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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?

#211

Post by teawrecks »

wbsss4412 wrote: post #190
teawrecks wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The first person to suggest fossil fuels would leaf to global warming was in 1896. How long until the field came to an agreement?

I don’t think I ever disputed that it can take a long time to reach consensus. It’s quite clear that there isn’t a consensus on what the truth is, ergo the truth is out there on what causes obesity and it isn’t to be found within the current consensus. However, do we take that to mean that sugar is the cause of obesity? I don’t see overwhelming evidence to that fact, so I personally don’t. What we can take is that wh…

I don't understand this statement:

> One could come up with various explanations, including lobbying by big sugar, but it falls flat when you consider that the sugar industry is only a small fraction of the industrialized food industry, there’s plenty of lobbying and influence to go around.

Are you saying that the sugar industry would be lobbying against larger industries with opposing goals? Or are you saying the sugar industry is just one of several industries who would like to use their money to push the blame around?

I am not well versed in the agricultural industry, but doesn't the majority of our mass produced sugar come from the corn industry which is absolutely massive and will obviously do anything it can to protect its sources of income (sugar, ethanol, alcohol, oil, etc.)?

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

#212

Post by john567 »

zamfi wrote: post #142
matthewdgreen wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What’s worrying about this is that we’re about 50 years into an unexplained epidemic of obesity and metabolic disease that nobody has a clear explanation for, and is also affecting lab animals fed controlled diets. It would be fascinating if this was all correlated with a common environmental contaminant, and the increasing use of various plastics could line up well.

You may find this exposition interesting: http://achemicalhunger.com/

This must be part of some disinformation effort to streer people away from the simple answer.

Their conclusion is that you're helpless if your fat and that's just not true. The idea that this is not in your hands is ridiculous. If you are fat and you don't want to be fat you simply change your eating habits. This can be very difficult to do because you have formed these habits throughout your life but it isn't complicated and you should just do it anyway.

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

#213

Post by gaze »

teawrecks wrote: post #186
wbsss4412 wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Absolutely. That said, it does beg the question: why, 12 years after that video was published, has the field not come to an agreement, if it is “pretty clearly” the truth? One could come up with various explanations, including lobbying by big sugar, but it falls flat when you consider that the sugar industry is only a small fraction of the industrialized food industry, there’s plenty of lobbying and influence to go a…

The first person to suggest fossil fuels would leaf to global warming was in 1896. How long until the field came to an agreement?

are you making the argument that BECAUSE his ideas are not widely accepted they must be true? Come on.

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

#215

Post by carlmr »

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…

>In these scenarios (0.15g and 0.3g) about 90% they estimate comes from salt.

I tried to find this, but all I could see was that it would mostly come from bottled water, shellfish, and plastic packaged food.

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

#216

Post by ciphol »

BenoitEssiambre wrote: post #48
GekkePrutser wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes and silicate is an environmental component that's well understood and our bodies have adapted to it because sand has been a thing forever. And glass is chemically inert.

Dust or soil has thousands of components, metals, bacteria, fungi, molds, organic matter, feces etc. It can give you farmer's lung and other illnesses. Plastic is comparatively inert. Weird that there is not environmental movement to reduce soil from the environment.

We evolved to survive breathing in soil.

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

#217

Post by CyanBird »

AstralStorm wrote: post #61

The plastics themselves are only part of the story - they are relatively inert. However chemicals used to plasticize them and prevent fire are not, and some of them are already banned, but we have insufficient days on the replacements used. (Phenolics such as Bisphenol A - have hormonal effects causing direct cancer risk. And other effects too.)

Also, note that while bisphemol A is largely banned from certain food-contact plastics, it has been replaced with other "plasticising" chemicals which are largely "the same" such as bisphemol E, F, S, or AF

For the interested https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bisphenol

Also note n2, variations of vinyl or pvc plastic makes strong use of bisphemols for flexibility, pvc is being used to replace ageing copper or lead piping across the world, it is also largely unexplored the degree to which there is legislation regarding the sourcing and chemical composition of said water pipes over most of the world (as in, if there is a new international hotel building being built in, let's say brazil, what type of water pipe will the construction company use? You honestly think they would use copper everywhere and pay a 5x premium on it, or just use some random pvc pipe embedded on the walls? And then, if it proves to be that the pvc had bisphemol X on it, how would you even fix it? Rip it all up? We are talking of literal concrete bricks. Or just hide it from the public? )

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

#218

Post by DoingIsLearning »

simmanian wrote: post #203
azinman2 wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What makes you think that’ll reduce it?

In a lot of regions, "farming" sea salt basically means pouring sea water on top of plastic tarps and evaporating water. Over time, the plastic degrades and you get microplastic particles in your salt. You also need to rake these salt fields pretty heavily, which also generates microplastic particles.

Which is sad because salt "farming" used to be done on clay soil near river deltas, which was a perfectly good medium for this job.

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

#219

Post by mcguire »

Melatonic wrote: post #209
mitchdoogle wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So people just started making different choices the last fifty years?

Plot the rise of computer related desk jobs on a graph and then overlay that with the same graph for obesity. Obviously not the sole cause but they line up pretty nicely

You might try adding the number of McDonald's locations and their revenue. I have a hypothesis.

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

#220

Post by bb123 »

matthewdgreen wrote: post #122
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…

What’s worrying about this is that we’re about 50 years into an unexplained epidemic of obesity and metabolic disease that nobody has a clear explanation for, and is also affecting lab animals fed controlled diets. It would be fascinating if this was all correlated with a common environmental contaminant, and the increasing use of various plastics could line up well.

I don’t think it’s unexplained at all. People just don’t like the explanation. People simply eat too much and don’t move enough. The secondary reasons behind that are many but again pretty easy to see (more desk jobs, cheap high calorie foods, automobile ownership etc)
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