[HN Gopher] What is our hidden consumption of microplastics doin...
___________________________________________________________________
What is our hidden consumption of microplastics doing to our
health?
Author : dnetesn
Score : 269 points
Date : 2022-05-19 10:08 UTC (12 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (nautil.us)
(TXT) w3m dump (nautil.us)
| zerop wrote:
| If we all are against usage of plastic, what stops us from
| eliminating it completely around us.
| PKop wrote:
| Modern economy depends on it. Too much economic pressure
| pushing against removing it.
| Sebb767 wrote:
| Probably most people don't have a strong opinion on eliminating
| plastic and even in that subgroup, few would be willing to pay
| the price (both in utility and literal price) to avoid plastic.
| In fact, if you're willing to go to a shop offering unpackaged
| goods, you can already eliminate a lot of plastic in your life.
| JohnWhigham wrote:
| I'm not against all usages of it. I think where one needs a
| supremely robust material (like in the military) it's very
| useful.
|
| However I think it should be banned from any and all contact
| with foodstuffs.
| karaterobot wrote:
| We aren't. We're against some of the predicted negative
| consequences of plastic waste, but we like plastic. It's cheap,
| and incredibly useful.
|
| Plastic goods enable the world we live in. For example, it
| would be interesting to see a mouse, and keyboard, and monitor
| housing made out of bronze, or wood, or cast iron, but I bet
| they would be worse in pretty much every other way -- heavier,
| harder to shape, and very expensive not only because of the
| cost of materials, but because they'd take so much more work to
| make.
|
| When I look around at all the plastic stuff around me, I think
| that _some_ of it is unnecessary, but much of it isn 't. Some
| of the necessary stuff could be made out of other materials,
| but much of it couldn't. At least not very well, and not at a
| price many people could afford.
|
| Better for us if we can figure out a way to effectively recycle
| plastic, and capture microplastic in the wild.
| TheRealNGenius wrote:
| I just want to clarify that the "we" in parent post does not
| include me personally, and I was not consulted on this matter
| prior by parent commenter. Thank you all for coming to my ted
| talk.
| pixl97 wrote:
| #1 on the list would be the coca cola corporation. They fight
| anything that would reduce plastic waste viciously.
|
| #2 on the list is everybody else. Once you start looking at
| what is made out of plastics you'll realise the modern world is
| completely dependant on it. The use of plastics on food and
| medical devices dramatically reduces bacterial contaminantes
| saving millions of people a year from sickness. It's used on
| structural components of all kinds of device to reduce weight,
| thereby decreasing energy usage. It is a very difficult problem
| to solve.
| mdavis6890 wrote:
| Nothing really, except our preferences. We could ban all
| plastics tomorrow in the US, if we wanted to. But I don't think
| we'd be happy with the quality of life trade-offs.
| ehnto wrote:
| As someone else said, we aren't. I am, but "we" aren't. But I'm
| also complacent as many if not most people are, even though I
| think I "do my part", I don't really do much. I can see
| probably a hundred bits of plastic in this very study room.
| Joyfield wrote:
| The numerous spiders you swallow in your sleep will take care of
| that.
| mnd999 wrote:
| Then you have to swallow a bird to catch the spider and I've
| heard it doesn't end well.
| Arrath wrote:
| You're supposed to let the spiders swallow flies, and the
| bird swallow spiders, then you swallow the bird. Not swallow
| them all in a row!
| dhosek wrote:
| But then you need to swallow a cat to eat the bird...
| toto444 wrote:
| Apparently it's a myth https://www.sleep.org/sleep-
| questions/debunking-sleep-myths-...
| andai wrote:
| This article was sponsored by Big Spider.
| alanek2007xD wrote:
| Is it me or are the comments haha funny here, like reddit
| 2.0.
| jrootabega wrote:
| This is the Purge. It's how the rest of the threads are
| able to be kept so serious.
| user_7832 wrote:
| The comments here _are_ a bit funny. Much unlike most of
| reddit comments, which are the same jokes overdone till
| death.
| dym_sh wrote:
| ..to take care of all the small spiders who wish to become
| big one day. no! there will be only one! BIG SPIDER
| Jamie9912 wrote:
| that was the joke
| wccrawford wrote:
| Unfortunately, not everyone knows it's a myth. Many people
| still believe it.
| bschne wrote:
| Plastic Bertrand, who eats 500 credit cards daily, is an
| outlier and should not have been counted
| jcfrei wrote:
| When asked why he does it Bertrand replied: Ca plane pour
| moi.
| danShumway wrote:
| In a slightly different direction than consumption, if you're
| worried about inhaling plastic particles:
|
| I haven't personally gotten the equipment to do actual
| measurements yet, but I keep pet rats and they have pretty
| fragile respiratory systems, and anecdotally when I put together
| a Corsi Rosenthal Box[0] and stuck it next to their cage their
| allergies/sneezing pretty much entirely vanished.
|
| I still need to get air quality measuring equipment and more
| objectively confirm that it's working, but the research I have
| read suggests that spending ~$100 to put together a DYI box with
| good MERV13 filters or higher will solidly outperform the
| majority of commercial consumer-grade air purifiers out there.
| And subjectively, I do notice a difference in air quality,
| although that could be a placebo effect.
|
| Regular vacuuming will also help a lot with dust and micro-
| particles, but that's a lot more work than just plugging in a box
| fan.
|
| [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corsi%E2%80%93Rosenthal_Box
| bryceacc wrote:
| it's true that cube might outperform many commercial grade
| purifiers but unfortunately it's only because fires/pandemic
| have skyrocketed prices on purifiers and made a bunch of scammy
| looking ones. As you see with that box, having a filter medium
| and a fan is all you need. No plasma/uvc or charcoal filters
| necessary. I only have a couple purifiers that are $100 each
| and have a good centrifugal fan and a filter in front of it
| that can be replaced for $30. A box fan as pictured doesn't
| have as much static pressure to pull through the filter well,
| but because you have four filters worth of surface area its
| fine. All you could upgrade with a commercial solution is
| having a smaller physical footprint.
| sydthrowaway wrote:
| Alternatively, whats a highly rated budget air purifier that
| handles VOCs too ?
| danShumway wrote:
| I haven't done a ton of research into VOCs, but my
| understanding is that most purifiers targeting them use
| activated charcoal filters?
|
| Those filters are pretty cheap, you can tape them to a Corsi-
| Rosenthal Box without adding much cost at all. If there's
| something more complicated going on then maybe that wouldn't
| be effective, but in general air filtration is just a
| combination of how much air your filter is moving and what
| the surface area of the filter is. In theory (I haven't
| confirmed) tying your own activated filters to a box fan will
| probably be pretty effective.
|
| A big reason why the Corsi-Rosenthal Box works so well is
| because there's not a lot of innovation or complexity in how
| good purifiers work. You just want a lot of air to go through
| a good filter with a sizeable surface area, so it's hard to
| compete with a 20 inch fan tied to 4 good filters. But again,
| take that with a grain of salt, maybe VOC purifiers are doing
| something more complicated that I'm not aware of.
| flaviut wrote:
| The cheap activated charcoal filters are bullshit.
|
| You can't absorb things without absorbant mass. The black
| plastic sponge has hardly any mass at all, period.
|
| I however do not have a good solution. I've DIY'd my own
| filter with charcoal pellets, but I've been unable to test
| it, and I'm somewhat unhappy with the design anyway.
| bryceacc wrote:
| correct, i remember discussion a long time ago that
| people would buy HVAC booster fans that look like inline
| duct fans and then put a giant bucket of pellets on the
| top of it to suck through
| sydthrowaway wrote:
| My gist was buying off the shelf equipment for people who
| don't have time to build something.
| danShumway wrote:
| Sure, I think that's totally reasonable.
|
| I will make one last pitch though that if you don't want
| to spend the hour putting together a full box or
| researching it, the most primitive filter you can build
| that will (as far as I can tell, again take my opinions
| on VOCs with a grain of salt) be decently competitive
| with commercial filters and will require less time to
| find the parts for and put together than you'll spend
| researching commercial purifiers is:
|
| - 1 20 inch box fan (any brand) from any store
|
| - A 20x20 MERV13 filter or equivalent (FPR 10 if you're
| buying from Home Depot), these will all be located right
| next to the commercial filters/purifiers in any store
| that sells them.
|
| - An activated charcoal filter (optional if you care
| about odor or VOCs, aprox 20x20 but it's likely okay if
| you go a bit smaller). Will likely also be next to the
| purifiers/filters in any store.
|
| - Duck tape or string in a pinch if you don't have tape.
|
| Tape them all together (make sure that arrows on the side
| of the filter point in the same direction as the fan is
| blowing) and run the fan at speed 2 or 3; don't worry
| about building a fan shroud or perfectly aligning things.
|
| ----
|
| That comes at the cost of:
|
| - Extra noise
|
| - General ugliness
|
| But it will still perform pretty decently well and takes
| less time to set up than it will take to read the
| instruction manual for a commercial purifier. The noise
| from running the fan at full speed is a downside though,
| so I'm not knocking anyone who wants to go commercial for
| an out-of-the-box solution -- just saying that if what's
| putting you off is the time/building requirements, you
| can do a hacky version of this in 3-5 minutes that will
| get the job done for an average small apartment, and
| there's basically no way to mess it up as long as you
| don't tape the filter on backwards.
|
| Again though, nothing against people who want to just
| order something, that's a totally reasonable ask. I just
| don't want people to get scared away thinking this has to
| be a full-fledged project, it's DIY but it doesn't have
| to involve any measurements or tools or any particular
| effort beyond slapping some duck tape around a single
| fan.
| x3iv130f wrote:
| Consumer grade filters have nicer fans that let them push move
| more air with less noise. I have multiple in my house and it's
| amazing how quiet they are.
| [deleted]
| tommek4077 wrote:
| How much glass do I consume? Or is glass, dust, whatever - any
| different from plastics?
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| Plenty, same with pollen; the difference is that glass / silica
| is pretty inert, whereas microplastics release chemicals that
| according to some research mimic that of hormones. It's one
| theory behind humans' fertility declining - not just that they
| have less children, but they produce less sperm and the like.
| MauranKilom wrote:
| Well, SiO2 is pretty different from plastic, chemically
| speaking. And I would expect that we inhale several grams of
| fine sand dust per week too.
|
| In other words, the amount of "glass" entering your body
| because you drank a beer is probably irrelevant compared to
| e.g. Sahara dust (if you're in Europe) in the air around you.
| Robotbeat wrote:
| I suspect that inhaling silicate is probably pretty terrible
| for you. Much worse than eating plastic.
| GekkePrutser wrote:
| Yes and silicate is an environmental component that's well
| understood and our bodies have adapted to it because sand has
| been a thing forever. And glass is chemically inert.
| sivizius wrote:
| Asbestos is a silicate...
| GekkePrutser wrote:
| I meant naturally occuring ones like sand. Even glass is
| kind of related. Didn't want to elaborate too much. But
| indeed it is.
| ectopod wrote:
| And, in quantity, even the "harmless" silicates aren't.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silicosis
| BenoitEssiambre wrote:
| Dust or soil has thousands of components, metals, bacteria,
| fungi, molds, organic matter, feces etc. It can give you
| farmer's lung and other illnesses. Plastic is comparatively
| inert. Weird that there is not environmental movement to
| reduce soil from the environment.
| ciphol wrote:
| We evolved to survive breathing in soil.
| refurb wrote:
| Silicon dioxide (sand) causes silicosis if inhaled. I
| wouldn't be so quick to dismiss the risk.
| mrguyorama wrote:
| Isn't the damage caused physically, not chemically? I
| think that's the main point
| [deleted]
| NoblePublius wrote:
| Neither this story nor the source for the credit card claim cite
| the formula for calculating this claim.
| twofornone wrote:
| >bisphenol A mimics the hormone estrogen and can lead to damage
| in sperm development.19 Further research has shown that
| microplastics, and not just those with bisphenol A, can cause
| damage to the testes and lead to the production of deformed sperm
| cells that have a harder time reaching eggs.
|
| I'd more interested in hearing what microdosing xenestrogens on a
| large scale does to our collective psychology. I think this is an
| extremely important but understudied effect. Much like birth
| control, which is known to influence decision making and
| behavior, and probably affects collective behaviors like vote
| outcomes and such.
|
| I have a haunch that a number of modern western ills are
| influenced by or rooted in the psychological influence of BC
| hormones. We know [0] that fertile women have different
| preferences in men, different risk tolerance, and different
| social behavior (increased mate seeking)...imagine what dosing
| tens of millions of women does to a country's politics? Now
| imagine dosing the entire population with chemicals that mimic
| estrogen...
|
| 0. https://magazine.tcu.edu/fall-2020/hormonal-birth-control-
| br...
| stuckinhell wrote:
| It could explain the rise of trans women too. It's honestly
| quite frightening to think we are unknowingly modifying
| ourselves at such a scale.
| unix_fan wrote:
| I have to question that claim. Poor countries eat plastic
| two, yet we don't see the same cultural phenomenon's here.
| twofornone wrote:
| The magnitude and duration of exposure is probably lower,
| since plastic is a western and relatively recent invention.
|
| Moreover, it is precisely because transgenderism is
| primarily a cultural (rather than biological) phenomenon,
| that rates between two otherwise identical populations are
| going to differ based on the culture's attitude toward
| transgenderism and the likelihood that a doctor is to
| diagnose someone with gender dysphoria.
|
| That latter point is severely understudied because
| transgenderism is one of the wests many recent sacred cows
| which are beyond criticism. But overdiagnosis should be a
| much greater concern than it is. Especially since puberty
| blockers and hormones given to adolescent boys will
| undoubtedly exacerbate any feelings of dysphoria and I am
| astounded that no one is talking about the reinforcing
| effects of these "treatments".
|
| But I digress. Point being comparing rates of
| transgenderism between first and third worlds is like
| comparing apples to oranges because transgenderism is a
| cultural phenomenon.
| itsafetish wrote:
| Maybe, though I think it's better explained by the widespread
| availability of pornography, and the power of the internet in
| reinforcing cult-like behaviour.
|
| There's a huge amount of "forced feminization" pornography
| out there now, accessible by children at a very young age. As
| well as "lesbian" pornography designed for the male gaze.
| It's no wonder some males end up feeling they should be like
| the characters in the pornography they consume.
|
| It's controversial to say this these days, but old school
| transwomen such as Anne Lawrence were very open about the
| sexually-charged nature of their dysphoria. (And she
| published extensively on this topic.)
|
| On top of that, there are many trans-encouraging echo
| chambers in the form of online forums, subreddits, and
| Twitter - ready to help anyone even vaguely curious to "crack
| their egg", as they say.
|
| Maybe environmental estrogens play some part in this rise,
| but I suspect it would only be a small piece of the larger
| puzzle.
| JohnWhigham wrote:
| Read Dr. Shanna Swan's new book, it's all about this. Very
| scary shit
| alexsundance wrote:
| Obviously prevention is better than treatment, but my
| suggestion for men would be to get tested to check their
| hormone levels and do Enclomiphene to address their deficiency
| https://www.maximustribe.com/science
| pcthrowaway wrote:
| In another 30 years perhaps we'll find out that the damage on the
| population wearing masks for years was actually worse than COVID.
|
| I don't actually think this, and support wearing masks when
| required, or around vulnerable people. But it's a bizarre
| thought.
| swayvil wrote:
| Be a good person, support the current thing.
| mr-wendel wrote:
| My concern is with all the infants. Being able to gawk out and
| stare at all the many faces you see, and how they respond to
| you has got to be foundational to your discovery of the world.
| If had to place a bet on a major "net negative" I'm going all
| in on this.
|
| I have one friend who absolutely swears that "covid babies" are
| a thing, and that you can spot them from across the room. I
| haven't yet figured out what that means, but I tend to believe
| her.
|
| So not sure I can really quality/quantify it, but just like
| this article, maybe someone will try and an article with a
| catchy title will be written about it.
| snowwrestler wrote:
| Infants basically ignore strangers or have mild interest in
| them.
|
| Infant eyesight is not good for distance; their perception is
| also in its infancy (their eyes detect photons but their
| brains are still learning to interpret the signals); their
| attention is correlated more strongly to sound than vision
| because sound is what they get in the womb.
|
| I mention strangers because the immediate caregivers of
| infants were generally not wearing masks around them most of
| the time even during the depths of the pandemic.
|
| Your friend is most likely engaged in motivated reasoning via
| confirmation bias; they are seeing what they expect and want
| to see. Infants in general often look spaced out or alarmed.
| Their facial expressions should not be taken to infer
| internal emotional state comparable to what an adult feels.
| Infant brains don't yet work like adult brains.
|
| In addition, it's not like COVID-19 is the first time human
| babies have been exposed to masks. Mask-wearing in public has
| been normal in some Asian cultures for decades, and of course
| some Muslim women cover their faces at all times outside the
| home.
| mr-wendel wrote:
| Cheers, thanks for the extra points to consider. It's not
| an idea I'm committed to -- just concerned about it, so
| that helps!
| escalt wrote:
| Every baby right now is a "covid baby", so of course they're
| easy to spot
| px43 wrote:
| I've got a covid baby, born June 2020. We're lucky enough
| that she was able to start school at 3 months old, and since
| then basically every adult she's interacted with (excluding
| us parents, but including grandparents) has been masked.
| These days her and her classmates are starting to wear their
| masks more often, but it's not fully required until she's 2.
| She seems well adjusted, social, super playful, and loves
| exploring the world as much as any kid I've ever known.
|
| I also grew up in the era where you were never ever supposed
| to use your real name or upload pictures of your face to the
| internet, and have absolute disdain for this weird webcam
| culture where people insist on seeing each-other's faces
| while interacting with them.I think the rise in racism and
| other forms of hatred on the internet ties directly to the
| increase in people making photographs of themselves central
| to their identity. I'm actually kind of hoping her generation
| grows up with less emphasis on appearance. Maybe we have a
| couple years here with a few less narcissists. Only good
| things can come out of such developments IMO.
| verisimi wrote:
| > We're lucky enough that she was able to start school at 3
| months old
|
| Lucky for who?
| the_sleaze9 wrote:
| As a parent in the thick of babies exactly at this age and
| surrounded by other parents in the same situation, I cannot
| tell the difference between a "covid" baby and any other.
|
| What I can tell you is how much time and effort the parents
| are putting into the baby, and whether is home-schooled or
| goes to school/daycare.
|
| First child? They're probably walking early. Third kid?
| They'll be pushing a year and a half old with barely 5 words
| in their repertoire and I'll consider them lucky if they can
| hold themselves upright using a chair for support.
|
| The parents with 3 young kids just don't have the bandwidth
| to provide the kind of attention that the baby needs.
|
| I essentially think about it this way - consider how much
| information AlphaGo has to learn with. Now consider how much
| information your brain processes with only your vision. You
| think there's gonna be a statistically relevant causation
| because there's a piece of fabric on the adult's face?
|
| I can't say for certain, but from my daily sampling it's much
| less than you intuitively would think. Kids are resilient and
| motivated to learn.
| mr-wendel wrote:
| Also good points to consider. The parental investment
| factor probably is a much more dominant factor in the
| equation too. Curiosity and resilience too.
|
| And thanks for a charitable understanding of the "covid
| baby" idea: obviously "all babies right now are covid
| babies" so this is a comparison of "pre-covid" vs "now"
| (and that early on, that line was much blurrier).
| danShumway wrote:
| > I have one friend who absolutely swears that "covid babies"
| are a thing, and that you can spot them from across the room.
|
| I don't dismiss this out of hand, it is at least somewhat
| plausible to me that less facial exposure might impact infant
| development. However, I can also probably spot a covid baby
| at least somewhat reliably across the room, because I'd just
| look for any baby that's seems like they're less than 2-3
| years old, so I'm not certain that being able to do so
| reveals very much.
| the_sleaze9 wrote:
| Totally agreed.
|
| I can also spot a Trump baby across the room, which is
| obviously totally different than a Biden baby. I'll take
| the liberty of not revealing my meaning either, of course.
| mkr-hn wrote:
| It seems like one of the countries where masking while sick and
| during flu/cold season is common would have some studies on
| this.
| BoxOfRain wrote:
| It didn't seem to make a difference at all when Scotland and
| Wales had mask mandates but England didn't, although I've not
| seen a rigorous analysis of why this was.
| swayvil wrote:
| Given the current hubub, you'd think that such studies are
| the _first_ thing we 'd hear about.
| saalweachter wrote:
| You'd notice it in professional populations, I'd wager.
|
| I also assume it would be a confounding factor in any study
| that involved masks, if it was a significant effect. "Weird,
| the group that breathed in asbestos for 20 years without
| wearing a mask had 90% more lung cancer than the masked
| group, but 20% less XYZ. Does asbestos exposure prevent XYZ?"
| mauvehaus wrote:
| Dental hygienists might be another group that could be
| studied, and hopefully one with fewer confounding factors.
|
| As an added bonus they're usually (in the Before Times)
| wearing surgical masks as opposed to a [K]N-95, which is
| anecdotally a lot more reflective of what the general
| population is wearing (if they're wearing anything at all).
|
| Edited to add:
|
| As an added, added bonus, dental hygienist skews heavily
| female, whereas construction and remediation skews heavily
| male. Female populations also wouldn't have the confounding
| factor of facial hair, which interferes with the seal of a
| respirator.
|
| Full disclosure: I type all this while I'm wearing a half-
| face respirator with P-100 cartridges on it because I'm
| doing a bunch of sanding today. I also have a goatee. Read
| into that what you will.
| andai wrote:
| I've seen memes showing a news headline "doctors baffled by
| microplastic in human lungs", juxtaposed with an unrelated
| headline that mentions face masks are made of the same plastic.
| Robotbeat wrote:
| The form matters. The plastic in masks is not inhalable, and
| in all likelihood wearing a mask reduces inhaled plastics
| like it reduces inhaling of any other solid.
| toss1 wrote:
| The article specified that all masks tested _other than
| KN95 masks_ produced more microplastics than they filtered
| out (it didn 't mention if they tested surgical masks).
|
| This is not a bad result, since if you want to filter out
| viruses to protect the wearer (vs minimize general
| transmission), the N95/KN95 masks are the only ones worth
| wearing.
|
| Quality matters, all items in a category are not the same.
| Robotbeat wrote:
| Oh, agreed, there. KN-95 masks are the only types I've
| been using for over a year, so I just kind of assumed
| that. Many cloth masks do very little so I wouldn't be
| surprised if they actually make it worse.
| [deleted]
| refurb wrote:
| Micro plastics mostly come from synthetic fibers, like the
| fabric in masks.
| Robotbeat wrote:
| More like from woven fabrics or non-woven felts, which
| shed fibers.
| JTbane wrote:
| Oh no, your shirt is made from polyester, panic! (/s)
| [deleted]
| dukeofdoom wrote:
| Fibers embedded in lung tissue is how asbestos causes lung
| cancer, so wouldn't surprise me. Wearing a mask for an entire
| work day, than inevitably some of those mask fibers will get to
| your lungs. Its only a question if your lung tissue is not able
| to clear out some of them, that will cause inflammation, that
| long term can lead to cancer.
| goodpoint wrote:
| Turns out masks are not made of asbestos.
|
| Unsurprisingly, masks safety and effectiveness has been
| studied extremely extensively.
| LeanderK wrote:
| certain groups (nurses, doctors or certain workers) have to
| wear a masks all of the time for years. It would have
| definitely been noticed if it would cause such
| effects...the control group exists, just compare it to the
| rest. It would have been obvious.
| GekkePrutser wrote:
| But those groups are particular ones that are also
| exposed to other environments that affect health so any
| discrepancy will be hard to attribute.
|
| Also, doctors did not wear masks to the extend we did
| during Corona. They'd only wear them during some surgery,
| not the whole day including even outside.
| goodpoint wrote:
| On the contrary, there's been plenty of doctors and lab
| technicians wearing masks full time and for decades!
|
| Not to mention semiconductor workers.
|
| And industrial worker dealing with hazardous materials.
| GekkePrutser wrote:
| Like hanoz says above, what professionals wear is not
| really comparable to what people wear on the subway these
| days. It's the cheapest of the cheap Chinese crap, and
| usually used so long and mishandled that it is becoming
| really fluffy. Especially now that nobody really cares
| anymore and the use of them is incidental they end up
| being lugged around more than worn and not frequently
| replaced.
|
| A fresh mask doesn't shed a lot but I've seen ones that
| are all hairy and stringy from being rubbed around in
| pockets with other stuff. I'm sure they shed a lot more
| material than a fresh mask.
|
| And a lot of the types you mention would not wear masks
| like this but powered respirators (e.g. people working in
| clean rooms)
|
| Personally I have major issues the masks for past medical
| trauma reasons but I really don't think they are healthy
| to keep around forever.
| hanoz wrote:
| Indeed. Nor were they wearing the same one again and
| again for months on end, and stuffing it in their jeans
| pocket in between.
| GekkePrutser wrote:
| True, I used a fresh one every day during the worst of
| it, but I have to say I've gone back to doing exactly
| what you describe. The only place I still need one is
| public transport and now that it's getting hot (Spain) I
| often go outside without a coat, so my pocket is the only
| place to leave it. And it seems like a waste to replace
| it after one 15 minute ride on the subway.
|
| And I'm not the only one, I've seen a lot of people
| wearing ones that are all fluffy from long use and
| sometimes washing (some people really wash disposable
| masks). I'm sure that will increase shedding a lot.
| ejb999 wrote:
| >>certain groups (nurses, doctors or certain workers)
| have to wear a masks all of the time for years
|
| Not really - doctors/nurses etc have for a very long time
| worn masks for short periods of times, for certain
| procedures, for certain hours of the day for some days in
| the week- very few HC professionals have _ever_ had to
| wear masks continually all day long, day after day and
| then also for additional chunks of time as they go about
| their non-work life.
| ejb999 wrote:
| >>Turns out masks are not made of asbestos.
|
| Neither are cigarettes, but getting enough cigarette smoke
| in your lung does causes cancer.
| moistly wrote:
| "Fun" fact: cigarette filters were made with asbestos.
|
| > From 1952 to 1956, Lorillard Tobacco Company's Kent
| Micronite cigarettes were made with asbestos filters. The
| filters were advertised as increasing the experience and
| safety of smoking
|
| https://www.mesothelioma.com/asbestos-
| exposure/products/asbe...
| simondw wrote:
| It also turns out masks are not made of burning
| cigarettes. How many more of these do we have to do?
| goodpoint wrote:
| At this point I can expect anything from this thread.
| Some conspiracy theory claiming that masks are
| manufactured by aliens.
| joshspankit wrote:
| Agreed.
|
| However on the other side: there were some rather poor
| quality masks produced during the pandemic, so I would not
| be surprised to see future data about _those_ being linked
| to health problems.
| Karawebnetwork wrote:
| We had at least one such situation here:
|
| https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/montreal/masks-early-pulmonar...
|
| https://montreal.ctvnews.ca/recalled-masks-were-worn-by-thou...
|
| "coated in a substance called graphene oxide that's linked to
| lung disease and is now banned in Canada, at least
| temporarily."
| goodpoint wrote:
| If anything, it's the very opposite.
|
| Wearing a mask has additional benefits of filtering out
| pollution, microplastics in the air and blocking common flu,
| pollen etc.
| walterbell wrote:
| Based on what particle size?
| cypress66 wrote:
| N95 masks filter 95% of 0.3 micron particles.
| varenc wrote:
| Fun fact: 0.3 micron particles are the most penetrating
| particles of any size, _including smaller particles_.
| It's counterintuitive, but 0.1 micron particles will be
| filtered out more easily than 0.3 micron particles. [0]
| That's in fact why all masks are rated this way, since it
| gives you the absolute worst case. It's fair to say that
| an N95 would filter out at least 95% of all particles.
|
| [0] Wikipedia graph showing this: https://en.wikipedia.or
| g/wiki/HEPA#/media/File:Filteration_C...
| cypress66 wrote:
| Nice, I didn't know that.
| jtdev wrote:
| donthellbanme wrote:
| I was thinking about this tonight on my walk.
|
| I've been noticing some funny looks at my mask wearing.
|
| I usually walk with my mask on. I have done this way before
| Covid.
|
| I used to wear it for allergies. My allergies just felt better
| when I wore a mask.
|
| Tonight I could smell burn't tires on my walk. A older guy
| happened to be doing a burn out in his Tesla. Yea--I know, not
| the typical burnout guy. A few Japanese beers might have
| something to do with the stunt.
|
| I left, and thought about why I like to wear a mask. We have so
| much pollution in the air, it just seems prudent? I'm not even
| that worried about Covid right now.
|
| (I do believe we consume way to much plastic, and other chemicals
| (Dawn Dish soap has 13 chemicals. Why? It cleans well. I am not a
| great dishwasher though.)
|
| So if you see a "jerk" wearing a mask on Sir Francis Drake look
| away. I know it bothers some folks.
| swayvil wrote:
| Mask-wearing is like foot-binding and leeching.
|
| Pathological and perverse, perhaps. But also totally cool and
| in agreement with the experts.
|
| It's a window into our psychology. Anthropologists of the
| future will reap much research papers.
| danShumway wrote:
| > Pathological and perverse, perhaps. But also totally cool
| and in agreement with the experts.
|
| Um... "perverse"?
|
| I have a lot less patience for these takes than I used to
| because at least early on in the pandemic people could
| convincingly claim that wearing a mask was "cool". There was
| at least truth to the idea that you would be shamed for not
| wearing a mask. But that's not the situation anymore -- GP
| wrote a comment about how they're getting a lot of weird
| looks in public for wearing a mask to help with pollution. If
| the response to that is, "what's up with this mask fad?",
| then I'm not sure you understand how fads or popularity work.
|
| Anecdotally, even in a majority Democrat area the majority of
| people I see in just about every single social situation are
| not wearing masks, even in enclosed environments and at
| offices. The majority of retail workers I see don't wear
| masks. There are maybe 3-6 people total that I've seen in my
| entire church that wear a mask. And it's not exclusive to
| Republicans, most Democrats I know are not wearing masks --
| to the point where people are far more likely to give funny
| looks or scowl at others for having one on.
|
| As far as I can tell people wearing masks in public are
| pretty squarely the minority at this point, but the rhetoric
| against masking never really got updated since the early
| pandemic so people are still pretending like if they go to an
| average grocery store without a mask everyone there will
| judge them over it.
|
| GP wears a mask to help with allergies and reduce road
| pollution -- this is pretty reasonable and would have been
| reasonable pre-pandemic. I don't understand why anyone would
| care about someone else making that decision in the first
| place, let alone why they would care so much that they'd call
| GP a pervert over it. :)
| swayvil wrote:
| In a hundred million years of biological history, I doubt
| that there is anything as perverse as voluntarily blocking
| your own breathing hole. It's right up there with crowds
| throwing themselves off cliffs and maniacs walking down the
| sidewalk chattering at their plastic rat.
| CyanBird wrote:
| > I doubt that there is anything as perverse as
| voluntarily blocking your own breathing hole.
|
| Well, then I would recommend you to look more around you,
| very few to no animals intake air directly through their
| trachea, we evolved noses to both filter the small
| particulate with nose hairs, change the temperature of
| the air and later evolved the use of smell
|
| So yeah, next time you go out I would recommend you to
| carefully review the faces of the beings you see around
| you and realize the existence and plurality of noses and
| "noseholes", and yes, noses themselves also inhibit
| oxygen flow vs "open trachea holes"
|
| Lastly, you are welcome to give yourself a tracheotomy if
| you'd like too, just be careful, or maybe not
| GabrielMtn wrote:
| "Blocking your own breathing hole"
|
| Ok. Well thanks for removing all doubt here at least.
| danShumway wrote:
| > In a hundred million years of biological history, I
| doubt that there is anything as perverse as voluntarily
| blocking your own breathing hole
|
| Really? You genuinely can't think of anything in the
| entire history of humanity more perverse that someone
| could do than wear a mask? Have you spent much time on
| the Internet? And historically -- I mean, I'm just
| throwing out one idea off the top of my head, but how
| about public executions in the Colosseum for
| entertainment purposes?
|
| This is pretty silly. :)
|
| Even if you do somehow think that mask-wearers are all
| perversely deriving some pleasure from suffocating
| themselves and that they're walking around unable to
| breathe, there's still no way you genuinely believe that
| auto-erotic asphyxiation is the most perverse thing that
| society has ever invented.
| TomSwirly wrote:
| If you think any of this is sane, you have another think
| coming.
| GabrielMtn wrote:
| Do you have any evidence of these claims or is this just more
| reactionary politicizing of masks?
| swayvil wrote:
| Experts agree that there is such a thing as
| anthropologists.
| TomSwirly wrote:
| One of the sad things about the Internet these days is that
| into every conversation descends the Screaming Loonie(tm).
|
| The Screaming Loonie doesn't waste any time but immediately
| dives into some world-class conspiracy theory - in this case,
| "Almost all the world's doctors, medical researchers and
| public health officials are in a century-long conspiracy to
| present a false theory, that masks help prevent infectious
| respiratory diseases."
|
| I used to find this sad, but now the Screaming Loonies have
| killed a lot of people by hampering our response to COVID,
| and it's not sad or funny any more, it's enraging.
|
| If we can jail people who call in prank bomb threats, we can
| should certainly jail the gloating and arrogant medical liars
| who have caused such carnage.
|
| In a just world, medical liars would be given the same sort
| of sentence that we give today to
| swayvil wrote:
| That is a carefully roundabout argument for something, no
| doubt. And I'm sure that the experts all agree.
| PhoenixDavidson wrote:
| Relevant: https://www.gq.com/story/how-testosterone-therapies-
| are-tran...
|
| "While Devgon was wondering what was wrong, he started reading
| about the increasingly prominent theory that toxins in pesticides
| and plastics are throwing off men's endocrine systems--and he
| started to wonder about his own testosterone levels."
|
| Discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31435864
| verisimi wrote:
| > You Eat a Credit's Card Worth of Plastic Every Week
|
| I'm pretty sure I don't. I'm not a subscriber (I can't read the
| article), but I take it that these plastics are so small we can't
| see them...
|
| How do I even test this claim? Do I get my microscope and look at
| salt? Cos I have.. and I don't see fibres or anything.
| dhosek wrote:
| Two simple things that you can do are to (a) don't wash plastics
| in the dishwasher and (2) don't microwave stuff in plastic
| containers. This last will require taking stuff out of the
| disposable container that many frozen meals come in to cook it.
| Some brands have a cardboard/waxpaper tray instead of a plastic
| one although there might be identical looking packaging that has
| different internals based on the store (I remember being
| surprised to discover that a frozen meal I bought at Whole Foods
| had the cardboard bowl while the same meal from a regular
| supermarket had a plastic bowl).
| mckirk wrote:
| A startup selling probiotics containing plastic-eating bacteria,
| anyone?
| moffkalast wrote:
| As long as you don't spill any and wake up tomorrow with all
| the plastic in your house eaten.
| AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote:
| Interestingly a friend of mine was discussing this with me
| yesterday and proposed that such a bacteria, if prolific,
| would be one of the more appealing causes of the end of
| modern civilization.
| ephbit wrote:
| Not gonna happen. Why? Because AFAIK all life on earth uses
| water as a solvent. Unless your plastic is
| constantly/regularly exposed to water, bacteria will have
| almost no chance of catabolizing it.
| yetihehe wrote:
| 1. Make plastic baby potties.
|
| 2. Sell baby food with "probiotic bacteria guarding babies
| internally against plastic pollution".
|
| 3. Profit.
| fsflover wrote:
| Who cares about externalities of your business today? /s
| thejackgoode wrote:
| I wonder how much evolution pressure you must exert onto a
| living thing for it to start consuming something as complex as
| plastic. And how many generations past time they are not in the
| lab anymore they figure out there's simpler solutions to
| nutrition, especially in the gut.
| ben-schaaf wrote:
| Not having any competition for a food source is a very strong
| pressure, so much so that multiple plastic eating bacteria
| have already been discovered.
| Qem wrote:
| If we consider lignin as the first plastic (not man-made), it
| took about 60 million years. See
| https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/article/the-
| fanta...
| andai wrote:
| There was a story on HN today about a plastic-eating enzyme:
|
| >Researchers at the Cockrell School of Engineering and
| College of Natural Sciences used a machine learning model to
| generate novel mutations to a natural enzyme called PETase
| that allows bacteria to degrade PET plastics. The model
| predicts which mutations in these enzymes would accomplish
| the goal of quickly depolymerizing post-consumer waste
| plastic at low temperatures.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31427011
|
| Maybe one of the human gut bacteria could be modified to also
| produce this enzyme? Though presumably it would be
| outcompeted by the natural variant (assuming dissolving
| plastic confers it no advantage).
|
| Also, I have to wonder if the monomers are more harmful than
| the plastic? Being smaller particles they might perhaps end
| up in the bloodstream?
| joshspankit wrote:
| We'd have to have a huge array of enzymes to deal with the
| dizzying array of chemicals we group in under "plastic".
|
| For example, the linked article specifically targets
| polyethylene terephthalate which they say is a huge target
| because it accounts for 12% of all plastic waste.
| moffkalast wrote:
| > Maybe one of the human gut bacteria could be modified to
| also produce this enzyme?
|
| Fantastic, now I can not only eat the food, but also the
| packaging!
|
| Can we get one for cellulose too? Then we can eat pizza
| while it's still in the box.
| sp332 wrote:
| You can, there are cellulase enzymes sold for human
| consumption. I don't know how much cellulose you'd be
| able to eat in one sitting, though. Cellulase is pretty
| slow.
| krageon wrote:
| And for keratin, so nail biting becomes a type of
| recycling.
| Robotbeat wrote:
| I actually suspect the plastics are not a big health problem. The
| exception is inhalation. Inhaling basically anything solid is bad
| for you. Silicate, dust, smoke, fine plastic particles, flour,
| pollen, it's probably all bad for you.
|
| https://oem.bmj.com/content/61/2/157
| post_break wrote:
| I saw a neat video which I cant find where a guy buys Himalayan
| salt, puts it under a microscope, and pulls out plastic. It's
| disturbing how plastic is in the salt and almost impossible to
| remove.
| TomSwirly wrote:
| How, exactly, would plastic be appearing in rock salt that was
| laid down millions of years ago?
| PKop wrote:
| From the processing that puts it into a package that people
| can buy, among possible other sources of contamination (ocean
| water itself).
| adamsmith143 wrote:
| It's not as if they are bottling it right at the source,
| presumably it goes through an industrial process to clean the
| stuff and get it into containers.
| pixl97 wrote:
| I would assume it's being added in the supply chain
| unintentionally on its way to you. You would think that the
| Himalayas would be presitine, but because of no solid waste
| systems plastics trash builds up very fast in the
| environment.
| ehnto wrote:
| My assumption is that because salt is mined and stored in
| open air, plastic particles from the ocean's non-trivial
| cache of microplastics being brought up into the atmosphere
| by evaporation and weather, and from ashes/plastics from
| trash incineration are potentially finding their way onto the
| piles.
|
| If water is used during the processing of the salts it could
| be that as well.
| dwighttk wrote:
| But my credit card is titanium
| zivkovicp wrote:
| then you really have your work cut out for you!
| dym_sh wrote:
| upscale on iron intake instead
| PKop wrote:
| that would be bad
|
| https://raypeat.com/articles/articles/iron-dangers.shtml
| AstralStorm wrote:
| The plastics themselves are only part of the story - they are
| relatively inert. However chemicals used to plasticize them and
| prevent fire are not, and some of them are already banned, but we
| have insufficient days on the replacements used.
|
| (Phenolics such as Bisphenol A - have hormonal effects causing
| direct cancer risk. And other effects too.)
| usrn wrote:
| I think it depends on the plastic. "Plastic" just refers to a
| mechanical property that _a lot_ of different polymers have.
| CyanBird wrote:
| Also, note that while bisphemol A is largely banned from
| certain food-contact plastics, it has been replaced with other
| "plasticising" chemicals which are largely "the same" such as
| bisphemol E, F, S, or AF
|
| For the interested https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bisphenol
|
| Also note n2, variations of vinyl or pvc plastic makes strong
| use of bisphemols for flexibility, pvc is being used to replace
| ageing copper or lead piping across the world, it is also
| largely unexplored the degree to which there is legislation
| regarding the sourcing and chemical composition of said water
| pipes over most of the world (as in, if there is a new
| international hotel building being built in, let's say brazil,
| what type of water pipe will the construction company use? You
| honestly think they would use copper everywhere and pay a 5x
| premium on it, or just use some random pvc pipe embedded on the
| walls? And then, if it proves to be that the pvc had bisphemol
| X on it, how would you even fix it? Rip it all up? We are
| talking of literal concrete bricks. Or just hide it from the
| public? )
| throw8383833jj wrote:
| >> When it comes to eating microplastics, scientists have
| documented plastic particles in about 40 percent of the human
| diet, including beer, honey, salt, and seafood
|
| I was surprised about the honey. Geezz.
|
| Anyways, i've got about 35 fruit trees, and 90 berry bushes in
| the backyard and I plan to eat primarily from that as soon as
| they generate enough food..
| glenneroo wrote:
| AFAIK that probably won't help you much as rain also contains
| plastic particles, which is also why all bodies of water tested
| (so far), even underground, contain plastic.
| throw8383833jj wrote:
| we don't get rain 10 months of the year. Irrigate from city
| water.
|
| do the fruit contain plastic?
| beeforpork wrote:
| This article conflates particles of any size, and often does not
| even mention sizes, e.g., '28 particles' in a serving of beer?
| That is imprecise (doesn't mention size) and wrong: probably way
| to little, as nano particles are used in filtering (clarifying)
| beer.
|
| The articles also doesn't really tell me how to avoid all that
| plastic. If 40 percent of human diet contains plastic, then
| there's hope, so which 60 percent do not contain plastic? This
| would be really helpful to check my own diet for surprises. E.g.,
| I drink only craft beer and make my own ketchup, in order to
| avoid nano plastics -- but what elephant do I miss?
|
| The problem is really serious, so articles about this should take
| more care to be helpful.
| kingnothing wrote:
| Carbonated beverage cans are lined with plastic. It should not
| be a surprise that microplastics are found in beer.
| joshspankit wrote:
| Personally, I think that in answer to the question of "how to
| avoid all that plastic?", the article is leaning more towards
| "take action to stop the plastic from being produced and added
| to food in the first place".
|
| While it makes the problem larger from an individual
| perspective, the alternative of simply trying to avoid it in
| our own foods would mean that our available foods shrink over
| time as plastics continue to seep in to more and more places.
| pc86 wrote:
| > _the article is leaning more towards "take action to stop
| the plastic from being produced and added to food in the
| first place"_
|
| Which is kind of nonsense unless someone happens to be CEO of
| Molson Coors or something. It seems obvious that if you want
| to avoid ingesting plastic, the clearest path to that is to
| know what foods are less likely to contain plastic in the
| first place.
| refurb wrote:
| Micro plastics are mostly fibers shed from fabric. So stop
| buying synthetic or semi-synthetic clothing and only buy
| cotton or other organic materials.
| bonniemuffin wrote:
| If consumers know which products have more microplastics and
| are able to avoid them, it'll produce market forces that
| encourage businesses to reduce the microplastics in their
| products. The free market doesn't always move in the right
| direction, but in this case aligning the incentives could
| really help -- if we don't even know which products to avoid,
| there's no chance of market forces helping to push businesses
| in the right direction.
| moffkalast wrote:
| > but what elephant do I miss?
|
| Probably the plastic that was in those tomatoes to start with.
|
| I doubt there's a practical way to avoid it, it's probably
| fairly random depending on where the food is from. Especially
| if I recall right it's often found in the water supply which
| you then drink directly or is used to water plants which you
| then eat.
| jacquesm wrote:
| Plants are reasonably good at filtering the water they ingest
| through their roots, if they weren't your tomatoes would be
| full of sand and mud (clay).
| wil421 wrote:
| Plants uptake chemicals and other smaller molecules through
| their roots. Oftentimes they will store pollutants in their
| fruit or stems because they don't know what to do with it.
|
| Here's an article from Nature that specifically studied
| plastic uptake by plant roots.[1]
|
| [1] https://www.nature.com/articles/s41893-020-0567-9
| jacquesm wrote:
| Yes, at the um scale and below it does happen, and such
| concentrating effects can really change it from a non-
| issue to a serious problem, depending on how chemically
| active the contaminant is.
|
| TFA: "Yet despite all the new knowledge about
| microplastics and the even tinier nanoplastics, smaller
| than a millimeter, that enter the human body through
| ingestion or inhalation"
|
| Microplastics are apparently taken as being a mm or
| larger, and 'nanoplastics' are anything smaller than a mm
| which is still very large. The ones you are talking about
| would be very much smaller than those by another 3 orders
| of decimal magnitude.
| wil421 wrote:
| The article specifically says micrometer so it would be
| right between millimeter and nano sized plastics. They
| will only get smaller as they degrade.
|
| > Our results provide evidence in support of
| submicrometre- and micrometre-sized polystyrene and
| polymethylmethacrylate particles penetrating the stele of
| both species using the crack-entry mode at sites of
| lateral root emergence.
| GekkePrutser wrote:
| Startup idea: flavoured credit cards!
| blastonico wrote:
| Yesterday I shit an American Express
| titzer wrote:
| Libertarian me, age 20, is screaming "I'm so glad we let the free
| market produce whatever they see fit, with little regulation!"
|
| Now me, age 42, has eaten an untold amount of everyone else's
| garbage and can now literally no longer avoid eating the chewed-
| up-and-spit-out refuse of our bad choices that now cannot be
| reversed.
| barbegal wrote:
| The actual study is here
| https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S030438942...
|
| The study presents three scenarios assuming different assumptions
| about the mass of plastic particles. In the worst case scenario,
| where I think the assumptions are bad, they estimate 5g of
| plastic per week. In the other two scenarios which used more
| complex but more realistic modelling they estimate 0.15 and 0.3g
| of plastic consumed per week so only a credit card sized amount
| per year.
|
| In these scenarios (0.15g and 0.3g) about 90% they estimate comes
| from salt.
| matthewdgreen wrote:
| What's worrying about this is that we're about 50 years into an
| unexplained epidemic of obesity and metabolic disease that
| nobody has a clear explanation for, and is also affecting lab
| animals fed controlled diets. It would be fascinating if this
| was all correlated with a common environmental contaminant, and
| the increasing use of various plastics could line up well.
| moistly wrote:
| And don't forget that sperm counts have dropped a frightening
| amount, and that plastics leech hormone analogues.
| zamfi wrote:
| You may find this exposition interesting:
| http://achemicalhunger.com/
| rajin444 wrote:
| Even they admit that in the end CICO is correct. You cannot
| escape physics.
|
| That being said, the real question is: if somebody stopped
| eating, would their body die instead of using their fat for
| energy? There could definitely be cases where that happens
| (likely caused by modern tech / science), but given things
| like this happen:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angus_Barbieri%27s_fast
|
| It's likely just a willpower/intellect issue once cico is
| handled. How long can you keep it up, are you able to make
| effective modifications, etc until you reach your goal
| weight.
|
| I'd wager that it's much more likely society lacks
| willpower & intelligence (when presented with excess
| resources) instead of we introduced something that makes
| our bodies unable to lose weight.
|
| Anecdotally, as a former obese person and with many family
| members who have dealt with/are dealing with obesity cico +
| willpower was always the answer. It's very likely the
| willpower needed to lose weight is something a large
| portion of the population fundamentally can't achieve
| without cultural enforcement.
| zamfi wrote:
| Sure, CICO definitely applies, but so what? The first
| derivative of stored calories doesn't tell you anything
| interesting about _causes_.
|
| Your bank balance is a sum of money coming and and money
| going out, but _what causes money coming in_ and _what
| causes money going out_ are much more useful to anyone
| trying to earn wealth or avoid debt than the _mere fact_
| that your bank balance is their sum.
|
| Like you, many people are convinced that the issue is
| "willpower / intellect". But this doesn't share a causal
| relationship with CICO! The willpower argument is like
| saying "oh yeah, to become rich, just earn more than you
| spend!" -- sure, that's true, and then someone says "ok,
| how do I do that?"; if your answer is "willpower!" I
| doubt they'll find that very satisfying.
|
| Since I suspect you didn't read the post either, I'll
| excerpt two questions here:
|
| (1) Rates of obesity in lab rats -- whose diets haven't
| changed -- have also increased over the last 50 years. Do
| they lack willpower too?
|
| (2) Average calorie consumption hasn't changed much over
| the last 50 years, and nor has calorie expenditure.
| Average weight gain is in fact _super slow_ , on the
| order of a few pounds per year, for most obese
| individuals. That's the equivalent of overeating by ~7000
| calories each year -- only 1% of typical annual
| consumption. It's hard to imagine that people don't have
| the willpower to reduce their food consumption by 20
| calories per day. Losing weight by keeping up a caloric
| deficit requires a ton of willpower because your body
| _super fights_ against starvation. But why would a lack
| of willpower be the reason people perpetually eat 1% too
| many calories? And why did they only start doing that 50
| years ago?
|
| CICO is not a useful causal explanation for the obesity
| epidemic. Obesity at the societal level is a more
| interesting problem than merely CICO, despite how many
| people think the reason is some variant of willpower.
| john567 wrote:
| This must be part of some disinformation effort to streer
| people away from the simple answer.
|
| Their conclusion is that you're helpless if your fat and
| that's just not true. The idea that this is not in your
| hands is ridiculous. If you are fat and you don't want to
| be fat you simply change your eating habits. This can be
| very difficult to do because you have formed these habits
| throughout your life but it isn't complicated and you
| should just do it anyway.
| zamfi wrote:
| Obviously you [0] didn't read the article, but that is
| not their conclusion.
|
| There seems to be some kind of unfortunate "shame
| brigade" out on the Internet that comes out of the
| woodwork to overrun any conversation around obesity that
| even _hints_ that there might be reasons for the obesity
| epidemic other than individual people 's poor choices.
|
| The lab rats whose rate of obesity has increased over the
| last 30 years, despite consuming the exact same
| controlled diets, are certainly not "changing their
| eating habits" -- there must be more to the picture than
| merely eating habits.
|
| This set of articles explores that. We don't have answers
| yet, but these folks make a strong argument that the
| question is worth asking.
|
| [0] It's an unfortunate fact of scientific progress that
| ideologues have, in other fields, at other times, held
| back that scientific progress for decades through their
| inability to consider disconfirming evidence against a
| favored theory. This kind of comment should be ignored by
| anyone who values truth over consensus.
| gilmore606 wrote:
| When I was obese and I thought about my own obesity, I
| decided it was under my control and I changed my habits
| (this was hard!) and I lost 110lbs. There was no more to
| the picture than my eating habits. Perhaps I was a
| strange outlier; lucky for me.
|
| But when I think about other people's obesity, I am not
| allowed to think that, because I would be part of a shame
| brigade.
|
| I wish the shame brigade had gotten to me years earlier.
| antisthenes wrote:
| > This kind of comment should be ignored by anyone who
| values truth over consensus.
|
| I hope you're talking about your own comment, because
| consensus is truth, for all practical purposes.
|
| What's _really_ toxic is taking a fringe theory and
| pretending it has equivalence and /or equal weight with
| scientific consensus, when it doesn't have even 1% of the
| rigor and reproducible evidence behind it. That kind of
| attitude is absolutely glorifying ignorance and is
| utterly toxic to actual progress.
| zamfi wrote:
| > consensus is truth, for all practical purposes
|
| Oof, you are definitely right about this. Very few people
| are able to distinguish truth where it deviates from
| consensus, and basically no one can do it in domains
| where they lack expertise.
|
| That said, there _is no scientific consensus_ about the
| causes of the obesity epidemic, so I 'm not sure what
| criticism you're directing at me, exactly -- though I
| deduce from your tone that I triggered you in some way.
|
| I'm not putting forth any fringe theory about the causes
| of the obesity epidemic; the link I posted examines
| common explanations for the epidemic and tries to figure
| out whether they're valid, and if not, what other causes
| there might be. They don't claim anything definitive, in
| the end, because it would take actual studies to prove
| any real connection. They're pretty clear about what they
| can and can't claim.
|
| I have no idea what this is supposed to mean:
|
| > it doesn't have even 1% of the rigor and reproducible
| evidence behind it. That kind of attitude is absolutely
| glorifying ignorance and is utterly toxic to actual
| progress.
| CuriouslyC wrote:
| Highly unlikely. The obesity epidemic is very well explained
| by diet and lifestyle choices, and regional variations in
| average body mass correlate with these explanatory variable
| pretty well.
| mitchdoogle wrote:
| So people just started making different choices the last
| fifty years?
| throwawayboise wrote:
| Yes. People and jobs are more sedentary. Kids sit in
| front of screens instead of riding bikes to the park and
| playing ball or just running around. Fat in prepared
| foods has been reduced, replaced with corn syrup. Portion
| sizes for food and drink at restaurants have probably
| close to doubled since the 1970s.
|
| We are less active and we're eating more. Thus we got
| fat.
| higgsbozo wrote:
| Exactly. Fats were deemed the enemy #1 and the problem
| with corn syrup has relatively only recently been brought
| to public's attention. A friend of mine from Europe spent
| the summer in Florida riding bike all day long under a
| swelling sun, selling encyclopedias. He should have lost
| weight, but he came back with puffy cheeks and belly. I
| blame corn syrup for that :)
| meowzero wrote:
| Not corn syrup. He probably ate well while he was
| vacationing in Europe. Exercise doesn't really burn as
| much calories as people think.
|
| I did similar things where I probably had 10k steps a day
| in Europe because we walked everywhere all the time. We
| also ate a lot and often. So my weight didn't change.
| Heck, I thinks some people gained.
| appletrotter wrote:
| Yes! People eat differently now than in the 70s!
| aaaaaaaaata wrote:
| It's a feedback loop.
| Melatonic wrote:
| Plot the rise of computer related desk jobs on a graph
| and then overlay that with the same graph for obesity.
| Obviously not the sole cause but they line up pretty
| nicely
| mcguire wrote:
| You might try adding the number of McDonald's locations
| and their revenue. I have a hypothesis.
| olyjohn wrote:
| God, now I want a Big Mac.
| pbhjpbhj wrote:
| Advertising, it's an insidious evil.
| jnwatson wrote:
| This is largely debunked by a paper posted on HN a while
| back I can't seem to find right now.
|
| Even our pets are getting fat.
|
| Previous experiments both natural and manmade indicate that
| homeostasis prevents long term weight gain in situations of
| high caloric availability.
|
| The conclusion of the paper was that something was
| introduced into the environment in the 70s that is
| disrupting humans' and nearby mammals' homeostasis
| mechanisms.
| titzer wrote:
| Lazy people have lazy pets.
| spywaregorilla wrote:
| You mean the dogs eating corn based diets?
| logicchains wrote:
| It's got an incredibly simple explanation, if you look at a
| graph of average daily calorie intake by year.
| ellopoppit wrote:
| It's pretty clear the epidemic of obesity and metabolic
| disease is largely caused by sugar
|
| https://youtu.be/dBnniua6-oM
| wbsss4412 wrote:
| It's not at all clear that the current epidemic is caused
| by sugar.
|
| Lustig is a great speaker, and I'll admit that when I first
| watched that I was quite convinced.
|
| His position, however, is still not representative of a
| consensus within the field, and for good reason. While
| sugar consumption is likely detrimental to one's overall
| health. Simply cutting out sugar is not necessarily going
| to lead to better weight management outcomes.
|
| While sugar consumption has increased over time, so have
| added fats and oils [0]. Which are much more calorically
| dense. It's unlikely that any one food source is leading to
| the increases in obesity that we are seeing.
|
| [0] https://www.ers.usda.gov/webdocs/publications/82220/eib
| -166....
| krasotkin wrote:
| Consensus is not a necessary condition for truth. An idea
| can have no one believing it and be correct, and another
| idea can have everyone believing it and be wrong.
| wbsss4412 wrote:
| Absolutely.
|
| That said, it does beg the question: why, 12 years after
| that video was published, has the field not come to an
| agreement, if it is "pretty clearly" the truth?
|
| One could come up with various explanations, including
| lobbying by big sugar, but it falls flat when you
| consider that the sugar industry is only a small fraction
| of the industrialized food industry, there's plenty of
| lobbying and influence to go around.
|
| At the end of the day, there are only a few things that
| are clear: junk food is bad, Americans eat too many
| calories, and could stand to eat more fruits and
| vegetables.
| teawrecks wrote:
| The first person to suggest fossil fuels would leaf to
| global warming was in 1896. How long until the field came
| to an agreement?
| gaze wrote:
| are you making the argument that BECAUSE his ideas are
| not widely accepted they must be true? Come on.
| admax88qqq wrote:
| No they are making the argument that people have been
| right in the past and it took forever for the community
| to find "consensus" on that position if ever.
|
| So to doubt something is true just because "it's been 12
| years and there's no consensus" is not necessarily a good
| rebuttal to something being true or not.
| wbsss4412 wrote:
| I don't think I ever disputed that it can take a long
| time to reach consensus.
|
| It's quite clear that there isn't a consensus on what the
| truth is, ergo the truth is out there on what causes
| obesity and it isn't to be found within the current
| consensus.
|
| However, do we take that to mean that sugar is the cause
| of obesity? I don't see overwhelming evidence to that
| fact, so I personally don't.
|
| What we can take is that whatever the truth is, it is not
| "clear" nor obvious at this point.
| teawrecks wrote:
| I don't understand this statement:
|
| > One could come up with various explanations, including
| lobbying by big sugar, but it falls flat when you
| consider that the sugar industry is only a small fraction
| of the industrialized food industry, there's plenty of
| lobbying and influence to go around.
|
| Are you saying that the sugar industry would be lobbying
| against larger industries with opposing goals? Or are you
| saying the sugar industry is just one of several
| industries who would like to use their money to push the
| blame around?
|
| I am not well versed in the agricultural industry, but
| doesn't the majority of our mass produced sugar come from
| the corn industry which is absolutely massive and will
| obviously do anything it can to protect its sources of
| income (sugar, ethanol, alcohol, oil, etc.)?
| wbsss4412 wrote:
| I can't say I have any special insider knowledge of food
| industry lobby.
|
| My statement was to preempt the common argument that
| somehow the sugar industry is so powerful that it was and
| is able to divert all of our collective attention from
| it, when it is the real culprit.
|
| The corn industry is a large industry, but so is the meat
| industry, dairy industry, processed food manufacturers,
| soy beans, etc. many of them, possibly even including
| corn, benefit from diverting attention away from their
| products towards sugar as the main villain. Even if sugar
| is a revenue source for corn, it pales in comparison for
| its main product: animal feed.
|
| None of that is to say that I think any of the above
| industries I listed is "the culprit" I only list them to
| illustrate my point. Big sugar has lobbying power, but it
| is all too common that the simplest story gets repeated,
| "it's all because of powerful lobbying group X"
| svachalek wrote:
| How many things did one guy say in 1896 that turned out
| to be wrong?
| uoaei wrote:
| I learned a while back but don't have time to dig up
| sources now that eating simple carbs and fats together
| encourages your body to take the fast calories and store
| them as fat, moreso than eating simple carbs alone (fast
| energy, relatively clean-burning) or fats alone. These
| kinds of interactions are historically very important for
| explaining particular quirks of the effects of diets and
| I wouldn't be surprised at all if microplastics had some
| sort of catalytic effect, e.g. by being nucleation points
| for buildup of something (arterial plaque or whatever
| else).
| sgtnoodle wrote:
| Sure, simply cutting out sugar but otherwise making poor
| dietary choices isn't going to lead to weight loss.
| Cutting out sugar tends to make it easier to eat healthy,
| though. Long term weight loss requires lifestyle changes.
|
| In my personal anecdotal experience, my weight gain and
| loss correlates to my caloric intake. When I've
| explicitly calorie counted, foods with refined
| carbohydrates are typically what blows up my count. When
| I've done low carb high fat and protein diets, I've found
| it difficult to eat too much, to the point of coming up
| several hundred calories short per day.
| wbsss4412 wrote:
| I mean yes, that's something of a tautology though.
|
| Cutting down on calories necessarily means cutting down
| on fat, carbs, or both (technically protein as well, but
| protein doesn't generally seem to be the issue.)
|
| If you were to follow an explicitly low fat diet, it
| would be very difficult to eat junk food as well. Almost
| all junk foods are high in both fat and carbs at the same
| time.
|
| You are right about refined carbs. Most public health
| organizations advise limiting one's consumption of those.
| eslaught wrote:
| I really, really recommend watching this lecture:
|
| The Human Microbiome: A New Frontier in Health by Susan
| Lynch
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XCaTQzjX2rQ
|
| What food you eat certainly influences conditions in your
| gut, which influences your gut microbiome. On the other
| hand, your gut microbiome is highly persistent and even
| efforts to diet may not have the direct impact you'd
| think it would. Also, other factors (like conditions at
| birth) have strong effects that are highly persistent.
|
| If you're not familiar with this research you really owe
| it to yourself to learn about it.
| k0k0r0 wrote:
| Indeed, this was very interesting. However, I missed a
| bit what changes to my diet I could do to improve
| myicrobiome. I would be glad to hear a scientist like her
| discussing this.
| eslaught wrote:
| This may not directly answer your question, but the
| Huberman Lab podcast [1] is done by a Stanford professor
| and generally includes very high quality summaries of
| recent research. He also provides actionable suggestions
| (though sometimes, the research is so new that they're
| still in the process of figuring this out). You can
| scroll through the home page and see the variety of
| topics he covers, there are a number on gut health.
|
| [1]: https://hubermanlab.com
| zamfi wrote:
| Sugar consumption peaked in 1997 [0] in the US. Obesity
| continues to rise.
|
| In Australia, sugar consumption dropped 23% (and other
| sweeteners dropped 16%) from 1980 to 2003, while obesity
| tripled. [1]
|
| There is more to the picture.
|
| [0] https://slimemoldtimemold.com/2021/07/11/a-chemical-
| hunger-p...
|
| [1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3257688/
| philjohn wrote:
| And HFCS?
| bb123 wrote:
| I don't think it's unexplained at all. People just don't like
| the explanation. People simply eat too much and don't move
| enough. The secondary reasons behind that are many but again
| pretty easy to see (more desk jobs, cheap high calorie foods,
| automobile ownership etc)
| zamfi wrote:
| Most folks who respond like this are not looking for
| reasons to believe they might be wrong, but just in case
| you are, please take a look at A Chemical Hunger [0], which
| explores these questions in some depth.
|
| It turns out, the simple explanations (people eat more &
| move less! too much sugar! etc.) are in fact insufficient.
|
| [0] https://slimemoldtimemold.com/2021/07/11/a-chemical-
| hunger-p...
| notahacker wrote:
| Obviously there are a large number of factors which
| affect the weight of a specific individual, and food
| intake and exercise are only two of them, but that blog's
| attempts to deny the causation behind the correlation
| looks far more highly motivated than anybody pointing out
| that trends in obesity mirror trends in diets and
| lifestyle changes.
|
| I mean, he handwaves away the statistic that suggests the
| mean US citizen's calorie intake increased by nearly a
| quarter over the period that obesity rose simply by
| saying "that's not a jaw dropping increase". He thinks a
| study in which people's food intake was increased by 50%
| showed a significant average weight gain in just three
| weeks _undermines_ the argument that feeding a population
| an average 25% more per day for the rest of their lives
| could increase obesity! I 'm actually _less_ suspicious
| that calorie counts are an oversimplification after
| reading what he citates as evidence against them; you
| could make a pretty good case for diet being the _sole_
| cause of increased obesity in the US from the references
| he makes to argue it 's unrelated!
|
| (Nothing wrong with the "lipostat" hypothesis he proposes
| as the alternative per se, but moving the cause of
| obesity onto "changes in how many individuals' bodies
| identify satiation points and metabolise food intake"
| doesn't result in a hypothesis which is independent from
| how diet has changed, it just complicates the causation a
| bit)
| kaezon wrote:
| Thank you for this citation! I've at least heard that
| CICO was nonsense, but the author has done a fantastic
| job researching the subject, breaking down common
| approaches to weight loss, and studies which have
| examined them.
| gloryjulio wrote:
| How is CICO nonsense...? Unless you are breaking the law
| of thermodynamics, there is no way you could gain more
| from what you eat. The best you can do is utilize 100% of
| the calorie intake. It's physically impossible to gain
| weight if you are burning for example 150% of the total
| calories intake! The fuel has to come from somewhere.
|
| The variation lies in different utilization rate, the
| burn rate, and all other variables, but within the limit
| of PHYSICS.
| spywaregorilla wrote:
| I don't buy it.
|
| > 2.1 Calories in calories out is a bad model
|
| True. It's insufficient. But it's not nothing. The
| article later claims that calorie consumption has "only"
| risen by about 20%. I find this take to be ridiculous.
| 20% is a lot. If I eat 20% more, I'll put on weight.
|
| Article also claims sugar consumption is down and carb
| consumption is down so therefore they can't be the cause.
| Yet in prior years we see an extremely strong correlation
| between carbs and sugar consumed per person and %
| obesity. Corn vs. actual sugar. Artificial zero calorie
| sweeteners. It all adds up.
| bb123 wrote:
| Exactly! That's 400 calories a day for the average
| person. Combine that with less physical activity and
| you've just found the source of your problem.
|
| We can even work it out: 1lb of human fat has ~4000
| calories in it. If we assume that only 10% of those
| excess calories actually end up as fat thats still 70lbs
| of additional weight by the time you're in your mid 20s.
| FuriouslyAdrift wrote:
| There's the beginnings of research that artificial
| flavorings are short-circuiting our satiation response,
| too. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8479585/
| tartoran wrote:
| That but also junk food and the industry pushing it.
| Karawebnetwork wrote:
| How does your theory explains
|
| > and is also affecting lab animals fed controlled diets
|
| ?
| formerly_proven wrote:
| How does a lab animal with a controlled diet get obese?
| Thermodynamics suddenly not a thing?
| paulmd wrote:
| an increase in the effectiveness of absorbing calories,
| or something in the food affecting their metabolic rate.
|
| you aren't a blast calorimeter, the food you eat
| obviously is not reduced to actual ash, so it's certainly
| possible that there are changes in either the inflow of
| calories _that your body is able to actually absorb_ or
| that something in the food is changing the rate at which
| you burn it. There are also various diseases and
| syndromes that could affect either of those processes.
|
| "calories in, calories out" is the only useful advice you
| can really give to people trying to lose weight, but that
| is not a scientifically rigorous position as far as the
| sum total of hormonal and microbiome processes involved
| in digestion and metabolism. Again, the food you eat is
| not reduced to ash, and there can definitely be changes
| in the processes involved.
|
| And indeed that is what the facts show - lab animals
| being fed controlled diets are now getting fat, as are
| feral animal colonies, so it doesn't make sense to make
| reductive and antagonistic remarks like "thermodynamics
| suddenly not a thing!?". The scientific process has
| showed you that your hypothesis is wrong, and it's now
| your duty to re-examine your hypothesis and account for
| the discrepancy. Maybe it's the study, maybe not.
|
| https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/full/10.1098/rspb.
| 201...
|
| But to be similarly reductive - "what, do you think feral
| cats are suddenly spending too much time at their desk
| job?"
|
| Feral cats aren't getting sugar in their diets, they
| haven't reduced their activity levels, and any increase
| in food supply should result in an increase in feral cats
| until the population can no longer be sustained, the
| predator-prey population cycle is as immutable as
| thermodynamics. Why are they getting fat, if calories in
| = calories out? Thermodynamics still works, right? So
| what's your alternative explanation? Maybe it's... not
| quite that simple?
|
| The most worrying potential answer is that we've created
| a variety of endocrine disruptors and those have
| permeated our environments. They get picked up by
| scavengers like mice and birds from our food and its
| packaging, they get picked up by cats who eat the mice
| and birds, etc. Potentially, they could end up even in
| things like fertilizer or pesticides that get turned into
| animal feed and fed to lab animals.
|
| This is also potentially backed by other effects, such as
| the continuing decrease in the age of menarche. Nobody
| really knows whether it's tied to changing patterns of
| exercise/weight, or whether those are _comorbid_ effects
| from exposure to endocrine disruptors /pseudo-hormones.
| It is definitely decreasing in societies where not
| everybody is working a desk job and eating 3000 calories
| a day but people _would_ be exposed to the chemicals
| endemic to modern society.
|
| Things like bisphenol compounds in receipts that we
| handle daily worry me greatly. 100 years ago people still
| had desk jobs, but they weren't handling thermopaper
| receipts and then throwing them in the trash where rats
| get them in the dumpster/etc. They weren't getting all
| their food in plastics and BPA-lined cans (or whatever
| the new compound they've moved onto since then). Food
| wasn't packaged in wrappers lined with BPA, they used wax
| paper. Etc etc.
| Karawebnetwork wrote:
| A lot of variables can make an animal or person obese.
| Hypothyroidism for example will cause weight increase
| even with a limited diet. Cushing's syndrome is another
| that comes to mind. Growth hormone deficiency can also
| cause increased body fat. The list goes on.
| IanDrake wrote:
| Terry_Roll wrote:
| > 50 years into an unexplained epidemic of obesity and
| metabolic disease that nobody has a clear explanation for,
|
| I think you need to look at how the food has changed in this
| time. For example, here in the UK supermarkets dont want pigs
| with 1 1/2" of back fat so the farmer get the nutritionist to
| make up a diet low in vitamin B5 because it helps to shift
| the fat under the skin. Nett result, you have fatty organs
| and marbleized meat as the fat remains else where in the
| body. We can grow chickens in half the time it took to grow
| them in the 70's, chemicals in the environment remain in the
| body for years even lifetimes, pollution levels are at their
| highest in a generation, people dont exercise like they used
| to.
| jnwatson wrote:
| Right but it happens to our pets too.
| rgrieselhuber wrote:
| Eating a credit card full of plastic per year sounds totally
| natural. Nothing to worry about!
| kbelder wrote:
| I'm sure we eat that much silica powder.. what makes a
| granule of plastic worse? I'm not discounting the potential
| problem of microplastics, but I'm not seeing a clear
| description of what it actually does to a person. Embed and
| raise cancer risk?
| rgrieselhuber wrote:
| For me it's about baseline assumptions. When I'm eating
| food, I should assume that I'm not eating anything my
| great-grandmother would not recognize as food.
| rgrieselhuber wrote:
| Amazing that this is objectionable.
| filoeleven wrote:
| Silica powder is basically inert. Plastics don't have that
| same guarantee. Some of them are endocrine disrupters, like
| BPA.
| carlmr wrote:
| >In these scenarios (0.15g and 0.3g) about 90% they estimate
| comes from salt.
|
| I tried to find this, but all I could see was that it would
| mostly come from bottled water, shellfish, and plastic packaged
| food.
| tomthe wrote:
| I can't take anyone seriously who publishes a pie-chart like
| this: https://ars.els-
| cdn.com/content/image/1-s2.0-S03043894203199...
| [deleted]
| dredmorbius wrote:
| You might care to state _why_ the chart is problematic.
| chrisma0 wrote:
| "Total number identified" is one of the pie slices, the
| other slices are subsets of this slice.
| dredmorbius wrote:
| Fair enough, thanks.
|
| The charts themselves would be better expressed as a
| Sankey flow, perhaps.
| palijer wrote:
| That seems a rather arbitrary trait to dismiss a researcher
| for. It is possible to be correct with flawed design choices.
| tomthe wrote:
| Yes, you are of course right. One shouldn't dismiss good
| work because of some flaws. But anyway... this is a rather
| silly pie chart and I wonder how this was able to pass
| through multiple authors and peer-review.
| kylebenzle wrote:
| Can ANYONE actually say what is wrong with it? I see no
| issue other than ascetically it could be better but it
| shows the data correctly.
| civilized wrote:
| The popular conception of science is really outdated in
| this respect. Peer review still matters, but most
| meaningful peer review happens post-publication, not pre-
| publication. People should not take published papers as
| reliable statements of "what the science says".
|
| Scientists are not going to expend a lot of effort on the
| thankless work of peer review, taking time away from
| their own careers, purely out of professional integrity
| and the goodness of their hearts. And their competency to
| do so is uneven at best anyway. What happens when the
| people who wrote this paper review other people's data?
| slim wrote:
| that pie chart to the left is not poor design choice. it
| demonstrates actual incompetency.
| hex4def6 wrote:
| Oh man. I was annoyed by the breakout of the second pie
| chart which seemed needlessly confusing. But the left one
| is worse for double counting everything.
|
| _And_ it has a typo! ( "Analys"[sic]). That doesn't
| really bode well for how much rigor the rest of paper
| had, either in its creation or review(s).
| [deleted]
| trzy wrote:
| Why? The labels are given in absolute units but they are
| correct.
| wmeredith wrote:
| One of the labels has a typo.
| zamfi wrote:
| The issue is that the pie chart included a slice for the
| _total_ and then two slices for each of the two
| components that sum to the total.
| civilized wrote:
| I didn't get it at first but you're right, it's
| horrifying. They put the total and the breakdown into the
| same pie chart.
| svachalek wrote:
| Yup. Something I wouldn't consider adequate work from a
| 6th grader.
| User23 wrote:
| Honestly communicating your results is just as important as
| getting good ones, and a junk chart like that is at best
| gratuitously confusing.
|
| I'd say everyone should have to read Edward Tufte, but
| everyone has and it didn't much help. 90% of the Q&A at his
| seminars is people asking questions that are variants of
| "but I'm used to doing it the old bad way, so isn't that
| really just as good?"[1] It was mildly amusing watching Mr.
| Tufte grow increasingly exasperated realizing just how few
| of his students had learned anything from the experience. I
| imagine that was a big part of why he retired to become a
| sculptor.
|
| [1] My personal pet peeve is the obsession designers appear
| to have with ensuring that there are no visible indications
| of which part of their design is meant to be clicked on.
| Agentlien wrote:
| Is that because the "Consumables ingested" on the right side
| looks like Pac-Man eating the other two categories?
| Calavar wrote:
| The pie chart on the left double counts everything. The
| total is represented as a slice in the pie chart.
| Agentlien wrote:
| I didn't think anything of it at first but that is indeed
| a strange design. Especially since the right part is a
| breakdown of one of the pieces.
| amelius wrote:
| Probably a case of automatically converting an Excel
| column into a pie chart.
| hombre_fatal wrote:
| That's what came to mind. And they simply selected a pie
| chart instead of a bar chart, and it wasn't super wrong
| because they were trying to show subcomponents of a
| larger value.
|
| Meh. Not worth the HN thread. It's like picking apart why
| someone wrote code in a suboptimal/messy way when in
| reality they just wanted to get something done under a
| constraint, and the author would totally agree if they
| were here to defend themselves.
|
| Yet here are people saying the author can never be taken
| seriously because of it.
| throwaway4220 wrote:
| You would probably never go to a doctor if you go to a
| medical conference. The number of red spelling lines from
| word you see on graphs would make you throw up lol
| thrwy_918 wrote:
| >In these scenarios (0.15g and 0.3g) about 90% they estimate
| comes from salt.
|
| I know nothing about anything, but could salt be heat-treated
| to burn off plastic?
| busterarm wrote:
| This is one of the biggest claims ("no microplastics") made
| about Korean bamboo salt...
| jpindar wrote:
| I think salt is heat-treated to dry it, but I don't know how
| hot it gets.
| [deleted]
| 2Gkashmiri wrote:
| nice. >In these scenarios (0.15g and 0.3g) about 90% they
| estimate comes from salt.
|
| for a few years now we have switched to rock salt completely at
| home. it's like 20-40% more expensive and we have to use a
| hammer/grinder every month or so but we are doing that.
|
| by reducing say 90% of the microplastics, is that.. good?
| azinman2 wrote:
| What makes you think that'll reduce it?
| simmanian wrote:
| In a lot of regions, "farming" sea salt basically means
| pouring sea water on top of plastic tarps and evaporating
| water. Over time, the plastic degrades and you get
| microplastic particles in your salt. You also need to rake
| these salt fields pretty heavily, which also generates
| microplastic particles.
| DoingIsLearning wrote:
| Which is sad because salt "farming" used to be done on
| clay soil near river deltas, which was a perfectly good
| medium for this job.
| 2Gkashmiri wrote:
| i am thinking, most of the salt consumed comes from sea
| salt that has those microplastics. if we use rocksalt, well
| that microplastics wont come from seasalt.
| [deleted]
| PeterisP wrote:
| Sea salt made from current seawater would include
| microplastics from that water, but rock salt would not as
| it was formed before these plastics existed. On the other
| hand, various mines of rock salt may have all kinds of
| other mineral additions that may be harmful for human
| consumption, so most rock salt is used for e.g. deicing
| roads.
| 2Gkashmiri wrote:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h23rF0xrhTE
|
| historically this mine for example has been used to
| extract salt for generations........
| sva_ wrote:
| I also switched to "Himalaya" (Pakistani) salt, hoping that
| is low in microplastics.
| lostcolony wrote:
| A thing to note there is that there are plenty of other
| contaminants possible (and found in studies) in brands of
| pink salt (basically all pink salt is branded Himalayan
| salt), at much higher concentrations than sea salt,
| including lead. It also has no added iodine, which
| depending on your diet and region and such may be a
| concern.
| 2Gkashmiri wrote:
| yep. the exact same thing. i get to buy them in huge 5 Kg
| rocks because its just a few hundred km away but that is
| the reason.
| Arrath wrote:
| Honestly that's kinda cool. And I refuse to imagine
| anything but a melon sized hunk 'o salt on the dinner
| table, with a small hammer and chisel for those who want
| to salt their meal.
| sva_ wrote:
| I think if you keep the salt exposed at the atmosphere,
| you'll quickly run into the problem of it absorbing a lot
| of water.
| 2Gkashmiri wrote:
| nah. we arent those kinds of brutes. we simply buy a big
| hunk, every other month on a sunday spend time with a
| hammer and break it down to small pieces. then use a food
| processor to powder it
| throw8383833jj wrote:
| i knew salt was bad for you but this is nuts. Normally salt
| isn't bad for you if you consume it in the right quantities <
| 1500g/day. but, knowing it's got plastic in it, is troubling.
| hammock wrote:
| Why is there so much in salt?
| Enginerrrd wrote:
| Likely because it is derived from seawater which is swimming
| in tiny plastic particles.
| mrguyorama wrote:
| My understanding that a significant amount of salt that is
| not advertised as "Sea Salt" is still mined out of the
| ground.
| [deleted]
| maxerickson wrote:
| Yeah, If I remember right it is pretty much that if you can't
| see plastic in the water you drink the assumptions that the
| credit card/week is based on are wrong.
| devoutsalsa wrote:
| When I die, just throw me in the recycle bin.
| asdffdsa wrote:
| Your body has too much plastic; off to the landfill you go!
| macinjosh wrote:
| Nah, I have Apple Card so mine is titanium.
| 0atman wrote:
| jacquesm wrote:
| There is this 'caps lock' key on your keyboard, please press
| it, once.
| kuroguro wrote:
| OH THANKS, IT'S SO MUCH EASIER TO TYPE NOW!
| user_7832 wrote:
| Do You Know That On Android (Using Gboard) You Can Select
| Your Text And Tap Shift To Switch Between Lower Case, Upper
| Case And Camelcase? Though Apparently It Only Works For A
| Single Line At Maximum.
| karaterobot wrote:
| What you're yelling about is true: fishing nets, car tires, and
| carpets are the major sources of microplastics, rather than
| plastic bags and drinking straws, but you wouldn't know that
| based on the public discourse.
|
| I suppose the reason we focus on the wrong sources is that most
| people can't brag to their friends about switching their
| commercial fishing fleet away from plastic gillnets. Most of us
| don't even have commercial fishing fleets. But, we can buy a
| metal drinking straw and be seen using it, demonstrating
| virtuous behavior in a conspicuous way.
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