[HN Gopher] Nanoplastic Ingestion Causes Neurological Deficits
___________________________________________________________________
Nanoplastic Ingestion Causes Neurological Deficits
Author : pseudolus
Score : 265 points
Date : 2023-06-08 11:52 UTC (11 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.the-scientist.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.the-scientist.com)
| peter_retief wrote:
| Obesity...
| jxramos wrote:
| > After two months of daily ingestion of nanoplastics at the
| estimated human consumption dose
|
| What is this said estimated human consumption dose anyways?
| neom wrote:
| My mum when I was a kid in the 90s: we don't store things in
| plastic, glass or ceramic only
|
| Me when I was a kid in the 90s: mum is a f'ing idiot wtf is wrong
| with plastic this hippy shit is dumb
|
| My mum 2020s: so plastic huh?
|
| Me 2020s: ugh.
| myth_drannon wrote:
| We threw away all our glass containers because they constantly
| chip. I'm more afraid of ingesting piece of sharp glass than
| nanoplastics. I don't know why that keeps happenning, I guess
| dishwasher's high heat damages the glass or they keep bumping
| into each other.
| Ireallyapart wrote:
| Get the expensive pyrex glass.
| myth_drannon wrote:
| Pyrex is the one that chips.
| Ireallyapart wrote:
| weird. I never had a problem with pyrex. Must be
| something to do with the environment the glass in your
| specific case is exposed to.
| hinkley wrote:
| Pyrex is just tempered glass now. You have to trawl yard
| sales and antique shops to find the borosylicate version.
| idiotsecant wrote:
| That's weird, I pretty much exclusively use glass food
| storage and it's never chipped. And I just got some random
| ones off Amazon, not like they're some super high quality or
| anything
| Fire-Dragon-DoL wrote:
| You would poop the glass though
| arsome wrote:
| Yeah, generally speaking unless it's a very large shard and
| cuts your esophagus, once it reaches your stomach, acids
| will knock the edges off and it'll pass without issue.
| thombat wrote:
| Gastric acid is basically hydrochloric acid, and rather
| less concentrated than the standard laboratory bench HCl,
| which stands peaceably for years in glass flasks. I would
| be wary of assuming that chemical attack will quickly
| blunt glass shards.
| lostlogin wrote:
| I really doubt stomach acid would do anything to glass.
| Strong acids are regularly stored in glass.
| XorNot wrote:
| HCl will do _nothing_ to glass. It 's strong bases that
| will dissolve glass (a little), and your digestive system
| doesn't have any.
| TurkishPoptart wrote:
| No, I think eating glass leads to internal bleeding and
| could be very bad for you.
| Fire-Dragon-DoL wrote:
| I remember being really scared about it and then I
| vaguely remember some doctor saying most stuff will go
| through stomach just fine, and that included glass.
|
| Memory is fuzzy and I'm definitely not a doctor, so
| please double check.
|
| I'm assuming if you are eating glass, it's a small enough
| piece that you won't notice, it can be big, you'll notice
| in your mouth.
| myth_drannon wrote:
| well the pieces are about 5mm. For sure it will cut mouth,
| throat or something else.
| Karawebnetwork wrote:
| In some cases, probably rare ones, it can lead to
| perforation of the intestine
| hedgehog wrote:
| It may be how you load, I don't think that's a common issue.
| Microscopic bits of glass are basically sand though so I
| wouldn't worry unless there's a lot or it's getting airborne.
| hinkley wrote:
| I've given up on teaching my partner how to load a
| dishwasher. She insists you can fit more into a load. We
| also have a bunch of chipped plates and mugs. Not on my
| watch of course.
| ren_engineer wrote:
| will be interesting to see if plastic ends up being our modern
| day equivalent to Rome and their lead pipes
| anlaw wrote:
| Sounds like leaded gas. Wasn't banned until 1980s.
|
| Our leaders are 80 year old post war shell shocked, Cold War
| paranoids who huffed leaded gas fumes for decades. Explains
| quite a lot actually.
| edem wrote:
| this comment made my day
| Night_Thastus wrote:
| If you can, there are some great borosilicate glass containers
| out there. I use them for everything. The ones I have seal well
| enough that I can fill it with soup and stick it in a backpack,
| ride somewhere and it's fine on the other side.
|
| Thick enough to be basically unbreakable, microwavable,
| dishwasher-safe, etc. Don't need to worry about tomato staining
| either like on plastic. I've been thrilled with mine.
| ajmurmann wrote:
| I love using these for things like casseroles. I can bake it
| directly in the container or even freeze a raw casserole and
| when ready, defrost and bake. One less dirty dish and no need
| to transfer and make sure it will fit.
| rektide wrote:
| Not a huge deal, but heads up from 3d ago that pyrex is now
| often tempered soda-lime glass & not borosilicate & is
| somewhat succeptible to thermal shock breakage.
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36206565
|
| PYREX all caps should be borosilicate still & mostly immune
| (within reason).
| jolux wrote:
| Aren't the lids typically plastic though?
| bilekas wrote:
| I would have assumed (probably incorrectly) that the 'seal'
| which would come in contact with the glass & liquids would
| be a type of silicone lid, while it could be considered a
| type of plastic, if its a good food grade lid, I would
| imagine it's a bit better ?
|
| Ironically though silicone is much harder to recycle
| though.
| jolux wrote:
| The lid is often thermoplastic of some sort, sometimes
| with a rubber gasket and sometimes without.
| actionfromafar wrote:
| U don't recycle plastic, you burn it in a furnace. Spread
| the word.
| balaji1 wrote:
| Burning seems to be the only good idea over long-term.
| But someone on HN explained that there are some toxic
| byproducts to burning plastic. Dioxins for one. So we
| need some way to capture those waste and store it along
| with the nuclear waste lol.
| actionfromafar wrote:
| There are such capture devices and they are already in
| use to burn trash.
| infogulch wrote:
| You just need a catalytic converter.
| digging wrote:
| Not sure if you're serious or not, but plastic should not
| actually be put in the recycling bin. It almost never
| gets recycled, and if it does, it degrades quickly and
| becomes more toxic after recycling.
|
| Plastic is garbage. If you live in a place that burns
| garbage for energy, that's the best fate for it.
| bilekas wrote:
| Everytime I think I can do even something small to help,
| more clever people come along and ruin it!
|
| Does remind me of a cool tech about plasma arc recycling.
|
| https://www.explainthatstuff.com/plasma-arc-
| recycling.html
|
| It can basically recycle anything into energy from what I
| briefly read.
| Night_Thastus wrote:
| Yes, but the vast majority of the container being glass
| still has advantages. For example, whenever heating it,
| you'd remove the lid and only be heating the glass.
| giantg2 wrote:
| Yeah. At least the food usually isn't in contact with the
| lid though.
| George83728 wrote:
| You can buy glass bowls with glass lids.
| JLCarveth wrote:
| Aren't the lids still plastic? I've never seen ones with
| glass lids.
| tescocles wrote:
| You can find ones with glass lids.
|
| Here in the UK we're lucky that Pyrex is still borosilicate
| glass, and there are some I've seen with glass lids that
| are advertised as "zero plastic".
| rektide wrote:
| PYREX all caps should be borosilicate. Indeed harder to
| get now. Submission from 3d ago on the this:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36206565
| Grazester wrote:
| And that is fine. We aren't going to be taking our spoons
| and forks and scraping the food from the plastic lip as we
| would with the container nor is the lid in contact with
| food should we warm it in the microware.
| kingkawn wrote:
| real confident bout that, kind of like everyone who said
| that the rest of the container being plastic was
| acceptable before...
| organsnyder wrote:
| Perhaps not perfect, but it's at least a massive
| improvement over all-plastic containers.
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| Storing leftovers in glass when the entire supply chain is
| plastic... would be interesting to know how futile this is.
| pengaru wrote:
| Contaminants/toxins are cumulative, affecting probabilistic
| negative outcomes. So it always makes sense to do what you
| can to reduce your exposure.
|
| Your line of thinking here is the same convenient sort of
| apathy which enables so many to become and/or stay obese.
| narag wrote:
| It depends on what you buy and where.
| Filligree wrote:
| Fresh plastic, however. Newly made food-grade plastics will
| 'leak' a lot less microplastics than anything you reuse.
| adhesive_wombat wrote:
| > basically unbreakable
|
| The clip-retaining rims seem to _love_ to chip on the IKEA
| 365 style ones.
|
| The long-tabbed GlassLock ones seem less vulnerable to that.
|
| Which not unique to glass boxes, I'm still amazed by how
| robust the living hinges can be, some are going on 10 years
| and haven't split yet.
| mszcz wrote:
| That's interesting. I have around 10-15 of those IKEA 365
| glass containers with plastic lids and have never had them
| chip. I stick them in the dishwasher all the time.
| adhesive_wombat wrote:
| I have had Lock&Lock ones, of almost exactly the same
| design, for about 10 years and they're only recently
| starting become significantly chipped, but I had an IKEA
| one get a small chip within months. Maybe it's how I
| stack then without lids (physically don't have cupboard
| space to store with lids on).
| curmudgeon22 wrote:
| mine quickly chipped as well... also stack without lids
| FWIW.
| artursapek wrote:
| based mum
| Pxtl wrote:
| A good set of mason jars is great for lunches, for salads and
| pastas and the like. They seal better than tupper, they're
| microwave-safe, they're standardized so you can get replacement
| lids easily, and they're pretty rugged. I use metal when the
| kids are too young for glass.
| isametry wrote:
| By "too young for glass", I'm assuming you mainly hint at
| weight - which happens to be basically the only, but quite
| significant downside to glass.
|
| The material itself is already about 1.5x to 2x as dense as
| your average container plastic, plus since you're aiming for
| at least a decent strength, on top of that the wall thickness
| will probably be several times larger too.
| derekja wrote:
| I had presumed he meant breakage and the shards turning
| into little knives.
| cout wrote:
| Plain glass jars can break if dropped (or thrown) off the
| table. If I'm sure a jar is borosilicate then I might
| consider letting my child drink from it, otherwise it's not
| worth the risk.
| masfuerte wrote:
| I've heard of a very small child being offered a sip from
| a thin glass and biting a chunk off the rim. Fortunately
| no harm was done.
| saiya-jin wrote:
| This happened to us on vacation in Italy 2 weeks ago, my
| almost 2 years old daughter was drinking water from glass
| wine (since some better restaurants there don't give you
| any other type of glass regardless of drink).
|
| We obviously freaked out and acted immediately, the staff
| was a bit concerned but it wasn't their child chewing
| glass shards. Daughter fortunately developed quite a
| skill or pushing stuff she doesn't like from her mouth
| using tongue, so she pushed out everything quickly, small
| cut in her inner mouth, 2 minutes of crying, us running
| around and that was it, with some evening worries (wife
| is a doctor but still...).
|
| Not recommending this experience, better check what they
| give to your young ones (say below age of 3) beforehand,
| or just bring your own unbreakable one, even if (good)
| plastic.
| Msw242 wrote:
| Metal usually has a plastic coating though, doesn't it?
| clnq wrote:
| Coca-Cola cans, and probably many others, have plastic
| coating with BPA on the inside.
|
| But that doesn't matter much in comparison, because PFAS
| (corrected) are in the product, allegedly: https://amp.theg
| uardian.com/environment/2023/jan/19/simply-o...
| chrisco255 wrote:
| BPA is not plastic.
| Grazester wrote:
| I don't think someone trying to be totally healthy is
| going to be drinking Soda or any of these juices with
| their ridiculously high sugar content anyway.
| clnq wrote:
| Two things:
|
| 1. Lots of drinks come in metal cans with BPA lining on
| the inside.
|
| 2. You can absolutely be reasonably healthy and drink
| some of these drinks, including the variants that are not
| sugar-free. I don't think most people try to be
| perfectionistically healthy. But I think PFAs are not
| anywhere closer "reasonably healthy" to consume.
| ifyoubuildit wrote:
| It's kinda like saying people can be reasonably healthy
| and still smoke some cigarettes. True enough, but if
| someone is trying to be healthy that's a pretty obvious
| change to make.
| kijin wrote:
| Wine would be a better analogy. It contains a large
| amount of a known carcinogen (alcohol), but plenty of
| people who try to be healthy don't feel particularly
| guilty about drinking some wine every now and then.
| ifyoubuildit wrote:
| I don't know if it's a better analogy, but I agree that
| it's a good one. There are tons of things that won't
| outright kill you on first exposure, but are good
| candidates for minimizing if you want to improve your
| health.
| saiya-jin wrote:
| I don't think I _ever_ considered drinking from cans
| healthy, it is just a desperate move if no better option
| is present. Same beer tastes significantly worse compared
| to glass (but if you drink cheapest crap you probably don
| 't notice nor care).
| pitaj wrote:
| It's not BPA anymore, but something very similar.
|
| Also, PFAS is not the plural of PFA - those are actually
| different classes of chemicals.
| clnq wrote:
| Thanks for the correction!
| giantg2 wrote:
| Food/drink cans do. Reusable storage made from stainless
| steel usually doesn't.
| balaji1 wrote:
| What are the concerns about the "plastic" carpets in American
| homes?
|
| They are pretty much everywhere. They shed fibers all the time.
| We're in contact with it all the time.
| ericd wrote:
| Yeah, polyester/nylon/polypropylene are everywhere. There are
| some really good, reasonably priced all wool ones available
| here: https://hookandloom.com/browse/undyed-natural-wool-
| rugs/loom...
|
| They're so much nicer than the plastic type, and seem durable
| so far (the thick flat weave type has been holding up well on
| our stairs).
| hinkley wrote:
| Polypropylene is probably the least nasty of the bunch.
|
| Probably.
|
| When the BPA scare came I saw so many people switching to a
| different kind of plastic instead of stainless steel or
| glass. I just could not understand what people were
| thinking.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| > They're so much nicer than the plastic type
|
| Unless you have kids or pets, or live somewhere especially
| humid, in which case you will regret not getting nylon.
| ericd wrote:
| We live somewhere humid and have very young kids, their
| playroom is covered with a very big one of those loom
| hooked ones, it's awesome for that because it's so soft.
| Spills tends to come out of it pretty easily, the wool
| seems to be at least mildly hydrophobic.
| dclowd9901 wrote:
| I keep saying it but it would be phenomenal if glass container
| recycling became an earnest effort. I'm just not sure we
| actually have the infrastructure to support such an endeavor.
| Even something like carting a load of groceries out to your car
| and loading them up suddenly becomes quite a lift.
| chrisco255 wrote:
| That's a good thing, many Americans are in need of a regular
| workout anyways.
| vsareto wrote:
| Purchased drinks taste different in different containers (Coke
| in plastic vs glass vs aluminum), so I'm on board with food.
| dTal wrote:
| Coke in "aluminum" is actually coke in plastic; the cans are
| lined.
| chrisco255 wrote:
| No they're not. It's an epoxy resin, not plastic. It's BPA.
| actionfromafar wrote:
| So, a plastic then?
|
| Edit after light scolding by commenter below:
|
| BPA is a form of plastic, both in the pedantic sense
| (it's formed ... plastically... into its product shape)
| but more importantly in the colloquial sense, "synthetic,
| plasticky material" and in this general thread "synthetic
| material with harmful effects on health, probably through
| hormonal disruption".
|
| So, yes, BPA is a resin, it's also a plastic, and it's
| also probably pretty bad, healthwise.
| gamblor956 wrote:
| BPA is not a plastic. BPA is not a resin.
|
| It is a precursor to resins and plastics, the same way
| that water is a precursor to sea water but is not the
| same thing, even though sea water is 96% water by weight.
| nehal3m wrote:
| Is it?
|
| [0] Bisphenol A (BPA) is a chemical produced in large
| quantities for use primarily in the production of
| polycarbonate plastics.
|
| Guess it is. Why is it a problem?
|
| [1] Researchers have found that BPA exposure is linked to
| a number of health issues, partly because BPA mimics the
| structure and function of the hormone estrogen
|
| Not to be wagging the finger, but instead of a snarky
| remark (ending in a question mark, so the reader can't
| conclude anything from it) a little Googling and posting
| a correction with the reasoning would be better.
|
| [0] https://www.niehs.nih.gov/health/topics/agents/sya-
| bpa/index...
|
| [1] https://www.healthline.com/nutrition/what-is-
| bpa#basics
| saiya-jin wrote:
| And for decades it was full of BPA, AFAIK it still is
| ('stable' one, if you believe them...)
| teddyh wrote:
| Obligatory link:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hUhisi2FBuw
| conradkay wrote:
| I think they're talking about McDonalds which uses
| stainless steel tanks for delivery. I'm pretty sure those
| aren't lined with plastic.
| dTal wrote:
| I would think if they had meant "stainless steel" they
| would have said so, rather than "aluminum".
| cma wrote:
| The cup linings and soda dispenser hoses and miles of
| water supply lines to the store your house and everywhere
| typically are.
| Ireallyapart wrote:
| aluminum may be toxic too.
| posterchild7382 wrote:
| I think the bigger problem can be that it is present in
| drinking water. Both bottled and tap water.
| https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9103198/
|
| Of course it cannot be positive to store food in plastic
| containers either. But difficult to avoid.
| washadjeffmad wrote:
| We've got sets of Indian brass, Korean steel, and Japanese
| lacquered wood food containers that we use in addition to
| ceramics and glass. The glass chips, and once it does we tend
| to avoid using it for food.
|
| Because all of these things last or compound over a lifetime,
| it's only expensive to be healthful if you wait.
| bombela wrote:
| Isn't lacquer technically a sort of plastic?
|
| I could find images for Indian Brass Container to learn what
| it is. But I didn't find anything conclusive for Korean
| steel.
| BizarroLand wrote:
| Lacquer is resin from trees, not plastic.
|
| I don't know if it's better for you than plastic or really
| anything about its chemical composition, but it's not
| plastic.
|
| Edit: After reading more, there is an acrylic lacquer that
| was developed in the 1950s that contains plastics, but
| outside of that, normal or traditional lacquers are
| typically biological in origin.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lacquer
| BobbyJo wrote:
| When you say "normal", does that mean "common"? As in, if
| I buy lacquered wood, can I expect it to be synthetic or
| biological? Is there a way to tell, or do you just have
| to trust the source?
| BizarroLand wrote:
| For the lacquer you buy in the stores, you will have to
| examine the contents to see if you have actual lacquer or
| synthetic petroleum lacquers.
|
| As far as wood products, if it was made after the early-
| mid 80's, assume that if it was lacquered it was done so
| with a synthetic, or if it is some form of manufactured
| wood.
|
| https://www.chicagotribune.com/news/ct-
| xpm-1986-11-09-860324...
| pengaru wrote:
| My impression is that finishes free of petroleum products
| have become somewhat of a niche cottage industry these
| days.
|
| So I wouldn't assume _anything_ acquired finished by
| someone else is free of such things, regardless of
| whatever once-precise names they used to describe the
| finish.
|
| Even when you try DIY-finish something with an eye
| towards food-safety it's rather challenging. E.g. the
| "Boiled Linseed Oil" you find on store shelves isn't
| actually boiled linseed oil, it's usually been
| adulterated with petroleum distillates and sometimes
| toxic "dryers" (cobalt comes to mind) to achieve the
| results boiling used to serve.
|
| Here in CA the once common Turpentine which is literally
| distilled pine trees can't even be sold to the public due
| to VOCs. The stocked replacements are mostly petroleum
| distillates, labeled as known to cause cancer in the
| state.
|
| The oil industry has infected everything
| autoexec wrote:
| Why would oil companies dispose of their toxic byproducts
| when they can sell them to companies who will poison the
| public with them? Since it makes them money and there's
| zero risk of legal repercussions for it, the only thing
| that would stop them is having morals and the oil
| industry certainly isn't burdened with those.
| ericd wrote:
| What percentage of lacquers these days do you think is
| the old natural type? I'd wager it's very low.
| BizarroLand wrote:
| For mass produced items, I would agree.
|
| For stuff made by lone craftsmen & small boutique shops,
| maybe 50/50? Maybe less?
| hinkley wrote:
| That resin comes from a tree that is the source of the
| name for urishiol - the chemical that makes poison ivy
| such a nasty experience.
|
| It's probably better than plastic, but remember that
| coral snake venom and puffer fish toxin are 'all natural'
| and so the concept of all natural is utter and complete
| bullshit.
| idiotsecant wrote:
| What is with putting superfluous place names in front of
| things? Are you trying to sound fancy? You have steel and
| wood food containers.
| lostlogin wrote:
| Those containers have a shape and style and the place names
| allow me to visualise what they look like.
| idiotsecant wrote:
| Nobody else knows what your country of origin status
| symbol words are supposed to mean, so using them to
| communicate has one clear motive and it isn't clarity
| ajmurmann wrote:
| I didn't know what a Korean steel container looked like,
| but Google gave me clarity and now I want some.
| cybervaz wrote:
| nah, you're just being overly reactive about things.
| You're not contributing to the main topic
| kwhitefoot wrote:
| Perhaps no one knows but once it is specified they can at
| least look them up if they feel inclined.
| JeremyHerrman wrote:
| This reminds me of a scene from the Simpsons [1]:
|
| Homer: Hmm. I wonder why he's so eager to go to the garage?
|
| Moe: The "garage"? Hey fellas, the "garage"! Well, ooh la
| di da, Mr. French Man.
|
| Homer: Well what do you call it?
|
| Moe: A car hole!
|
| [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m5t9w98afJo
| washadjeffmad wrote:
| Why even be that specific? My matter holders are made of
| matter.
| jxf wrote:
| American cheese is different from other kinds of cheese.
| Canadian bacon is different from other types of bacon.
| English muffins are different from other types of muffins.
|
| OP isn't trying to be "fancy", they're trying to
| communicate. This is a weird thing to get agitated about.
| myshpa wrote:
| What we have here ... is a failure to communicate.
|
| (I'll see myself out)
| [deleted]
| bilekas wrote:
| Slightly different experience, but my parents were like this
| always when growing up, it never was an issue but it was just a
| constant thing that I inherited.
|
| Nowadays though I have the extreme where if my food is in
| plastic I don't feel the food is contaminated (until recently,
| but for different reasons), but like the plastic is forever
| smelling of the food and filthy.
|
| My gf uses plastic lunchboxes and even reuses plastic bottles
| and I swear I can smell the things around the appartment. It's
| gross.
| rektide wrote:
| My dad & his ancient reused plastic waterbottles & container
| ware. :(
| mtlmtlmtlmtl wrote:
| Not sure it matters since there's plastic in all the food and
| drinking water anyway.
|
| There's no way to avoid ingesting plastic any more. You could
| maybe reduce it a bit, that's all.
| jjallen wrote:
| So don't try and minimize it altogether because you're
| getting some elsewhere? This isn't good logic.
| riskable wrote:
| Eating food out of a plastic container isn't going to
| increase your microplastics intake (by enough to matter).
| Those kinds of plastics are too stable to be a problem in
| that regards. Even if you left your food in them in the
| fridge for days.
|
| The microplastics problem is a _pollution_ problem. When
| you 're done with any given plastic thing you throw it out.
| Some tiny percentage gets recycled, sure but for the most
| part nearly all plastics get trashed.
|
| The trashed plastic breaks down into microplastics slowly
| over time and those microplastics are very mobile and
| easily wash or _blow_ away if they 're exposed to sun. This
| means they end up in rivers, lakes, streams, and large
| bodies of water (e.g. the ocean). From there they diffuse
| and get inadvertently eaten by sea creatures which are then
| eaten by larger sea creatures and ultimately end up
| _concentrating_ inside the larger species that we eat.
|
| It's not just the fish though; it ends up in our water
| supplies which are used to wash our _other_ foods and
| ourselves. Basically, microplastics are currently so
| pervasive in our water supplies that every product made for
| human consumption _that exists_ has microplastics in it.
|
| The solution isn't to do away with plastics entirely it's
| to use different kinds of plastics that don't become long-
| lived microplastics. For example, polylactic acid (PLA).
| It's not suitable for all purposes but it's perfectly fine
| for something like a frozen food container or even the thin
| plastic film that seals it up.
|
| The only reason we're not using such plastics (in the
| places where they can be used) is they're not as cheap as
| the bad stuff. We need regulations that require single-use
| products use plastics that don't break down into long-lived
| microplastics.
| mtlmtlmtlmtl wrote:
| Sure, minimise if you want.
|
| But yes, my intuition says that whatever you might
| eliminate by not storing food in plastic and other types of
| avoidance is just gonna be a tiny drop in the constant dose
| of plastic you're getting from everything you ingest.
| gotoeleven wrote:
| It's important that the titanic's deck chairs be nicely
| arranged.
| olalonde wrote:
| When the risk is small enough, it seems rational to ignore
| it.
| haswell wrote:
| The more we learn, the less reasonable it seems to
| dismiss the risk as small enough to ignore.
| dekhn wrote:
| in many cases it's the opposite: the more we've learned,
| the more we recognize that the body is able to tolerate
| small doses of many things in a way where the effects at
| larger doses don't scale down (IE, the linear no-
| threshold model is probably wrong in many cases, beyond
| radiation)
| haswell wrote:
| I'm not making claims about a specific harmful threshold,
| just pointing to the rationality of concern given the
| ubiquity of plastic and our increasing understanding of
| its harm.
|
| Unless you're saying we understand the specific threshold
| for plastic and the risk of reaching that threshold can
| be reasonably extrapolated from typical levels of
| exposure, I think we're getting at different points.
| matheusmoreira wrote:
| When the risk is significant but there's no viable
| solution, it's also reasonable to ignore it. There's no
| way to fix the microplastic problem at the individual
| level so the best thing to do is to ignore it. Actively
| avoiding plastics will only cause hardships without any
| significant results in exposure.
| wkearney99 wrote:
| Emphasis on /seems/. It all adds up, small or not.
| coldtea wrote:
| If minimizing it wont make any real dent, it's a sound
| logic. You know, if it just ends up as wasted, feel-good
| busy-work.
| haswell wrote:
| I don't think this is the right way to frame this.
|
| To me, this is a problem that needs broad solutions and
| some of those solutions are available immediately and
| some require broader changes, i.e. there are some things
| I can control and some things I can't.
|
| Living your life in a way that is conscious of these
| risks and minimizes them when possible makes the
| avoidance of plastic an ongoing concern, and increases
| awareness of the issue in public consciousness.
|
| I don't see how broader changes are possible without
| growing awareness, and often the best place to start is
| in one's own life.
|
| If you were to examine the decision in a vacuum and
| discard all downstream effects, I think it's rational not
| to invest effort if it won't make a difference.
|
| But I think this overly constrains the possible effects
| of making the changes that we can, and underestimates the
| value of instilling ideas in public consciousness.
| titzer wrote:
| The planet is absolutely tainted with nanoplastics at this
| point. They are already being sucked up into the atmosphere
| and being deposited on the tops of mountains. There's no
| escaping it.
| ramijames wrote:
| A modern, worse version of lead in gasoline.
| kortex wrote:
| I don't think you understand how bad lead is for neural
| development. It's _far_ worse than plastic. And with leaded
| gas, there was no escaping it. At least you can generally live
| a no-plastic or reduced-plastic lifestyle. We literally dosed
| an entire generation with aerosolized heavy metals.
| mjhay wrote:
| Leaded gas was probably worse, but you can't escape
| microplastics. They are ubiquitous in all environments now.
| can16358p wrote:
| Effects are reversible though.
|
| Of course not to defend plastics or anything. It's just
| relatively less worse than lead.
| FrustratedMonky wrote:
| So I guess when I was a kid and microwaved things until the
| plastic melted and the saranwrap melted, kind of sunk me.
| hinkley wrote:
| You are doomed. Please send me all your Lego and electronics.
| ulnarkressty wrote:
| Everyone is talking about food containers, what about textiles -
| we breathe in and swallow quite a lot of dust every day, mostly
| coming from them. Even if you're wearing pure cotton the others
| may not and the office carpets and furniture are all plastic,
| getting torn every day.
| hinkley wrote:
| According to a report compiled by the EU, the largest group of
| primary sources consists of the small particles released from
| the washing waters of synthetic textiles, such as fleece
| clothing. Wear particles from tire and road materials are the
| second largest primary source. Together, these primary sources
| form 15-31% of the microplastics in the oceans, that is, less
| than one third. Secondary sources include larger
| plastic items, such as bottles, bags and fishing nets that are
| ground into microplastics over time. These are estimated to
| form 69-81% of the sources of microplastics in the oceans, that
| is, at least two thirds.
|
| The fleece loving hippies are killing us faster than the car
| fanatics are, but only just.
|
| https://www.nokiantyres.com/company/sustainability/environme...
| XorNot wrote:
| Food containers are also just..not the problem. No bulk plastic
| is. Even scraping the hell out of container isn't going to make
| particles in any quantity.
|
| Microplastic in the environment comes from long term
| degradation of plastic when it washes into the ocean or
| waterways and breaks down from UV / radical exposure.
| kornhole wrote:
| Yes those N95 and other disposable masks people have been wearing
| for years are made of plastic. This is a great way to ingest
| nanoplastics.
| SapporoChris wrote:
| N95 masks can be made from plastics, however to my knowledge
| there are not any masks on the market made of nanoplastic
| particles.
|
| Just as air filters are not polluting the air with massive
| clouds of nanoparticles your face mask is not filling your
| lungs with them.
| samstave wrote:
| no - but disposed of masks decompose via UV and mechanical
| means to particulates and get into the food hierarchy.
| hinkley wrote:
| 'disposed of' masks don't decompose via UV. Littered masks
| do, but littering is a lack of disposal.
| balaji1 wrote:
| Do air purifiers help with micro plastics in indoor air?
| kornhole wrote:
| I do not think any air purifiers can fit inside your face
| mask. I assume in room air purifiers will capture some as
| they are particles like others that get caught in filters.
| balaji1 wrote:
| The disposable masks were such a shame. We ingested and
| breathed in the plastic. Then once discarded, it is just
| plastic pollution.
| ch4s3 wrote:
| There's literally no evidence that they shed nano-plastic
| particles in regular use. Also they need to be disposable
| to be useful, they're filters which trap things you don't
| want in your lungs. Also, if you put them into the
| regular trash, they just go to a land fill, which is
| totally fine.
| samstave wrote:
| Its not so much about ingesting from wearing them - they are
| almost single-use and disposable - how many TRILLIONS of
| plastic masks have been thrown into the environment in the last
| 3 years.
|
| Seriously - if I had enough tinfoil - I'd say that our entire
| dietary ecosystem is under attack, directly, in order to reduce
| the healthiness of our food supply. Plus the many many food
| processing/farm etc plants which caught fire in the last 18
| months.
| lm28469 wrote:
| Your clothes, your phone, your keyboard, &c.
|
| The vast majority of what you interact with is made of plastic,
| at least the mask is useful
| throitallaway wrote:
| This is highly reductive. Clothes are useful in ensuring I
| adhere to societal standards (and laws.) Keyboards help me
| earn my living (without which I wouldn't be able to eat.)
| throwaway290 wrote:
| So are HEPA filters in all air purifiers.
|
| Pick your battles. First you don't want to be sick/die/cause
| your elder relative to die by infecting them. Then once you are
| not dead you don't want to get into your body substances that
| clearly have no business being there and can make you sick
| slower and less noticeably.
|
| I'm guessing you would want to run a filter/wear a mask if
| there's a good reason and not do it when there isn't.
| Dowwie wrote:
| How can nanoplastics be removed from the intestine?
| manmal wrote:
| I think the article insinuates that it gets excreted or decays
| by itself over time.
| kleer001 wrote:
| ... IN MICE !
| Taywee wrote:
| They do these kinds of studies on mice because mice have a high
| homology with humans, and a huge number of the findings
| extrapolate to humans.
| kansface wrote:
| Any idea what percentage of mice studies do extrapolate to
| humans?
| kleer001 wrote:
| Yes, and as a model organism they're fantastic. But I feel
| any and all studies on mice need to have "on mice" always in
| any published study or news report about that study.
|
| But it's one thing to pump a 100g/100g of micro plastics to
| bodyweight directly into the brain of a mouse and another to
| study mice in a mostly natural environment filled with
| plastic dust in similar proportions to what we find in our
| human lives..
| magicalhippo wrote:
| Reminds me of those "mobile phone radiation is bad for you"
| studies. I read a few and calculated the energy they
| exposed those mice with in joules per kg, and it was like
| putting your head in a microwave oven for a few seconds. No
| wonder the mice had some issues afterwards...
| tikkun wrote:
| Eugh. See also: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36226432
| Reptur wrote:
| Companies poisoning us need to be held accountable.
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| It's amazing how robust the human body is to surviving every
| little attempt to clog the gears.
| ne0flex wrote:
| Convenient non-plastic solutions need to be developed. After
| learning about micro plastics and forever chemicals, I started to
| get paranoid of this stuff. Started cooking at home more and
| started removing plastic from my daily life. After my wife got
| pregnant, I keep telling her to avoid plastic, but she doesn't
| seem to take it seriously. She purchased plastic food containers,
| I tell her don't microwave food in it, but she does it anyway
| because the container is "microwave safe". She also wants to
| carry her own lunch but glass containers are heavy and she
| doesn't want to carry that. I keep reminding her that she
| shouldn't use it, especially while pregnant, but she says that
| I'm stressing her out with that. She said she's open to using
| non-plastic stuff but it needs to be as convenient as the plastic
| products she's using now. It's difficult to find proper
| replacements for stuff like plastic wraps, or lightweight glass
| food / beverage containers.
| beambot wrote:
| Should be equally concerned about non-stick pans. PTFE (Teflon)
| and other coatings are notoriously bad...
| hinkley wrote:
| They're not a lot lighter, but there are glass containers that
| have a silicone mesh over the outside, which in theory gives
| you better survivability.
| rcme wrote:
| > Convenient non-plastic solutions need to be developed.
|
| PFAS coated paper?
| ne0flex wrote:
| Obviously not. I guess non-toxic (plastic, PFAs, etc.)
| would've been a better description.
| Tade0 wrote:
| I hate to make this worse for you, but apparently (that's what
| I read at least) water pipes are also lined with BPA.
|
| Baby products are often made from stuff which at least in
| theory should be less harmful, but I suppose it's only tested
| for a select group of hazards.
|
| EDIT: forget the bamboo - not microwave safe. I ate some glue
| along with my dishes apparently.
|
| EDIT2: Apparently wheat bran containers are microwave safe and
| since they're edible, they can't be lined with plastic. Not
| reusable of course.
|
| Also I wouldn't put them on 100%, because low-water content
| stuff tends to burn in a microwave oven.
| snapcaster wrote:
| It sounds like you and your wife have different values. I see a
| lot of people that share her opinion. It's hard for me to not
| be mad at them since their lack of care is what enables
| companies to act like this in the first place and not lose
| customers
| Karawebnetwork wrote:
| >replacements for stuff like plastic wraps
|
| Beeswax food wraps work surprising well
| ne0flex wrote:
| To my understanding, they can't be microwaved so it defeats
| the main purpose my wife uses plastic wrap for (wrapping rice
| balls / covering food and heating them up)
| carabiner wrote:
| Cover them with a damp paper towel or a plate? Food usually
| doesn't need an airtight cover to be microwaved.
| [deleted]
| snapcaster wrote:
| I wonder what harm she is doing to your child
| mjhay wrote:
| Ooh boy that's extremely bad to do, quite a bit worse than
| heating food in a tupperware.
| yboris wrote:
| Make it easier for her by taking on the chores of washing them
| and preparing them. If you're insisting she do something
| differently, ask her if there is anything you could do to make
| it easier for her to do it -- since this is clearly a more
| important change for you than for her (at this time).
| ne0flex wrote:
| I did offer to do that but the main problem is she doesn't
| want to carry the items and it can be heavy for her with all
| the tools she carries (she's a piano technician). Really only
| solution would be finding lightweight alternatives, but
| haven't had luck with that.
| oefnak wrote:
| Metal? Lighter and less prone to breaking than glass. Also
| less inert maybe, but probably better than plastic.
| yboris wrote:
| No way to microwave sadly :/
|
| Hard problem to solve. I wonder what the best effort-per-
| payoff is in this scenario. Perhaps cutting out plastic
| water bottles would be 90% of the benefit, and the
| plastic containers for food is 10% of the benefit but
| tremendously more effort -- I don't know (never did
| research on this).
| cwkoss wrote:
| When I clean the lint out of my dryer, I can see a very faint
| cloud of particles.
|
| Should I be worried about breathing those? I presume a portion of
| them are plastic from synthetic fibers. Should I be wearing a
| mask to load/unload the dryer?
| can16358p wrote:
| Well, better safe than sorry. Even if they aren't plastics, by
| common sense we can say its bad for lungs regardless.
|
| Use a mask or try not to breathe it as much as possible.
| hinkley wrote:
| Almost all of the synthetic clothes that I personally own are
| drip dry. I garden, and I know where the dryer vent comes out.
|
| I haven't convinced the rest of the family of this however, so
| I'm just doing what I can.
| culopatin wrote:
| You get those as you wear the clothes anyway. Might as well get
| rid of any polyester
| positr0n wrote:
| Cleaning dryer lint does massively spike PM 2.5. As far as we
| know, any PM 2.5 probably is bad for you and could reduce your
| lifespan.
|
| https://dynomight.net/humidifiers/
|
| That being said I have no idea if it's worth wearing a mask.
|
| Edit: this joke comment that struck a nerve haha
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34428710
| taneq wrote:
| > According to Chao Wang, an immunologist at Soochow University
| and coauthor of the study, feeding mice nanoplastics induced a
| greater overall immune response in their guts than feeding mice
| larger microplastics.
|
| Still interesting, but yes, this is in mice.
| AbrahamParangi wrote:
| Treatments (in mice) are one thing but hazards (in mice) is a
| totally different thing. Most things that help a mouse don't
| help us. Most things that harm a mouse _do harm us_.
| xedrac wrote:
| > Most things that help a mouse don't help us.
|
| Like exercise and eating fewer calories?
| thx-2718 wrote:
| I guess those things wouldn't be included in 'Most' then.
| sproketboy wrote:
| [dead]
| 29athrowaway wrote:
| Not only small plastic but also phtalates, PFAS, lead, etc.
| EMCymatics wrote:
| One of the reasons I love Pyrex
| kwhitefoot wrote:
| So long as it isn't modern US made Pyrex which is just soda
| glass not borosilicate.
| throitallaway wrote:
| Soda glass is likely safer than plastics when it deteriorates
| and is subsequently ingested.
| EGreg wrote:
| Sorry people, but you can't stop it:
|
| 1. https://www.euronews.com/green/2022/04/11/how-much-
| plastic-d...
|
| 2.
| https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/mar/24/micropla...
|
| 3. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/apr/15/winds-
| ca...
|
| Because humanity and capitalism's incentives are just wrong.
| Bottling companies like Coca Cola and Snapple have long switched
| to plastic bottles, and externalized the cost to the environment.
|
| My recommendation would be to tax negative externalities and
| redistribute all of it as a UBI to the people of the country.
| Simple and effective, but apparently the governments have been
| moving way too slowly.
|
| What's worse is that the governments perpetuate a lie to the
| public, making them think they can individually make a
| difference. In the case of plastic the lie was "recycling", when
| in fact the plastics were simply shipped to China, who dumped
| them in landfills and rivers.
|
| But the government tells the individual that they can't have a
| plastic straw or bag. It's all there to distract the individuals
| from banding together and demanding the costs be imposed on the
| corporations which put out metric tons every day. I write more
| about this phenomenon here: https://magarshak.com/blog/?p=362
|
| And it's not just the bottling companies. It's all the packaging.
| It's the clothes using synthetic fabrics like polyester, which
| generate microplastics flushed in every wash. And so on.
| Convenience is when you'd rather have a one-time-use spoon
| shipped from China, than wash and re-use a spoon. Your ancestors
| re-filled containers.
|
| If we made it more costly for these companies, they'd long ago
| have researched biodegradable alternatives.
| deelowe wrote:
| One of my favorite quotes is:
|
| "A problem is a challenge with a least one workable solution. A
| dilemma is challenge with multiple choices, all equally bad."
|
| If we eliminated all PFAS chemicals today, society would
| collapse. What's the point of eliminating PFAS chemicals to
| improve life expectancy if the very act of doing so would cause
| a famine?
| rngname22 wrote:
| Phasing out PFAS over a 5-10 year period or imposing a
| steady-increasing tax on its usage (to the point that
| eventually it became an apocalyptically high tax) would drive
| supply chains to adapt and move to alternatives. Paper, wood,
| metal, glass, etc. are materials that have worked fine for
| hundreds of years.
|
| Oh no, less waterproofing, what will we ever do? Guess we
| should keep this cancer material around.
|
| Oh no, we lose some classes of medications, guess we should
| just poison the Earth and generations to come because losing
| lipitor and prozac is just unacceptable.
| nahstra wrote:
| What products use PFAS whose absence would cause society to
| collapse? If you look at the major sources of PFAS by 3M,
| it's not like these were essential products. Here's a random
| list from wisconsin.gov:
|
| Cleaning products. Water-resistant fabrics, such as rain
| jackets, umbrellas and tents. Grease-resistant paper.
| Nonstick cookware. Personal care products, like shampoo,
| dental floss, nail polish, and eye makeup. Stain-resistant
| coatings used on carpets, upholstery, and other fabrics.
| DubiousPusher wrote:
| I think the biggest material impact for any curb on
| plastics would largely be felt in medicine. Disposability
| is huge in preventing infection. Also, many medical
| implants rely on the combination of elasticity and strength
| found in plastics.
| barbazoo wrote:
| Maybe focus on all the non-essential shit people buy
| every day then first.
| Taywee wrote:
| Medical use of plactic is a minuscule minority of plastic
| use. The vast majority of disposable, single-use plastic
| is not actually necessary. I'd be shocked if less than
| 90% of single-use disposable plastic was from food
| containers. Hell, I'd be pretty surprised if it were less
| than 99%.
| 83 wrote:
| PFAS is used in the coolant for semiconductor production.
| kortex wrote:
| Just because you don't personally encounter it, doesn't
| mean it's non-essential.
|
| Viton is essential in modern engines. Basically anywhere
| you are in contact with gasoline, you need fluoroelastomer.
|
| The entire chemicals industry - everything from medicine to
| energy to commodity chemicals - would collapse overnight if
| you took away teflon, viton, and PVDF. That's not
| hyperbole, it's used everywhere and there are no drop in
| alternatives. Silicone can fit the bill for some purposes,
| but it has nowhere the compatibility and longevity of
| viton. We have no real non-fluoronated alternative to
| teflon.
| deelowe wrote:
| Anything containing "rubber."
| EGreg wrote:
| Doesn't rubber come from rubber trees? What does that
| have to do with PFAS?
|
| Teflon is not rubber, as far as I know PTFE are petro-
| flourochemicals
| kortex wrote:
| Very little "rubber" is actual natural latex rubber.
| Balloons, certain hose, and some gloves are natural
| latex, as are about 40% of the material in tires. The
| rest is synthetic elastomer. EPDM and Buna-N/nitrile are
| probably the most common.
|
| Teflon is not rubber, but viton is fluorinated elastomer,
| and it's used everywhere as well.
| adrian_b wrote:
| There are probably no products for individual consumers
| that contain large amounts of PFAS and that are
| indispensable.
|
| Small amounts of hard to replace PFAS may be contained in
| devices such as antenna connectors for devices with WiFi
| (which cannot cause pollution unless destroyed in an
| inappropriate way).
|
| Nevertheless PFAS are absolutely irreplaceable in various
| chemical equipment used in chemical analyses and in various
| fabrication processes, for instance in the fabrication of
| all semiconductor devices (because no other substances have
| comparable corrosion resistance). PFAS would also be very
| difficult to replace in a few other applications, e.g.
| vacuum seals and insulators for high-frequency applications
| (as no other materials have a similar combination of low
| dielectric constant and low losses).
|
| In all such industrial applications the risks of pollution
| are much smaller than in mass-market applications. However,
| it is likely that after PFAS will hopefully no longer be
| used for mass-market applications their price for
| professional applications might increase a lot, causing
| some price increases in other products, e.g. electronic
| devices.
| DubiousPusher wrote:
| > IF we eliminated all PFAS chemicals today, society would
| collapse.
|
| I think this is a failure of imagination. The modern world,
| largely as we appreciate it today, existed in 1940 in Europe
| and the U.S. That is well before the widespread deployment of
| plastics. It was a world in which everyone, including the
| very rich did with a little less but still, a fairly high
| quality of life.
|
| The only question that separates then from today, is whether
| we can scale that kind of material to the much larger global
| middle class.
| kortex wrote:
| Synthetic chemistry in the 40s was like alchemy compared to
| the processes today. There are myriad chemical techniques
| and reactions that exist today, that didn't exist in the
| 40s, and you flat out can't do without fluoropolymers,
| because the reagents used are way too aggressive on
| virtually everything else.
| adrian_b wrote:
| In 1940, (with the exception of primitive point-contact
| radar diodes) there was no production of semiconductor
| devices.
|
| Without PFAS there would be no production of modern
| electronic devices, so no computers and no mobile phones.
|
| Nevertheless, unlike with PFAS used in things like clothes,
| kitchenware or packing, when PFAS are used in industrial
| processes or in electronic equipment (as high-frequency
| electrical insulators or in optical devices) it is much
| easier to avoid any pollution.
| veemjeem wrote:
| I've read that the majority of microplastics come from tire
| wear (national geographic quoted 28% of the total), and because
| there's no good alternative to wheel tires, it's unlikely we'll
| see a decrease of pollution here. So even if we found an
| alternative to bottles, plastic bags, clothing, etc, it still
| won't make a dent in pollution unless we convince the world to
| use a form of public transit that doesn't make use of plastic
| tires.
|
| We could reduce human consumption of the particles if we only
| consumed lab-grown meat & hydroponically grown vegetables where
| the water is ultra-filtered before use.
| proto_lambda wrote:
| > there's no good alternative to wheel tires
|
| Steel wheels on steel tracks work pretty well, actually.
| Admittedly brake dust is still a problem for classic
| locomotive-pulled trains.
| broguinn wrote:
| I also learned in a Not Just Bikes video that the US tire
| lobby prevents regulation on quieter car tires. I bet there
| are ways to make tires that shed fewer microplastics - it's
| just that we don't do it.
| digging wrote:
| > because there's no good alternative to wheel tires, it's
| unlikely we'll see a decrease of pollution here
|
| Well, we could stop pretending that God gave cars dominion
| over the earth and build livable cities.
| bequanna wrote:
| Not everyone wants to live in high density urban cities.
|
| Suburbs don't exist because of some big oil and auto
| company conspiracy. They exist because they give people an
| option they find more appealing vs urban areas.
|
| You are certainly welcome to try and lure more people out
| of the suburbs and rural areas by creating better high
| density, carless cities. I think the issue is that when
| people have kids, they want bigger homes, yards, more
| privacy, lower crime, freedom of movement etc.
|
| It isn't clear how to give people (in the US) the things
| that they want and make a city walkable. If it was obvious,
| there would be plenty of examples.
| digging wrote:
| > Suburbs don't exist because of some big oil and auto
| company conspiracy. They exist because they give people
| an option they find more appealing vs urban areas.
|
| No, modern car-dependent suburbs actually do exist
| because of oil and auto conspiracies. There exist options
| between high density and car-dependency. Surburbs can be
| walkable, and cities can have walkable low-density areas.
| mike50 wrote:
| Your typical modern American suburb is homes that would
| be three family homes 60 years ago on land that would fit
| three of those homes let alone a normal size house. All
| of this is subsidized by tax write-offs and gasoline that
| is 50% discounted relative to the rest of the developed
| world. Not much freedom of movement when everything even
| a neighbor is a 15 minute drive away either due to sprawl
| or trafic.
| bequanna wrote:
| "Subsidized by tax write offs"
|
| Umm, are you referring to the being able to write off
| mortgage interest on your personal residence? What
| exactly does this have to do with suburbs?
| merlinran wrote:
| 28% is not majority. Plus the hard part shouldn't prevent us
| from doing the easy part with much higher ROI.
| veemjeem wrote:
| I did some more research, and it looks like tires are the
| 2nd largest part of the pie in terms of single origin. The
| largest is textiles which are 35%.
| conradev wrote:
| > But the government tells the individual that they can't have
| a plastic straw or bag
|
| Policies exist to improve the situation, they just need to be
| fought for (against the bottling companies):
|
| > According to the Container Recycling Institute (CRI), the
| average nationwide recycling rate for beverage containers is
| around 35%. By contrast, Oregon's beverage container redemption
| rate is regularly in the 80-90% range
|
| https://obrc.com/results/how-bottle-bills-compare/
|
| Plastic in a landfill is actually fine, even if wasteful, as
| long as the landfill is properly built.
| XorNot wrote:
| Plastic in landfill has the quality of being oil that won't
| be burned.
| willcipriano wrote:
| > My recommendation would be to tax negative externalities and
| redistribute all of it as a UBI to the people of the country.
| Simple and effective
|
| Wouldn't you want to resolve the externalities with those funds
| instead of spending it, likely increasing consumer consumption
| and making the problem worse?
|
| > If we made it more costly for these companies
|
| Why wouldn't the costs flow to consumers? Firms recently seem
| to be able to set prices at what the market will bear.
| EGreg wrote:
| Because we'd be indirectly subsidizing _any competitor_ who
| puts out biodegradeable solutions, without directly picking
| winners and losers, just making it more costly to produce
| non-biodegradeable stuff. The alternatives can come out of
| the same department (e.g. of DuPont chemicals) and they
| wouldn 't be hit with the same tax, so they'd be more
| competitive over time. The money is redistributed to the
| working class because otherwise you get this:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yellow_vests_protests
| willcipriano wrote:
| How do you accurately price externalities without resolving
| them? If you spend a billion a year cleaning up plastic
| it's pretty simple math to spread that out over the cost of
| plastic products. On the other hand if you don't actually
| do anything to resolve it you are just guessing on what
| that costs and could be way over or under.
|
| This seems like "I want UBI" with a flimsy environmental
| justification.
| EGreg wrote:
| You don't need to accurately price them. You just
| gradually keep increasing the price year over year until
| the companies spin up R&D departments to switch to
| biodegradable sustainable alternatives, or their
| competitors do.
|
| You have to hit those corps in their pocketbook and
| affect their bottom line before they act. It's the only
| thing they understand.
|
| As far as cleanup - forget it. We may be able to clean up
| the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, but we won't be able to
| remove microplastics around the world. It is urgent we
| stop creating MORE though. That means also mandating
| drainage systems that filter and trap these particles
| before they escape. We already mandate that for many
| forms of grease!
| willcipriano wrote:
| That's not really taxing externalities. Biodegradable
| solutions likely have externalities of their own at
| scale. In less words this solution is "tax corporations
| that make plastic a lot and distribute the funds to the
| citizens leaving the mess behind for future generations".
| It isn't as noble when put that way.
|
| It you on the other hand took those funds and used them
| for environmental clean up, recycling programs, etc I'd
| be on board. Consumers should pay for the disposal of
| what they consumed.
| MagicMoonlight wrote:
| That might explain why some modern children are so stupid. I have
| young relatives who are just gone. There's nothing in their
| heads. It's like watching a fly bash into a window.
| dysoco wrote:
| Are you sure it's not just confirmation bias plus a bad
| perception of how smart you and your same-age friends were when
| you were young? Sounds like that to me.
|
| Kids look normal to me, some of them probably smarter than I
| was back when I was as kid, others not so much, it's hard to
| say based on only a few observations but it's probably the same
| it's always been.
| saiya-jin wrote:
| This is hugely anecdotal, I can find examples of both
| extremes and everything in the middle around me. I think its
| rather good/poor parenting, parents not having enough time to
| raise kids properly (hint: there is never 'too much' time you
| spend with kids, especially young), dumbing kids down with
| primitive addictive screen fun or social media.
|
| Lacking a lot of social interaction can make otherwise smart
| kids appear... less smart, since they may be shy, lacking
| motivation or skill to express themselves so they can be
| interacted with on higher level.
|
| Once you filter all of this (and probably much more), and
| still see a difference on massive scale, we can start having
| a case.
| carabiner wrote:
| It's fun to think about what society would be like if all those
| "kids these days" denigrations, which are thousands of years
| old, were objectively true. The ancient greeks must have had
| secret fusion reactors and AGI that our blithering idiot
| archaeologists have yet to uncover. Our hypersonic aircraft are
| no comparison to the sumerians' near-lightspeed craft. Humanity
| has been on a downhill trajectory since the phoenicians figured
| out gravity field manipulation. Secrets lost to time along with
| our IQ points.
| jacobsenscott wrote:
| As a parent I know a lot of kids. Sounds like it is a problem
| with your relatives, and not kids in general.
| aero-deck wrote:
| and we're just soooo much smarter nowadays than we were 1000
| years ago...
| burke wrote:
| I mean the average lifespan in the year 1000 was about 31, so
| we're doing at least a few things right.
| Night_Thastus wrote:
| Isn't that average lifespan? There was a lot of death either
| in childbirth or during early childhood years. If you filter
| that data out a bit, adults lived a more comparable age.
| Still not as good as today, but not 31.
| Tenoke wrote:
| >Excluding child mortality, the average life expectancy
| during the 12th-19th centuries was approximately 55 years
|
| So still worse by whole decades than now.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life_expectancy#:~:text=Exc
| l....
| lostlogin wrote:
| Yes, although lots of places (mainly in Africa) have
| average life spans in the 50s.
|
| https://www.worlddata.info/life-expectancy.php#by-
| population
| tomgp wrote:
| TBH I'm not sure the argument that only women and those
| under 5 were dying young in large numbers is a great
| rebuttal to the idea that we were better off in 1023.
| jazzabeanie wrote:
| Lifespans got worse before they got better. Better to
| reference 10,000BC than 1023AD, and that's not so clear.
| Night_Thastus wrote:
| I wasn't arguing that. Of course medical tech is better
| now. I was saying 31 is just not a good number to claim
| for that time period.
| dekhn wrote:
| that's dominated by child mortality; people who survived to
| teen years typically lived much longer than 31
| albrewer wrote:
| From what I've read, if you filter out children under 5 in
| that statistic people lived into their early 60's pretty
| regularly.
| Tade0 wrote:
| High child mortality is still a bad thing.
| albrewer wrote:
| Not saying it's not, but the implication that everyone
| was dying at 30 isn't true.
| Tade0 wrote:
| That's not what's implied. Only thing that was said was
| that the average lifespan was 31. Could be any curve
| under that number, but it's bad however you cut it.
| euroderf wrote:
| Yes. Stats about average lifetimes are quite misleading &
| useless until you filter out child mortality.
| [deleted]
| aero-deck wrote:
| all the correct observations about averages aside,
| quantity!=quality
| JR1427 wrote:
| It would be worth checking that the concentrations of
| microplastics used in this study are of a similar concentration
| to those found naturally. Otherwise the research is not very
| meaningful.
| shaunregenbaum wrote:
| Tap water contains about 1.67-2.08 ug/ml of nanoplastics on the
| larger side (https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/
| pii/S00139...)
|
| So this article was working with concentrations 10x larger on
| mice (usually worse ability to filter). Beyond that, they
| admitted that microplastics did not induce an effect which is
| most of the plastics found in the ocean, etc...
| shawndrost wrote:
| "1.67-2.08 ug/ml" is incorrect. Your link states "1.67-2.08
| ug/L". In other words, the paper is about the effects of
| nanoplastic concentrations which are 10,000x greater than in
| tap water.
| hinkley wrote:
| Many nasty chemicals are attracted to plastic particles. As
| bad as the plastics are, they may be carrying something
| nastier.
|
| Get some nice PCBs stuck to plastic particles and they may
| not trip contamination sensors, but get deposited in your
| body where the PCBs become mobile again and end up in your
| system.
| bboygravity wrote:
| Yeah ok, I'm going to keep drinking tap-water and stop
| reading clickbait "science" articles.
| nologic01 wrote:
| Could you elaborate on naturally found microplastics?
| JR1427 wrote:
| I meant microplastic concentrations in the real world, i.e.
| not in a lab.
|
| If the concentrations of those used in a lab are far in
| excess of those in the real world, then these results may be
| of less concern.
| JR1427 wrote:
| In the paper they mention a concentration of 20ug/ml. I
| haven't compared this to what is typical for drinking
| water, food, etc.
| balaji1 wrote:
| good one haha... nologic but savage... (commenter's handle is
| nologic, this is supposed to be a pun)
| civilized wrote:
| One relevant bit from the article:
|
| > After two months of daily ingestion of nanoplastics at the
| estimated human consumption dose, nanoplastic-exposed mice
| exhibited reduced cognition and short-term memory as assessed
| by standard neurological assessments such as the open-field
| test, novel object recognition assay, and the Morris water
| maze.
|
| I'm a bit confused about whether it makes sense to feed the
| "estimated human consumption dose" of something to a mouse when
| a human weighs something like 2000 times as much.
| zug_zug wrote:
| Well, except in the real world whatever amount of nanoplastics
| we're consuming we consume for decades, starting from in utero.
|
| It's obviously not possible to give a mouse a smaller dose of
| microplastics over 30 years and measure the cognitive effects.
|
| This is all to say -- your prior shouldn't be "this thing that
| was never supposed to go into the body is safe until proven
| otherwise"
| habitmelon wrote:
| It's still worthwhile to look at 10x and 100x concentrations
| since these things bioaccumulate. Whatever negative effects are
| happening at 1x should be studied as we crank that
| concentration up. Might be fine now, but in 100 years? We
| should probably have an idea how the harm/effects scale
| DoreenMichele wrote:
| I personally try to avoid canned drinks and foods to avoid metal
| poisoning. I typically buy two liter sodas in plastic bottles and
| avoid softer plastics. Styrofoam cups and other styrofoam food
| containers are awful. If you get hot food in a styrofoam go box,
| the box is often visibly marked by contact with hot food and you
| can smell it and taste it.
|
| It's also potentially a reason to switch to an electric vehicle
| -- to avoid exposure to gas fumes while refueling your vehicle.
| (Or you can be "an extremist nutter" like me and give up your car
| entirely.)
| quickthrowman wrote:
| Canned food and beverage cans are lined with epoxy or plastic.
| romseb wrote:
| This is what you ingest when you drink/eat food from a can:
| https://youtu.be/pGZyT9vGraw?t=135
| hinkley wrote:
| When I was young and poor I used to use a spatula to get
| the last 20 calories out of the can. Now I plop out
| whatever comes out and then rinse the remainder down the
| drain before dropping it into recycling. I figure some
| large fraction of the leachate stays near the lining
| (unless you shake vigorously, or the contents are highly
| liquid at room temperature)
| civilized wrote:
| What is metal poisoning? Should we be concerned about it if we
| use stainless steel containers?
| DoreenMichele wrote:
| Stainless steel is ok.
| lm28469 wrote:
| > I typically buy two liter sodas in plastic bottles and avoid
| softer plastics.
|
| If you drink that plastic is the least of your problems
|
| > It's also potentially a reason to switch to an electric
| vehicle -- to avoid exposure to gas fumes while refueling your
| vehicle.
|
| Car interiors are off-gassing nasty shit all the time,
| especially when they sit in the sun
| Taywee wrote:
| Both of those things are straight-up improvements, even if
| they're not perfect. You can nit-pick every single thing all
| you want, but better is better.
| digging wrote:
| Changing the container your soda comes in is like sanding
| off splinters from the sharpened stake you're about to stab
| into your leg.
| DoreenMichele wrote:
| It's a lot more complicated than that.
|
| And I will note that I drink a lot of tea and fruit
| juice, which _also_ come in plastic bottles. Most drinks
| come in plastic or metal containers these days. Most of
| the time, I buy mine in plastic containers.
|
| I wish it were different and I've lived without a car for
| more than a decade in the US. Try advocating for a less
| car dependent infrastructure in the US. It gets you
| mostly pissed on.
|
| Individuals have limits on how much they can control
| given the larger context of the world they live in.
| Attacking my consumption of cola drinks as the focus
| willfully ignores my real point that styrofoam food
| containers are dramatically worse than plastic bottles.
| carabiner wrote:
| Not complicated. US has normalized sugar addiction and
| obesity. Rest of the world sees this as fucking bizarre,
| like pretending that cigarettes are ok as long as you
| don't have cancer at the moment.
| DoreenMichele wrote:
| A. I only drink diet coke. It contains no sugar.
|
| B. I have a genetic disorder. Diet coke contains extracts
| from the coca plant -- thus the name "Coca Cola" -- minus
| the hallucinogen cocaine. They have medicinal effects on
| the gut and lungs, both important systems significantly
| impacted by my genetic disorder.
|
| C. Before someone else jumps up to tell me I'm evil
| incarnate, diet coke is the only thing I consume that
| contains sugar substitutes. I generally avoid them as
| well. And I drink no other cola drinks. Full stop.
|
| I generally don't discuss this on HN. I don't intend to
| discuss it further in this thread. Note to self: I
| thought it was just a few of my relatives who were
| nutters who believe all sodas are the work of the devil
| and if you have any health issues and ever drink a single
| drop of cola, your health problems are entirely your
| fault for drinking colas. But, no, there are more people
| out there cast from the same mold.
|
| Edit: comment not 100 percent accurate. I also drink
| ginger ale. Feeling like you need to defend your personal
| choices at gun point from judgy random internet strangers
| is not the best means to engage in meaningful discussion.
| digging wrote:
| I'm sorry that I contributed to a judgmental discussion.
| I was being glib and short-sighted.
| timeon wrote:
| > Most drinks come in plastic or metal containers these
| days.
|
| But do people buy those drinks daily? I drink mostly just
| tap water - because it is convenient - as it is almost
| everywhere.
| DoreenMichele wrote:
| I live in a 100 year old building with lots of plumbing
| issues. I don't trust my tap water. I limit my
| consumption of it.
|
| So, yes, I buy such drinks -- and consume them --
| _daily_.
|
| This is possibly a class issue. Lots of people in the
| world lack reliable access to clean water. There are
| entire charities devoted to trying to remedy that fact.
| Taywee wrote:
| That's a ridiculous analogy. What about suger-free sodas,
| or sparkling water without even artificial sweeteners?
| What about people who drink soda, but still don't go over
| the daily recommended sugar intake, and otherwise have
| healthy lifestyles?
|
| I'd be willing to make two assumptions:
|
| 1. A gaping wound in your leg is probably less healthy
| than a moderately-high sugar consumption.
|
| 2. People who are concerned about nanoplastic intake are
| probably also concerned about deleterious health effects
| of things like sugar intake.
| ifyoubuildit wrote:
| I think sparkling water is a great alternative, but I'm
| skeptical that all the fake sugars will turn out to be
| much better in the end. We seem to have a habit of
| replacing known bad things with things that we just
| haven't found out are bad yet.
| digging wrote:
| > 1. A gaping wound in your leg is probably less healthy
| than a moderately-high sugar consumption.
|
| I didn't saw they were equivalent, I just said they're
| similar. They're in fact two totally different categories
| of "unhealthy", which is why I used them. Because over a
| 20-year period, most stab wounds go away completely,
| while the effects of sugar intake tend to compound.
| [deleted]
| samstave wrote:
| Exactly!
|
| I dont think I have had a 'soda' in at least 15 years.
|
| I havent been able to avoid plastic in my life - but I try.
|
| For example, pretty much every spoon in my drawer is Bamboo.
|
| I have a 'hippy' friend, and he has nearly zero plastic in
| his kitchen - and he exclusively eats with wooden utensils,
| stoneware or wooden bowls.
|
| I think that ALL single-use-plastics should be replaced by
| corn-plant-based materials.
|
| Single use plastic should be taken out as aggressively as the
| nazis! :-)
|
| Its so bad for everything.
|
| We should also be burning down DOW Chemical and the major
| plastic manufacturers for their lack of any accountability,
| responsibility.
|
| Look at the documentary "the devil we know" about Teflon.
| jackothy wrote:
| Why bamboo or wood spoons/utensils instead of stainless
| steel? I would imagine the wood will crack or break after a
| while, and is harder to clean properly.
| culopatin wrote:
| You seem to imply that there is plastic in metal spoons
| since you avoid the material in your examples. I'm yet to
| open a drawer full of plastic spoons, most of them are
| stainless, why bring those up in your example in
| particular?
| McSwag wrote:
| You can't get metal poisoning from cans...because they're lined
| with BPA! :)
| Solvency wrote:
| So do seed oils and other PUFAs and a thousand other things and
| if anyone would just listen to a podcast once in a while (like
| Peter Attia's) they'd learn a thing or two.
| machinawhite wrote:
| I'm not sure I can imagine something more painful than
| listening to people that I find absolutely uninteresting
| nerding out about microplastics for 3 hours but ok
| digging wrote:
| > just listen to a podcast once in a while
|
| Sorry, but this just sounds so silly. If only I would take a
| little bit of time out of my day to pick one of the 45 new
| podcasts created that morning and learn from its reliable, well
| sourced arguments!
| throitallaway wrote:
| Is "listen to a podcast" the new "read a book"?
| ch4s3 wrote:
| No, it's far worse. You can churn out junk podcast content
| at a pretty impressive rate, hours a day if you wanted.
| euroderf wrote:
| Robots! We'll do it with chatty, witty robots!
| stevebmark wrote:
| The people who think seed oils are unhealthy and cause
| inflammation are up there with the most ignorant folks in
| nutrition.
| ch4s3 wrote:
| Hearing someone say "seed oils" is a good shibboleth for
| knowing that your time is about to be wasted.
| z9e wrote:
| So, trans fats which are a known contributor to heart disease
| are healthy now?
| brianbreslin wrote:
| I wonder if this will eventually make farmed fish the only safe
| type of fish to eat. We can control their environment and define
| what they ingest.
| reset2023 wrote:
| Coca Cola is to plastic what oil is to Exxon, and what food is to
| Monsanto. The CEO of coca cola and his team of scientist in 1978
| are responsible for this. Extremely intelligent but extremely
| unconscious.
| titzer wrote:
| They'd make their containers out of pickled baby faces, set up
| their factory next to a nuclear waste disposal site, and whip
| children who nod off during their 18 hour shifts if it saved
| one goddamn cent per bottle.
| colpabar wrote:
| And we'd all keep drinking coke products as long as they
| express the correct opinions and put flags on their pfps when
| appropriate on twitter.
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