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Plastic-based fuels may present an “unreasonable risk” to human health

propublica.org

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Re: Plastic-based fuels may present an “unreasonable risk” to human health

#71

Post by simongr3dal »

rockostrich wrote: post #39
myshpa wrote: post #21

Change my mind: 90%+ of plastic is not necessary. Not necessary: - plastic bottles (good only for coca-cola's profits etc., 90% of bottled drinks contain microplastics, use glass) - food wrappers (use paper & natural wax, not pfoas) - plastic shopping bags (use textile bags like our grandma's did) - eshop packages (ever received goods in plastic bags wrapped in insane amounts of additional plastic?) - tea bags made w…

Sorry for the very kitchen focused comment but the kitchen is where I used the most plastic. Polycarbonate is a very useful plastic for food containers ("cambros") because it's lightweight, durable, and can be transparent. Sure, glass could work but it's a lot more fragile, especially if you were to try to constantly stack/unstack them in a commercial kitchen. To a lesser extent the same argument could be made for po…

A lot of commercial kitchens use stainless steel for their containers.

Re: Plastic-based fuels may present an “unreasonable risk” to human health

#72

Post by coryrc »

myshpa wrote: post #21

Change my mind: 90%+ of plastic is not necessary. Not necessary: - plastic bottles (good only for coca-cola's profits etc., 90% of bottled drinks contain microplastics, use glass) - food wrappers (use paper & natural wax, not pfoas) - plastic shopping bags (use textile bags like our grandma's did) - eshop packages (ever received goods in plastic bags wrapped in insane amounts of additional plastic?) - tea bags made w…

> polystyrene for home insulation (why not support plant based alternatives, like hemp / hempcrete)

Not a class-II vapor retarder. Can't build a comfortable and energy-efficient home without air barrier vapor retarders. (You can build an uncomfortable one, or one which uses far more energy).

> tooth brushes (what's wrong with wood/bamboo ?)

They all still use nylon brushes.

> food wrappers

You must be unfamiliar with warehouse conditions if you're willing to eat unprotected food like that.

Re: Plastic-based fuels may present an “unreasonable risk” to human health

#73

Post by njarboe »

marginalia_nu wrote: post #54
daniel_reetz wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And the soy plastic alternatives have caused huge problems in practice. Squirrels and mice totaling entire brand new cars by eating the insulation. Not to mention terrible longevity.

Yeah in a lot of ways the things that make plastics bad for the environment makes them good for electrical insulation. Primarily how they don't break down very easily, aren't particularly chemically reactive, don't rot, etc.

The knob and tube wiring in my 1930's house was still working fine. That tech would need to be updated for modern safety requirements (ground wire, etc) but worked without plastics for about 50 years. Much high cost though, I would guess.

Re: Plastic-based fuels may present an “unreasonable risk” to human health

#74

Post by tfandango »

jnsaff2 wrote: post #46
hannob wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm all for reducing plastics, but some of your ideas are quite naive. Like replacing plastics with glas - I mean, you can do that, but glas isn't exactly an environmentally friendly material. Glas making uses a lot of fossil gas, the technology to make glas with renewable electricity does not exist at scale (it's been tried more than a decade ago and was a big failure), and it has emissions that cannot be easily avo…

Glass bottles and jars are pretty much infinitely reusable. Recycled glass saves about 40% of the original energy.

My city has stopped taking glass in the recycling saying the cost to recycle it outweigh the benefits. It makes me wonder why we don't just clean/reuse them instead like we did in the old days when we returned glass bottles to the grocery store.

Re: Plastic-based fuels may present an “unreasonable risk” to human health

#75

Post by njarboe »

Wowfunhappy wrote: post #31
myshpa wrote: post #21

Change my mind: 90%+ of plastic is not necessary. Not necessary: - plastic bottles (good only for coca-cola's profits etc., 90% of bottled drinks contain microplastics, use glass) - food wrappers (use paper & natural wax, not pfoas) - plastic shopping bags (use textile bags like our grandma's did) - eshop packages (ever received goods in plastic bags wrapped in insane amounts of additional plastic?) - tea bags made w…

One use that comes to my mind are trash bags. I'm almost embarrassed to ask this, but what did people use for trash bags before plastic was invented? I've tried Googling this a few times with unsatisfying results. Trash bags by definition need to be disposable.

Throw trash in the bin without a bag. Dump trash in your big trash can outside (that still doesn't have a trash bag). That can gets dumped into the garbage truck (truck also does not have a huge trash bag). Wash bin when it gets too dirty/stinky.

Trash bags are just a great time saver and more sanitary. I sure like them.

Re: Plastic-based fuels may present an “unreasonable risk” to human health

#76

Post by selectodude »

hammock wrote: post #25
consumer451 wrote: post #4

> according to agency records obtained by ProPublica and The Guardian, the production of one of the fuels could emit air pollution that is so toxic, 1 out of 4 people exposed to it over a lifetime could get cancer > That risk is 250,000 times greater than the level usually considered acceptable by the EPA division that approves new chemicals.

I know it’s not disclosed, but which toxin do we think this would be?

Benzene and vinyl chloride would be my guess. A ton of plastics have benzene precursors.

Re: Plastic-based fuels may present an “unreasonable risk” to human health

#77

Post by FlyingAvatar »

myshpa wrote: post #21

Change my mind: 90%+ of plastic is not necessary. Not necessary: - plastic bottles (good only for coca-cola's profits etc., 90% of bottled drinks contain microplastics, use glass) - food wrappers (use paper & natural wax, not pfoas) - plastic shopping bags (use textile bags like our grandma's did) - eshop packages (ever received goods in plastic bags wrapped in insane amounts of additional plastic?) - tea bags made w…

In most cases, I would bet the CO2 impact of the alternatives you list is on the order of 2x - 10x.

So long as plastics are not being burned, at least their carbon is not going into the atmosphere.

Re: Plastic-based fuels may present an “unreasonable risk” to human health

#78

Post by cma »

myshpa wrote: post #21

Change my mind: 90%+ of plastic is not necessary. Not necessary: - plastic bottles (good only for coca-cola's profits etc., 90% of bottled drinks contain microplastics, use glass) - food wrappers (use paper & natural wax, not pfoas) - plastic shopping bags (use textile bags like our grandma's did) - eshop packages (ever received goods in plastic bags wrapped in insane amounts of additional plastic?) - tea bags made w…

> tea bags made with plastic (yes, they're there, not biodegradable, lots of microplastics in your tea)

I would imagine every time you scrape off the lint from your dryer's lint trap you inhale orders of magnitude more microplastics than these food/drink examples and and swallow more too from nasal drip.

Is this intuition off?

Re: Plastic-based fuels may present an “unreasonable risk” to human health

#79

Post by bob_theslob646 »

pfdietz wrote: post #37

"Less than 6% of plastic is recycled in the U.S. Much of the rest — millions of tons of it — ends up in the oceans each year, [...]" Calling bullshit on that second sentence.

It's not b**** because you have no idea whether or not the plastic that is generated actually ends up in the ocean. We used to ship most of our ways to other countries. So if the plastic is actually generated in the United States, it is possible that it could actually end up in another country and the end up in the ocean.

I agree with you that the wording is not necessarily the best but it is not facetious to think that plastic created in the United States'could'end up in the ocean.

You are correct that 94% of it does not end up in ocean, but the % is still too high.

Re: Plastic-based fuels may present an “unreasonable risk” to human health

#80

Post by ticviking »

tfandango wrote: post #74
jnsaff2 wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Glass bottles and jars are pretty much infinitely reusable. Recycled glass saves about 40% of the original energy.

My city has stopped taking glass in the recycling saying the cost to recycle it outweigh the benefits. It makes me wonder why we don't just clean/reuse them instead like we did in the old days when we returned glass bottles to the grocery store.

The relentless drive to make our labor available outside our local community in a single global labor market.

The trend of interconnected markets has pushed many families and companies to use more and more of their time getting cash instead of being productive in the home or local community.

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