I am fairly convinced that this comment section is among the best demonstrations for "isolated demands for rigor" I have personally ever seen, especially paired with any comment section about an AI-related article
When we are trying to predict the implications of unproven technologies on complex worldwide economies, there is talk of "obvious inevitability"
When we express concerns that chemicals humanity recently started coating the entire planet with at an alarming rate seem to get really deep into every kind of living tissue and nearly everything else we've ever seen bioaccumulate like that has caused a lot of unforeseen issues that took a long time to suss out but most turn out to be at least somewhat harmful, there's all this "well we don't have longitudinal RCTs with enormous sample sizes showing the specific harms of every specific plastic published in prestigious journals yet so who knows really"
> I am fairly convinced that this comment section is among the best demonstrations for "isolated demands for rigor" I have personally ever seen,
I’ve found HN and other comment sections to lean in the direction of assuming the worst about microplastics, historically.
However, I think we’re all getting tired of the constant “sky is falling” tone around these studies that can’t demonstrate harms outside of extremely narrow and exaggerated lab circumstances.
Meanwhile, the alternative medicine gurus have adopted microplastics as their excuse for nearly everything.
I think there's an issue of burden of proof at play. If these microplastics were a drug, they would need to go through an expensive and onerous vetting process that consists of both safety testing and efficacy testing for a particular indication for it to be legal to sell someone if and only if a doctor specifically prescribed it for that person. Even if you believe, as I do, that efficacy testing shouldn't stop people from voluntarily accessing potential cures, safety testing doesn't strike me as unreasonable
These microplastics are crossing the blood-brain barrier in a significant portion of the population without most people even intentionally ingesting them. Hell, it's hard to avoid if you try. Our society slathers this stuff over everything. In my lifetime I've seen a giant swath of packaging for food go to plastic from some other material, presumably to cut costs. I recently bought a new oven and I guess they put those stupid plastic phone screen covers over the glass panes on both sides of the oven door. Do they just ship all glass with this stuff applied to it now?
The burden of proof to ensure these things are safe should be on the companies selling them. The companies that make these substances already have vast research arms for designing the polymers, and if they were held to even the FDA's standards for drug safety we would have a lot more studies about this stuff. These companies are also heavily subsidized by governments, which might even be part of why downward pressure on price seems to make everyone go to plastics. Like why exactly is it cheaper, even if you don't bake in the entire R&D budget of inventing them, to use novel polymers made as byproducts of petroleum than it is to make glass or cardboard packaging?
We should, in the same way that we do for pharmaceuticals, hold these orgs to a standard of demonstrating that this bioaccumulation doesn't cause some kind of harm, because the alternative is that some researcher needs to come up with a specific claim of harm, fund a study despite there being significant pressure from these orgs to never do such studies, and certainly never publish if the results might credibly make them look bad, and somehow translate that into making bespoke positive policy prescriptions that would likely be fought tooth and nail by same. That expectation is not a sane default
Most of the direct human exposure seems to come from polyester, which we have raced to make the dominant clothing and bedding fabric.
Massively subsidizing anything to do with oil has certainly caused all these byproducts to be super artificially cheap, so with the governments with globe-spanning military empires absorbing most of the cost and ensuring not even the mildest threat of accountability for "externalities" in an economy designed to reward single-minded monetary optimization, it was pretty inevitable that things made of oil would get pervasive everywhere
Maybe we should convince government to do less of those things somehow?
I mean, yes.
But also:
Polyester is just so cheap that any feasible oil tax wouldn't amount.
For the past several years a large fraction of people have literally been inhaling every lungful of air through a frangible polyester microfiber that they wear around their mouth & nose. We tear these fabrics to shreds and then manually extract the lint from the dryer with our bare hands so it won't start a fire. Putting the finest dispersal mechanism we have, micro-spun fibers, directly into our lungs, and not even thinking about the consequences, seems like maybe it's an orthogonal bad choice we are making which could have orthogonal solutions.
On one hand, I strongly agree that some mitigations are personally achievable and that this is smart to do. Personally, I preferentially buy natural fibers (cheaper than you might think if you thrift 'em), and I cold wash and hang dry the polyester garments I do own
However, I am also wary of the push to view mitigations or "consumer behavior" generally as a means to actually deal with this kind of problem at scale. Like the whole carbon footprint thing BP was pushing for a while. Still in the public lexicon, doesn't do jack shit about real emissions at scale, but great for gotchas on activists. We have significant poison control and food quality control regulations because people can't really develop all the expertise necessary to vet all their own stuff, and it's a huge drain on society to make them do so rather than just solve that coordination problem centrally. Also, monopolistic consolidation has made even very organized boycotts dubiously feasible in forcing change in companies who respond more to their investors than their customers.
To me, governments exist to solve exactly this kind of problem, even though there are many other areas in which I would like them to mind their own business. In this case a lot of why petrochemicals are so cheap is because the cost of doing business for oil companies is heavily subsidized, so removing those subsidies wouldn't even require a new tax, and that money could be productively spent on lots of stuff, like maybe medical research even
Under our brand of capitalism, the system pressures the working class doubly hard to use the cheapest things on the market, and guilts the middle class to aspire to more expensive goods which are Ethical, or Natural, or Lite, or Healthy, or Artisan, or whatever buzzword of the day prevails.
Boycotts are a luxury that only the middle class can afford to participate in, and they don't really have the potential to participate in more than one or two at a time.
That is not a restriction that an effective boycott of an entire industrial method can labor under. The "personal responsibility" crowd have it dead wrong - we are trapped in this system and have very limited choices about what we consume, far too limited to allow us to collectively throw out an industrial technique that is anything less than lethal to us.
> Meanwhile, the alternative medicine gurus have adopted microplastics as their excuse for nearly everything.
Used to be, you could ignore the alt types because you had to buy their magazines to know what they were thinking. Now apparently everyone needs to be aware of what they are thinking and make sure they have the exact opposite opinions of the alt types so they seem sane or whatever. You can just ignore the them you know, they are not in the room with you.
5 years ago I didn't routinely have to have conversations with family members about why they should get vaccinated against deadly diseases. Now I do.
They are absolutely in the room with us, and they're getting people killed.
Everything you say above can be said of global warming too. Yet there’s good reason to be cautious.
In a way the constant alarmism without solid evidence can be counterproductive
> However, I think we’re all getting tired of the constant “sky is falling” tone around these studies that can’t demonstrate harms outside of extremely narrow and exaggerated lab circumstances.
I mean, this was once essentially the case for "cigarettes are bad for you".
Well, we've been exposed to microplastics for decades, but what does the evidence say? Afaict, not much.
We don't need RCTs, nor do we rely on them to make causal inferences about long term exposures, nor would an RCT be possible with microplastics.
But we need some converging lines of evidence before we go chicken little. What's the alternative?
> Well, we've been exposed to microplastics for decades, but what does the evidence say? Afaict, not much.
The revelation that you are likely to have microplastics suffused throughout your body seems far more meaningful than "not much".
The effects of this are unknown, but it seems reasonable to be concerned about potential harm until it's effects are studied in vivo and it's statistically not more harmful than the utility we get out of it. That alone seems like decades of research. You don't need to throw up your hands and act like you can't hypothesize even if the answers are out of your reach.
The fact that we can't pin down a strong effect on human health outcomes after decades of exposure should be a relief. We do have in vivo studies, but afaict they don't seem to pan out in human health outcomes.
> The fact that we can't pin down a strong effect on human health outcomes after decades of exposure should be a relief
What kind of strong effect are you looking for, immediate death?
That fact isn't reassuring to me at all. There's a wide variety of increasingly common health conditions that have an unknown etiology -- ADHD, autism, CFS, IBS, mental illness, obesity, etc.
The fact there isn't an immediately obvious health outcome is worrying because it just as likely has a wide reaching effect on a great many bodily systems, making it difficult or impossible to isolate exact consequences from varying exposure.
> There's a wide variety of increasingly common health conditions that have an unknown etiology -- ADHD, autism, CFS, IBS, mental illness, obesity, etc.
And the number of people named Killian corresponds well with the rise in incidents related to airbags:
https://tylervigen.com/spurious/correlation/2599_popularity-...
You don't just get to pull random things that are going up (assuming that they're going up, which you haven't actually shown) and blame them on something else that is ostensibly going up. That doesn't suggest anything. Ever. [1]
That is pretty sus, after all. Oh look, I just made MSCI's stock go up:
https://tylervigen.com/spurious/correlation/1639_google-sear...
[1] But hey, waitaminute...violent crime is down since the 1970! Did microplastics do that, or does it only work for bad stuff?
Taking a step back, my point was simply that there's a large number of common ailments that we don't understand. We don't know what causes them and we don't know how to cure them. Our understanding of human biology is grossly incomplete. We are nowhere close to first principles here.
We also have a long history of introducing new compounds into the environment and then many decades later saying oops, turns out those are toxic. BPA and PFAs recently, to name a few.
Where does that leave us? Who knows. I'm not saying microplastics are responsible for any of those diseases. I'm saying we don't really know what the hell is going on, so some alarm and caution seems appropriate. And, call me crazy, I'd say accidentally coating the planet with a new substance isn't a good thing. There is nothing reassuring about this situation.
No no no, you don't get to point at "common ailments" and assume you've explained anything. What common ailments do you think we don't understand, don't know the causes of, or can't cure?
> The fact that we can't pin down a strong effect on human health outcomes after decades of exposure should be a relief.
I can't say this means much to me when exposure to plastic has been accelerating that entire time.
Still, I do sincerely appreciate skepticism as a useful part of any dialogue about hypothesized health impacts.
Personally, I don't see an issue with avoiding consumer-grade plastic except when necessary.
In the last century the landscape of human health problems has pretty drastically shifted (more cancers, more obesity, more asthma, perhaps more mental illness, lower rates of maiming, less malaria and consumption deaths, and frankly this is all just deaths, which is not the only kind of health outcome we care about) so the fact that we can't suss out all the cause and effect from every factor and every outcome is neither surprising nor an argument against it being alarming any time a novel foreign substance can penetrate cell membranes and readily bioaccumulates
Like we study mechanisms for a reason. "Little things get into all your cells" isn't a specific causal argument for specific health outcomes, but it's reasonable to assume it might do something undesirable based on what we know about how cells work and other cases like it. Also, the intervention space is pretty large and some scaling back on plastic usage from the current levels would not be some crazy obvious harm either
Also, "we haven't found effects yet" is especially troublesome in a case where the contaminant in question is a cash cow for an industry that has continuously spent more money than I can even meaningfully reason about suppressing science and muddying discourse about products they sell. Sowing doubt has been an explicit strategy of the petroleum industry for greenhouse effects and it took a long time for us to even definitively know that, so now that we do, why should I assume the same companies aren't taking the same approach for this problem? Again, it feels like isolated demands for rigor
It's not important how "relieved" you feel, it is important that we exercise scientific rigor when we notice something like this. I don't want scientists to look at the lack of evidence of harm, and just breathe a sigh of relief and carry on with other studies. I want scientists to see the overwhelming microplastic problem, and exhaustively study the risks, and harms, and the solutions.
I see no benefit in hand waving away a potentially serious public health problem just because you aren't seeing any anecdotal evidence of harm.
> what does the evidence say? Afaict, not much.
That's only because we have no way to gather evidence, because almost everybody alive has microplastic exposure, so we don't have a control group.
It's just the nature of poorly understood psychology and the long human lifespan that most scientific research wouldn't be able to establish causality on a whole host of negative things (e.g. look how long it took to even get agreement that football concussions were detrimental in the long-term).
It's a soft, warm blanket of denial, because the actual implications of it are too scary.
As humans, we seem to really like warm blankets. See: high school football and CTE
My impression is people are generally alarmed but without any science of what the harms are it’s hard to understand what we need to do about the situation. The science is still very immature, and there are lot of other bad things (PFAs for example) that are likewise ubiquitous and permeate everything and everywhere that we have a pretty clear notion of their dangers. Even then it’s hard to assess how severe the harms are for microplastics yet. Part of the reason is they’re clearly not overtly dangerous. The way in which they are dangerous is very poorly understood, so what policy or regulatory actions could we take today? Ban plastics globally? “Plastic” is a very broad term for a specific mechanical characteristic of a material and includes lots of monomers and polymers, some of which we know are inert enough in life we use them for implants in human bodies already. Are those micro plastics dangerous? Who knows. Should be bans everything that has the characteristic of being “plastic?” That’s absurd. So while I might agree we need to “do something,” that something will need to be super subtle and targeted out of bare necessity.
> Even then it’s hard to assess how severe the harms are for microplastics yet. Part of the reason is they’re clearly not overtly dangerous.
This is a contradiction.
How so? Something can be unknown impact but known to not be overtly dangerous. Cyanide is overtly dangerous. You ingest it then you die. That’s overt. Some things take decades of research to identify their danger because their method of action is subtle and confounded that isn’t contradictory.
But why there is a contrast between how we treat emerging technologies versus environmental pollutants?
Does someone have good papers on the negative effects of microplastics (ideally on humans)?
A while back I tried to look for those, and it was nontrivial to find papers that would conclusively show that they are harmful, and the mechanisms of this harmfulness.
There's a ton of press about where they are (everywhere) but (as a layman) you could argue it's because they're not very reactive, and this lack of reactivity could mean they're not actually that harmful, and are just there.
Take TFA as an example. Based on the abstract it shows that microplastics are there, but concludes with "highlighting the need for further research on their neurotoxic effects and implications for human health".
Now of course doing good studies about this is extremely hard, as it's hard to find subjects untouched by microplastics for control groups, but I hope someone here can provide me with some good sources on this.
To be clear, I'm not trying to deny the harmfulness here, I'm just looking for good related content.
This is probably one of the most prominent studies till date: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/38446676
Microplastics and nanoplastics in atheromas and cardiovascular events. N Engl J Med. 390(10):900-910, 2024.
Summary: People with artherial plaque that contains micro- and nano-plastics have a higher risk of death during the followup period. It's an observational study, sample size is not too big, but some findings look quite mechanistic suggesting causality, e.g. "electron microscopy revealed visible, jagged-edged foreign particles among plaque macrophages and scattered in the external debris". The effect size induced by microplastics on death risk also looks substantial.
Personally, I think microplastics are a very important pollutant, and evidence of this will unfold during the next years. Sadly, it is extraordinarily hard to remove them from our environment. They are everywhere. For example, car tires shed lots of microplastics that end up in eggs or inside vegetables and plants, which absorb them from soil. Most liquids are packaged inside plastic, which is continuously leaking into the content. We should at least be measuring their levels and setting up maximum concentration thresholds in our food chain. We should go back to glass bottles, whenever possible. Suspended microplastics in the air are also a major concern. Plastics are great for certain applications, but we use them in places where they don't belong.
> For example, car tires shed lots of microplastics that end up in eggs or inside vegetables and plants, which absorb them from soil.
Last year I moved to a house with a greenhouse and started gardening, and was surprised not only by the amount of plastics used, but by the amount of UV unstable plastics used.
- Previous owner used polyester string to tie up plants, which now just disintegrates whenever I touch it. I had to go out of my way to find jute twine.
- I bought agricultural fabric to cover plants during spring. I left it at the top of the greenhouse over the summer to provide shade. By autumn it was disintegrating as it was not UV stable. Again I had to go out of my way to buy a UV stable polyester sheet that I will use now.
True. The paradoxical thing is that even organic agriculture doesn't currently care much about microplastics given that they are not tested. It's a huge blind spot.
People don't even care about the atherosclerotic effect of saturated fats and lipoproteins that we've known for half a century.
What are you even talking about? Every single physical revolve around that with plenty of lectures from doctors and everyone talks about it all the time.
>We should go back to glass bottles, whenever possible.
There are very good, very practical reasons we moved from glass (and metal and other materials) containers to plastic. Unless those factors are sufficiently addressed, plastic is here to stay.
For those who haven't been keeping track or are just too damn young to know history, those factors include:
* Weight. Glass and metal, and also other materials like ceramic and wooden containers, are heavy compared to plastic. This additional weight means it takes more energy to transport, meaning more costs in fuel and labor.
* Fragility. This namely applies to glass; glass containers are fragile and they are very dangerous to handle if and when they break. Plastic containers are much more durable, and even if they break they are seldom as dangerous as broken glass. More broken containers also mean more goods lost to spillage, which in turn means additional cost to re-manufacture and re-ship.
* Durability. Going along with the above, plastics are equal to metal containers in keeping contents and the outside world separated. This is incredibly important for ensuring food safety.
* Contaminants. This applies primarily to metal containers, but also paper and sometimes ceramic. Metals leach into foods, this is mostly prevented with special coatings but it's not perfect and the coatings themselves are also contaminants that will eventually leach. Likewise paper containers which have coatings applied so liquids don't seep through, and sometimes ceramic containers to prevent leaching. We know these contaminants are bad, unlike microplastics where we still aren't conclusively sure.
* Cost. Plastic is cheap compared to basically every other material we can make containers out of. This is a great boon to the consumer who ultimately ends up paying the most markup.
I agree with every point here, and they all make a lot of sense... yet most alcoholic beverages are shipped to the consumer in glass bottles, including even the cheapest beers.
I have seen some drinks shipped in plastic, so it is possible to do, I wonder if glass packaging is a 'premium' thing. Though, if they can do it for cheap beer, then I'm sure they can do it for non-alcoholic drinks on scale.
It's about reducing costs for the producers and supermarkets, ignoring externalities. That is, tons of plastic that doesn't get recycled and goes to the landfill. Now the issue seems worse as another important externality are adverse effects to human health.
I can't believe costs of switching to glass or ceramic are that high. I've bought tons of inexpensive dairy and desserts that came packaged using those materials. But since most customers don't care, they tend to use plastic.
a 500 ml Al can weights 13 grams. life knows if we can skim down its weight if we don't have self openers, the price if we develop a better recycling system etc.
if plastics have impact on human health, how many $ we can save for using re-usable glass and metal?
Aluminum cans are lined in plastic.
I think it's about steel cans?
I've seen and had alcohol in plastic. They generally seem to do fine.
But damn did it feel cheap in a bad way. Being cheap is obviously one of the reasons we use plastic containers, but the feeling associated with plastic alcohol is just plain irrationally bad.
Some EU supermarkets used to have a circular glass system where products were brought in bulk, and only canned in glass inside the shop, sometimes by the customer. Bottles were then returned after use, washed locally and reused many times. This looked fairly efficient.
Restaurants and bars still have the same system here for e.g. Coca-Cola drinks, which come inside a glass bottle that has been reused several times. I'm not sure plastic is more efficient than reusing a glass bottle. Lots of yogurts are packaged in glass containers, and price seems average. I have also heard that plastic is rarely recycled, so it also sounds unsustainable from that perspective.
> cost
Oh yes, I love paying a couple cents less per drink to have micro plastics in me
And - of course - you're probably not even paying a couple of cents less. Those couple of cents are extra profit for everyone further up the 'value chain'.
And when your girlfriend finds out you have microplastics in your emissions, she'll say "yay, thank you for putting microplastics in me."
And yet you would get, on average, 0 microplastics from drinking out of plastic bottles since those are brand new bottles which have not been subject to UV degradation of any kind. They're also entering via the GI tract, which doesn't have a particularly high rate of foreign matter exchange with the blood stream.
Meanwhile you'll walk outside sipping your glass bottle and take a deep breath of tire dust from nearby cars, which is actually the primary route of exposure for microplastics to enter the body since the lungs do exchange particles with the blood stream (notably, you will also find silicates, soot and basically every other type of thing all throughout the body via lung exchange as a mechanism).
in many ways it seems likely that this response was generated by chat gpt , I apologise if this was not the case
Apologies accepted.
What's the toxicity of microglass particulates?
AFAIK, glass is super stable. It won't shed anything significant unless you grind it, at least according to the literature.
Silica is one of the most common substances on earth — the crust is more than half silica by mass. Pretty much all life can, by necessity, tolerate a good deal of silica exposure. You don't really want to breathe a lot of fine silica dust (or, frankly, any size of glass bits), but actively grinding it into dust that gets airborne is just about the only way it'll cause problems, other than cutting yourself.
So glassware is safer than plastics? I'm not going to get bits of glass in my brain just from drinking soda out of bottles?
Yes, glassware is vastly more stable than plastics. Ever microwave something in a plastic bowl and it comes out smelling kinda plasticky? That smell means it’s degraded and venting volatile compounds that are chemically reacting with your olfactory neurons.
Smelling something doesn’t automatically make something dangerous, obviously. It does mean the molecules that were previously part of your plastic soup bowl are now knocking around in the open air.
Glass doesn’t do that at common temperatures. It’s basically inert.
You mean sand?
I was too clever by half. Dalewyn omitted safety from their criteria comparing glass to plastic.
>glass containers are fragile and they are very dangerous to handle if and when they break. Plastic containers are much more durable, and even if they break they are seldom as dangerous as broken glass.
"Being there" can be harmful in and of itself. Blocking receptors, clogging up conduits, etc. As I understand it, this is why certain elemental metals are so toxic: They're big atoms that deposit in harmful places and can't be effectively filtered out.
Also interfering with immune response https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9552327/ and directly or indirectly via immune response triggering inflammation https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S016041202....
True, but it could also be totally innert and not have any measurable negative effect. Who knows?
Bisphenol A have a carbon ring structure that resembles hormones like the estrogen. It can bind to the estrogen receptors and potentially increase risk of hormone related cancers.
Don't worry, we got rid of BPAs and replaced them with substitutes that probably do the same thing!
Small amounts of mercury and aluminum have been shown to be safe in the bloodstream. The dose is the poison
Which is why you have to take care not to eat too much seafood
True. Children and babies, even less seafood than adults
A quick search led me to this review, which has a number of studies linked in references, including a few that studied humans.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9885170/
Quote from the abstract: The direct consequences of MPs and NPs on the thyroid, testis, and ovaries are documented. Still, studies need to be carried out to identify the direct effects of MPs and NPs on the hypothalamus, pituitary, and adrenal glands.
Disappointingly nothing in that study relates these health impacts to known levels of microplastics in humans. That means there’s no way to tell, from that study, if the levels of microplastics to be found in you and me are likely to have material impact.
I definitely feel we should be more serious about reducing use of plastics, especially for uses likely to contribute to microplastic levels, but it’s going to be hard to convincingly make that case without quantifying these risks in relation to actual human microplastics levels.
One doesn't reduce the use of plastics without using something else as a replacement.
If we replace all plastic cups with glass cups, might we get micro-glass inside ourselves instead?
Glass, mostly silicon dioxide, might sound harmless, but glass can chip off in microscopic sharp fragments (think fiberglass dust - which some suggest might be as bad as asbestos). Glass also slightly dissolves in water (this is how glasses start to look frosty after enough dishwashing - they're dissolving), and slightly evaporates (everything has a vapour pressure!). And obviously the glass isn't pure - there can be all kinds of deliberate and accidental additives.
Am I worried about glass? No. But it seems naive to wholesale replace plastic with something else until there is a decent understanding of the replacement.
I disagree that replacing plastic without a decent understanding of a replacement is any more naive than continuing to use plastic without a decent understanding of the implications of plastic. Glass for one has been used for at least an order of magnitude longer than plastic has, without the mentioned issues of microscopic sharp fragments, dissolution in water, evaporation etc. causing harm. It seems clear to say that going back to glass and ceramics would be - on the balance of probabilities - likely safer, as they don't cause bioaccumulation to anywhere near the same extent, and history hasn't shown any comparable dangers which persist today.
This is completely inaccurate and disingenuous. Glass suffers from no such thing as "microglass", unlike plastic. Plastic actively sheds micro/nanoplastics into bottled water, with hundreds of thousands of particles (and probably more depending on its handling) floating in the water, along with any chemicals used to make plastic moldable, fire-retardant, etc. Glass bottles have no additives that leach out in anything but the most minute quantities, even in an alkaline solution. The same can't be said for plastic containers.
Also, while glass does dissolve in water, it is an extremely slow process that does not affect containers at room temperature in any significant way. As for the claim about glass evaporating due to vapor pressure, while technically true, the vapor pressure of glass at room temperature is so infinitesimally small that it's completely irrelevant for practical purposes. This process occurs at such a slow rate that it would take far longer than the age of the universe to have any measurable effect on a glass container.
> disingenuous
How about we leave the silly accusations of malice at whatever low rent other website they were learned at. You don't know motivations.
The term 'disingenuous' isn't about malice, it's about misleading comparisons. Equating the well-documented issue of micro/nanoplastics with hypothetical (and inaccurate) risks from glass muddies the water on a serious environmental problem. If you want to dispute the facts I presented about glass versus plastic safety, let's focus on that instead of tone policing.
Saying you don't know someone was being disingenuous isn't tone policing. It's nothing to do with tone.
I think we can find and should seek out easy wins. That is we should identify the major sources of microplastics and eliminate them. From my personal observation it seems the major issue could be textiles made from plastic. Clothes and carpets made from polyester, nylon, I would guess these are subject to a lot of wear and tear and rubbing which produces plastic dust that may be breathed.
The clothes dryer is a major culprit, as it turns fabric into lint especially when the fabric is mostly dry. The appropriate care for plastic clothing is to at least end the drying on a clothes horse or clothesline. The horse is a great way to get cotton relatively wrinkle free and not turn your favorite shirts into dryer lint. But it's a bit more labor-intensive to set up that drying, so it's unlikely to catch on.
> they're not very reactive, and this lack of reactivity could mean they're not actually that harmful.
Per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) are so stable they are called "forever chemicals", but according the NRDC, "PFAS are also toxic at extremely low levels (i.e. parts per quadrillion), posing significant risks to our health":
https://www.nrdc.org/stories/forever-chemicals-called-pfas-s...
Based on a similar search, my take away was that it’s too early to tell. Animal models suggest some risks, but it’s not very clear if that translates to humans. Feeding plastic to mice isn’t an exact analogue.
You can back that question up one level to "what are the biological effects of plastics?"
And the answer is, broadly, they mimic hormones. Compounds in plastics can activate endocrine receptors because they are similar enough to hormones which are more or less everywhere across the animal kingdom.
Sometimes it can be hard to pin down the specific negative effects in isolation, but there are some pretty clear metrics.
"A review of the endocrine disrupting effects of micro and nano plastic and their associated chemicals in mammals" https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9885170/
The most common plastic, PET, is inert and does not mimic hormones
This is not correct.
"When comparing water of the same spring that is packed in glass or plastic bottles made of polyethylene terephthalate (PET), estrogenic activity is three times higher in water from plastic bottles."
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S096007601...
Here is one on human GI track
"Micro- and nanoplastics in the body are passed on during cell division"
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2024/03/240306150719.h...
People, get air filters inside of your house and especially your bedroom. Anything with a HEPA filter. I personally have a Winix and a dyson fan, quite happy with it.
You'll be surprised what it picks up over time, and consequently what you end up not inhaling...
Everything is made of plastic now though including those fuzzy blankets and pillows people love.
It's true... Plastic has become so ubiquitous that it's in nearly everything
Are these filters sufficient to filter out microplastics?
Yes. And particles down to 0.3 microns.
My understanding is that the health benefits are most pronounced from avoiding smoke and fine dust particles which don't necessarily have a lot to do with plastic, but it's a good recommendation regardless.
There is significant evidence linking PM2.5 concentrations and health (which is a common metric about fine particles in the air of a particular size, in this case 2.5 micron range)
To add to this, hepa filters are extremely effective. They are rated at something like 99.95%. That is the rating for the size of particle that they are worst at filtering. Particles both smaller and larger are filtered at a higher rate. This is also only for air passing through the filter once, if you have a air purifier running in a small room it will pass all the air through it multiple times, completely cleaning the air of basically anything that is not gas or vapour. Of course new particles can come into the air from various sources. It’s kinda magical that we can have this technology that is affordable and actually genuinely does what is advertised
They are so effective that they will literally filter a bad smell out of a room assuming it’s not a gas that’s making then smell.
Plastics need be banned from clothing and food.
From clothing? Do you have any idea how prevalent it's become? It is hard/impossible to find clothes without traces of plastic.
I can't tell whether you're making an argument for or against it.
I don't think they're stating either - just that it's pretty impractical to remove plastic from clothing at this point.
As another commenter pointed out, you could (and people surely did) make the same argument about lead or asbestos. That alone doesn't mean it's not the right thing to do.
We have clear evidence that asbestos and lead are very harmful.
I don't think we have that evidence for plastic (yet).
Also you totally can start buying plastic free clothes here and now. Just more expensive usually.
Sure we do, just look at the piles of clothing waste around the planet.
It was about health hazards.
Plus, plastics is a very very broad term. Saying "ban all plastics" isn't the same as saying ban lead, it's the same as saying "ban all metals".
Yeah, i.e., is rayon banned? Silicones (they're very different from all the classic oil-sourced plastics).
Why is it impractical? It would be unpopular and put prices up but it could be done. We would have to reduce the amount of clothing that is produced but that is hardly a problem as we produce vastly more than we need. We could eliminate fast fashion for a start.
You don't hear people saying, man, that asbestos and lead did a bang up job on X. But you 100% see 100% of women wearing stretchy pants. For the longest time I exclusively wore cotton jeans and then they became impossible to find and I finally realized what plastic was good for: fat people. Now I see men wearing them all the time. The struggle of the 80s on people killing themselves to fit into jeans is not longer a thing.
Not sure how socks used to be without plastic but pretty sure they'd fall apart fast.
You don't need plastics for that. Warp knitting has been used for the last few centuries with cotton/linen/silk/wool to get stretchy textiles, and there are plenty of stretchy pants that are made of natural materials available today for those who struggle fitting into jeans.
Cotton socks exist as well as wool worsted, so not a huge problem as far as I can see. Tights and stockings will be a much bigger challenge.
> You don't hear people saying, man, that asbestos and lead did a bang up job on X.
Well, asbestos is a great insulator and lead makes beautiful bright paints, it's just that the downsides outweighed those great properties.
It's extremely practical. We have cotton, linen, and wool as great amazing fabrics. Drawstrings replace elastic.
In my opinion, no natural fabric is as comfortable as synthetics. But I have cotton bedding and curtains. I think these are higher priority: bedding is used while you're lying close to it and easily able to inhale any dust, and curtains are exposed to sunlight that can weaken the fabric and make it break down more easily. They're also both large, meaning there's more plastic to be released. Carpet also seems a high priority, although that's more expensive and difficult to change.
It doesn't need to be comfortable, it needs to not lay waste to the planet and shrink your balls.
I do hate fast fashion, but I can think of many exceptions where natural fibers won't cut it. There is no natural fabric product on the market that can properly replace lightweight, waterproof clothing. Waxed cotton is waterproof but heavy. Rubber is not breathable. Technical synthetics like Goretex have its issues (low durability, high cost, coated with PFAS), but it sure beats getting hypothermia.
It's a rare exception that natural fibers won't serve. Alaska, Arctic circle, Antarctica, disaster prep.
You don't need lightweight waterproof clothing, you just like it. Getting a little sweaty under a non-breathable fabric or getting wet but staying insulated with wool will be just fine. Umbrellas are great as well.
What beats lightweight breathable fabric is not desecrating the planet.
People will make all kinds of excuses as to not impose any minor inconvenience to themselves, even if it means making species go extinct and killing the planet.
Nothing is replacing nylon where it is best used anytime soon.
We can replace Nylon with get this, poorer alternatives, if we gave a shit about the environment. I know it's unthinkable to switch to a worse product or user experience, but imagine caring more about the health of the planet.
This feels naive. For things like parachutes or airbags, I question whether you would actually have benefits from using something like cotton. In particular, they almost certainly do not perform at the same level. As such, you run the real risk of losing gains from other material to losses to maintenance.
Might be time to scale up spider silk synthesis, then?
Or maybe (high strength successors to) Rayon, which as I understand should decompose like regular cotton.
So, materiel that doesn't really exist?
And rayon doesn't exactly have a good history.
I'm all for looking for better things. Will be hard to replace some stuff, though.
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Before we removed lead from petrol it was hard/impossible to find fuel without petrol in.
I dunno, half of my wardrobe is natural and the stuff that isn't is specific outdoor gear that would just be marginally worse at its' job (heavier, a bit less waterproof).
I feel as if people get a bit stuck on things being optimal or whatever. If my boxer shorts and socks are a bit less elastic, ok, cool, whatever, who cares? If this stuff actually is dangerous it doesn't matter how much better it is.
It seems plastic in fabrics can mostly be replaced with cotton.
Cotton production, however, is extremely resource-intensive (particularly water) to the point of unsustainability – and it's largely grown in parts of the world that are likely to suffer catastrophic droughts in the future.
Cotton has been produced for a long time and with far more primitive means than today, so I'm pretty sure it is sustainable. Moreover, cotton being so cheap pretty much rules out it being "extremely resource intensive". Water is a very inexpensive resource in most parts of the world.
We're obviously no longer in those times. Many things that were once sustainable are no longer so. It is well understood that cotton production will face considerable difficulties in the future. At the same time the demand for cotton has exploded along with global population. Consumer prices of cotton do not accurately reflect the production cost due to the usual reasons (externalities, lack of global water pricing mechanisms).
> Water is a very inexpensive resource in most parts of the world.
I don't think you know what you're talking about, and you're (like myself) living in a privileged part of the world if water is an inexpensive resource to you. Freshwater scarcity is going to be one of the most critical issues exacerbated by the climate change, and as I said, particularly so in those parts of the world where cotton is grown such as South Asia. The most famous case of cotton production having catastrophic consequences is the Aral Sea (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aral_Sea).
https://h2oglobalnews.com/cotton-farming-and-water-scarcity/
https://thewotrblog.wordpress.com/2018/02/27/why-farmers-are...
https://www.theguardian.com/sustainable-business/2015/mar/20...
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S09218...
on the bright side, cotton is a lot more durable and lasts longer.
Another problem is fast fashion. The fashion industry is a bit of a cancer on the planet, encouraging chains like H&M to sell very cheap clothes filled with plastic, that people need to replace every few years.
Well, it depends. Certainly nylon and polyester can be vastly stronger than cotton, that's why they're used in many garments requiring mechanical durability. (Heck, ballistic nylon is a thing; you don't hear about ballistic cotton!)
But sure, it's also true that you can make extremely low-durability clothing from synthetic polymers that aren't even intended to last (ultra fast fashion is incredibly destructive, yes).
Too many people! We can grow enough cotton without too much damage if it needs to go on fewer people.
Most cotton production in the US is not irrigated.
The problem with farming resource calculations and fearmongering, is often they measure water usage of a particular crop without really considering where the water came from.
Wouldn't you say crops grown with just water from the rain were using water with perfect sustainability?
The cotton in my clothes doesn't come from the US, and neither does that of the vast majority of world's people. Besides that, surely you're aware that the American South is going to increasingly suffer from droughts as well? It's pretty disingenuous to assume that just because historically rainwater has been sufficient, it's going to be so in the future as well.
Also, agriculture isn't necessarily sustainable just because it doesn't require artificial irrigation. As an extreme example, just look at the Amazon. The land used to grow a water-intensive species might be better used for other purposes.
The US bans most of the cotton from China, the worlds largest producer, because of slavery. The US also produces a third of global cotton and is the leading exporter. You certainly have some American cotton in your closet, a huge portion of the people around the world will have American cotton in their clothes.
And for the rest... talking to climate doomers isn't interesting or productive. You'll only believe negative things, you demonstrably here don't know what you're talking about and just make things up to fit the narrative you have in your head. You clearly knew nothing about cotton production but made up facts without bothering to look for information at all. You make up your climate facts as well, do you know anything about the climate models for what will happen in the cotton growing regions of the US? Or have you heard vague things about droughts and decided to parrot those and assume they apply here because they supported your doom thoughts?
What is your evidence that microparticles from cotton are not also toxic?
They are ordinary, biodegradable, organic plant material, things to which our bodies are accustomed to for millions of years. You might as well ask whether grass is toxic.
The human body does not contain enzymes that digest cellulose. So how is this degradation to occur?
Fungal attack on woody biomass involves chemicals you do not want in your body. The attack involves extremely reactive hydroxyl radicals, for example.
Being accustomed to something doesn't mean the thing doesn't hurt us.
> The human body does not contain enzymes that digest cellulose. So how is this degradation to occur?
Mostly outside the body, before ingestion occurs.
> Being accustomed to something doesn't mean the thing doesn't hurt us.
I disagree. Evolution had the last ~360 million years (that's about how old cellulose is I believe) to evolve mechanisms to protect our body from cellulose particles.
Evolution has had the last ~360 million years for us to evolve enzymes to digest cellulose. And yet we can't.
> Mostly onside the body, before ingestion occurs.
This is an obviously silly statement. Of course cellulose can be ingested in various ways, including extremely small particles.
Traces? I'm really puzzled by this thread, meaning I don't really understand what do people mean by plastics. I would guess it's all synthetic fabrics, but then the gp proposition is so nuts it's surprising someone even discusses it. Like, all sportswear is synthetic, and you cannot replace it with any old-fashioned fabrics, because synthetics are simply better. It isn't even the right word, it's like saying you must ban motorized vehicles from transportation. I mean, sure, there was a time when people were wearing wool, wood and leather and somehow even managed to do something like mountaineering in it, but it is absolutely unimaginable to me, how you can go for long grueling hikes in cotton clothes that just won't dry out on your body.
"were wearing wool, wood and leather and somehow even managed to do something like mountaineering"
Serious mountaineering is still done with merino wool.
You obviously have no clue about "serious mountaineering" and what you are talking about in general. Even though I do have a couple of merino wool items, they can be replaced with synthetics quite easily (the only real upside of wool is it is very warm and comfortable to sleep in), and no amount of wool will replace the other 95% of my clothing, which is mostly synthetic. Well, except for down, obviously, which is the only thing actually superior to the synthetic counterparts (and even that many people avoid, when travelling in rainy/wet regions). Everything else... It's not even a serious descission, it just isn't something anybody who ever did "serious mountaineering" would argue about, the vast majority of your gear is synthetic, and not because it's cheaper (it absolutely isn't cheap). It just the only viable option. Even something you could potentially replace with cotton (IDK, a backpack?) would weight a ton.
As a mountaineer as well, thank you for capturing my shared frustration. Before synthetic bags, heavy canvas bags were used and typically required hiring a pack mule, donkey, or sherpa. Synthetics made mountaineering and the outdoors accessible to the common person.
Let's also not forget while down is natural, the material encapsulating it is usually not!
I did not claim wool only. The argument above sounded like there is no use case for wool anymore in mountaineering.
"the only real upside of wool is it is very warm and comfortable to sleep in"
Because that is a big upside to me.
So thanks for confirming my point and congratulations on defeating your strawmen.
Yes, but our outer layers and bags are all synthetic.
Yes, and it is useful, I did not claim we go to the mountains plastic free.
Sure, but don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good, buying something with a bit of spandex or whatever for stretch/durability is vastly better than buying something that's pure polyester fleece. Just go for as high a percentage cotton/wool/linen wherever you can.
It isn’t hard at all to find 100% cotton clothes though?
It's not hard. Going to war is hard. Watching a loved one die is hard.
Googling "100% cotton" _clothing item_, "100% linen", "100% leather", "100% wool". It's not hard.
Starting to eye my dryer lint as a toxic substance
Yes? Any sort of dust is best avoided and treated with care. Your literal dead skin can be toxic if you let it build up enough.
depends what you’re drying, no?
I personally use a clothing rack to hang all my plastic (polyester, spandex, etc) clothes, and i only put cotton items in the dryer. Including towels of course.
If you put a machine that blew asbestos fibers out the wall/roof of the building in most homes in the US people would probably be pretty upset.
For that matter, I wonder if they ever made asbestos clothing for routine wear? Looks like aprons, oven mitts, and ironing board covers.
I don't think we can yet compare microplastics to asbestos. Asbestos is still used today but in much more industrial, safe ways than it once was used. Not to downplay any net harm but I don't believe its as clear yet.
I'm pretty sure we can compare them. Whether the ultimate harm will be anywhere near that level of impact I have no idea, but they're clearly tiny fibers infiltrating places they weren't expected with possible health outcomes as a result of indiscriminate use before the risks were fully understood.
I don't think you can compare the net harm yet? Unless you have research that no one else does. We know asbestos is a carcinogen, we know it gets lodged into the lungs and does not remove itself. We know the outcomes from heavy exposure.
While we know plastic is getting to places it should not be, we have not fully figured out all the negative impacts. Those impacts will drive where/when to use it.
Edit: Again, I am not trying to downplay potential harm. It might be a serious issue that is driving poor outcomes but I don't believe we have research of that as of yet.
Curious what other items end up there. E.g. particulate dust, dirt, minerals etc.
It’s a more interesting result if plastics are unique in ending up here.
Microplastics seem bad. The evidence of adverse effects seems marginal. But in the bigger picture, plastics provide enormous wealth to the world. We should look for ways to mitigate any adverse environmental effects, of course, but it's not at all obvious to me that the ROI of doing so in my personal life is positive.
this… is a dril tweet
The predominant shapes were particles and fibers, with polypropylene being the most common polymer.
No doubt these are almost entirely due to synthetic fibres in clothing and other textiles, which have been around for more than half a century now:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olefin_fiber
Note that natural fibres aren't great either if you inhale enough of them:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Byssinosis
The amount of pseudoscience and illogicity around microplastics is staggering. Consider those advocating for banning traditional blown-film plastic bags and replacing them with ones which are woven or non-woven fibre... the majority of which will also be made from plastic, but will emit loose fibres far more easily. Go after the textile industry if you really want to reduce microplastics, as that's where the majority of them come from. Of course this is assuming there is any clear evidence of harm, which is far from conclusive.
I blame our debt-based system for fueling globalization at a rapid speed and for shifting the focus too much towards low-costs and mass production.
When consumers are in debt and deprived of surplus income, they are forced to ignore their ethical concerns and go for the cheapest of the cheap, which is usually bad for the environment.
Had we had a more decentralized system, with less severe inequality, I tend to think that we would be using a far more heterogeneous set of materials in manufacturing. There would be less focus on minimizing costs, leaving more room for ethics and thus we wouldn't end up with massive global problems like this.
It's weird how plastic in its current form has been around and sold in such massive qualities for such a long time. It makes it look as though there is absolutely no room for innovation. But history tells us there is always room for innovation. Capitalism has been good at finding creative paths (plural). The tech monoculture we have today seems unnatural. Likely propped up by our debt-based monetary system which allows infinite compounding of wealth which leads to unsurmountable artificial centralization. It manufactures inequality, homogeneity and groupthink.
Capitalism should be a hydra, but the monetary system has turned it into a one-headed dragon with a single mighty but aging head.
What the plan to deal with this? People make fun of doomers, but this unfixable.
PS: originally this said boomers, but I meant Doomers, as I. People who run around screaming the world is doomed
Lawyers. If harmful effects are found decades later, then we'll be entitled to compensation! How fun.
Here's your 3 dollars, don't spend it all in one place.
This will affect every child In The world for many generations.
Who is paying these damages in trillions? Even if you were to pin it on specific companies, they would go bancrupt.
It was more of a joke because usually compensation is next to nothing in large class actions. Basically, we don't really care.
Lead and asbestos in housing and consumer products were similarly intractable, but we (mostly) banned them anyway. We're still dealing with removal and mitigation decades later, but at least those problem aren't getting any worse. At some point you have to say enough is enough and ban plastics in contexts where they're most likely to find pathways into the biosphere: food containers, disposable goods, clothes, car tires, water pipes, etc. Just because the problem will take centuries to resolve doesn't mean that we can't start now.
This is not in housing, it’s in the water, in the snow, it’s everywhere forever.
I think you are confusing plastics with so-called forever chemicals.
I'm not sure they are. Microplastics have been found in snow[1] and in "oceans, air and food supply"[2]. Additionally, the so-called forever chemicals (PFAS) originated with PTFE (Teflon) plastic, and PFAS 'forever chemicals' are used to produce polymers used in plastics, rubber and fabrics so they are intimately linked with plastics and microplastics.
Enzymes
nanobots?
Just the thing when you've swallowed a fly.
Nanobots in the Olfactory Bulb of the Human Brain (2030)
...what are those sha512 hashes doing in the author list?
Nanomachines, son.
a.k.a. enzymes
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