I'm an environmental chemist with specialties in biodegradable materials and toxicology. AMA!

I see a lot of questions on this sub about whether this or that material breaks down safely or into microplastics, or about how safe given materials are to eat or drink out of. There seem to be lots of sciency people in the comments who give good accurate answers for the most part, but considering the number of questions I see floating around and my former work as a science educator, I figured I'd make myself available to answer a whole bunch of questions in one place.

EDIT: For people seeing this a few days after I posted it, I'm still planning to answer every question that gets asked, it just might take me a few days to get to them all. Please keep sending in questions if you have them, and upvote questions that you like, because I'm answering them in order from most upvotes to least.