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Plastics are poisoning us

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Re: Plastics are poisoning us

#211

Post by stef25 »

stef25 wrote: post #100
GuB-42 wrote: post #89

Considering how ubiquitous plastics are, they look rather harmless to me. We are wasting hundreds of millions of tons per year, we eat it, drink it, we have been doing that for decades and we are still discussing statistical signifiance. Sure, not completely harmless, but few things are. And considering the tremendous value plastics have brought to society, I'd say the downsides are comparatively small. What worries…

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. In Asia especially it's crazy how plastic is often used - you go to a 7/11 to buy a cold drink, they put it in TWO flimsy plastic bags which you throw in the first trash can you…

Correction: it's actually a credit card per week, not per month

Re: Plastics are poisoning us

#212

Post by semi-extrinsic »

MagicMoonlight wrote: post #147
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…

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

PLA - poly(lactic acid) - is biocompatible to the point that it is used in medical implants. It breaks down into lactic acid, which the body produces itself during exercise and can safely metabolize.

Breathing smoke and dust from PLA is bad, because breathing any type of smoke or dust is bad. Wildfire smoke is bad, but wood is not a harmful chemical.

We actually do understand the chemistry of plastics. And to a very large extent they are very safe, primarily because they are incredibly stable and non-degradable.

Even the studies of e.g. BPA health issues point to very weak effects. You need to do meta-analysis on tens of thousands of individuals to have statistically significant effects, and even then they are weak and it's not easy to say whether you have successfully eliminated confounding factors.

And "BPA-free" plastics just use BPF instead, with very similar chemistry. The consumer-facing BPA fuss is primarily driven by companies that want to sell products; health agencies are primarily concerned with occupational exposure, which is 4-5 orders of magnitude larger in terms of dose per body weight. BPA is metabolized in the kidneys to the benign BPA-G and excreted in urine; a dose 250 000 times the EU dose limit is cleared by the body in 24 hours.

PFAS is a similar story. Over long timescales with stupid disregard for basic PPE, like cross country ski waxing trailers where people were breathing C8-dust without masks for a thousand hours per year, there has been clear health concerns identified. So people are saying "there is no safe lower dose limit" and companies are switching to chemicals that haven't been used in the same context so there is little to no data on exposure safety, and saying "this will be safer".

Re: Plastics are poisoning us

#213

Post by patmorgan23 »

LinuxBender wrote: post #146
pvaldes wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

8 -> copper is toxic. People with some genetic traits will suffer cirrhosis and shouldn't use it for water storage. Cooking on copper pots specially should be avoided. Iron and Aluminum are safer.

It's also a required element so I guess a question might be how many micrograms of copper are consumed per day by using a copper lined bottle. Adults should get 900 micrograms daily unless they are also consuming a lot of zinc and then one must do more math. Gastric bypass surgery is thought to be a risk factor for copper deficiency. Usage of proton pump inhibitors may also contribute to copper deficiency by reducing…

Most new construction in the last 10 years is all PVC and PEX, not copper.

Re: Plastics are poisoning us

#214

Post by throwaway602088 »

_dain_ wrote: post #164
aziaziazi wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for the courage to express 12. Absolute anthropocentrism can’t continue indefinitely and we already see boomerang effects.

Anti-natalists are the enemy of mankind.

…Said the horny rat in an overcrowded cage

…Said the Easter Island native

…Said the XX century boomers

Would you elaborate on your thought? Why questioning the demography is “enemy of mankind”? Is there other subjects/sciences we should avoid completely to be friends with mankind?

Re: Plastics are poisoning us

#215

Post by c00lio »

Capricorn2481 wrote: post #209
c00lio wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

No. The problem is overall resource consumption. Which is a product: people * consumption/person. Since consumption per person has a lower limit, there has to be an upper limit for the sustainable number of people on the planet. Since standard of living should be at least equal to that of your ancestors, resource consumption per person will also be above the bare necessary minimum. And since the normal mode of population growth is exponential, any change in consumption per person is meaningless anyways, the overall resource consumption would be exponential nonetheless. So yes, we are always on the verge of overpopulation, followed by catastrophic collapse. We only avoided collapse in the past because technology (industrialization, green revolution) enabled exponential growth in resource production. But that might be a one-time thing.

Re: Plastics are poisoning us

#216

Post by smallerfish »

vram22 wrote: post #57
perlgeek wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> With modern pollution rain water is not likely to be safe to drink (depends on your location) There are lots of "grey water" uses that don't require drinkable water, like watering plants, flushing toilets.

>There are lots of "grey water" uses that don't require drinkable water, like watering plants, flushing toilets. Yes. I've heard/read grey mentioned many times in permaculture articles. I like the fact that permaculture takes a systems or holistic approach. Another nice, small but useful example of permaculture design is the concept of guilds, when it comes to planting crops around a house. They plant by category, in…

Yeah you're talking about zones. Zones refer to the intensity of maintenance / how often you'll be harvesting from them. Zone 1 around the house is most frequent - zone 5 is way in the jungle where you harvest wild guavas once a year.

Guilds are about companion planting - they're combination of plants that form a small ecosystem where they provide benefit to each other. E.g. comfrey is often used around fruit trees to break up subsoil (it has very long taproots, to 10 feet or so), and as a prolific mulch producer (cut it back every couple months, and chop and drop the leaves in place). Nitrogen fixing plants are common, as a way of providing nutrients. Etc.

Re: Plastics are poisoning us

#217

Post by oasisbob »

taneq wrote: post #174
Retric wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Does it contain Fluorine (a dangerous halogen gas) or does it contain Fluoride (the ion of that gas, commonly added to toothpaste and drinking water).

"Fluorine" is also the terminology used for covalently bonded Fl moieties, not just difluorine, the gas.

Fluoride is the ion, but if you want to get pedantic, you're not adding the ion to toothpaste and drinking water - you're adding another fluorine compound which is dissociating in solution.

Ie, when you salt your food, you're not tossing in Cl- ions directly.

Re: Plastics are poisoning us

#218

Post by alach11 »

c00lio wrote: post #116
stef25 wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At my parents' house rain water was collected in a well and that was used for things like flushing toilets and watering plants. This was already in place 30+ years ago mainly cause it's "free water" (apart from the cost of building the well and the pump)

Over here, your water bill has 2 components, the price of the fresh water and the price of the waste water. Waste water is at least as expensive per m³ as fresh water, sometimes more than double. If you are using rain water, you save on the fresh water price, but you have to still pay for the waste water. And since waste water price is calculated from your fresh water consumption, you either have to have a second met…

How does the water company know you're using rain water?

Re: Plastics are poisoning us

#219

Post by jdiff »

acumenical wrote: post #150
kashunstva wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> suffer cirrhosis …and neuropsychiatric symptoms. Wilson’s disease is surprisingly common at 1 in 30,000.

> surprisingly common at 1 in 30,000 You should reevaluate what you consider common. Schizophrenia, a condition you probably rarely witness in every day life, is around 1 in 100. You don't interact with 30,000 people even over the course of a year.

Visibility has little impact on commonness. Something can be ubiquitous and invisible. That doesn't make something common-but-less-so rare.

Re: Plastics are poisoning us

#220

Post by grimgoldgo »

oezi wrote: post #198
Retric wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I understand that Teflon might be a hazard in pans but feel like it reduces the amount of burned food in contrast to steel/iron pans so much for me that I hope it is a net gain. (sorry in advance for all who want to suggest iron skillets. I can't make them work in daily use.)

If you are regularly burning food in steel or iron pans, maybe it's time to understand why? I cook in exclusively iron and steel cookware and I cannot remember the last time something got burned (excepting when I deliberately charred something.)
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