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Microplastics in the human brain

smithsonianmag.com

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Re: Microplastics in the human brain

#201

Post by mrguyorama »

njarboe wrote: post #187
ethagnawl wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have a 2018 Fit and it's a fantastic car. It gets 36 MPG and has much more interior space than it would seem. I've had taller people ride in it comfortably and its crowning achievement was fitting a hot water heater in the cargo area with the rear seat split -- without having to remove the child car seat on the other side. Pair a roof rack and you really don't need more -- especially day-to-day. It's a crying shame…

Marketing does seem to work, especially over generations. I think the main reason trucks/SUVs were marketed so much was because of a 25% tax on imported light trucks and not cars. The so called "chicken tax"[1] was imposed on light trucks in 1964 and is still with us today. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicken_tax

A big reason car companies push trucks so much is that they are more profitable per unit. Demand is extremely limited in terms of quantity, because you can only really sell about 1-2 cars per family, per about 10 years.

That means, all else being equal, a car company makes more profit selling a vehicle that has a higher profit margin. The $80k trucks my family members buy do not cost 3X as much to manufacture as say, a nice Camry, but the price you pay is about 3X. This means the dealer/manufacturer just outright make more money if a higher percentage of people buy trucks instead of small cars.

Consumers have "signaled" that they will be fine paying three times as much for the same exact feature set (no, they are not hauling anything, and there certainly isn't a massively higher percentage of Americans doing truck things than 50 years ago), even using longer term loans to make it happen.

When the car market has been basically saturated for decades, how else do you "make line go up" than selling the same product (transportation) for more money?

Re: Microplastics in the human brain

#202

Post by idiotsecant »

squigz wrote: post #97
pinkmuffinere wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thankyou. I think I will quote your last two lines frequently.

Or just quote the guidelines https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html > Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith. And > Please don't post comments saying that HN is turning into Reddit. It's a semi-noob illusion, as old as the hills.

I'm dying on that hill.

Re: Microplastics in the human brain

#203

Post by mrguyorama »

raddan wrote: post #121
mythrwy wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do I consume drinks? No, except water and instant coffee, no soda, no beer. Meat? Yes in small quantities and much of it comes from the local environment. I grow most of my own produce, with RO water. Yes they are unavoidable, just the plastic containers etc probably give some and I do eat candies and imported bananas and bread etc. But pretty sure I get a lot lower dose than most people. However I'm not sure it matt…

> However I'm not sure it matters that much until a mechanism of actual damage is established. This is the thing about all the microplastics articles I see popping up: they rarely include any description of harm. If they even mention it, it is only speculative, as in this article. Until I read a scientific article about real harms, I am going to regard most of the microplastics news as fearmongering. Humanity has bee…

There is no strong evidence of anything yet, but consider how long it took to "prove" to society's satisfaction that cigarettes are harmful, despite most scientists finding the lung cancer connection quite clear from pretty early. Comprehensive and long term data takes a long time. It could be worth it to be cautious in the meantime.

If microplastics are making our lives 10% worse in some dimension, we will have to stumble onto what that dimension would be basically by luck and then spend at least a decade rigorously studying it before we could make useful assertions.

The hubub about microplastics is that, we don't have great civilization wide health data on most health dimensions, so we don't even have good baselines to figure whether we have regressed in many ways. IF there is a negative effect, it will effect everyone all over the planet and there is no escape

It's an extreme corner of the likelihood/amount of harm graph, and some people think that corner of the graph warrants caution even before harm is proven.

It's the same situation we faced with leaded gasoline, and the US is pretty bad when it comes to those kinds of "mild, diffuse harm that mostly affects people who can't afford whatever system the wealthy use to avoid the harm" problems.

It's not fearmongering, we are literally gambling that microplastics have minimal harm right now.

Re: Microplastics in the human brain

#204

Post by ethagnawl »

mrguyorama wrote: post #201
njarboe wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Marketing does seem to work, especially over generations. I think the main reason trucks/SUVs were marketed so much was because of a 25% tax on imported light trucks and not cars. The so called "chicken tax"[1] was imposed on light trucks in 1964 and is still with us today. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicken_tax

A big reason car companies push trucks so much is that they are more profitable per unit. Demand is extremely limited in terms of quantity, because you can only really sell about 1-2 cars per family, per about 10 years. That means, all else being equal, a car company makes more profit selling a vehicle that has a higher profit margin. The $80k trucks my family members buy do not cost 3X as much to manufacture as say,…

> The $80k trucks my family members buy do not cost 3X as much to manufacture as say, a nice Camry, but the price you pay is about 3X.

> ... even using longer term loans to make it happen.

I don't understand how so many people are driving these vehicles. Not only are they 2-3x as expensive to buy or lease but they're also 2-3x more expensive to fuel and maintain. (Probably to insure, too?) I don't have any data to back this up but my intuition tells me that these vehicles and their loans could be the cause of the next subprime mortgage-esque financial crisis.

Re: Microplastics in the human brain

#205

Post by ergl »

bluefirebrand wrote: post #184
epistasis wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well good news, nothing is stoping you from bringing home a full cartful of groceries that walking distance either. You just have more options. Now, if you are really attached to your car and are only open to using your car for groceries, stay in suburbia, it's oversupplied through centralized planning and not at risk of going anywhere!

> Well good news, nothing is stoping you from bringing home a full cartful of groceries that walking distance either Dunno about you but I only have two hands and can only carry so much at one time I could have bought and brought a wagon or something I suppose, but that presents its own problems. Where do I store the wagon in my tiny apartment? What do I do with it when I'm actually in the store shopping, to make sur…

Have you never heard of a shopping caddy? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shopping_caddy

They're incredibly popular here, and yes, all supermarkets will have a lock stand near the checkout area so you can leave them there and easily reach for them as you're bagging your groceries. They're also foldable and/or small enough to fit in almost any closet.

Re: Microplastics in the human brain

#206

Post by timeon »

mythrwy wrote: post #191
timeon wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is really interesting. Do you have suggestions how to use RO in garden scale? (Like link where could I start)

I built my own RO system it cost around $1500 including a water softener. There are some ongoing supplies every year, maybe $200 or less. I don't have any links I just figured it out, but it's not super complicated. I made it out of undersink RO membrane housings (housings from those little RO systems you can buy for around $300 that do a couple of gallons a day). The membranes have pressure pumps in front of them th…

Thanks!

Re: Microplastics in the human brain

#208

Post by bluefirebrand »

ergl wrote: post #205
bluefirebrand wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Well good news, nothing is stoping you from bringing home a full cartful of groceries that walking distance either Dunno about you but I only have two hands and can only carry so much at one time I could have bought and brought a wagon or something I suppose, but that presents its own problems. Where do I store the wagon in my tiny apartment? What do I do with it when I'm actually in the store shopping, to make sur…

Have you never heard of a shopping caddy? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shopping_caddy They're incredibly popular here, and yes, all supermarkets will have a lock stand near the checkout area so you can leave them there and easily reach for them as you're bagging your groceries. They're also foldable and/or small enough to fit in almost any closet.

Those little things would definitely not carry a weeks worth of groceries. They barely look like they carry more than I could by hand

Never seen a grocery store with a lock stand for these things either

Re: Microplastics in the human brain

#209

Post by lurking_swe »

bluefirebrand wrote: post #174
lurking_swe wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

no judgment on you in particular, but i’m not a fan of this thought process. I believe it’s a major cause for why americans (statistically) are so obese. and i say this as an american that lives in a city but has family in the suburbs. running errands with your own two feet every day by walking, cycling, etc keeps people healthy and lean. this country has a major car problem. it’s sad. of course one can go to the gym…

> running errands with your own two feet every day by walking, cycling, etc keeps people healthy and lean. this country has a major car problem I did live this exact lifestyle in my 20s. I was definitely more active but my diet was way worse. I was closer to a lot of restaurants, and I was closer to a lot of bakeries and convenience stores and such as well. A healthy lifestyle also requires a healthy diet and city li…

thanks for the thoughtful reply. :)

I agree, it’s not a magic fix for all issues! But it does address one major component, the physical activity part. The other is diet, which is a separate issue of course.

Re: Microplastics in the human brain

#210

Post by repiret »

kirubakaran wrote: post #207
repiret wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That says nothing about tire wear.

You think tire wear is less than road wear for a given load?

Yes.

Tire wear is caused by the surface of the tire being rubbed off through contact with the road. Most tire replacements happen because too much rubber has worn off of the contact surface.

While that happens some in the other direction, that’s not what usually causes road failure. You can tell this because pot-holes and other road failures have abrupt edges - they are not the road material until nothing is left but the earth beneath.

Roads also wear by being elastically deformed by the weight of the vehicles upon them. Eventually this deformation leads to failure of the road material, and it breaks away from the rest of the road, creating cracks and pot holes and so on.

Because the cause of failure is different, I don’t have any reason to expect the effect of vehicle weight to be the same. Moreover, unlike tire wear, its easy to hypothesize a physical reason that heavier vehicles will disproportionately wear the road: heavier vehicles will cause more deflection, and every material I have experience with will fail from repeated deflection faster if it’s deflected more.

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