31–40 of 48 posts
I am not sure if we will ever purge nature of them. But we could reduce them going forward with better packaging science and use of biodegradable plastics.
I'm curious - has there been a place yet that hasn't found microplastics yet? Some of the places I have now read about seem so unlikely (archeological dig, deep bore holes, returning spacecraft) that I am now thinking of other plausible alternatives: - some "microplastics" are naturally occurring phenomenon - cannot run a test without the sample being compromised - like the presence of carbon-14 in the atmosphere aft…
Is there food safe plastics that don’t leach microplastics? My RO filter uses plastic tubing, I imagine within the filters themselves there’s plastic
This is why I switched to a countertop electric water still. It boils a gallon of water in a few hours, then I just refill and plug it back in. The water tastes great too.
(And your comment on taste is interesting. Distilled water doesn't taste like anything (except possibly slight tingling if it "burns" your tongue), which is why minerals are often added to drinking water to make it taste "good")
The very ubiquity of microplastics coupled with the lack of definitive harm is pretty strongly suggestive that they are pretty innocuous as far as chemicals go.
The harm is hard to assess without a control group.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
One of the ironies is that organic agriculture has increased plastics use dramatically in farming. https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2019/06/07/729783773/or...
As far as I can tell, organic is mostly a mechanism to price discriminate produce and animal products. If you label one organic, then some people will be willing to pay more for it.
Whether you agree with the mission of organic agriculture or not, getting certified for it does come with a lot of expensive extra rules.
Is there food safe plastics that don’t leach microplastics? My RO filter uses plastic tubing, I imagine within the filters themselves there’s plastic
I am not sure if we will ever purge nature of them. But we could reduce them going forward with better packaging science and use of biodegradable plastics.
Depending on the type of biodegradable plastic, part of it's degradation process would be to break down into small pieces of microplastics.
Is there food safe plastics that don’t leach microplastics? My RO filter uses plastic tubing, I imagine within the filters themselves there’s plastic
https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2020/09/how-to-reduce-micropl...
https://www.unep.org/news-and-stories/story/fashions-tiny-hi...
The very ubiquity of microplastics coupled with the lack of definitive harm is pretty strongly suggestive that they are pretty innocuous as far as chemicals go.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The harm is hard to assess without a control group.
If the harm is hard to assess, is it worth caring about? At some point the effect becomes insignificant.
It was hard to detect population-scale lead poisoning too.