Nurdle Patrol

Post by davidjhall » Fri, Oct 11, 2024, 1:24 PM UTC

ptk wrote: post #20

Cthulhu_ wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, probably not the nurdles themselves unless they're scooped from the oceans and used as a food additive, but they'll break down into microplastics and enter the food chain that way. The damage of said microplastics is still being researched, at the moment (I believe) it's still fairly vague, not unlike asbestos or smoking. IIRC they have been found to mimic hormones though.

What do you find vague about the studied effects of smoking or asbestos? Or did you mistype and mean “unlike” instead of “not unlike”?

Post by doctorhandshake » Fri, Oct 11, 2024, 2:09 PM UTC

jdietrich wrote: post #13

protonbob wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They are particularly harmful because they end up in your food and cause damage to your organs.

A plastic pellet is typically 3-5mm in diameter. I think I'd notice that in my food. Even if I did enjoy swallowing fish guts whole, a plastic pellet is just going to pass straight through my digestive system. Additives can leach out of plastics and enter the food chain, but pellets lost at sea are a completely insignificant factor because the total volume of waste produced by this route is so small. The majority of…

Post by oasisbob » Fri, Oct 11, 2024, 2:42 PM UTC

dTal wrote: post #7

Traubenfuchs wrote: post #4

Imagine a beach completely consisting of nurdles. Imagine an ecosystem of bacteria, microorganisms, fish and other seafood creatures adapted to living on it. I feel like as humanity we could totally reach a point where evolution to that kind of ecosystem becomes the only choice. Same for our immune, digestive and lymph system. We could end up at a point where most of life NEEDS microplastic to survive! Then we can fi…

"Evolve" here is a neat word for "countless trillions of creatures die preventable deaths or otherwise fail to reproduce over geological time". If your terminal goal is to "finally stop caring about micro plastics" rather than "protect Earth's existing ecosystem", why wait? Just nuke the planet to glass. Microplastic worry over. (A similarly nihilist viewpoint comes from the people who pontificate that "the planet wi…

Post by yashasolutions » Fri, Oct 11, 2024, 3:15 PM UTC

Post by whythre » Fri, Oct 11, 2024, 3:40 PM UTC

api wrote: post #15

zombot wrote: post #14

Wow, Texas seems to be one of the worst offenders here. How do you collect close to 1000 nurdles in 10 minutes? Do people wade through them on the beach?

That doesn’t necessarily mean they are all coming from Texas though does it? It could mean ocean currents are carrying them there. I think the idea here is we have maps of ocean currents and can trace them to their likely source.