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What Do We Know About the Microplastics Inside Us?

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Re: What Do We Know About the Microplastics Inside Us?

#51

Post by ButlerianJihad »

estearum wrote: post #32
ButlerianJihad wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even more so: plastics are not a specific chemical and they are not a specific material. Plastic is a category of materials that is very broad and very wide. You can make plastics out of almost anything. Therefore, to hate on plastics is to basically hate on an entire category of engineering and material design but not to actually know what a plastic is... sheer ignorance.

Yes, it's a category of materials that is overwhelmingly populated by a much more specific, ultra-cheap and therefore ultra-pervasive, set of chemicals which are shown in study after study to have worrying characteristics. Anything that shows evidence of omnipresence, endocrine disruption, bioaccumulation, and inter-generational transmission should be extremely, extremely closely scrutinized. To think otherwise is ab…

Personally, I think that the Microplastics Moral Panic is a textbook study of F.U.D.

There is practically nothing that ordinary people can do for prevention, mitigation, diagnosis or treatment of microplastics in our bodies, so I therefore conclude that it is futile and wasteful to worry or argue about it, unless you have abundant free time and resources to get paranoid strangers all in a frenzy, for no good reason.

Re: What Do We Know About the Microplastics Inside Us?

#52

Post by zug_zug »

AyanamiKaine wrote: post #12

Microplastics have always fascinated me, because I keep seeing article after article about how much microplastic exists around us, but far less strong evidence about its actual effects. That is not to say there are no effects, of course. Maybe we just have not found them yet. A friend of mine worked on her bachelor’s thesis about the effects of microplastics on the immune system, specifically T cells. Her result was…

> but far less strong evidence about its actual effects.

Yeah, but we shouldn't take absence of evidence as evidence of absence. The fact is that it's just really really hard to establish a causal relationship, even if it's there, because of all the cofounders. Heck even if you constructed a study with a known poison, like lead, and you might not see the results in a single study. You could give 50 participants water with flint levels of lead in it for a month, and you might not get scientifically significant result just due to the wide variance in a population.

Or another example is just thinking how hard it would be construct a study with a control, when every single construction material has plastics in it and they are floating in the air around us all the time (as mentioned in the article). Could it affect mental or reproductive wellbeing? Certainly. Can we construct a study to establish either way? Not easily.

And one of the plasticizers they talk about, pthalates, are known to be endocrine disruptors (i.e. mess with hormones).

Re: What Do We Know About the Microplastics Inside Us?

#53

Post by topgrain2 »

beej71 wrote: post #35
cobbzilla wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> requires buying a whole new set of things that distinguish them from their peers No, it requires buying a whole new set of things to fit in with and be accepted by their peers, to distinguish themselves from the outgroup , the plastic users. I don’t necessarily believe this is some emergent elitism; I see it more as a modern religion with many many rules about eating and consumption (using plastic is now a sin). Li…

I don't get this whole attitude. Moving away from plastics in our kitchen was basically zero extra cost. Something busted, and we replaced it with non-plastic. Even bamboo scrubbers don't cost more than plastic (maybe even a little less) and I can't see any particular longevity difference. I think the fact that I volunteer to clean up trash on public lands and know that weathered plastic is the period worst period to…

Things like glass food storage containers are really expensive compared to plastic. And they still have plastic lids; like, I don't know what you'd even do without at least the seal-part being some kind of plastic, I guess you'd need to use natural-sourced wax to make it seal, or something?

And on the topic of cost, I'm certain my kids have broken between 50 and 100 glass and ceramic drinking cups, storage containers, plates, and bowls in a little over a decade. They destroy plastic items at a way, way lower rate. Consider the use case of packing a kid's lunchbox. Plastic is... very tempting, for practical reasons. And cheaper.

Last I checked, plastic vs. wood on an otherwise identical stamped metal Victoronix knife costs you an extra $15-$20, which is a notable percentage of the total cost of the item. I sprung for the wood on my latest replacement just for the aesthetics, but it cost enough more that I did give it a good think first.

> Even bamboo scrubbers don't cost more than plastic (maybe even a little less) and I can't see any particular longevity difference.

Are those actually just bamboo? Maybe they are, I dunno, I can't recall seeing one. Lots of the "bamboo" materials I've encountered have turned out to contain (at least some) plastic.

> Plus, a solid $3 wooden spoon is just a joy to cook with. They outlast the plastic ones, too.

That's just true. Plastic spoons for cooking suck, wood and (where it makes sense and won't damage other things) metal are way better. Wooden ones aren't even expensive. The popularity of plastic ones is baffling.

One thing that's surprised me is the cost and/or total lack of availability of glass blender jars, even on fairly high-end brands (both the fake-high-end ones that are just expensive, and the actually-good ones). I remember my parents' assuredly cheapest-thing-in-the-store blender that they probably bought in the 70s or 80s had a glass jar, because that was just... standard. Meanwhile my as-awesome-as-I'd-hoped-thank-god expensive-ass Vitamix came with a plastic jar, and they do not make glass replacements. (I'm just checking and it looks like they might finally make one in stainless, though? Still, I'd prefer glass because being able to see what's going on in there is very nice, but I'm gonna have to look into that...)

Re: What Do We Know About the Microplastics Inside Us?

#54

Post by vitally3643 »

magicalist wrote: post #37
AyanamiKaine wrote: post #12

Microplastics have always fascinated me, because I keep seeing article after article about how much microplastic exists around us, but far less strong evidence about its actual effects. That is not to say there are no effects, of course. Maybe we just have not found them yet. A friend of mine worked on her bachelor’s thesis about the effects of microplastics on the immune system, specifically T cells. Her result was…

> Her result was that the microplastic particles she studied were too large to interact with T cells. Her "result" of what? Was there an actual experiment and what was its scope or was this by surveying literature? Microplastics are of a pretty large range of size, and then there are nanoplastics below that. I'm also not an expert, but a quick search shows a number of results of microplastics affecting T cells, some…

I'm not an expert but I'm going to condescend about an expert's "results" anyway.

Very informative, thank you for your comment. You have truly contributed to the conversation. Good job.

Re: What Do We Know About the Microplastics Inside Us?

#55

Post by dzhiurgis »

Borg3 wrote: post #42
codybontecou wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can microplastics never get small enough to interact with T cells?

Once microplastics fall apart futher, to nano-plastic, it will start to get absorbed by T cells because they want to destroy any invaders. Once absorbed, T-Cell start to produce H2O2 to destroy anything they absorbed. Unfortunately, plastics are mostly chemically neutral and so, it cannot be destroyed like that. T-Cells produce more H2O2, eventually it leaks outside and start inflamation of surrunding tissue. There i…

AKA nanoplastic-induced oxidative stress, but it's actually macrophages (and neutrophils), not T-cells.

The reason this is problem is because cells can never destroy nano-plastic so they keep self destroying forever (chronic inflammation).

I still have my doubts about actual scale of this, especially how we still haven't solved pm2.5 pollution or even asbestos and heavy metals. And then there's PFAS, VOCs, Phthalates and Bisphenols. There's insane amounts of benzene in gas stations and traffic jam, yet no one really gives a fuck (until there's like a ppm in a sunscreen lol).

You are most likely to inhale it due to plastic abundance in environment, just like thousands of other things. It doesn't even have ICD yet. Ingested microplastic unlikely to breakdown while it travels thru your body.

p.s. my partner de-plastified a lot of my life (thru a lot of opposition of me) to the point where a lot of plastic objects feel gross now.

Re: What Do We Know About the Microplastics Inside Us?

#56

Post by estearum »

ButlerianJihad wrote: post #51
estearum wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, it's a category of materials that is overwhelmingly populated by a much more specific, ultra-cheap and therefore ultra-pervasive, set of chemicals which are shown in study after study to have worrying characteristics. Anything that shows evidence of omnipresence, endocrine disruption, bioaccumulation, and inter-generational transmission should be extremely, extremely closely scrutinized. To think otherwise is ab…

Personally, I think that the Microplastics Moral Panic is a textbook study of F.U.D. There is practically nothing that ordinary people can do for prevention, mitigation, diagnosis or treatment of microplastics in our bodies, so I therefore conclude that it is futile and wasteful to worry or argue about it, unless you have abundant free time and resources to get paranoid strangers all in a frenzy, for no good reason.

Did this apply to people freaking out about lead a couple decades ago?

What about those advocating for smoking bans in shared spaces?

Cholera outbreaks near the city water wells?

Or are microplastics special in some way?

Re: What Do We Know About the Microplastics Inside Us?

#58

Post by [deleted] »

Borg3 wrote: post #42
codybontecou wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can microplastics never get small enough to interact with T cells?

Once microplastics fall apart futher, to nano-plastic, it will start to get absorbed by T cells because they want to destroy any invaders. Once absorbed, T-Cell start to produce H2O2 to destroy anything they absorbed. Unfortunately, plastics are mostly chemically neutral and so, it cannot be destroyed like that. T-Cells produce more H2O2, eventually it leaks outside and start inflamation of surrunding tissue. There i…

[deleted]

Re: What Do We Know About the Microplastics Inside Us?

#59

Post by topgrain2 »

ButlerianJihad wrote: post #51
estearum wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, it's a category of materials that is overwhelmingly populated by a much more specific, ultra-cheap and therefore ultra-pervasive, set of chemicals which are shown in study after study to have worrying characteristics. Anything that shows evidence of omnipresence, endocrine disruption, bioaccumulation, and inter-generational transmission should be extremely, extremely closely scrutinized. To think otherwise is ab…

Personally, I think that the Microplastics Moral Panic is a textbook study of F.U.D. There is practically nothing that ordinary people can do for prevention, mitigation, diagnosis or treatment of microplastics in our bodies, so I therefore conclude that it is futile and wasteful to worry or argue about it, unless you have abundant free time and resources to get paranoid strangers all in a frenzy, for no good reason.

I half-assed try to avoid plastic in contact with (especially very) hot food or drink, and avoid it in long-term food containers, in no small part because I've seen things like plastic cooking spoons losing non-microscopic parts of themselves in food, and I find the stains plastic storage containers acquire after a little use kinda worrisome (I'd rather my reusable storage containers not be that permeable, thank you very much), but otherwise agree that any real amount of effort to avoid microplastics would probably do more good if it took the form of a 20-minute jog per week, i.e. "don't even consider worrying about it unless you've really, really got all your other health stuff sorted out"

Like I'm pretty sure the bigger health risk with a plastic soda straw is the soda, not the straw, you know?

Re: What Do We Know About the Microplastics Inside Us?

#60

Post by Terr_ »

dzhiurgis wrote: post #55
Borg3 wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Once microplastics fall apart futher, to nano-plastic, it will start to get absorbed by T cells because they want to destroy any invaders. Once absorbed, T-Cell start to produce H2O2 to destroy anything they absorbed. Unfortunately, plastics are mostly chemically neutral and so, it cannot be destroyed like that. T-Cells produce more H2O2, eventually it leaks outside and start inflamation of surrunding tissue. There i…

AKA nanoplastic-induced oxidative stress, but it's actually macrophages (and neutrophils), not T-cells. The reason this is problem is because cells can never destroy nano-plastic so they keep self destroying forever (chronic inflammation). I still have my doubts about actual scale of this, especially how we still haven't solved pm2.5 pollution or even asbestos and heavy metals. And then there's PFAS, VOCs, Phthalates…

> macrophages

Right, and when it comes to "what happens when the macrophage can't destroy what it engulfed", we can probably learn a lot from parallel work studying tattoos, where the ink-particles are similarly "attacked".

Plus it's a lot easier to create studies or even just observe the cells in question.

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