https://www.tiktok.com/@distilledscience/video/7636888658351590686
After what I just learned, I will never let my baby daughter drink out of this bottle ever again. Rewind. Did you catch the immediate problem? He's about to say that stainless steel isn't safe, especially for kids, because it can leach nickel, which disrupts histamine pathways, which causes skin problems. And he just tried to scare you with all of these images, which worked given the millions of views that this video has received. But those few seconds were super suss because it looked to me that he was showing images conditions, which he is implying are caused by drinking from stainless steel water bottles. So I decided to do some trusty reverse image searches, and the results still have me laughing. The very first image. Measles at 33 year high. Yeah. Is he saying that you're going to get measles from drinking from your stainless steel? But it gets better. Next image comes from this article about people swimming in a little pond in Idaho and getting something called Swimmers It. Which is an allergic reaction to tiny parasites in the water that burrow into your skin while you're swimming. Eek. Are those in your water bottle? Speeding up, we have this image from COVID SkinSigns.com, because it's a rare skin side effect of COVID. Some sores from hand, foot, and mouth disease, and an article about hives and toddlers. And the problem here is that if you or your child suddenly shows any of these symptoms, if you had just seen this video with these images, you might first jump to throwing out your stainless steel water bottles and cutlery instead of going and getting yourself diagnosed and treated for a potential disease or allergy. But if you're astute, then you've realized that none of what I just said is any sort of evidence that stainless steel water bottles or cookware is not a health problem. Just that Drew Canoli doesn't seem to be a very trustworthy source. So the short answer is yes, if you cook or store acidic liquids in stainless steel, tiny amounts of metals including nickel can leach into your food. might cause problems for a subset of the people who are allergic to nickel, which is more common than you might think. But it's actually an issue with a bit of nuance, and I've spent the last week reading all the studies on the topic. So in my next few videos, I'll give clear guidelines and a lot more explanations.
Additional notes
Most people don't realize how many different types of stainless steel there actually are. I'll do a full video on this soon but technically to be called stainless steel you just need to add at least 10.5% of chromium, which reacts with oxygen on the surface of the metal to form a thin layer of chromium oxide, which protects the iron in the metal from contacting the air and rusting. Different grades of stainless steel then have added nickel, manganese, molybdenum, and sometimes other elements to change their structural properties in different ways, including adding extra resistance against corrosion. Drew's primary point in his video is that the nickel that gets added can sometimes leach into your food and cause health problems. He doesn't seem to realize that the types of stainless steel that he recommended you look for are actually ones that have a greater likelihood of nickel leaching because corrosion resistance is not the same as nickel leaching resistance. More on this coming soon! #science #health #steel #tiktoklearningcampaign #learnontiktok
References
- Image-source/reverse-image context and nickel leaching studies are discussed in the transcript/caption, but no study title, DOI, PMID, or direct source link was available in the workbook row.