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

New study finds microplastics infiltrate all systems of body, alter behaviour

sustainableplastics.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

151–160 of 403 posts

Re: New study finds microplastics infiltrate all systems of body, alter behaviour

#151

Post by xdavidliu »

JoeAltmaier wrote: post #113
xdavidliu wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

i don’t think evolution works that fast; the only thing that fast would be something like selective breeding for dogs, but thats intentional; the type of evolution you’re talking about is more on the order of 10^6 years

Evolution is working every single generation. Dogs no more or less than humans or anything else. Dogs were selected, but everything responds to environmental pressures. All the time. Natural ones no different than human-provided ones, right? And humans have changed more in the last 50K years than in the 1M before that. Because of civilization I have to think. Anyway, off by 2 orders of magnitude there, for really sig…

i’m not saying the effect is zero; im saying the effect is clearly too small; there are obviously degrees to this. halving of overall hormone levels are surely not explained by a measly three generations of improved health care removing the selective pressure in favor of the survival of high-hormone humans

Re: New study finds microplastics infiltrate all systems of body, alter behaviour

#152

Post by JKCalhoun »

tmikaeld wrote: post #124
bhouston wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My suggestion, which isn't rocket science: Ban plastic food containers for any type of long-term storage or anything that gets heated up (and different plastics have different microplastic shedding profiles, so ban the worst first) and also ban PFAS in anything that gets close to food. It will increase costs, but the alternative is we poison ourselves, so it is sort of needed. Phase it in so that industries have time…

Considering the alternatives are metal and glass, I'd assume that the cost difference would be exponential, especially if the most common alternative is banned and transport will be much heavier.

You can add wax-coated cardstock (milk containers) and wax-coated bags (breakfast cereals) and just plain cardboard (quick oats).

Re: New study finds microplastics infiltrate all systems of body, alter behaviour

#154

Post by bowsamic »

superhumanuser wrote: post #145
bowsamic wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The harm should be obvious to the layman IMHO in order to be legislated away. Otherwise, it should be left up to personal choice. I'm not sure if this is sarcasm but if it's not, this is really the peak of anti-intellectualism ideology, i.e., that if a thing is not immediately obvious without studying then we should remain ignorant of it. I don't think that kind of opinion is a good fit for this forum to be honest,…

> if a thing is not immediately obvious without studying then we should remain ignorant of it. I'm not sure if you're willfully ignorant or just saw an opportunity to pass a pejorative and took it. I didn't say we should "ignore it". I said we shouldn't allow scientists to exclusively decide what should or should not be legal.

No you didn't, you said that if a layman cannot understand it immediately, then we should never use the information in the context of law, i.e. we should just ignore the information, i.e. remain ignorant

Re: New study finds microplastics infiltrate all systems of body, alter behaviour

#155

Post by FollowingTheDao »

bhouston wrote: post #75

There are two macro population health trends that suggest we are somehow poisoning ourselves at a large scale. Most people do not relate the two, but I personally wouldn't be surprised if they have related causes. The first is the Flynn effect, which was rising IQ levels decade over decade, which halted and then reserved for most Western nations around 1990s/2000s and is now declining: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/F…

EMFs.

Re: New study finds microplastics infiltrate all systems of body, alter behaviour

#156

Post by jokoon »

bowsamic wrote: post #117
jokoon wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem of replacing plastic in food is the cost. If you use glass or steel or aluminum, you need new logistics to reuse them. Also, glass is heavier, and requires a lot of energy to be made, so it would require a production chain that ships back empty containers. The best silver bullet solution would be to have local canteen, a bit like in the army or at school, where you just get a subscription with a calendar…

This is how they do it in Germany. Most working Germans I know of eat at the work canteen and have a small bread meal at home in the evening Weird that you're getting downvoted for this. HN is on a weird one recently

Because the united states valued individualism for a very long time, before and during the cold war, and even now. It's a cultural aspect.

Blame people like Reagan and Milton Friedman for this. It's a highly political problem.

Inequality is already somewhat caused by individualism, but climate change is also caused by climate change. For example, if China wants to reduce its co2 emissions, you only have to convince Chinese leaders, and it's done just by snapping fingers.

In the US, you have to make it profitable, which is doable, but it's more complicated and lobbyists will also be a big barrier to change.

I loathe the chinese leadership, but being a democratic modern industrialized nation doesn't mean you will see decisions that make sense.

Re: New study finds microplastics infiltrate all systems of body, alter behaviour

#157

Post by tuukkah »

resonious wrote: post #88
reisse wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It seems like we had a pretty good system years ago in requiring people to leave a deposit for bottles when purchasing beer or pop to incentivize return + reuse. On the other hand, this system incentivised using plastic bottles instead of glass, because of less hassle with returning. > Everything I've read about plastic recycling points to it being ineffective... There is one effective way to recycle plastic into e…

Japan incinerates trash for energy, and yet they typically require residents to separate plastics from "burnables". Maybe it'd be better (and easier) for everyone if we just started putting everything into the burnable pile.

Another reason for the sorting at least here is that the companies using plastic packaging are the ones responsible for and paying the disposal system. I think the theory is that this will cause them to reduce plastics use and develop improved re-use.

Re: New study finds microplastics infiltrate all systems of body, alter behaviour

#158

Post by lebuffon »

rthomas6 wrote: post #131
bhouston wrote: post #75

There are two macro population health trends that suggest we are somehow poisoning ourselves at a large scale. Most people do not relate the two, but I personally wouldn't be surprised if they have related causes. The first is the Flynn effect, which was rising IQ levels decade over decade, which halted and then reserved for most Western nations around 1990s/2000s and is now declining: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/F…

Also the metabolic syndrome/obesity epidemic. 40% of US adults have obesity. By 2030 about half of US adults will, and in 29 states more than half of adults will be obese. We see obesity becoming increasingly normalized. People feel powerless to stop it and that we should just accept it. It feels to me like there is something besides diet changes happening to us. That's part of it, but I wonder if microplastics or so…

Alternative explanation (call me crazy) :-)

A US comedian once commented that when he went to Europe 20 years ago, he noticed that people only ate three meals a day.

What a concept!

Re: New study finds microplastics infiltrate all systems of body, alter behaviour

#159

Post by sva_ »

yuumei wrote: post #80
m_a_g wrote: post #5

This is the third time this week I've seen a study related to microplastics. Should I be alarmed? If so, what can I even do? If I'm understanding these studies correctly, these microplastics are everywhere. In our bodies, in our water supplies, in our food. And we can't even get rid of them.

One thing you can do personally to reduce the amount in your body is to donate blood

I think you mean PFAS, not microplastics

Re: New study finds microplastics infiltrate all systems of body, alter behaviour

#160

Post by bedhead »

bhouston wrote: post #75

There are two macro population health trends that suggest we are somehow poisoning ourselves at a large scale. Most people do not relate the two, but I personally wouldn't be surprised if they have related causes. The first is the Flynn effect, which was rising IQ levels decade over decade, which halted and then reserved for most Western nations around 1990s/2000s and is now declining: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/F…

[flagged]
Post reply on HN