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Plastics are poisoning us

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Re: Plastics are poisoning us

#291

Post by VoodooJuJu »

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…

We refer to them as plastics because it's meaningful and useful to do so in most contexts, including the context of the harm they do. Whether that harm is done during manufacturing or ingestion is irrelevant. They're all plastics and they all cause harm.

It's not useful to nitpick over their long chains or oxygen double bonds. That rhetoric contributes nothing but deflective nerdery and confusion to the conversation.

Re: Plastics are poisoning us

#292

Post by tfourb »

midoridensha wrote: post #119
tfourb wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you kidding me? Even if that were true there are probably 500 ways of making leather soles equally grippy to plastic soles that would either eliminate or drastically reduce the use of these materials. There are also other biodegradable alternatives to plastic that could be used. Most plastic-based shoes are worn out much quicker than quality leather shoes would be. These are cheap excuses that are quite transpare…

If there some reasonable way to make leather soles grippy, it would have been done ages ago I think. Instead, back in the old days, leather shoes that needed grip were probably made with rubber soles. >Most plastic-based shoes are worn out much quicker than quality leather shoes would be. True, but there's tradeoffs here. For hiking boots, for instance, some people swear by "sturdy" hand-made leather boots, but the p…

The "good old way" of making leather soles grippy is nails, just to give one example. Even using synthetic materials instead of hobnails would reduce plastic consumption quite a bit for these use cases.

I've hiked quite a bit in various types of boots and yes, It's nice to have lighter shoes, but for most people most of the time a kg more or less won't make the damndest bit of difference. Only a fraction of all hikers are attempting trails under circumstances that require top-notch performance gear.

Re: Plastics are poisoning us

#293

Post by goeiedaggoeie »

Oleksa_dr wrote: post #285

It all depends on global and legislative initiatives. Only restrictions on the production of plastic and cardboard (!!!) work. Personal initiatives are just romanticization and a philosophy that shifts the problem from the producer to the consumer (who has no choice). Metal is an alternative to many things. Plastic is only for containers and things with a long cycle of use. It has its advantages. It is more resistant…

>>Only restrictions on the production of plastic and cardboard (!!!) work. Agreed. we need to price in the externalities into the cost of manufacturing, else it will always be a tragedy of the commons

Re: Plastics are poisoning us

#294

Post by brnt »

jader201 wrote: post #255
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…

> Teflon Aka Polytetrafluoroethylene cookware represents a health hazard. Are you saying, then, that this claim [1] is false? It states that PTFE is safe, whereas PFOA — what Teflon used to contain — was the component that made Teflon unsafe. [1] https://www.webmd.com/food-recipes/is-teflon-coating-safe

PTFE is a PFAS, as is PFOA.

> Now, since PFOA belongs to a large group of chemicals called PFAS, consisting of 4,700 similar substances, it might be tempting to just switch to one of the other PFAS chemicals that hasn’t been restricted yet. But that wouldn´t solve the problem, it would only postpone and perpetuate it. [1]

[1] https://marketplace.chemsec.org/articles/news/2020/04/01/the...

I.e. there's a whole zoo of similar compounds, and all those type specific safety claims are all at room temperature. The whole point of their use is often on heated surfaces, getting near and over the safety limit.

Re: Plastics are poisoning us

#295

Post by everybodyknows »

cynicalsecurity wrote: post #196
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…

[flagged]

> 3) Make the West so powerful it will finally destroy and conquer both Russia and China and dictate the third world how to live.

Minor snag in your plan: "The West" cannot itself figure out itself "how to live". Witness Jan 6, 2020. And growing strength of Germany's AfD: https://www.dw.com/en/germany-far-right-afd-expands-politica...

Re: Plastics are poisoning us

#296

Post by mint2 »

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…

Many dental flosses are literally strands of ptfe and some studies correlate using them with higher blood concentrations of pfas.

Many “compostable” paper food and drink containers are lined with a ptfe film, which does get into the food.

Okay sure maybe it’s all leftover pfas reagents, (or maybe some break down but ignore that) it’s impossible for anyone to know that this particular instance of ptfe doesn’t have residual pfas.

Re: Plastics are poisoning us

#297

Post by antonvs »

littlestymaar wrote: post #136
smellyshaft1 wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Aluminum is not safer than copper

It's almost like saying that Covid is not less dangerous than the plague… They both have issues, but the latter is still worse than the former.

Plague is (was) worse in terms of its mortality rate, but Covid is worse in that we still don't have a way to eradicate it, so it's going to continue to be a health risk for some time to come.

Re: Plastics are poisoning us

#298

Post by kmmlng »

trgn wrote: post #114
rkagerer wrote: post #37

The study found that, to have a lower environmental impact than a plastic bag, a paper bag would have to be used forty-three times and a cotton tote would have to be used an astonishing seventy-one hundred times. “How many of those bags will last that long?” Franklin-Wallis asks. Walker-Franklin and Jambeck also note that exchanging plastic for other materials may involve “tradeoffs,” including “energy and water use…

A plastic bag is literal trash. The problem with these sort of equivocations is that they conveniently side-step the categorical argument. One something like; do not surround yourself with trash. realshadow has rule 7, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36503179 , "quality over quantity". That is a value argument, not an efficiency argument. Only arguing from efficiency is essentially internalizing the logic of the…

You raise an interesting point, but isn't this just moving to another extreme? It seems like both quality and efficiency have their place, we are probably putting too much emphasis on efficiency at the moment, but completely focusing on quality and disregarding efficiency isn't the solution either. It's maximising a single (ill-defined) metric as well, no?

If we stick with the plastic vs cotton bag example, we are considering two factors: some aggregate of environmental impact metrics e and the number of times we use the bag n. If n=1, would you still favor the cotton bag just because it is higher quality? Isn't it also mostly trash in this case? What is trash? I'd argue it's a product that we cannot or do not squeeze any additional utility out of. How about n=10? n=20?

Re: Plastics are poisoning us

#299

Post by steamer25 »

VoodooJuJu wrote: post #291
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…

We refer to them as plastics because it's meaningful and useful to do so in most contexts, including the context of the harm they do. Whether that harm is done during manufacturing or ingestion is irrelevant. They're all plastics and they all cause harm. It's not useful to nitpick over their long chains or oxygen double bonds. That rhetoric contributes nothing but deflective nerdery and confusion to the conversation.

As we become more interested in the relatively new information about these materials, different kinds of conversations are occurring than we've had in the past. To facilitate these new interests, it's entirely possible that some of the more specific terms could/should/will become part of the household or water-cooler vernacular. BPA already has.

> deflective nerdery

FWIW, the point about carbon bonds was actually a response to nerdery that's already present here, in a forum intended for digging into the nerdy details of various subjects.

Re: Plastics are poisoning us

#300

Post by wing-_-nuts »

sfpotter wrote: post #130
aziaziazi wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or at least car/patio washing if you’re almost really a minimalist.

If you’re really a minimalist, you don’t own a car

outside of nyc, this is going to have a major impact on quality of life. don't let perfection be the enemy of good.
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