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What is our hidden consumption of microplastics doing to our health?

nautil.us

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Re: What is our hidden consumption of microplastics doing to our health?

#311

Post by twofornone »

itsafetish wrote: post #252
stuckinhell wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It could explain the rise of trans women too. It's honestly quite frightening to think we are unknowingly modifying ourselves at such a scale.

Maybe, though I think it's better explained by the widespread availability of pornography, and the power of the internet in reinforcing cult-like behaviour. There's a huge amount of "forced feminization" pornography out there now, accessible by children at a very young age. As well as "lesbian" pornography designed for the male gaze. It's no wonder some males end up feeling they should be like the characters in the p…

I mean, there's a name for it, I don't think its a new phenomenon: autogynephilia. If it becomes so severe as to interfere with daily life then I don't think indulgence is an appropriate treatment, any more than I would expect telling a schizophrenic to listen to the voices in their head to be responsible medical practice.

We've gone too far with all of this acceptance stuff, because these modern acceptance movements brush off any criticism, however logical or valid, with accusations of bigotry. If the road to hell is paved with good intentions, then puberty blockers, affirmation treatment, and SRS are premium quality cement.

Edit: hilariously ironic that the wikipedia page for autogynophilia has been deleted from the english wiki, though there is a talk page discussing its restoration[0]...how uncomfortably dystopian. I can only hope that average people are catching onto the games played to justify this irrationality.

0. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Autogynephilia

Re: What is our hidden consumption of microplastics doing to our health?

#312

Post by supercheetah »

bb123 wrote: post #220
matthewdgreen wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What’s worrying about this is that we’re about 50 years into an unexplained epidemic of obesity and metabolic disease that nobody has a clear explanation for, and is also affecting lab animals fed controlled diets. It would be fascinating if this was all correlated with a common environmental contaminant, and the increasing use of various plastics could line up well.

I don’t think it’s unexplained at all. People just don’t like the explanation. People simply eat too much and don’t move enough. The secondary reasons behind that are many but again pretty easy to see (more desk jobs, cheap high calorie foods, automobile ownership etc)

Yeah, and it's all due to us having evolved in a world where famines were a constant threat, but now that's not an issue for many (although it's still a problem for many others.)

Re: What is our hidden consumption of microplastics doing to our health?

#313

Post by formerly_proven »

Terry_Roll wrote: post #258
matthewdgreen wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What’s worrying about this is that we’re about 50 years into an unexplained epidemic of obesity and metabolic disease that nobody has a clear explanation for, and is also affecting lab animals fed controlled diets. It would be fascinating if this was all correlated with a common environmental contaminant, and the increasing use of various plastics could line up well.

> 50 years into an unexplained epidemic of obesity and metabolic disease that nobody has a clear explanation for, I think you need to look at how the food has changed in this time. For example, here in the UK supermarkets dont want pigs with 1 1/2" of back fat so the farmer get the nutritionist to make up a diet low in vitamin B5 because it helps to shift the fat under the skin. Nett result, you have fatty organs and…

> pollution levels are at their highest in a generation

Try looking out the window in a 1970s city.

Re: What is our hidden consumption of microplastics doing to our health?

#314

Post by formerly_proven »

CyanBird wrote: post #217
AstralStorm wrote: post #61

The plastics themselves are only part of the story - they are relatively inert. However chemicals used to plasticize them and prevent fire are not, and some of them are already banned, but we have insufficient days on the replacements used. (Phenolics such as Bisphenol A - have hormonal effects causing direct cancer risk. And other effects too.)

Also, note that while bisphemol A is largely banned from certain food-contact plastics, it has been replaced with other "plasticising" chemicals which are largely "the same" such as bisphemol E, F, S, or AF For the interested https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bisphenol Also note n2, variations of vinyl or pvc plastic makes strong use of bisphemols for flexibility, pvc is being used to replace ageing copper or lead pipi…

> pvc is being used to replace ageing copper or lead piping across the world

PVC for water pipes seems to be a relatively US-only thing as far as I can tell. I don't think it's legal in the EU, for example; plastic piping here is PE-HD.

Re: What is our hidden consumption of microplastics doing to our health?

#315

Post by watwut »

zamfi wrote: post #309
notahacker wrote: post #303

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Americans ate more calories in 1909 than in 1960, and were no more obese then. That's his assertion , but all we've got is a link to a complex dataset on "food availability" and his word for it (and some probably-unjustified ancillary assumptions about calorie burning between the two eras being similar, of course). Extraordinary claims, I think, demand a higher standard of evidence. > Hmm, I think the point here is…

Wait, I think we’re talking past each other. “People eat too much” (where “too much” is defined not in raw calorie numbers but in terms of “more than burned or excreted”) is the obvious proximate cause, and I don’t think these folks are denying that. The confusing question is: why is everyone suddenly eating “too much” and seemingly unable to control it? Why does it now require willpower and dieting to not become obe…

In general, I agree with stance that obesity issue is more complicated. But:

> People in the 1960s had plenty of food access, plenty of cars, etc. etc., and did not have obesity rates in the 40%+ range.

I don't think they had comparable level of physical movement. They had more of it just by existing. Take office worker - today I come to work and sit on chair until I go to toilet or home. Communication is done via keyboard, documents are in computer. Compared to my parents in 80-90ties - when they wanted to talk to people, they would stand up and go physically to another office. If they wanted documents, they would stand up and search for it. People did used walking to stores and public transport more too. In 1960, 1980 kids walked to school and that includes 6 years old. They played unsupervised outside for hours. Again, expectation today is that they are driven. The 6 years old playing outside is outrage, so they dont do it (plus indoor tablet is more fun to them subjectively).

None of that is huge amount of movement. But I think these frequent low effort movements counts and adds up. And, just turning wheel on 1960 car requires more strength then on current one. A lot of housework (both the one done by women and men) requires less effort then people in 1960 needed - cleaning cooking too. Everything is physically easier.

I have car, but used public transport to get to work. I made around 8000 steps every day just by existing. When covid hit and I was at home, the amount of steps went down drastically - could be just few hundred.

Re: What is our hidden consumption of microplastics doing to our health?

#316

Post by quantum_magpie »

thrwy_918 wrote: post #156
barbegal wrote: post #11

The actual study is here https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S030438942... The study presents three scenarios assuming different assumptions about the mass of plastic particles. In the worst case scenario, where I think the assumptions are bad, they estimate 5g of plastic per week. In the other two scenarios which used more complex but more realistic modelling they estimate 0.15 and 0.3g of plastic cons…

>In these scenarios (0.15g and 0.3g) about 90% they estimate comes from salt. I know nothing about anything, but could salt be heat-treated to burn off plastic?

To properly burn plastic you need temps >1000 degC. Salt melts at 800 degC. If you vaporize plastic at lower temperature you release very nasty toxins.

Re: What is our hidden consumption of microplastics doing to our health?

#317

Post by ClumsyPilot »

JTbane wrote: post #201
refurb wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Micro plastics mostly come from synthetic fibers, like the fabric in masks.

Oh no, your shirt is made from polyester, panic! (/s)

Maybe we should hav3 never made clothing out of plastic, entire fast fashion insutry needs to burn in hell

Re: What is our hidden consumption of microplastics doing to our health?

#318

Post by maeil »

tintedfireglass wrote: post #304
matthewdgreen wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What’s worrying about this is that we’re about 50 years into an unexplained epidemic of obesity and metabolic disease that nobody has a clear explanation for, and is also affecting lab animals fed controlled diets. It would be fascinating if this was all correlated with a common environmental contaminant, and the increasing use of various plastics could line up well.

If it is related to plastics obesity should have been distributed evenly worldwide. But it is not. Even among developed countries it isn't evenly distributed.

I'm often saddened to see how even on this kind of community where the level of discussion is relatively high given the openness of the platform, this kind of cross-country comparison is almost completely forgotten when it debunks so many, possibly even the majority, of arguments made on a host of topics including this one. It isn't helped by the fact that HN, given its roots and SV focus, is very Ameri-centric - ime e.g. Europeans are at least somewhat more likely to consider regional comparisons, though they're still underutilized.

A 20-second search for "obesity rates by country" will show that plastics or other chemicals are very unlikely to play more than a minor role. It's so straightforward, yet there are dozens and dozens of comments above this one with not a single one bringing it up.

In the end, CICO is correct. The question then becomes "why do certain countries have a higher CI" to which the answer is "culture", as with anything to do with human behaviour. But most are very unwilling to point at things about certain cultures that are very clearly negative, something that both mainstream Western political leanings have in common. One of them because they believe their culture is inherently Great (Again?) even if it's sending them to an early deathbed, the other because they believe (or at least outwardly adhere to the dogma) that cultures should not be compared in any kind of positive vs negative way unless it's one they see as a political opponent on the national scale.

Re: What is our hidden consumption of microplastics doing to our health?

#319

Post by burntoutfire »

zamfi wrote: post #296
notahacker wrote: post #279

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Obviously there are a large number of factors which affect the weight of a specific individual, and food intake and exercise are only two of them, but that blog's attempts to deny the causation behind the correlation looks far more highly motivated than anybody pointing out that trends in obesity mirror trends in diets and lifestyle changes. I mean, he handwaves away the statistic that suggests the mean US citizen's…

> mean US citizen's calorie intake increased by nearly a quarter over the period that obesity rose simply by saying "that's not a jaw dropping increase" I think the context here is that while 400 extra calories a day might seem like a lot, it's within the observed variability going back as far as we have measurements. Americans ate more calories in 1909 than in 1960, and were no more obese then. > He thinks a study i…

> Americans ate more calories in 1909 than in 1960

They also did A LOT more manual labor back then. Heavy construction projects (roads, dams etc.) were still performed by thousands of people literally swinging a pick-axe 10 hours a day, slowly chipping away at the hill that stood in the way. That must have required couple thousand of extra kcal per day. Meanwhile, in 1960, a lot of most energy-consuming work was already performed by machines.

Re: What is our hidden consumption of microplastics doing to our health?

#320

Post by [deleted] »

zamfi wrote: post #309
notahacker wrote: post #303

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Americans ate more calories in 1909 than in 1960, and were no more obese then. That's his assertion , but all we've got is a link to a complex dataset on "food availability" and his word for it (and some probably-unjustified ancillary assumptions about calorie burning between the two eras being similar, of course). Extraordinary claims, I think, demand a higher standard of evidence. > Hmm, I think the point here is…

Wait, I think we’re talking past each other. “People eat too much” (where “too much” is defined not in raw calorie numbers but in terms of “more than burned or excreted”) is the obvious proximate cause, and I don’t think these folks are denying that. The confusing question is: why is everyone suddenly eating “too much” and seemingly unable to control it? Why does it now require willpower and dieting to not become obe…

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