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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

#321

Post by AngryData »

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.

Glass isn't really that expensive. It was cheap enough to be commonly used 100 years and it is only cheaper and easier to produce and transport today than it was then.

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

#322

Post by michaelmrose »

ethbr1 wrote: post #247
saberience wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Obesity is caused by eating too much of the wrong thing. Which happens to be the cheap thing in industrialized mass produced Western food chains. Cheap in terms of dollars and personal time. So obesity is really an economic problem. We should come down like a ton of bricks on fast food and require they offer healthier options at low prices, subsidized by taxes on their unhealthier options.

How many people are going to go to McDonald and order to tofu instead of the burger exactly? What's more the problem isn't the mere choice of the burger its the choice of the double burger with bacon, super sizing it, adding fries and lets top it off which a chocolate shake.

For practical purposes you either need to eat modestly at McDonalds or more realistically not eat at McDonalds very much.

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

#323

Post by AngryData »

hotstickyballs wrote: post #83
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]

The average human reproductive fitness level is not anywhere near bad enough for just a couple of generations to have such a profound effect on reproductive health.

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

#324

Post by wadd1e »

confidantlake wrote: post #235
bawolff wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 then started to reverse a bit: Same point in time where people started to get cell phones and be always connected to the internet.

Underrated comment. When I was growing up I would often read books and do math problems for fun because there was not much else to do. Now I am constantly on the internet watching things and using my brain very little.

I'd like to offer a single datapoint(mine) on this too, I'm going to university soon and in the last few years, the fact that the internet exists has allowed me to solve interesting math problems that I would've never learnt in school

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

#325

Post by edgyquant »

avgcorrection wrote: post #282
saberience wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The tunnel-vision on this subject is truly astounding. I can't think of any subject that is treated in the same way. Say that someone was failing at university because they have no motivation. And they have no motivation because they have depression. Then a vocal minority would always butt in with the following truism: - Failing university courses is caused by not studying enough. There is no subverting the fact that…

How about we stop trying to come up with any reason but the objective one for the cause of the problem?

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

#326

Post by trgn »

thworp wrote: post #314
trgn wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I believe you. Or, plastic is essentially worthless, so it just gets applied willy-nilly. As if, plastic, _because_ it is cheap and easy to produce, therefore it must be everywhere. Go shopping, here's your free plastic bag, well, hell no, double bagged, because plastic is flimsy and crap quality (you didn't even ask, but force of habit, shrug). Package a thing, wrap it in plastic on the outside and the inside! And m…

If you were just talking about plastic packaging you have a point. By weight that is a small percentage of plastics though, which is incidentally why it is so cheap. For other applications plastics are an outright miracle material though. Imagine if all drinks came in glass bottles; all cases and other structural parts were made of metal or wood; all elastic members were made of rubber or treated wood. The added need…

Thanks.

> Imagine if all drinks came in glass bottles

I can totally imagine. Glass bottles with deposit. Return them when empty, reclaim deposit. Most plastic bottles are also, I don't know, for crap products (?). Sodas, energy drinks. We could just drink more water.

> plastics are an outright miracle material though

Absolutely. There's certainly "good" applications of plastic. I don't dispute that.

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

#327

Post by throw4847285 »

joeframbach wrote: post #238
throw4847285 wrote: post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 t…

And how do you feel about leaded gasoline?

I don't go a day where I don't drink at least two glasses.

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

#328

Post by rTX5CMRXIfFG »

throw4847285 wrote: post #229
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 t…

Your default position should actually be caution considering how the introduction of foreign elements to the human body, especially one that enters the bloodstream, generally causes some kind of illness. See steroids, chemotherapy, heck even the antibiotics that we are prescribed to take sometimes. Why should microplastics get a pass by default in your worldview?

And don’t you think there’s disproportion in your asking for a total and convincing argument to believe otherwise, while also claiming that the basis of your doubt is some scene from a TV series that performs bathroom humor?

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

#329

Post by throw4847285 »

bhouston wrote: post #239
throw4847285 wrote: post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 t…

Microplastics may be a significant cause of Male Infertility: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9134445/ The plastic brain: neurotoxicity of micro- and nanoplastics: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7282048/ Phalates in plastics reduce IQ significantly: https://time.com/3625352/phthalates-iq-toxins/

I don't deny that there is more and more research every day about the negative impacts of microplastics on the human body. From my place of relative ignorance, it still seems that more sweeping claims like "Microplastics are responsible for the Flynn Effect and the male infertility crisis" are awfully bold. You throw obesity in there too, and doesn't it seem like folks are trying to pin all of society's ills on a single issue? It's like when people try to pathologize black people by arguing that all their social ills are actually just due to lead exposure. That has proven to be a very shaky argument, and one that has to plow through a lot of nuance and complex social phenomena to land on a materialist claim so simplistic that it's kind of infantilizing.

Plus, the obsessive focus on IQ reeks of bad social science.

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

#330

Post by rthomas6 »

lumost wrote: post #196
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…

Big thing you would expect if it’s due to general plastic/pollution prevalence is obesity in pets/wild animals.

We see that. Pets and wild animals that live around humans are also increasingly obese.

From a quick search: https://www.livescience.com/10277-obesity-rise-animals.html

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