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Plastics are poisoning us

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Re: Plastics are poisoning us

#201

Post by dbcooper »

hospitalJail wrote: post #165
MagicMoonlight wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you know PLA is safe? I'm sure you would have thought lead was safe at the time

Thank you for bringing this up, I may be incorrect. I looked at the formula and that Oxygen double bond attached to a carbon with another oxygen bond... yikes! I have no idea why this is stable. It appears stable, but you wonder about things like UV light, exposure to some cation, etc... Well, seems like I have reading to do. (Chem engineer here, I feel like its my responsibility, similar to how programmers read open…

That's just an ester bond. That's extremely common in biochemicals, including food.

PLA is just going to break down into lactic acid. Big deal.

Re: Plastics are poisoning us

#202

Post by luxuryballs »

tfourb wrote: post #107
swalling wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most people have microplastics in their body, and even babies in the womb are being exposed ( https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S016041202... ). The most remote, otherwise pristine environments have microplastics due to atmospheric transport ( https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/36868287/ ). It is too late.

Even if it is "too late" for this generation or the next generation or the next 5 generations that is not a reason to simply don't care and continue to make the problem worse. That is the kind of attitude that kept us from doing anything against climate change when it still was cheap to do so (just 15 years ago). I really wish people would start seeing these problems as a positive challenge that can help transform so…

climate change can’t be prevented, it’s a natural oscillating cycle on a grand scale, but not making plastic is totally on us, though perhaps we will all freeze or boil long before drowning the ecosystem in plastic, there is some real bitter irony in being hopeful that nature can take us out before we do even more harm, if it can’t then I guess Earth will have proven itself not so resilient, but I suspect on a long enough timeline the Earth will absorb it all deep into the white hot swirling depths for refinement, climate change may end up being a big part of the solution

Re: Plastics are poisoning us

#203

Post by lukas099 »

yetihehe wrote: post #94
mrweasel wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You shouldn't be washing your car in the driveway. Even if you use environmentally friendly soap, or no soap, the water coming of the car isn't exactly clean. Professional car wash places are required (depending on location) to collect and dispose of their waste water in a safe way. When you wash the car in the driveway, the waste water will either go into the ground or the storm drains, neither of which will ensure…

I solved this problem in minimalist way - I wash my car maybe twice a year. It sits in my driveway in rain anyway because my garage is waiting for some spare time so that I can finally reuse all that pallets I collected since last year (mostly clean pallets I've already made some nice yard furniture for myself and family, all those pallets already have planned use but I don't have enough time).

They said "Even if you use environmentally friendly soap, or no soap, the water coming of the car isn't exactly clean."

If the rain is falling on your car it will have the same issue, no?

Re: Plastics are poisoning us

#204

Post by jcutrell »

yadingus wrote: post #194
iso1631 wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There's microplastics which are now absolutely everywhere. Apparently we consume a credit card's worth of plastic per month. Nobody should feel ok about consuming a drink that's got a ground up credit card in it, yet that's what we're doing. And what's the effect? We've been doing this for decades?

I think you severely underestimate not only how long effects can take to show, but how long and complicated it can be to fund good long term scientific studies. There's this belief that if something has an effect, it'll just show up magically on the news after the minimum amount of time, without taking into account all the hurdles people have to go through to research. Even if you didn't have powerful companies with…

I think the point is that we don’t see the major spikes that the ubiquitousness of plastics combined with the alarm levels raised by headlines like this would theoretically produce.

If plastics are indeed poisoning us, the hazard ratio seems to be small enough that it would require significant research to quantify.

Compare to, say, the lung cancer skyrocket that happened in the 70s-90s from the 30-year smoking habits developed in the 40s-60s.

With plastics, either the lag time for effects is really long, the effects themselves are so spread out that any meaningful bump for a single one is hard to identify, or we are reducing other causes of the same issues in lock step.

Re: Plastics are poisoning us

#205

Post by dinkleberg »

acumenical wrote: post #158
realshadow wrote: post #11

I became a minimist to save the planet as much as i could. Its easier than any one could think you know. Here is what i have been doing for a decade and would receommend 1. Reusing plastic bags (i love cotton bags but not ideal). Fold and keep one or two in your pocket before you leave home 2. Support and use light software so you dont need to upgrade your gadgets (12y laptop i use) 3. Prepare and eat home cooked mea…

I was with you until the whole sleep away the day bit, then you lost me. It sounds more like a cover for depression or learned helplessness than a desire to do good. If that's how you see things then I question the rest of it.

Really? Sleeping the recommended 8 hours a day is a cover for depression or learned helplessness?

Apparently I’m depressed too then, as I value my sleep.

Re: Plastics are poisoning us

#206

Post by c00lio »

myshpa wrote: post #197
cynicalsecurity wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Good luck trying to convince Russia or China to stop exploiting other countries, abandon fossil fuels or stop animal agriculture. Here is the unsolvable problem of the climate activism. They can't save the climate, but they are capable of destroying their own homeland, playing right into the hands of those authoritarian monsters.

Don't look up! > Good luck trying to convince Russia or China Whataboutism. Best way to avoid doing anything. > the unsolvable problem of the climate activism. They can't save the climate, but they are capable of destroying their own homeland That's incredibly foolish.

No. Prisoners' dilemma.

There are two possible answers to climate change: avoidance and preparation. Avoidance means that the world reduces its CO₂-footprint to zero or less to limit global warming or even to revert it. Preparation means that, if global warming cannot be avoided, states prepare for the changes in weather, sea level, agriculture, etc.

Avoidance can only work if all nations worldwide do participate to reduce their CO₂-footprint. If some big nations do nothing, or even worse, if non-consumption of fossil fuels by western nations causes a price drop and a shift of fossil fuel consumption to the rest (instead of an overall reduction), avoidance by the west is pointless and a waste of resources. All the world has to participate for avoidance to be successful.

On the other hand, preparation mostly works on a more local level. Nations with coastlines invest to protect those, nations threatened by water shortages invest in countermeasures such as maybe desalination or storages, etc. Even if the rest of the world doesn't care, preparation will mostly work for the local community.

Both avoidance and preparation need a lot of resources. But allocation to avoidance is only sensible if every nation agrees to it, otherwise those resources are wasted and far better spent on preparation.

Re: Plastics are poisoning us

#207

Post by SapporoChris »

Retric wrote: post #143
hospitalJail wrote: post #133

The word 'Plastic' needs to die. Instead we should be more specific on the type of plastic. Teflon, PLA, ABS, resins, foams, etc... are all plastics, but they are so unrelated outside their long chains, its terrible to stereotype them all into one category. You aren't going to get cancer from PLA or Teflon, but rather the manufacturing process. You can eat these plastics as far as I know and you'd be fine. Eat someth…

Teflon Aka Polytetrafluoroethylene cookware represents a health hazard. The stuff contains a great deal of Florine and breaks down at 300C, but that’s not purely binary instead it becomes increasingly unstable as your approach the temperature. Further no manufacturing process is perfect, I wouldn’t therefore assume eating significant quantities would be safe. That said, it’s generally used as a coating rather than a…

300 C is typically the highest setting on a stovetop. I never go above medium when using Teflon cookware. I've not used a cooking thermometer yet, but https://homebli.com/stove-top-temperature-knobs-what-the-num... gives a good general guide line under a section labelled Stove Top Numbers to Degrees.

Also, I only use 'plastic' utensils with the pan. The result, not a single scratch on the pan. The surface looks brand new, I've been using it over a year.

Re: Plastics are poisoning us

#208

Post by jcutrell »

elric wrote: post #200
hackernoteng wrote: post #193

Glad to see this is finally coming out in main stream media. Its been well known for decades among the so called "conspiracy theorists". Same thing with pesticide/herbicide being endocrine disrupting and cancer causing chemicals. Hopefully this type of thing start to get as much visibility and legislation as the so called "climate crisis" does.

I've never heard of anyone referring to this as a "conspiracy theory". The toxicity of many types of plastics has been common knowledge for a very long time. Same with pesticides/herbicides. This has been discussed in "main stream media" for years, probably decades. There have even been various legislative attempts to curb their usage or improve their safe disposal.

There are definitely people who land squarely in conspiracy theory land for this. For example, those who avoid literally all plastic, and won’t eat something that touched even the most stable forms of plastic, despite having little to no evidence of leaching at whatever temperature their bottle of water is at.

Re: Plastics are poisoning us

#209

Post by Capricorn2481 »

c00lio wrote: post #178
_dain_ wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The whole point of saving the environment was to leave a better world for our children and grandchildren. Someone has to show up after us.

Yes, but for mankind to continue, there has to be less of mankind.

This is a myth. We are not over overpopulated, the problem is the way we live.
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