111–120 of 120 posts
Not suggesting to have humans consume concentrated concoctions of plastics, but however ethically science allows.
Plastics, let alone microplastics, are a rather small problem that seem to get a lot of airspace. There are no established health effects of microplastics. There are magnitudes worse health problems in e.g. both under and overnutrition that cause a lot less panic and fuss. https://www.undp.org/kosovo/blog/microplastics-human-health-...
Micro plastics is like CO2. Spread out everywhere, can't be sequestered or reversed.
Rather than saying it's not a problem now — it's worth saying what's the threshold beyond which health complications begin (that number can't be infinity), and based on current growth levels how far we're off from it. If that's like at current rate of growth we still have 5000 years, then yeah I would agree with you and ignore the news. But just saying retrogressively that there is no conclusive evidence based on what we're eating so far – unfortunately sounds only politically correct, without considering the spirit of doing science (exploring the horizons / where the limits are).
Plastics, let alone microplastics, are a rather small problem that seem to get a lot of airspace. There are no established health effects of microplastics. There are magnitudes worse health problems in e.g. both under and overnutrition that cause a lot less panic and fuss. https://www.undp.org/kosovo/blog/microplastics-human-health-...
An equally true statement is that there is no established safe concentration of microplastics in tissue.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Stop driving? Most microplastic in water come from tires. I've been trying to make small moves away from car infrastructure in my town and the response is, well, less than positive. We already tacitly accept that cars are one of the biggest causes of death. Reducing car infrastructure to reduce microplastics, where we don't even really know the harm, seems far far more challenging.
What town is that? It seems like the success of diversifying away from cars depends on the place and how it grew. LA, for example, grew at the time of peak automobile infrastructure investment and it's basically unrecoverable at this point. There are probably other reasons why places like LA are so locked in to cars now, but that's the one that seems obvious to me.
However there's also a regressive aspect that refuses to make any accommodations for anything except cars, and these people have veto power over non-car infrastructure. There is no built-in veto power for new car infrastructure, and in fact existing law requires car infrastructure as a base for any sort of building, for example parking minimums.
Most of the city was built 1960-1980, so based on car designs. But it's small enough that small amounts of change would eliminate car dependence.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Stop driving? Most microplastic in water come from tires. I've been trying to make small moves away from car infrastructure in my town and the response is, well, less than positive. We already tacitly accept that cars are one of the biggest causes of death. Reducing car infrastructure to reduce microplastics, where we don't even really know the harm, seems far far more challenging.
> Stop driving? Not a realistic solution. The vast majority of people will take the microplastics over not driving.
If we were to even legalize non-car options, we might discover what the market actually wants. And the necessity of those laws kind of shows that the non-car option must be legally suppressed to prevent its true market preference from being revealed.
To everyone who thinks that the "vast majority" of people prefer driving, I say: show the confidence of your convictions and make it legal to build other options.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Stop driving? Not a realistic solution. The vast majority of people will take the microplastics over not driving.
You say "vast" but we have to outlaw non-car options and legislate that only car options are allowed for nearly all our land. If we were to even legalize non-car options, we might discover what the market actually wants. And the necessity of those laws kind of shows that the non-car option must be legally suppressed to prevent its true market preference from being revealed. To everyone who thinks that the "vast major…
What do you mean by that? Which non-car options are outlawed?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> And wash your clothes in a modern washing machine with a microfibre filter on its drain outlet. That doesn't solve the whole problem because the microfibres eventually need disposal.
Assuming you dump the sludge in the bin when you clean the filter then it’s much better than going into the ocean. Depending on your location, they’ll either get destroyed by incineration or put in landfill where they’ll do less harm and hopefully break down after a few centuries. Of course, if you clean the filter by flushing the sludge down the sink then you didn’t solve anything.
Obviously these are geography-relative concerns. But they aren't rare.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
You say "vast" but we have to outlaw non-car options and legislate that only car options are allowed for nearly all our land. If we were to even legalize non-car options, we might discover what the market actually wants. And the necessity of those laws kind of shows that the non-car option must be legally suppressed to prevent its true market preference from being revealed. To everyone who thinks that the "vast major…
> legalize non-car options What do you mean by that? Which non-car options are outlawed?