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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?

#321

Post by jrs235 »

spywaregorilla wrote: post #274
zamfi wrote: post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most folks who respond like this are not looking for reasons to believe they might be wrong, but just in case you are, please take a look at A Chemical Hunger [0], which explores these questions in some depth. It turns out, the simple explanations (people eat more & move less! too much sugar! etc.) are in fact insufficient. [0] https://slimemoldtimemold.com/2021/07/11/a-chemical-hunger-p...

I don't buy it. > 2.1 Calories in calories out is a bad model True. It's insufficient. But it's not nothing. The article later claims that calorie consumption has "only" risen by about 20%. I find this take to be ridiculous. 20% is a lot. If I eat 20% more, I'll put on weight. Article also claims sugar consumption is down and carb consumption is down so therefore they can't be the cause. Yet in prior years we see an…

Watch Robert Lustig's presentations on Sugar: the bitter truth. I think he explains what's happening quite well. Unfortunately it seems to "sciency" and most people aren't disciplined enough to stay with it and hear him out because they don't understand chemistry and physiology. :(

https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=the+bitter+trut...

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

#322

Post by jrs235 »

Riseed wrote: post #293
gloryjulio wrote: post #283

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is CICO nonsense...? Unless you are breaking the law of thermodynamics, there is no way you could gain more from what you eat. The best you can do is utilize 100% of the calorie intake. It's physically impossible to gain weight if you are burning for example 150% of the total calories intake! The fuel has to come from somewhere. The variation lies in different utilization rate, the burn rate, and all other variab…

CICO is nonsense in the sense that it simplifies something to the point of being unhelpful. Similarly to if anyone claimed "garbage in, garbage out" is all there is to producing good code. Personally, when I reduce CI, my body responds by decreasing CO: I don't think as clearly (problematic for being a functional adult), and I'm even colder than normal. With no reasonable way to accurately measure the change in CO, i…

>CICO is nonsense in the sense that it simplifies something to the point of being unhelpful.

100%

Not all calories are equal.

Watch Robert Lustig's presentations on Sugar: the bitter truth. I think he explains what's happening quite well. Unfortunately it seems to "sciency" and most people aren't disciplined enough to stay with it and hear him out because they don't understand chemistry and physiology. :( https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=the+bitter+trut...

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

#323

Post by matthewdgreen »

watwut wrote: post #315
zamfi wrote: post #309

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wait, I think we’re talking past each other. “People eat too much” (where “too much” is defined not in raw calorie numbers but in terms of “more than burned or excreted”) is the obvious proximate cause, and I don’t think these folks are denying that. The confusing question is: why is everyone suddenly eating “too much” and seemingly unable to control it? Why does it now require willpower and dieting to not become obe…

In general, I agree with stance that obesity issue is more complicated. But: > People in the 1960s had plenty of food access, plenty of cars, etc. etc., and did not have obesity rates in the 40%+ range. I don't think they had comparable level of physical movement. They had more of it just by existing. Take office worker - today I come to work and sit on chair until I go to toilet or home. Communication is done via ke…

I am baffled by this explanation. Physical movement is one of the things we have lots of and lots of data about. We can even measure it reasonably accurately using devices that most people always carry in our pockets. If the solution to the obesity epidemic was as simple as "walk around more" then we'd have already solved it. But while there are huge benefits to going from zero walking to "some walking", those benefits don't scale to the levels needed by simply adding more steps.

TL;DR If adding a couple miles per day of walking would resolve the obesity epidemic, it'd already be resolved across a huge swath of the population. But all evidence is that the marginal weight-loss benefit of walking tails off rapidly, unless it's paired with a restricted-calorie diet (which is exactly the point: our 1960s parents/grandparents didn't need that.)

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

#324

Post by matthewdgreen »

burntoutfire wrote: post #319
zamfi wrote: post #296

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> mean US citizen's calorie intake increased by nearly a quarter over the period that obesity rose simply by saying "that's not a jaw dropping increase" I think the context here is that while 400 extra calories a day might seem like a lot, it's within the observed variability going back as far as we have measurements. Americans ate more calories in 1909 than in 1960, and were no more obese then. > He thinks a study i…

> Americans ate more calories in 1909 than in 1960 They also did A LOT more manual labor back then. Heavy construction projects (roads, dams etc.) were still performed by thousands of people literally swinging a pick-axe 10 hours a day, slowly chipping away at the hill that stood in the way. That must have required couple thousand of extra kcal per day. Meanwhile, in 1960, a lot of most energy-consuming work was alre…

Some of them just worked at desks. Actually quite a few. And they were thin too. You can find pictures of the typical city office-worker if you hunt through the Library of Congress archives.

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

#325

Post by matthewdgreen »

gloryjulio wrote: post #283
kaezon wrote: post #273

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thank you for this citation! I've at least heard that CICO was nonsense, but the author has done a fantastic job researching the subject, breaking down common approaches to weight loss, and studies which have examined them.

How is CICO nonsense...? Unless you are breaking the law of thermodynamics, there is no way you could gain more from what you eat. The best you can do is utilize 100% of the calorie intake. It's physically impossible to gain weight if you are burning for example 150% of the total calories intake! The fuel has to come from somewhere. The variation lies in different utilization rate, the burn rate, and all other variab…

> The variation lies in different utilization rate, the burn rate, and all other variables, but within the limit of PHYSICS.

CICO is useful as an upper bound on calorie utilization, but unfortunately not relevant to the problem of obesity, which deals with the exact opposite end of the problem space.

CICO might be important if the problem was that people in first world nations were starving due to an insufficient supply of calories. But the obesity epidemic indicates that this is not the case. So CICO is relevant to the problem in the same way that a theoretical understanding of the gasoline-air reaction is relevant to understanding why my car's gas mileage has dropped recently.

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

#326

Post by rajin444 »

ClumsyPilot wrote: post #299
rajin444 wrote: post #291

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I read enough. > (1) Rates of obesity in lab rats -- whose diets haven't changed -- have also increased over the last 50 years. Do they lack willpower too? There are so many explanations for this outside of "some environmental factor causing everyone to get fat" that I don't think it needs explaining. > Average calorie consumption hasn't changed much over the last 50 years, and nor has calorie expenditure The methods…

> There are so many explanations for this outside of "some environmental factor causing everyone to get fat" that I don't think it needs explaining. Do you not realise that this point alone jeopardizes your entire argument? If this effect is real, the rest of this discussion belongs straight in the trash. So yes, very much needs explaining.

Yes, that’s my point. Parent is trying to “appeal to authority” essentially. We’re both arguing with no evidence, but parent is trying to act like they aren’t.

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

#327

Post by rajin444 »

zamfi wrote: post #297
rajin444 wrote: post #291

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I read enough. > (1) Rates of obesity in lab rats -- whose diets haven't changed -- have also increased over the last 50 years. Do they lack willpower too? There are so many explanations for this outside of "some environmental factor causing everyone to get fat" that I don't think it needs explaining. > Average calorie consumption hasn't changed much over the last 50 years, and nor has calorie expenditure The methods…

> I'm saying we have a large surplus of resources, and humans are designed to consume. You have no particular evidence of this either. In other contexts where humans have had a large surplus of resources, there has not been an obesity epidemic.

Can you point to other contexts with an equivalent level of surplus of today?

Even if you could, our science is not advanced enough to control for all the confounds. You can’t point to “evidence” or “science” to prove your point because we are not advanced enough to accurately claim anything at the level you’re attempting to.

Research like you’re referencing is great for “this is interesting” and not “this is why the world works this way”.

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

#328

Post by danShumway »

flaviut wrote: post #268
danShumway wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I haven't done a ton of research into VOCs, but my understanding is that most purifiers targeting them use activated charcoal filters? Those filters are pretty cheap, you can tape them to a Corsi-Rosenthal Box without adding much cost at all. If there's something more complicated going on then maybe that wouldn't be effective, but in general air filtration is just a combination of how much air your filter is moving a…

The cheap activated charcoal filters are bullshit. You can't absorb things without absorbant mass. The black plastic sponge has hardly any mass at all, period. I however do not have a good solution. I've DIY'd my own filter with charcoal pellets, but I've been unable to test it, and I'm somewhat unhappy with the design anyway.

Are commercial air purifiers using something better? Part of the reason I'm skeptical of the commercial market is that when I look at the teardowns of these products they're either doing something questionable where they're sacrificing air volume for noise, or they're basically using regular filters of the same or less quality that you can buy from a store.

I don't doubt you at all that cheap filters work less well, but at the same time, what are the consumer-grade commercial purifiers that aren't using cheap charcoal filters? I don't think I've ever noticed an in-store purifier that took pellets, but maybe I missed something.

Edit: it does make me curious if with a Corsi-Rosenthal box you could hang a non-enclosed/mesh bag/basket of charcoal pellets under the fan inside of the box and if that might produce better results than attaching charcoal filters to the sides. The obvious problem that springs to mind though is that this would make the design a lot more complicated and annoying to build. Might also result in charcoal dust spread around too, which might defeat the purpose of a purifier in the first place.

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

#329

Post by danShumway »

x3iv130f wrote: post #256
danShumway wrote: post #97

In a slightly different direction than consumption, if you're worried about inhaling plastic particles: I haven't personally gotten the equipment to do actual measurements yet, but I keep pet rats and they have pretty fragile respiratory systems, and anecdotally when I put together a Corsi Rosenthal Box[0] and stuck it next to their cage their allergies/sneezing pretty much entirely vanished. I still need to get air…

Consumer grade filters have nicer fans that let them push move more air with less noise. I have multiple in my house and it's amazing how quiet they are.

Not to doubt you, but have you actually measured that they're moving the same amount of air?

Circulation-to-noise ratio is something that pretty much every fan manufacturer cares about; I'm a little bit skeptical that there's an innovation here that wouldn't be applied to consumer-grade fans in general; or that you wouldn't be able to find a good box fan outside of the entry-level Walmart offerings that doesn't offer the same quality for a cheaper price. The "vornado" fans seem to get recommended a lot in this area, but I don't know if they're actually moving more air or just directing it better.

Anecdotally I did look into a few fan options from purifiers that claimed to be silently moving the air, and was pretty disappointed with the specs on what I was seeing. The conclusion I drew was that increasing the size of the unit and the intake area was the best way to allow for reduced fan speed/noise/power-consumption.

But it is completely possible that there's something I missed; again I haven't done my own testing.

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

#330

Post by Arrath »

sva_ wrote: post #278
Arrath wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honestly that's kinda cool. And I refuse to imagine anything but a melon sized hunk 'o salt on the dinner table, with a small hammer and chisel for those who want to salt their meal.

I think if you keep the salt exposed at the atmosphere, you'll quickly run into the problem of it absorbing a lot of water.

Quite. I learned this the hard way when I moved to a place with a swamp cooler. My salt lamp started weeping brine and salt sludge onto my side table.
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