. Researchers say that they must conduct further studies to determine whether the 'leak' has happened throughout Earth's existence or if it's a new phenomenon. Gold isn't as rare as you may think—it's just hard to reach. 99.999 percent of Earth's precious metals lay hundreds of miles beneath the surface, trapped inside the planet's molten core. If the transparent distance didn't make accessing gold difficult enough, we're also separated from the ore by (literal) tons of solid rock. Fortunately, Earth is making it easier for us humans. According to a new study published in the journal Nature, Earth's core is 'leaking' gold. Now, don't get too excited—gold isn't spewing out of the ground in cartoon-esque fountains—but the researchers on the study did find evidence that precious metals are oozing out of Earth's core and into the mantle. Unlike the core, the mantle is mostly solid, and makes up most of the planet (84 percent of the Earth's volume to be exact). Comparatively, the mantle also has less of a platinum-group-metal called ruthenium, or Ru. Scientists discovered traces of Ru while studying samples of volcanic rocks from Hawaii and concluded that they must have come from Earth's core. 'When the first results came in, we realized that we had literally struck gold,' first author of the study Nils Messling said in a press release. 'Our data confirmed that material from the core, including gold and other precious metals, is leaking into the Earth's mantle above.' New procedures developed by the University of Göttingen allowed researchers to detect the microscopic markers that indicate the Ru actually came from the molten core. According to the paper, when Earth's core formed 4.5 billion years ago, the Ru came from a different source than the trace amounts of the element that naturally occur in the mantle. The differences in the isotopes are so small, however, that it was previously impossible to distinguish them. On top of procedural revolutions, the study is also notable in that it supports wider geological theories. Evidence from the study affirms the plate tectonics theory that oceanic islands formed from molten material. 'Our findings not only show that the Earth's core is not as isolated as previously assumed,' Matthias Willbold, another author of the study, said in the release. 'We can now also prove that huge volumes of super-heated mantle material–several hundreds of quadrillion metric tonnes of rock–originate at the core-mantle boundary and rise to the Earth's surface to form ocean islands like Hawaii.' As for the future, the researchers expressed that there is still much to learn, particularly when it comes to the timeline of the 'leak.' 'Whether these processes that we observe today have also been operating in the past remains to be proven,' Messling explained. 'Our findings open up an entirely new perspective on the evolution of the inner dynamics of our home planet.' You Might Also Like The Do's and Don'ts of Using Painter's Tape The Best Portable BBQ Grills for Cooking Anywhere Can a Smart Watch Prolong Your Life?
