Right, I didn't mean 121° Frankenstein, and I see now that my comment could be misinterpreted as meaning that all common plastics would be fine, when actually I only meant nylon, polydimethylsiloxane, and a few others — and even for nylon I should have been more specific.
I was just trying to emphasize that it's a fairly...aggressive process.
You can pasteurize eggs at ~135˚F and they're practically uncooked. The autoclave isn't like that at all--15-20 min at full temp/pressure plus the rampup/down times can do a number on things.
