Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

nautil.us

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

221–230 of 341 posts

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

#221

Post by wbsss4412 »

teawrecks wrote: post #211
wbsss4412 wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 su…

I can’t say I have any special insider knowledge of food industry lobby.

My statement was to preempt the common argument that somehow the sugar industry is so powerful that it was and is able to divert all of our collective attention from it, when it is the real culprit.

The corn industry is a large industry, but so is the meat industry, dairy industry, processed food manufacturers, soy beans, etc. many of them, possibly even including corn, benefit from diverting attention away from their products towards sugar as the main villain. Even if sugar is a revenue source for corn, it pales in comparison for its main product: animal feed.

None of that is to say that I think any of the above industries I listed is “the culprit” I only list them to illustrate my point. Big sugar has lobbying power, but it is all too common that the simplest story gets repeated, “it’s all because of powerful lobbying group X”

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

#222

Post by CyanBird »

swayvil wrote: post #98
danShumway wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 commen…

In a hundred million years of biological history, I doubt that there is anything as perverse as voluntarily blocking your own breathing hole. It's right up there with crowds throwing themselves off cliffs and maniacs walking down the sidewalk chattering at their plastic rat.

> I doubt that there is anything as perverse as voluntarily blocking your own breathing hole.

Well, then I would recommend you to look more around you, very few to no animals intake air directly through their trachea, we evolved noses to both filter the small particulate with nose hairs, change the temperature of the air and later evolved the use of smell

So yeah, next time you go out I would recommend you to carefully review the faces of the beings you see around you and realize the existence and plurality of noses and "noseholes", and yes, noses themselves also inhibit oxygen flow vs "open trachea holes"

Lastly, you are welcome to give yourself a tracheotomy if you'd like too, just be careful, or maybe not

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

#223

Post by stuckinhell »

twofornone wrote: post #105

>bisphenol A mimics the hormone estrogen and can lead to damage in sperm development.19 Further research has shown that microplastics, and not just those with bisphenol A, can cause damage to the testes and lead to the production of deformed sperm cells that have a harder time reaching eggs. I'd more interested in hearing what microdosing xenestrogens on a large scale does to our collective psychology. I think this i…

It could explain the rise of trans women too. It's honestly quite frightening to think we are unknowingly modifying ourselves at such a scale.

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

#224

Post by filoeleven »

kbelder wrote: post #155
rgrieselhuber wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Eating a credit card full of plastic per year sounds totally natural. Nothing to worry about!

I'm sure we eat that much silica powder.. what makes a granule of plastic worse? I'm not discounting the potential problem of microplastics, but I'm not seeing a clear description of what it actually does to a person. Embed and raise cancer risk?

Silica powder is basically inert. Plastics don’t have that same guarantee. Some of them are endocrine disrupters, like BPA.

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

#225

Post by rgrieselhuber »

rgrieselhuber wrote: post #175
kbelder wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm sure we eat that much silica powder.. what makes a granule of plastic worse? I'm not discounting the potential problem of microplastics, but I'm not seeing a clear description of what it actually does to a person. Embed and raise cancer risk?

For me it’s about baseline assumptions. When I’m eating food, I should assume that I’m not eating anything my great-grandmother would not recognize as food.

Amazing that this is objectionable.

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

#226

Post by logicchains »

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.

It's got an incredibly simple explanation, if you look at a graph of average daily calorie intake by year.

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

#227

Post by admax88qqq »

gaze wrote: post #213
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?

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

No they are making the argument that people have been right in the past and it took forever for the community to find "consensus" on that position if ever.

So to doubt something is true just because "it's been 12 years and there's no consensus" is not necessarily a good rebuttal to something being true or not.

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

#228

Post by k0k0r0 »

eslaught wrote: post #195
wbsss4412 wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s not at all clear that the current epidemic is caused by sugar. Lustig is a great speaker, and I’ll admit that when I first watched that I was quite convinced. His position, however, is still not representative of a consensus within the field, and for good reason. While sugar consumption is likely detrimental to one’s overall health. Simply cutting out sugar is not necessarily going to lead to better weight manag…

I really, really recommend watching this lecture: The Human Microbiome: A New Frontier in Health by Susan Lynch https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XCaTQzjX2rQ What food you eat certainly influences conditions in your gut, which influences your gut microbiome. On the other hand, your gut microbiome is highly persistent and even efforts to diet may not have the direct impact you'd think it would. Also, other factors (like…

Indeed, this was very interesting. However, I missed a bit what changes to my diet I could do to improve myicrobiome. I would be glad to hear a scientist like her discussing this.

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

#229

Post by tartoran »

bb123 wrote: post #220
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.

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)

That but also junk food and the industry pushing it.

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

#230

Post by uoaei »

wbsss4412 wrote: post #165
ellopoppit wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's pretty clear the epidemic of obesity and metabolic disease is largely caused by sugar https://youtu.be/dBnniua6-oM

It’s not at all clear that the current epidemic is caused by sugar. Lustig is a great speaker, and I’ll admit that when I first watched that I was quite convinced. His position, however, is still not representative of a consensus within the field, and for good reason. While sugar consumption is likely detrimental to one’s overall health. Simply cutting out sugar is not necessarily going to lead to better weight manag…

I learned a while back but don't have time to dig up sources now that eating simple carbs and fats together encourages your body to take the fast calories and store them as fat, moreso than eating simple carbs alone (fast energy, relatively clean-burning) or fats alone. These kinds of interactions are historically very important for explaining particular quirks of the effects of diets and I wouldn't be surprised at all if microplastics had some sort of catalytic effect, e.g. by being nucleation points for buildup of something (arterial plaque or whatever else).
Post reply on HN