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New study finds microplastics infiltrate all systems of body, alter behaviour

sustainableplastics.com

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Re: New study finds microplastics infiltrate all systems of body, alter behaviour

#341

Post by creole_wither »

bowsamic wrote: post #26
njovin wrote: post #22

I'm still shocked that there hasn't been more of a regulatory push to eliminate single-use plastics. In the US the closest we've gotten is banning plastic straws and charging for plastic carry bags. Everything I've read about plastic recycling points to it being ineffective and requiring massive amounts of fossil fuel to move the waste around the globe, often with much of it just getting burned or dumped into the env…

It's exactly the same as fossil fuels and climate change, plastic is far too convenient for any government to even consider doing anything extremely significant regarding it

If we replace plastic packaging with metal or glass containers which weigh more then more fossil fuels will be required for transport.

Re: New study finds microplastics infiltrate all systems of body, alter behaviour

#342

Post by sudosysgen »

joquarky wrote: post #332
wickedsight wrote: post #267

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your argument is that forcing people to go without food causes them to lose weight, which is impossible to deny. You argument says nothing about what causes people to gain weight, however. Just look up 'hormonal weight gain' to see that it isn't just about eating less. Then look at research into the influence of chemicals/micro plastics on those hormones. Yes, all calories have to go in through the mouth. How those c…

>How those calories are processed, however, is influenced by a great many factors. I feel compelled to assume that we can't possibly be extracting every calorie from certain types of food. Caloriometers work differently from human digestive systems.

That's correct, but we're pretty efficient - from 75 to 99%. This is typically around 90% except for fiber, which is marked down in calorie labels already. It also depends on what exactly you're doing with the energy, if you're in a calorie surplus then protein to tryglyceride metabolism is less efficient than, say, dietary fat to tryglyceride, but this can just be neglected.

But yeah, human digestion is pretty efficient. Muscles are far less efficient though, around 30%, which is a neat fact.

Re: New study finds microplastics infiltrate all systems of body, alter behaviour

#343

Post by creole_wither »

kjkjadksj wrote: post #306
darajava wrote: post #271

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, but what about the more slight effects? A 2-point general decline in IQ is a huge problem, but not obvious. I am wary of any “bogeyman” that we are told to be worried about, in this case, the pervasiveness of plastic does actually worry me. Hopefully i’m wrong

Correlation does not equate causation. Maybe IQ has gone down because a lot of people literally do not give themselves time to think at all. Every free moment the phone is open dumping junk food tier information into their head. The mind didn’t evolve to be inundated by tick tocks while you pee. Its supposed to wander and be bored.

Or maybe people are dumping junk food tier information into their heads because their IQs are lower.

Re: New study finds microplastics infiltrate all systems of body, alter behaviour

#344

Post by smallerfish »

bjowen wrote: post #249
smallerfish wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Microplastics are everywhere. Everywhere on the planet we look, we find microplastics. Just ... everywhere. I appreciate the links, but that's not what I asked. I know microplastics are everywhere. Do you have studies showing that plastic begins to distintegrate immediately? What's the working lifetime for a plastic container before it begins to distintegrate and leach microplastics into what's stored in it?

The microplastics in a product don’t have to originate in a product’s final packaging. Things like airborne particles on the production line, filaments from filters and cleaning equipment, manufacturing swarf, and cleaning processes that are oriented to killing small things with heat / UV / chemistry rather than filtering tbem out is probably more of the answer than leaching and degradation.

Understood, but the article specifically said: "anything stored in plastic bottles, plastic wrap, or cans/cartons lined with plastic".

Re: New study finds microplastics infiltrate all systems of body, alter behaviour

#345

Post by pizzaknife »

usuallyalurker wrote: post #233
pizzaknife wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

i would love a citation related to the polyblend tshirt. I absolutely love them but if its poisoning me more significantly than microwaving food in plastic containers, i will gladly return to hemp

Here : https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4426466/

Ooof. back to hemp it is. edit: thank you, sincerely, for this.

Re: New study finds microplastics infiltrate all systems of body, alter behaviour

#347

Post by trident5000 »

darajava wrote: post #291
trident5000 wrote: post #15

I bought a tub of BCAA powder from Ghost and was horrified after finding a large spidery plastic blob buried in there. I went to Burger King and looked inside the burger randomly which I never do and found plastic. Theres a microplastic issue but theres also a large plastic issue in food. Often times you do even notice when you eat it.

Don’t eat that rubbish. Buy whole foods that you can trust

yup

Re: New study finds microplastics infiltrate all systems of body, alter behaviour

#348

Post by p3rls »

purpleflame1257 wrote: post #134
bhouston wrote: post #75

There are two macro population health trends that suggest we are somehow poisoning ourselves at a large scale. Most people do not relate the two, but I personally wouldn't be surprised if they have related causes. The first is the Flynn effect, which was rising IQ levels decade over decade, which halted and then reserved for most Western nations around 1990s/2000s and is now declining: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/F…

Obesity itself is oestrogenic. It's the calories, stupid!

At least it's not ostrogothgenic

it could always be worse

Re: New study finds microplastics infiltrate all systems of body, alter behaviour

#349

Post by DrThunder »

BaseballPhysics wrote: post #319
DrThunder wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You have to have a good alternative first. Paper items sprayed with harmful chemicals is not a good replacement. https://fortune.com/well/2023/08/24/paper-straws-harmful-for...

No you don't. A ban forces industries to create alternatives. Otherwise they won't bother. You just schedule a phased elimination over time so those alternatives can get developed. That's precisely how the Montreal Protocol banned CFCs and protected the ozone layer: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Montreal_Protocol

If it was that easy to get an alternative introduced it would have been suggested already and all of these radical "green" governments would have hopped on the train immediately. This idea that we're just killing people with microplastics because we like it is insane.

CFC's coming out of your hairspray is WAY different than removing the plastic keeping your food fresh.

Stop with the black and white thinking. There is NO alternative that is free of some negative consequence. You're already seeing this with EV's. Every single "green" replacement introduces new problems that are often worse than what they've replaced.

Re: New study finds microplastics infiltrate all systems of body, alter behaviour

#350

Post by bhouston »

throw4847285 wrote: post #329
bhouston wrote: post #239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Microplastics may be a significant cause of Male Infertility: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9134445/ The plastic brain: neurotoxicity of micro- and nanoplastics: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7282048/ Phalates in plastics reduce IQ significantly: https://time.com/3625352/phthalates-iq-toxins/

I don't deny that there is more and more research every day about the negative impacts of microplastics on the human body. From my place of relative ignorance, it still seems that more sweeping claims like "Microplastics are responsible for the Flynn Effect and the male infertility crisis" are awfully bold. You throw obesity in there too, and doesn't it seem like folks are trying to pin all of society's ills on a sin…

> it still seems that more sweeping claims like "Microplastics are responsible for the Flynn Effect and the male infertility crisis" are awfully bold

You are making my original statements into a straw man argument. I didn't say they are fully responsible, but rather I think they are contributors.

I even asked in my original post what else could be contributing:

> I think microplastics along with forever chemicals/PFAS are two of the likely culprits and are probably fairly easy to deal with. > > I wonder what else could be contributing?

Lead does reduce IQ and increase crime. Here is a meta-analysis that tries to tease out how much lead was responsible for crime and homicide:

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S016604622...

Banning lead gasoline was the right thing regardless. It was causing harm. It is hard at the time to know exactly how much.

You then wrote:

> You throw obesity in there too, and doesn't it seem like folks are trying to pin all of society's ills on a single issue?

I do think we are poisoning ourselves in probably a few different ways -- we have made so many novel chemicals without significant safety testing that a good chunk of them are probably harmful and can also likely build up over time. If we can continue to deal with these harmful chemicals that have clear links to negative health outcomes, we will be better off as a society.

The trick is to keep studying them and then act on those studies to mitigate the harms of those chemicals.

The world is complex and there is usually not a singular cause of everything. But that doesn't mean we should just throw our arms up and say, oh no, I can not do anything it is all just too complex or overwhelming. No, instead you just have to do, as Anna says in Frozen II, "the next right thing:"

https://youtu.be/kFkClV2gM-s?t=118

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