[HN Gopher] Microplastics are finding their way into fruit and v...
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Microplastics are finding their way into fruit and vegetables as
they grow
Author : MikeDelta
Score : 110 points
Date : 2023-01-07 17:12 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.bbc.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.bbc.com)
| Eisenstein wrote:
| Plastics are inert. This is why they don't biodegrade easily. It
| is the additives in the plastics (to make them softer, or color
| them, or whatever) that are terrible for you.
|
| By the time these things are 'microplastics' I am having a hard
| time feeling scared that they are harmful. I'm not saying they
| aren't, but until someone can tie them to an actual problem, I
| don't see an issue -- especially since there is nothing we can do
| about it.
|
| That said, one-time-use plastics are absolutely obscene and need
| to be removed from society as soon as humanly possible.
| tomp wrote:
| There's nothing wrong with one-time-use plastics, in countries
| with good waste management systems.
|
| Paper straws suck.
| maxbond wrote:
| Every paper straw I have ever used has been great.
| [deleted]
| radec wrote:
| What's a good waste management system? Honest question.
| MorrisMinor wrote:
| Plasma converter:
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plasma_gasification
|
| Unfortunately it's more expensive than just throwing waste
| into a hole in the ground.
| tomp wrote:
| Burying plastics in the ground; returning carbon to where
| it came from.
| colechristensen wrote:
| No, burning them in a waste to energy plant.
|
| While we still use hydrocarbons for a while for power, we
| might as well let some of them hang out as our stuff for
| a bit before being burned for energy.
| vouaobrasil wrote:
| Animals live in the ground and you are talking about
| filling their homes with garbage? You are sick.
| brettermeier wrote:
| There are no countries with good waste management systems.
| Waste counts as recycled, if it was exported. What happens
| after that, nobody knows and nobody cares. Even in Europe,
| just a tiny amount of plastic gets recycled, most is shipped
| away, so that others should care about.
|
| Edit: Source: "The recycling lie"
| https://www.daserste.de/information/reportage-
| dokumentation/... (german)
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| Mandate plasma gasification instead of plastics recycling.
| The result is a syngas that can be burned for energy and an
| inert slag you can dispose of in asphalt.
|
| Edit: MorrisMinor suggests this further down:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34293509
| dashundchen wrote:
| Honestly go look outside. Go alongside a well trafficed road
| in the city or the country and take a close look at the soil.
| The curb or tree lawn is filled with visible bits of degraded
| plastic, and that's not even seeing abraded tire dust that
| will just look like soot or dirt.
|
| Go to pretty much any beach and sift through the sand. Again
| you will find an abnormal number of plastic mixed in. Even in
| "clean" places with not a lot of litter plastic bits are
| visibly everywhere.
|
| Own any synthetic clothes? Look at your lint trap after
| running a dryer or shaking out your clothes. The dust and
| lint coming off will quickly become microplastics. The
| wastewater from your washer will also be filled with them
| politician wrote:
| Metal straws (and spoons, forks, knives) are amazing.
| legulere wrote:
| Plastics are relatively brittle however without those additives
| and will break down into harmful micro and nano plastics:
| https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S00489...
|
| There's a lot we can do about it. Clothes tires and mismanaged
| waste are leading sources for microplastic that can be reduced.
| Eisenstein wrote:
| Without the full article we can only go by the abstract of
| your link, which doesn't say anything definitive except that
| the effects on humans are unknown.
| mumblemumble wrote:
| The precautionary principle would seem to be worth
| considering in that case.
| Eisenstein wrote:
| I'm not sure how freaking out about it is going to help.
| I am all for removing plastics as much as possible, so
| the motivation to do that should help the other. In the
| meantime there are _definite_ , _known_ bad things that I
| can freak out about health-wise.
| nullish_signal wrote:
| "Better the Devil you know than the Devil you don't",
| yes?
| userbinator wrote:
| _It is the additives in the plastics (to make them softer, or
| color them, or whatever) that are terrible for you._
|
| _That said, one-time-use plastics are absolutely obscene and
| need to be removed from society as soon as humanly possible._
|
| Those seem to be somewhat conflicting viewpoints. The
| overwhelming majority of single-use plastics are PE or PP,
| which also don't really have much in the way of additives.
|
| PVC, ABS, and others in those families are what need the really
| harmful plasticisers, and also cost a lot more; as a result,
| they aren't going to be chosen for single-use applications
| unless there are other important reasons to do so.
|
| Then the article goes on to mention PFAS, which is related to
| fluoropolymers, another very different category. I'm sure FPs
| are used in some single-use applications, but they are not
| cheap compared to PP or PE so they'll be massively lower in
| volume.
|
| I hate how articles like this just promote a "plastics = bad"
| narrative, and they didn't even mention what type of
| microplastic they found.
| Traubenfuchs wrote:
| I always dream about opening a single use plastic shop in the
| future, for those who just don't care and those who are
| actively opposed to it being removed everywhere.
|
| For example, drinking delicious Coca-Cola Zero Sugar at
| McDonalds from a paper straw is disgusting. The straw usually
| disintegrates before I am done and sticks to the lips at the
| start.
|
| I love single use plastic.
| Eisenstein wrote:
| Why is everyone using straws as an example? First, they are
| not what I am talking about -- we used to get beverages in
| re-usable containers and now it is almost impossible to find
| anything in glass. We don't need plastic to-go containers, we
| don't need _everything_ in a plastic wrapper or vacuum sealed
| in a thick plastic container (as evidenced by companies not
| doing that and having zero problems with their products being
| damaged). These are just a few things that could be changed
| with zero inconvenience to the consumer. In fact, the plastic
| sealed packages that require a chainsaw to open being
| discontinued would be a convenience for consumers, since I
| have never met a person who didn 't hate them.
|
| Keep your plastic straws.
| kennywinker wrote:
| I would be so far from shocked if we found out soon that
| plastic grocery bag / straw bans were a psi-op by big
| oil/plastic manufacturers to make people hate the idea of
| reducing single-use plastic. I couldn't have picked a more
| inconvenient and inconsequential place to start legislating
| if I had tried.
|
| A ban on plastic soda bottles? Great! There's are existing
| non-plastic solutions, nobody would be negatively impacted,
| and we'd see that reducing our plastic use can be easy and
| not require major sacrifices. Instead we come up against it
| every time we buy a beverage or go to the grocery store.
| tdeck wrote:
| The paper straws are pretty inferior but the grocery bag
| taxes just aren't that annoying. If you live in a place
| that charges for bags you quickly get used to just
| bringing bags with you and it's no big deal. Plus it
| significantly reduces the number of plastic bags blowing
| around in the wind. Since bags are so light they easily
| become airborne, sometimes posing a traffic safety hazard
| and often blowing into waterways.
| kennywinker wrote:
| My city outright banned single-use grocery bags. I was
| already in the habit of bringing re-usable bags, but
| every so often I'll have forgotten to grab bags or I'm
| stopping in on my way home from something else so I don't
| have them on me. Before the plastic bag ban, I'd just
| grab a "single-use" bag, and then use it as a trash bag
| for my kitchen or bathroom. Since the ban I regularly buy
| kitchen trash bags, I have about a dozen re-usable bags
| stuffed in the back of a closet, and half the stuff I buy
| at the grocery store still comes wrapped in a layer or
| two of excess plastic. For me, net loss. For the city?
| Probably a minor win in terms of plastic usage and street
| trash, and a significant loss in terms of people's
| willingness to ban other forms of single use plastic.
| userbinator wrote:
| _Before the plastic bag ban, I 'd just grab a "single-
| use" bag, and then use it as a trash bag for my kitchen
| or bathroom. Since the ban I regularly buy kitchen trash
| bags_
|
| I wonder if those who come up with these ideas realise
| the irony of forcing people to buy bags which are _truly_
| going to be single-use instead of reusing what they would
| 've already had.
| kennywinker wrote:
| How many people in your life re-use grocery bags? I'm
| fairly certain grocery bag bans are a net-win when viewed
| from the perspective of total plastic usage, because MOST
| people would have to be using them at least twice for the
| result to be anything other than a net-win from any
| perspective but mine. I only managed to use about as many
| as I was given because I got pretty good at remembering
| my re-usable bags...
|
| The problem is not the burden of changing my behaviour,
| or the extra cost of buying exactly as much single-use
| plastic as I need in the form of a box of trash bags a
| couple times a year - the problem is why are we starting
| with this?? I'm dead certain that there are a ton of
| single-use plastics we could ban that would have close to
| ZERO impact on 99.9% of people's lives, because it would
| be handled entirely by industry doing a single re-tooling
| of their lines, but we're not doing those for some
| strange reason?
| Eisenstein wrote:
| I think you are on to something. It isn't unprecedented
| -- they did the same thing with 'recycling' -- using a
| political and media campaign to convince people that
| plastics weren't bad because they could be recycled, then
| getting legislation passed to require recycling by
| households. It is absolutely villainous.
| Traubenfuchs wrote:
| But I want to leave the store with the beaverage and throw
| away the container afterwards. Another great horror: Thin
| plastic bottles! Drinks in crinkly plastic bottles that
| feel like you could just roll them into a ball. Yuck. I
| want the thick plastic ones you can use to bonk someone on
| the head. I want back my cheap single use plastic bags that
| I could just throw away after use, instead of managing
| storage and availability of reusable ones.
| tedunangst wrote:
| Because more cities have banned plastic straws than have
| banned plastic bottles.
| dewclin wrote:
| > we don't need everything in a plastic wrapper
|
| I bought a celeriac the other day, it was in a vacuum
| wrapped plastic cover. What a waste of resources.
| Eisenstein wrote:
| In case anyone else has no idea what a 'celeriac' is:
|
| > Celeriac (Apium graveolens var. rapaceum), also called
| celery root, knob celery, and turnip-rooted celery
| (although it is not a close relative of the turnip), is a
| variety of celery cultivated for its edible stem or
| hypocotyl, and shoots. Celeriac is like a root vegetable
| except it has a bulbous hypocotyl with many small roots
| attached.
| xorcist wrote:
| I understand I am the weird one here, but I have the
| feeling must have missed the great straw usage conditioning
| everyone else went through. I find straws to be something
| for small children, not grownups.
|
| I'm not sure I've used a straw in my adult life, yet I see
| people drinking _coffee_ with a straw. Isn 't the taste
| affected? Lots of what we think of as taste is actually
| smell and texture.
|
| No wine connoisseur would order a straw with their
| expensive wine! I fail to see why one would be necessary
| for coffee or water, except for long distance runners and
| other situations where one needs to drink while moving.
| fwsgonzo wrote:
| We must not inconvenience anyone at any cost! Even if it
| creates a layer of plastic on earths surface and we get
| microplastic in our spines.
|
| It would have been easier to believe in a better future if
| people could stomach tiny inconveniences.
| zoklet-enjoyer wrote:
| Who even uses straws? Straws should be reserved for the
| disabled.
| csmeder wrote:
| Something I don't understand:
|
| Patagonia's stated mission is to save the earth and microplastics
| entering the oceans is a major environmental concern. However, it
| is also true that many of Patagonia's clothes are made from
| synthetic materials such as plastic. The use of synthetic
| materials in clothing (and each washing) greatly contribute to
| the problem of microplastics in the oceans.
|
| I'm I missing something? Is the above wrong? Or is Patagonia
| lying about their mission driven approach?
| mjamesaustin wrote:
| They have a page on it here:
| https://www.patagonia.com/stories/an-update-on-microfiber-po...
|
| The short of it is that all product manufacturing has an impact
| on the environment, and they are investing in minimizing their
| impact over time.
|
| Something they note is that the biggest way to reduce impact is
| to create longer lasting and high quality products, because the
| less frequently you need to buy something the less pollution
| you create.
| [deleted]
| Arbortheus wrote:
| Saving the earth is a complex aim with so many different areas
| to prioritise. Synthetics may produce micro plastics, but then
| natural fibers like cotton require huge amounts of pesticides
| and water, viscose or bamboo requires a shit load of chemicals.
| Carbon footprints for almost all textiles are big. Recycled
| plastic is a low carbon, no pesticide, low impact material with
| one downside - micro plastics.
|
| Polyester is one of the few success stories around recycled
| plastic. It's not like the alternative is to turn your old
| plastic bottle into a new plastic bottle, plastic recycling is
| almost always downcycling the material into a lower grade
| product.
|
| Like most things around conservation and the environment, it is
| complicated and there are loads of stakeholders - biodiversity,
| micro plastics, chemical accumulation, CO2 and greenhouse
| gases, deforestation, waste management, just to name a few.
|
| One thing we can be sure of is the best thing is to not buying
| new clothes. In fact this philosophy should be applied to every
| consumer good. Making things is extremely bad for the
| environment. Patagonia have been pretty consistent around this
| point, for example as far back as 2001 they had their "don't
| buy this jacket" ad:
| https://blog.yorksj.ac.uk/jovanalleshi/patagonia-sustainabil...
|
| This is the elephant in the room that most consumer goods
| companies don't want to talk about. They can make things out of
| bamboo or produce paper straws or have recyclable packaging,
| but fundamentally even environmentally friendly products have a
| huge environmental impact.
|
| Ultimately Patagonia's mission statement is at odds with the
| reason it or any company exists. Saving the earth isn't
| profitable.
| mistrial9 wrote:
| agree and good post BUT "Saving the earth isn't profitable"
| is too simple, and gives ammo to those with different agendas
| Arbortheus wrote:
| Yeah, I did debate not including that part. I think I would
| elaborate by saying...
|
| Saving the earth isn't profitable for companies in the
| business of making consumer products (in most cases).
|
| But for companies that make essential sustainable
| products/technologies and services like wind farms, or
| various green technologies, or electric car infrastructure,
| or waste-to-energy plants, or recycling plants, or any
| number of things we will need to reach net-0 carbon, there
| will be a lot of jobs and profit to be made while also
| advancing humanity and helping solve this big problem.
| nonethewiser wrote:
| What's more sustainable than using fur from an animal that
| needs to be sheared of it for it's own health?
|
| Patagonia uses synthetics because they're cheap.
| colechristensen wrote:
| I was under the impression that the primary sources of ocean
| plastics were large usually Asian cities without proper waste
| management effectively dumping significant portions of their
| trash in rivers and the ocean as well as ocean fishing waste.
|
| Sure some plastics get into natural water sources from clothes
| washing, but how much of an issue is this actually compared to
| other sources?
| LarsAlereon wrote:
| The flawed premise is that synthetic clothing significantly
| contributes to microplastic pollution, particularly in the
| ocean. Plastic pollution in the ocean comes primarily from
| fishing gear like nets, debris unintentionally released by
| major storms and wave events, and countries that use rivers
| leading to the ocean as primary waste disposal. If you want to
| make a difference to plastic pollution, advocate for
| sustainable fishing practices, end shipping waste overseas for
| fake recycling (Patagonia really recycling helps this), and
| support programs to establish waste collection and disposal in
| countries that don't have it.
|
| Standard sewage treatment processes also capture most
| microplastic with the solid waste, if you live somewhere with
| sewage treatment.
| davejohnclark wrote:
| I was stunned to read that, in the UK, after carefully
| separating out the microplastics with the solid waste, that
| waste is then... spread on farmland as fertiliser,
| microplastics and all.
|
| >In the UK, of the sewage sludge screened out by treatment
| works, 87% is sent to farms. The microplastics so carefully
| removed from wastewater by the treatment process are then
| spread across the land in the sewage sludge the water
| companies sell to farmers as fertiliser.
|
| https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/may/26/microp.
| ..
| andrewstuart wrote:
| (reposted comment) I've got a bee in my bonnet about "plastic
| roads".
|
| Many countries, desperate to make use of the gargantuan flow of
| waste plastic, and desperate to avoid it going into landfill, are
| putting the waste plastic into roads.
|
| This is called "recycling".
|
| Sounds like a great idea until you realize that cars and trucks
| drive on the roads and grind them into dust - dust containing
| microplastics.
|
| The microplastic dust will go into air, waterways, rivers,
| oceans, food, plants animals and people.
|
| All this is because the environmentalists have decided that
| "keeping plastics out of landfill" is more important than
| anything.
|
| Plastic roads are an environmental disaster in an epic scale
| being created in the name of "recycling".
|
| The worst thing is that for some reason it's not obvious that
| this is a disastrous idea, and all around the world people are
| breathlessly talking up plastic roads like its a solution to the
| plastic waste problem.
|
| "In 2015, the Indian government made it mandatory for plastic
| waste to be used in constructing roads near large cities of more
| than 500,000 people"
|
| https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20210302-could-plastic-ro...
|
| Mandated madness. The safest place for the fire hydrant of waste
| plastic is in landfill, not "recycled" into microplastic dust.
|
| Would you like a plastic road outside your house, or outside your
| kids school?
| 8note wrote:
| I'm not sure if it's environmentalists pushing for that, or the
| plastics industry, in response to complaints about the amount
| of plastics waste. The alternative that environmentalists
| actually want is reduced production of plastics, and less
| making of single use and short lived items
| dang wrote:
| Please don't copy-paste comments on HN. It lowers the
| signal/noise ratio of the site.
|
| If you want to refer to something you wrote elsewhere (e.g.
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34153694), a link is
| great. Even better, if possible, would be a link along with new
| information drawn from the specifics of the new discussion.
| andrewstuart wrote:
| gotcha ..... apologies.
| dang wrote:
| Appreciated!
| sampo wrote:
| > Sounds like a great idea until you realize that cars and
| trucks drive on the roads and grind them into dust - dust
| containing microplastics.
|
| Car tires themselves wear down and produce microplastics. I
| would guess the tires wear down more than the road, so the
| contribution from road would be minuscule, comparing to the
| contribution from the tires.
|
| https://www.nationalgeographic.com/environment/article/tires...
| nonethewiser wrote:
| The contribution from the road is independent of the
| contributions from the car.
|
| By your reasoning, if the micro plastics from cars increased,
| so could the micro plastics from the road, even to
| astronomical levels, so long as it's less than the cars.
| suyash wrote:
| Every action has a consequences, these are what we call
| 'unintended consequences'. It's good that this is making news
| on BBC, hopefully Governments around the world will take heed
| and correct this policy.
| switch007 wrote:
| My carpet fitter tried to sell me on recycled plastic underlay.
|
| They only want to sell it because it's dirt cheap and
| lightweight.
|
| Zero cares about what I'll be breathing in for 10 years
| coffeebeqn wrote:
| What do you think the carpet is made out of?
| andrewstuart wrote:
| The linked BBC article seems to be dead - anyhow the BBC is
| praising plastic roads as "saving us from the plastic waste
| problem"
|
| https://www.bbc.co.uk/search?q=plastic+roads
|
| Here is a better article "The plastic road to hell is paved
| with good intentions "
|
| https://www.ehn.org/recycled-plastic-roads-2658987942.html
| suyash wrote:
| Wow, so no even vegetarian diet is safe from micro plastics
| anymore. Anyone know if organic food soil is treated with this
| nasty 'sewage sludge' ?
| colechristensen wrote:
| It never was? Plastics are everywhere.
|
| And most of the mineral nutrients in your food were indeed
| something's poop at one point. I'm not sure how you want to
| escape that.
| majjam wrote:
| The article says so: " Sewage sludge is the byproduct left
| behind after municipal wastewater is cleaned. As it is
| expensive to dispose of and rich in nutrients, sludge is
| commonly used as organic fertiliser in the US and Europe."
| JoeAltmaier wrote:
| Lots of speculation about how evil microplastics are. I worry
| it's theatre that's preventing real discussions about real
| problems.
|
| Hey go ahead and disagree, but maybe post a link to some evidence
| beyond 'microplastics exist'?
| garbanz0 wrote:
| Microplastics are so pervasive that they're even found in human
| breastmilk now. Maybe it's fatalistic, but what is the point of
| worrying about this on an individual level beyond limiting use of
| certain plastic products? And it's not just microplastics - we're
| seeing other news about "forever chemicals," hormones in our
| food, the _global_ drop of average male sperm production by 50%
| (!!!), etc.
|
| At a certain point, apathy sets in. If this is our generation's
| mesothelioma, so be it.
| lnsru wrote:
| I am absolutely with you. Total apathy. I can't do anything. My
| 100% waste goes to local recycling system. I pick up thrash
| when I am in the nature and bring home. Even left by others. I
| avoid synthetic clothing and wear only when I really need it.
| And still micro plastic in the air everywhere. How is this
| happening!?
| Traubenfuchs wrote:
| We are doomed. The only conscious choice is not having more
| children to live on this dying planet. I see this is a fact.
| All our efforts to "save the climate" or ban some especially
| dangerous chemicals are lipstick on the pig.
| Empact wrote:
| Congratulations on being the first person in human history to
| call the end times correctly.
|
| Again and again we've shown we can make these transitions,
| including surviving a major ice age. While there's good
| reason to worry, as lack of worry denotes foolhardiness,
| despair is both self-defeating and counterfactual to the
| whole of human history.
|
| This time it may well be different, but if it is, then your
| attitude is guaranteed to lead to failure, as we will then
| not take the necessary steps to secure the future.
|
| My money is on a technological solution overall, but there
| are many things regular people can meaningfully do, such as
| driving less, giving up one or more cars, or choosing to
| build or renovate toward highly insulated, potentially net
| carbon sequestering house as with the passive house standard,
| switch to heat pump based a/c and water heating, and
| voluntarily contributing to carbon sequestration efforts such
| as through YC alum Wren https://www.wren.co/join/Empact
|
| If you think that's not enough, and perhaps you're right,
| what lever do we need to press to make change? It is our
| responsibility as the current generation to identify and
| press that lever to secure the future for our descendants.
|
| Politically, my money is on the Citizen's Climate Lobby
| effort to bring about a carbon tax, and the American
| Conservation Coalition for its effort to raise the prospect
| of environmental policy in the Republican sphere. If enough
| people vote on this issue alone[1], as the second amendment
| and abortion communities have effectively done over the past
| forty years, then we have a chance to shift policy in the
| direction of conservation/protection.
|
| For me that means: a carbon tax to reduce demand, unleashing
| zero-carbon sources like nuclear to further out-compete the
| fossil fuel plants, while also embracing efficient
| infrastructure like pipelines to efficiently convey that
| supply we continue to use. On this last point, remember that
| the demand is constrained via a carbon tax.
|
| The world needs our earnest efforts. You can keep your
| despair.[2]
|
| [1] particularly in the primaries, as most house districts
| are now non-competitive between the parties
|
| [2] Incidentally, I think the hysteria on the left is also
| counterproductive, as "the sky is falling" only reaches so
| many people before it discredits the speaker, and the goal
| should of convincing the middle does not require them to be
| terrified - IMO the easiest way to do that is to make the
| behavior high-status and motivate people that way, e.g. see
| Tesla, solar panels, etc.
| fleddr wrote:
| I do think there's a limit to how much doom and gloom an
| individual can productively handle and I suppose this also
| applies to society as a whole.
|
| People seem to accept that it's all downhill from here, and
| sometimes even cynically applaud it. Like with the male sperm
| story. It's catastrophic and accelerating, yet got near-zero
| attention. The few responses to it seem to celebrate it.
|
| Humanity lacks a story for the future. It can't just be "it's
| going to get so much worse" nor can it be "if we try really
| hard, we may slow down the decline, but a decline it will be".
| Those stories just aren't good enough. Nobody invests in a
| sinking ship.
| peytoncasper wrote:
| "People seem to accept that it's all downhill from here"
|
| Strange, I know plenty of people that do see an upside,
| including myself. It's a choice to believe things can and
| will get better.
|
| Unless you have a crystal ball, we're both choosing to
| believe in an unknown future. So choosing to believe it will
| get worse is no different from believing it will get better.
| Although one is arguably better for mental health.
| [deleted]
| Der_Einzige wrote:
| The real story is the massive increase in LGBT identification
| across the youth. I strongly believe that a large component
| of this is biological due to hormonal changes.
| threadweaver34 wrote:
| It's important we understand what's going on for the future
| of the species, but the research is political suicide.
| not_enoch_wise wrote:
| Thank you for not wasting a single valuable second backing
| your belief up with evidence.
| mlindner wrote:
| I'd say the cause is societal because it's popular to
| become part of a protected class. You can't change your
| race but you can change this.
| xwdv wrote:
| I'm honestly surprised why you can't change your race.
| Race, like gender, isn't really a _real_ thing beyond an
| abstract human concept.
|
| If you want to identify as black why not simply say you
| are black? Especially if you can pass as black without
| further modifications?
|
| Most people's lineages aren't even so pure that you can
| say they are a pure example of a certain "race" anyway.
| We just accept people at face value. You could be 50%
| black and say you're black and people accept it
| wholeheartedly (i.e. Barack Obama) So why not 40%? Or 5%?
| mlindner wrote:
| The male sperm issue isn't from environmental issues, it's
| psychological/societal. When you repeatedly tell men that their
| natural state is "toxic masculinity" you'll of course drive
| down sperm counts through depression and self hatred.
| finikytou wrote:
| Im getting really worried about the impact this will have on our
| kidneys. I had a tap water filtering on very dusty tap water and
| the filter was supposed to last 1 year it lasted 3 weeks.
|
| I believe it might be a good analogy to how those microplastics
| are destroying our kidneys
| anonymous_sorry wrote:
| I have no expertise in this area, but before reaching the
| kidneys wouldn't microplastic particles have to cross one of
| the "filters" from our gut or lungs into the blood? I guess
| that's where I'd look for problems first.
| nonethewiser wrote:
| What is dusty tap water? And what kind of filter did you have?
| I really wouldnt expect much from something you just bolt onto
| the faucet.
| kornhole wrote:
| This problem was known long ago. In typical fashion like their
| climate change reporting, BBC reports on this decades too late.
| suyash wrote:
| I remember earlier it was limited to ocean and fish were seem
| to be polluted with micro plastics but contaminated soil in
| large parts of the world is very scary news.
| mouzogu wrote:
| it seems almost impossible not to consume some kind of
| carcinogen, no matter how careful you are.
| vasco wrote:
| We all have to die of something.
| synu wrote:
| Might as well be cancer as soon as possible?
| [deleted]
| NackerHughes wrote:
| Isn't it great how corporations can flood our food and water with
| poison and then brag to us about how they're doing it?
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