Tiny Plastic Is Everywhere • Hacker News Board

Re: Tiny Plastic Is Everywhere

#41

Post by subcosmos » Mon, Aug 20, 2018, 9:04 PM UTC

timr wrote: post #35

subcosmos wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are literally hundreds of papers on BPA and its links with diabetes. The only difference now is that we have the molecular culprit behind the trend. https://www.ucsusa.org/our-work/center-science-and-democracy...

"There are literally hundreds of papers on BPA and its links with diabetes." There are literally not. The review you've linked to cites a handful of papers involving minor effects observed in mouse studies. Moreover, the paper you originally cited proves nothing even approximating a mechanism. I'm not suggesting anything about the safety of BPA, but it's utter nonsense to claim that it is a more plausible explanation…

But is it really?

Elevated blood glucose, as in Type 2 Diabetes, has LONG been known to be primarily driven by excessive production of glucose by the liver due to liver insulin resistance. In fact, the way that the drug metformin improves diabetes is by shutting that pathway down.

http://diabetes.diabetesjournals.org/content/50/8/1807.short

Thats not dietary, thats the hormone insulin being ignored by the liver. This is further complicated by the fact that peripheral tissues, like muscle, are themselves insulin resistant.

The TCF7L2 pathway has been shown to be down-regulated in all of these tissues in diabetics.

Re: Tiny Plastic Is Everywhere

#42

Post by CptFribble » Mon, Aug 20, 2018, 9:09 PM UTC

dmritard96 wrote: post #27

WalterBright wrote: post #8

Plastics should be taxed.

Agreed. There should be a mitigation cost associated with all plastics. Nothing more frustrating than buying a container for some food that will last for millennia meanwhile the food was consumed in a couple minutes... More generally, I hope more will push for taxes on all things we want to discourage as means of weening off. Oil, coal, plastic, high impact animal products. All of them have huge external costs, none…

If we began taxing externalities to reflect actual total cost to society, consumer behavior would change real quick.

My only concern is that we are too far down to rabbit hole with cheap, ubiquitous, damaging materials that if the true cost was reflected in the price no one could afford anything.

Re: Tiny Plastic Is Everywhere

#43

Post by delecti » Mon, Aug 20, 2018, 9:10 PM UTC

robotkdick wrote: post #36

WalterBright wrote: post #8

Plastics should be taxed.

Because plastic is so cheap, producers will pay the tax, continue using plastic, and pass the costs onto consumers. Given the higher cost of other materials, changing consumer behavior (which is not easy, but it's happening right now, and achievable through further exposure and education) may be the only way to change producers' behavior. While a tax seems like an easy fix, it may also cause the government to come to…

> While a tax seems like an easy fix, it may also cause the government to come to rely on income from plastic acting as a deterrent to law-making which discourages the use of plastics.

I don't know how common such a thing is, but in Washington state if a tax is labeled as a "fee", it must be earmarked for a specific purpose. If we put a "plastic fee" on products packaged with single-use plastics, and then mandated the raised funds be used to clean up plastic waste, that could be a good way to avoid that very likely outcome.

Re: Tiny Plastic Is Everywhere

#44

Post by dang » Mon, Aug 20, 2018, 9:10 PM UTC

exabrial wrote: post #39

This headline really needs an Oxford comma.

We filled its need.

Edit: actually we can just lop off the problem instead.

Re: Tiny Plastic Is Everywhere

#45

Post by cat199 » Mon, Aug 20, 2018, 9:11 PM UTC

subcosmos wrote: post #20

ams6110 wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's much more likely that the diabetes epidemic is linked to the insane levels of carb/sugar intake and obesity of so many adults.

We can keep running on the macronutrient treadmill, like we've been doing for 50 years, or we can find molecular evidence that jives with genetics. Check out this study, where they fed mice water, water+fructose, or water+fructose+BPA. At the end of the experiment, only the BPA containing solutions had elevated liver fat https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0300483X1...

and yet, most everything came in glass until about 25 years ago..

Re: Tiny Plastic Is Everywhere

#46

Post by exabrial » Mon, Aug 20, 2018, 9:14 PM UTC

WalterBright wrote: post #8

Plastics should be taxed.

Couple of points:

Taxes don't work to work to change behavior, or people would have stopped speeding a long time ago, sugary drinks wouldn't sell in Seattle, and people would stop buying coffee in California. They are an unfortunate excuse used by politicians to fool the public into "hey I'm doing something!".

Instead, innovation is needed around providing biodegradable solutions that can outcompete their plastic counterparts. People will naturally switch to something healthier for the environment when it's more convenient and it saves them money. In this light, taxing plastics looks like an act of desperation admitting that "alternatives will never be as good, we have to help them out!" This actually stalls development on the renewables since an artificially inflated market is created.

Finally, this would become a source of revenue for governments that would be hard to eliminate. When environmentally friendly solutions finally came about, we'll literally have people saying "If we ban plastics, how will we pay for schools?"

There is a huge investment opportunity to replace them in the vast majority of areas. We need research, innovation, and investment, not more taxes.

Re: Tiny Plastic Is Everywhere

#47

Post by subcosmos » Mon, Aug 20, 2018, 9:14 PM UTC

cat199 wrote: post #45

subcosmos wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We can keep running on the macronutrient treadmill, like we've been doing for 50 years, or we can find molecular evidence that jives with genetics. Check out this study, where they fed mice water, water+fructose, or water+fructose+BPA. At the end of the experiment, only the BPA containing solutions had elevated liver fat https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0300483X1...

and yet, most everything came in glass until about 25 years ago..

Thats about when things got really bad

http://www.diabetesandenvironment.org/home/incidence

Re: Tiny Plastic Is Everywhere

#48

Post by pixl97 » Mon, Aug 20, 2018, 9:17 PM UTC

newswriter99 wrote: post #33

Aloha wrote: post #9

I strongly suspect that within about 50-100 years something will evolve that can digest all of this plastic. Which will probably cause us as a society to move back to glass and metal as storage components.

"within about 50-100 years" That's how bottlenecks work, but not evolution. No species is going to evolve in the next century which will be able to suddenly break down plastic and turn it into energy/nutrients. The ones that do, mostly bacertium and fungi, were pre-disposed to doing so, and didn't suddenly X-men their way into consuming plastic. As for organisms such as the Chinese mealworm that "eats" plastic bags,…

There is a good chance a species already exists that can break down plastics along with whatever else its actual diet is. We would be giving it an environment to flourish.

Re: Tiny Plastic Is Everywhere

#49

Post by joneston » Mon, Aug 20, 2018, 9:20 PM UTC

timr wrote: post #32

subcosmos wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We can keep running on the macronutrient treadmill, like we've been doing for 50 years, or we can find molecular evidence that jives with genetics. Check out this study, where they fed mice water, water+fructose, or water+fructose+BPA. At the end of the experiment, only the BPA containing solutions had elevated liver fat https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0300483X1...

"We can keep running on the macronutrient treadmill, like we've been doing for 50 years, or we can find molecular evidence that jives with genetics." Yes, let's ignore 50+ years of established science that is parsimonious with everything we know about the molecular biology of insulin resistance, and dump it in favor of a fringe theory, based on a single paper about a mouse study, where there's not even a plausible ex…

It’s interesting to notice that what we have here is one industry being villified, and then possibly passing the buck, only to point at another industry as possibly to blame.

It’s pretty interesting to think about how easy it is to muddy the waters like this. Something starts off as a direct medical concern, but then sprals into a secondary contamination problem. Both are bad. Plastics are bad for a variety of reasons, and sugars definitely contribute to obesity.

But, horomonal factors really cannot be shrugged at. There’s some serious distortion affecting people for the past 20 or more years, and it’s nothing normal. Is it birth control pills being dumped down the drain, and recirculating into the drinking water? Is it ibuprofen messing with people who have over dosed on their analgesic NSAIDs?

One thing’s for sure modern civilization has inteoduced many complications, all simultaneously, and that is likely the biggest mistake of all.

Also, I’m not sure you’ve used the word “parsimonious” correctly? Are you trying to say they’ve been “very careful” or “strict”? I think it’d be more appropriate to replace it with “well aligned” or “concomitant” if a vocabulary word should be preferred.

Re: Tiny Plastic Is Everywhere

#50

Post by fredsir » Mon, Aug 20, 2018, 9:23 PM UTC

SteveNuts wrote: post #11

fredsir wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm intrigued, still the sceptic in me thinks that most victims of type 2 diabetes are probably just victims of the simpler answer, which is occupying a body that has been exposed to too great amounts of fat (from especially oils and other processed foods) over too great a time period. However, I can only imagine the amount of harm continued consumption of plastic over a long period of time will do to a body, and I f…

I've always heard that rising levels of carbs and sugars consumption have caused rises in Type 2, not fats and oils. I am no expert though.

Carbs nor sugar causes T2 diabetes. Simply put, sugar (refined or in food with a high glycemic level) becomes dangerous when you are diabetic because you body can't handle it because the arteries are plagued (from overconsumption of fat) so the sugar becomes trapped in the blood instead of escaping and being processed as it should, and as it's trapped in the blood it will build up to dangerous levels.

The reason you've always heard that (processed) carbs and sugars causes it, is probably because processed carbs and sugar is most often served with huge amounts of fat. Think oils and animal fat in cakes, candy, fries and so on. In any way, it isn't the cause, the cause is the fat, but rising levels of carbs and sugar go hand in hand with rising levels of fat.