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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

#221

Post by Matticus_Rex »

bhouston wrote: post #132
tmikaeld wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Banning DDT was also incredibly inconvenient for farmers as DDT worked amazingly: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silent_Spring Human ingenuity knows no bounds and it will be a market opportunity for new entrants and innovators.

IIRC, cost-benefit analysis (even in terms of health and other human indicators) suggests we probably should have kept at least some uses of DDT, as a lot of people have died of malaria because we didn't.

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

#222

Post by elboru »

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…

> It will increase costs, but the alternative is we poison ourselves, so it is sort of needed

I hate to be that guy, but it's easy to say costs increase is a lesser problem when you are not in the lower end of the economic spectrum. What would happen to people who barely survive today? Corporations won't decrease their profit, gained by using cheap plastic, for the greater good.

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

#223

Post by soco »

psychoslave wrote: post #56
soco wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They have for the PET bottles, yes, but there are still thousands of other packaging types which just get dumped in garbage with unknown destinations. I cannot really imagine a deposit on those (do you want stinky meat packages returned to the shop?) but still we need to find a solution.

Bottle in glass, aluminum or paper. Beers, various soda and juice already use that

The salad head comes in a plastic bag. The pork chop is sealed in plastic. Sausages are coming with plastic labels, single use bags are still everywhere, and let's not forget the hard wrappings of tools or toys. Can we put all all those in waxed paper? And what exactly will that "wax" be?

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

#224

Post by lukas099 »

xdavidliu wrote: post #91
hotstickyballs wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

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

Everyone always says this but I’ve never heard it from an actual evolutionary biologist. Some genes evolve faster than others; in fact, some genes have themselves evolved to be able to evolve faster.

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

#225

Post by saberience »

bhouston wrote: post #142
rthomas6 wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Obesity is caused in part by environmental toxins, probably to different extents in different people: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/may/19/environm... https://www.webmd.com/obesity/what-to-know-obesogens These so called "obesogens" just increase the propensity towards obesity and depending on exposure and your sensitivity to then, you can overcome them or not via exercise and dieting and other means.

Obesity is caused by eating too much. If you don’t eat then you won’t gain weight, there is no subverting the laws of thermodynamics.

It sounds callous but if you go to Africa or visit a prisoner of war camp you won’t find many fat people and so blaming chemicals in America for so many fat people doesn’t make much sense to me.

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

#227

Post by remarkEon »

drewcon wrote: post #178
Justsignedup wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I don't understand this perspective, the need to wait for mountains of published evidence that something is "bad", or "bad enough" to do something about it. Plastic is toxic, we all know this. It's everywhere, it's in the food and in the water. In reality it's the "Citation needed" reflex that's the reddit-tier reaction to stuff like this, because it pretends that humans can't or shouldn't make decisions unless we all sit around in a peer-review committee to review the "data". Perhaps in some contexts that perspective makes sense, but again, in this one, we all know plastic is bad (for us and the environment).

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

#228

Post by confidantlake »

screye wrote: post #214
lebuffon wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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!

I don't know about you, but loads of people around me eat only 2 meals a day and still struggle with being overweight. (Not obese tho). The number of meals is a very small part of the entire diet and lifestyle matrix.

They may only eat 2 meals a day but they likely snack too. If you only eat 2 meals a day and do not eat between meals you are most likely going to be a normal weight.

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

#229

Post by throw4847285 »

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…

I'm gonna need some more hard evidence before I believe that microplastics in the human body play a strong causative role in both infertility and changing IQ scores (and first you have to convince me of the import of IQ scores).

It's a classic "jacking off butterflies" response. That's a reference to the TV show Childrens Hospital, in which one of the doctors finds a cure for cancer and it's butterfly semen. One of the other characters says something along the lines of "We both know cancer is an amalgam of unique conditions, it should be impossible to find a single cure" but they brush it off and starting jacking off butterflies. That's how I feel whenever people try to reduce complex social phenomena to a single simplistic cause. "We both know it can't be just this one thing, but let's pretend it is because that's easier to solve."

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

#230

Post by gglitch »

JKCalhoun wrote: post #146
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…

It's almost as if it was the adoption of the microwave oven that signaled the roller coaster was beginning to race downhill. God, I wish I could go back to non-plastic packaging. Natural peanut butter I can still find in glass, as I can for my jelly. But mayonnaise, ketchup and countless other items are in plastic-only containers.

I don't know about ketchup, but mayonnaise turned out to be far easier to make at home than I anticipated.
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