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

sustainableplastics.com

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

#171

Post by gremlinsinc »

ekianjo wrote: post #61
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.

> This is the third time this week I've seen a study related to microplastics Most of Science is utter junk, driven by the willingness or desperate effort to publish anything to make a career in academia or funded by special interests. What matters is what can be consistently replicated, observed and explained.

what special interest benefits from showing negative impacts to mps? you've got to think who has the most to lose our gain. This is a more trustworthy study because usually showing negatives about huge entrenched products is fought by the special interests like plastic/oil companies, or DuPont in the case of Teflon aka forever chemicals.

Though I think worrying about it is fruitless as we're more likely to solve global warming than get all the Chemicals and plastic out of our blood globally, and that's worth the worry because there are at least things we can do to mitigate things(assuming political will ever signs)

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

#173

Post by registeredcorn »

I can't help but feel that a website named sustainable plastics might have an ulterior motive for criticizing current plastic usage. This isn't to say that current plastics are somehow good, but rather that, perhaps the people talking about the best ways to fight fires ought not be the fellows with a vested interest in fire extinguisher sales.

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

#174

Post by ethanbond »

dwighttk wrote: post #110
ethanbond wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is an absolutely horrible heuristic. Let’s put radioactive toys, toys painted with lead, leaded gasoline, DDT, and thalidomide back on the market. None of these were “obvious to the layman.” Individual scientists are wrong a lot. Science as a process continues to be the (imperfect) reigning world champ of truth discovery, no matter what contrarianism du jour memes are spreading over the internet.

note how all of those have a horrifying story Tell the horrifying plastic story (if there is one)

Uhh no. Lead, mercury, radioactivity, thalidomide, and asbestos poisoning are not detectable as “my child put a toy in their mouth and their tongue fell off.”

These were uncovered over the course of years by statistical analysis, prompted by suspicions created by (noisy, often non-human) information about the mechanisms.

Similarly, we have tons of data supporting a bunch of theories of micro plastic harm in the lab. The waiting revelation isn’t going to be “omg all these people are sick and we didn’t know it,” it’s going to be “all these people have been sick and we didn’t know why.”

Which is exactly the form of the sperm quality/fertility theory as well as obesity. We know these compounds cause fertility and metabolism issues in cell cultures and in animal models. We know we are facing civilization-scale problems with obesity and fertility. Drawing the connection between these types of observations is always extremely noisy because there are obviously trillions of variables affecting “does a specific individual become infertile or obese,” or “does a person have an elevated risk of birth defects.”

I’m not necessarily on the side of an immediate and total ban, but this “we’ll see the problems if they exist” attitude is profoundly ignorant and arrogant. The historical examples appear obvious to you because you saw the results of extremely deep study prompted from initially low-quality suspicions.

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

#175

Post by usuallyalurker »

bhouston wrote: post #90
spicyusername wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

probably fairly easy to deal with. [citation needed]

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…

Plastic food containers aren't even close to being the largest source of microplastics.

Synthetic fibres in clothing (like that cotton-poly blend shirt you're most likely wearing) and motor vehicle tyres are some of the bigger sources. These both also release particles directly into the atmosphere allowing them to get absolutely everywhere, unlike plastic in landfills that probably has a harder time escaping into the wider environment.

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

#176

Post by throwaway92837 »

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…

[dead]

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

#177

Post by hardware2win »

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…

>It feels to me like there is something besides diet changes happening to us.

Cars?

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

#178

Post by drewcon »

Justsignedup wrote: post #43
njovin wrote: post #22

I'm still shocked that there hasn't been more of a regulatory push to eliminate single-use plastics. In the US the closest we've gotten is banning plastic straws and charging for plastic carry bags. Everything I've read about plastic recycling points to it being ineffective and requiring massive amounts of fossil fuel to move the waste around the globe, often with much of it just getting burned or dumped into the env…

The problem is plastic particles getting into food. And that comes from things like heating up in plastic, storing things in plastic. Non single use plastics are a major problem. That's the thing. Plastic is modern lead. It's easily moldable, but causes subtle health problems.

Citation needed.

These comments read like Reddit/TikTok. Lots of frantic fearful hand waving, not a lot of evidence presented.

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

#179

Post by DrThunder »

njovin wrote: post #22

I'm still shocked that there hasn't been more of a regulatory push to eliminate single-use plastics. In the US the closest we've gotten is banning plastic straws and charging for plastic carry bags. Everything I've read about plastic recycling points to it being ineffective and requiring massive amounts of fossil fuel to move the waste around the globe, often with much of it just getting burned or dumped into the env…

You have to have a good alternative first. Paper items sprayed with harmful chemicals is not a good replacement.

https://fortune.com/well/2023/08/24/paper-straws-harmful-for...

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

#180

Post by lotsofpulp »

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…

> 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 some kind of gut biome disruption is playing a role as well.

Based on what many people have in their shopping carts and the sugar water many people are constantly chugging, I see no reason to think anything other than excess calories is the cause. And lack of exercise as an exacerbating factor.

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