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Plastics are poisoning us

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Re: Plastics are poisoning us

#441

Post by namaria »

myshpa wrote: post #96
realshadow wrote: post #11

I became a minimist to save the planet as much as i could. Its easier than any one could think you know. Here is what i have been doing for a decade and would receommend 1. Reusing plastic bags (i love cotton bags but not ideal). Fold and keep one or two in your pocket before you leave home 2. Support and use light software so you dont need to upgrade your gadgets (12y laptop i use) 3. Prepare and eat home cooked mea…

Good points. Minimalists saving the planet should add one more: 10. Eat plants. Avoiding meat and dairy is ‘single biggest way’ to reduce your impact on Earth https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/may/31/avoiding... If the world adopted a plant-based diet we would reduce global agricultural land use from 4 to 1 billion hectares (and free an area as big as Africa for wildlife/reforesting) https://ourworldindata…

When three companies move nearly all the food around the globe, and we throw away between a third and half of our crops in transit, telling me to change the menu to save the planet is a bad joke.

Re: Plastics are poisoning us

#442

Post by concordDance »

realshadow wrote: post #11

I became a minimist to save the planet as much as i could. Its easier than any one could think you know. Here is what i have been doing for a decade and would receommend 1. Reusing plastic bags (i love cotton bags but not ideal). Fold and keep one or two in your pocket before you leave home 2. Support and use light software so you dont need to upgrade your gadgets (12y laptop i use) 3. Prepare and eat home cooked mea…

> 5. Collect rain water and/or use less water

A lot of the classic list of feel good things do little or come with giant asterisks and this is a good example.

Potable water shortages are a very serious problem... that affects particular areas at particular times.

A little town on a tributary of the amazon in the rainy season can use as much water as they want to water their lawns or bath in and it will cause no issues, while a drought striken area must preserve all their water.

Re: Plastics are poisoning us

#443

Post by namaria »

_dain_ wrote: post #164
aziaziazi wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for the courage to express 12. Absolute anthropocentrism can’t continue indefinitely and we already see boomerang effects.

Anti-natalists are the enemy of mankind.

None of the species that have gone extinct (which are over 90% of all species that ever existed) reduced their rates of reproduction voluntarily.

Re: Plastics are poisoning us

#444

Post by crznp »

kurthr wrote: post #376
brnt wrote: post #294

Earlier quoted context omitted.

PTFE is a PFAS, as is PFOA. > Now, since PFOA belongs to a large group of chemicals called PFAS, consisting of 4,700 similar substances, it might be tempting to just switch to one of the other PFAS chemicals that hasn’t been restricted yet. But that wouldn´t solve the problem, it would only postpone and perpetuate it. [1] [1] https://marketplace.chemsec.org/articles/news/2020/04/01/the... I.e. there's a whole zoo of…

Sorry, but PTFE (polytetrafluoroethylene) may be a PFAS (per-and polyfluoroalkyl substances but not a Perfluorooctane Sulfonate PFOAS) however, it is definitely not a PFOA (perfluorooctanoic acid). Your link does not contain a reference to PTFE and looking at the meaning of the acronyms should provide evidence fluorethylene is not a sulfonate or an octanoic acid. The manufacture of PTFE may involve generating these a…

I think you misread: GP claimed that PTFE is a type of PFAS, and separately: PFOA is also a type of PFAS. And if PFAS is the problem, it wouldn't be useful to ban specific classes like PFOA if they are just replaced by different classes of PFAS.

I'm not sure about the last claim: it isn't clear that all PFAS are equally bad, so replacing PFOA with a different PFAS might be worthwhile. It seems hard to study, but with Europe banning PFOA, perhaps we'll get some more insight.

Re: Plastics are poisoning us

#445

Post by gtk40 »

LinuxBender wrote: post #146
pvaldes wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

8 -> copper is toxic. People with some genetic traits will suffer cirrhosis and shouldn't use it for water storage. Cooking on copper pots specially should be avoided. Iron and Aluminum are safer.

It's also a required element so I guess a question might be how many micrograms of copper are consumed per day by using a copper lined bottle. Adults should get 900 micrograms daily unless they are also consuming a lot of zinc and then one must do more math. Gastric bypass surgery is thought to be a risk factor for copper deficiency. Usage of proton pump inhibitors may also contribute to copper deficiency by reducing…

My plumber prefers copper pipes. He's replaced a couple of leaks (in PVC pipes) with copper at core junctions in my house. I never knew it was dangerous.

Re: Plastics are poisoning us

#446

Post by concordDance »

VoodooJuJu wrote: post #402
concordDance wrote: post #399

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Plastic" is not actually a useful or meaningful term. E.g. if scientists made perfect artificial skin that was atom for atom identical to your skin it would be mostly made of plastic. Not all "plastics" cause harm (at least, not any more than the skin you shed every day).

If you go up to someone in the street, and tell them about the plastic in the water supply and food they eat, how it's harming them, and that we need to better clean it up and regulate it, they're going to understand exactly what you're talking about, and they won't get into a debate with you about whether you're talking about dead skin, artificial skin, or BPA.

They won't understand, they'll just think they do. Just as if you talked about the dangers of "chemicals" and how dihydrogen monoxide kills thousands of people a year.

I've seen countless disagreements on numerous topics caused by people thinking they both have the same definition of a term and even more instances of confusion because the intuitive implicit definition that came from the example usages they'd seen of a term was a non-representative subset of the things matched by the explicit definition.

Nuance and clarity of language matters, otherwise you'll ban "chemicals" and discover you actually have no sane definition of it and are inflicting a lot of unnecessary suffering.

Re: Plastics are poisoning us

#447

Post by concordDance »

ajkjk wrote: post #404
concordDance wrote: post #392

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Everything has or might have a risk. For all we know carrots increase the risk of cancer. If we banned everything that increases the risk of some sort of bad thing we'd probably end up banning everything (or more realistically, everything we'd do studies on).

No, the symmetry of "anything could be dangerous" is broken by reality , by what is actually dangerous . Arguments of the form "all things look the same if you ignore all their differences" don't work.

Uh... I think you're assuming all your readers have the same precise understanding of "actually dangerous" that you do.

Is walking "actually dangerous"? Is cycling? Is driving? Is swimming? Is hang gliding? Different people will give different answers to these questions and I've even kept them all to the domain of transportation!

Once you get to the realm of all chemistry things get very murky. E.g. Is sugar dangerous?

In practice we're evolved creatures full of hacks that work well enough to mostly not die before we've had kids, I would be very surprised if there was a single substance we consume (both intentionally and not) that doesn't damage something.

Re: Plastics are poisoning us

#448

Post by deathanatos »

assbuttbuttass wrote: post #330
oezi wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I understand that Teflon might be a hazard in pans but feel like it reduces the amount of burned food in contrast to steel/iron pans so much for me that I hope it is a net gain. (sorry in advance for all who want to suggest iron skillets. I can't make them work in daily use.)

There are some great ceramic non-stick pans available these days.

… which are non-stick because they're coated.

Now, I do think some of them are coming coated in silicone-based coatings. The consensus I get asking "are these carcinogenic?" is "probably not?"

But the other problem is determining what a particular pan is coated with: I have not seen a single manufacturer label their pan with anything more informative than that it is coated in "magic science stuff".

Re: Plastics are poisoning us

#449

Post by hospitalJail »

ahoy wrote: post #369
hospitalJail wrote: post #133

The word 'Plastic' needs to die. Instead we should be more specific on the type of plastic. Teflon, PLA, ABS, resins, foams, etc... are all plastics, but they are so unrelated outside their long chains, its terrible to stereotype them all into one category. You aren't going to get cancer from PLA or Teflon, but rather the manufacturing process. You can eat these plastics as far as I know and you'd be fine. Eat someth…

I don't want more labels. I don't want to have to be an "informed consumer" when im buying cookware in order to know whats going to give me cancer. Those products shouldn't exist.

FYI, the labels are not for you. They are for recycling.

Re: Plastics are poisoning us

#450

Post by sfpotter »

radlad wrote: post #323
JeremyNT wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And if you're only kind of a minimalist, who does own a car, you don't wash it.

I don't know... wouldn't a minimalist want to prolong the lifetime of their fewer possessions?

Do clean cars last longer than dirty cars?
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