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What is our hidden consumption of microplastics doing to our health?

nautil.us

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Re: What is our hidden consumption of microplastics doing to our health?

#71

Post by mauvehaus »

saalweachter wrote: post #21
mkr-hn wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems like one of the countries where masking while sick and during flu/cold season is common would have some studies on this.

You'd notice it in professional populations, I'd wager. I also assume it would be a confounding factor in any study that involved masks, if it was a significant effect. "Weird, the group that breathed in asbestos for 20 years without wearing a mask had 90% more lung cancer than the masked group, but 20% less XYZ. Does asbestos exposure prevent XYZ?"

Dental hygienists might be another group that could be studied, and hopefully one with fewer confounding factors.

As an added bonus they're usually (in the Before Times) wearing surgical masks as opposed to a [K]N-95, which is anecdotally a lot more reflective of what the general population is wearing (if they're wearing anything at all).

Edited to add:

As an added, added bonus, dental hygienist skews heavily female, whereas construction and remediation skews heavily male. Female populations also wouldn't have the confounding factor of facial hair, which interferes with the seal of a respirator.

Full disclosure: I type all this while I'm wearing a half-face respirator with P-100 cartridges on it because I'm doing a bunch of sanding today. I also have a goatee. Read into that what you will.

Re: What is our hidden consumption of microplastics doing to our health?

#72

Post by mr-wendel »

pcthrowaway wrote: post #16

Quoted post unavailable.

My concern is with all the infants. Being able to gawk out and stare at all the many faces you see, and how they respond to you has got to be foundational to your discovery of the world. If had to place a bet on a major "net negative" I'm going all in on this.

I have one friend who absolutely swears that "covid babies" are a thing, and that you can spot them from across the room. I haven't yet figured out what that means, but I tend to believe her.

So not sure I can really quality/quantify it, but just like this article, maybe someone will try and an article with a catchy title will be written about it.

Re: What is our hidden consumption of microplastics doing to our health?

#73

Post by BoxOfRain »

mkr-hn wrote: post #19
pcthrowaway wrote: post #16

Quoted post unavailable.

It seems like one of the countries where masking while sick and during flu/cold season is common would have some studies on this.

It didn't seem to make a difference at all when Scotland and Wales had mask mandates but England didn't, although I've not seen a rigorous analysis of why this was.

Re: What is our hidden consumption of microplastics doing to our health?

#74

Post by GabrielMtn »

swayvil wrote: post #55
donthellbanme wrote: post #17

I was thinking about this tonight on my walk. I've been noticing some funny looks at my mask wearing. I usually walk with my mask on. I have done this way before Covid. I used to wear it for allergies. My allergies just felt better when I wore a mask. Tonight I could smell burn't tires on my walk. A older guy happened to be doing a burn out in his Tesla. Yea--I know, not the typical burnout guy. A few Japanese beers…

Mask-wearing is like foot-binding and leeching. Pathological and perverse, perhaps. But also totally cool and in agreement with the experts. It's a window into our psychology. Anthropologists of the future will reap much research papers.

Do you have any evidence of these claims or is this just more reactionary politicizing of masks?

Re: What is our hidden consumption of microplastics doing to our health?

#76

Post by Agentlien »

tomthe wrote: post #59
barbegal wrote: post #11

The actual study is here https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S030438942... The study presents three scenarios assuming different assumptions about the mass of plastic particles. In the worst case scenario, where I think the assumptions are bad, they estimate 5g of plastic per week. In the other two scenarios which used more complex but more realistic modelling they estimate 0.15 and 0.3g of plastic cons…

I can't take anyone seriously who publishes a pie-chart like this: https://ars.els-cdn.com/content/image/1-s2.0-S03043894203199...

Is that because the "Consumables ingested" on the right side looks like Pac-Man eating the other two categories?

Re: What is our hidden consumption of microplastics doing to our health?

#77

Post by cypress66 »

varenc wrote: post #67
cypress66 wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

N95 masks filter 95% of 0.3 micron particles.

Fun fact: 0.3 micron particles are the most penetrating particles of any size, including smaller particles . It’s counterintuitive, but 0.1 micron particles will be filtered out more easily than 0.3 micron particles. [0] That’s in fact why all masks are rated this way, since it gives you the absolute worst case. It’s fair to say that an N95 would filter out at least 95% of all particles. [0] Wikipedia graph showing t…

Nice, I didn't know that.

Re: What is our hidden consumption of microplastics doing to our health?

#78

Post by swayvil »

GabrielMtn wrote: post #74
swayvil wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mask-wearing is like foot-binding and leeching. Pathological and perverse, perhaps. But also totally cool and in agreement with the experts. It's a window into our psychology. Anthropologists of the future will reap much research papers.

Do you have any evidence of these claims or is this just more reactionary politicizing of masks?

Experts agree that there is such a thing as anthropologists.

Re: What is our hidden consumption of microplastics doing to our health?

#79

Post by wil421 »

jacquesm wrote: post #56
moffkalast wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> but what elephant do I miss? Probably the plastic that was in those tomatoes to start with. I doubt there's a practical way to avoid it, it's probably fairly random depending on where the food is from. Especially if I recall right it's often found in the water supply which you then drink directly or is used to water plants which you then eat.

Plants are reasonably good at filtering the water they ingest through their roots, if they weren't your tomatoes would be full of sand and mud (clay).

Plants uptake chemicals and other smaller molecules through their roots. Oftentimes they will store pollutants in their fruit or stems because they don’t know what to do with it.

Here’s an article from Nature that specifically studied plastic uptake by plant roots.[1]

[1] https://www.nature.com/articles/s41893-020-0567-9

Re: What is our hidden consumption of microplastics doing to our health?

#80

Post by danShumway »

swayvil wrote: post #55
donthellbanme wrote: post #17

I was thinking about this tonight on my walk. I've been noticing some funny looks at my mask wearing. I usually walk with my mask on. I have done this way before Covid. I used to wear it for allergies. My allergies just felt better when I wore a mask. Tonight I could smell burn't tires on my walk. A older guy happened to be doing a burn out in his Tesla. Yea--I know, not the typical burnout guy. A few Japanese beers…

Mask-wearing is like foot-binding and leeching. Pathological and perverse, perhaps. But also totally cool and in agreement with the experts. It's a window into our psychology. Anthropologists of the future will reap much research papers.

> Pathological and perverse, perhaps. But also totally cool and in agreement with the experts.

Um... "perverse"?

I have a lot less patience for these takes than I used to because at least early on in the pandemic people could convincingly claim that wearing a mask was "cool". There was at least truth to the idea that you would be shamed for not wearing a mask. But that's not the situation anymore -- GP wrote a comment about how they're getting a lot of weird looks in public for wearing a mask to help with pollution. If the response to that is, "what's up with this mask fad?", then I'm not sure you understand how fads or popularity work.

Anecdotally, even in a majority Democrat area the majority of people I see in just about every single social situation are not wearing masks, even in enclosed environments and at offices. The majority of retail workers I see don't wear masks. There are maybe 3-6 people total that I've seen in my entire church that wear a mask. And it's not exclusive to Republicans, most Democrats I know are not wearing masks -- to the point where people are far more likely to give funny looks or scowl at others for having one on.

As far as I can tell people wearing masks in public are pretty squarely the minority at this point, but the rhetoric against masking never really got updated since the early pandemic so people are still pretending like if they go to an average grocery store without a mask everyone there will judge them over it.

GP wears a mask to help with allergies and reduce road pollution -- this is pretty reasonable and would have been reasonable pre-pandemic. I don't understand why anyone would care about someone else making that decision in the first place, let alone why they would care so much that they'd call GP a pervert over it. :)

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