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Tons of microplastic rain onto western US

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Re: Tons of microplastic rain onto western US

#61

Post by dungdongdang »

ollo wrote: post #55
chewz wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One cotton t-shirt equals 2,700 liters of water—what one person drinks in two-and-a-half years. Google about Aral Sea. Cotton farming is also responsible for 24 percent of insecticides and 11 percent of pesticides despite using about 3 percent of the world’s arable land. https://www.wri.org/blog/2017/07/apparel-industrys-environme...

Producing cotton clothes also releases more CO2.

fortunately producing the original cotton plants those tshirts are made from captures hundreds of times more CO2 from the air. you know, because they're plants.

Re: Tons of microplastic rain onto western US

#62

Post by titzer »

scottlocklin wrote: post #4

I don't like plastic in the air any more than anyone else does, but 1) stop wearing those stupid fucking polyester hoodies (and other artificial fibers; aka your socks, gym shirts and underpants) -that's where most of it comes from. I'm looking at you, SF hacker nerds. 2) Even assuming the entire population of the Western US breathed all that plastic waste in and it was permanently deposited in the lungs: 1000e3 kg/…

By mass, 8 million tons of plastic garbage is estimated to be entering the oceans every year. The oceans, with their hundreds of thousands of miles of shoreline and reef breaks, are the world's broadest, most powerful erosive force. The oceans grind up our plastic garbage into micro and nanoplastics and clearly that is now being swept up into the hydro cycle and rained back on Earth. This is not that hard to grasp.

Yes, artificial fibers are bad. They cause lots of microplastic problems in local water sources. I agree we should stop wearing them. But this problem is huge and global.

The risk to human health from microplastics seems lower than some other types of pollution. But microplastics are persistent pollutants that don't go away after a year or two or five; they might survive centuries. They sicken and kill aquatic life, over and over. They are poison pills that never stop being poisonous.

It's truly bad shit. We need to think about whether we want to address this problem at a global scale or not. If not, then we are accepting a big loss of biological life due to our utter carelessness.

Re: Tons of microplastic rain onto western US

#63

Post by elric »

undersuit wrote: post #33
scottlocklin wrote: post #4

I don't like plastic in the air any more than anyone else does, but 1) stop wearing those stupid fucking polyester hoodies (and other artificial fibers; aka your socks, gym shirts and underpants) -that's where most of it comes from. I'm looking at you, SF hacker nerds. 2) Even assuming the entire population of the Western US breathed all that plastic waste in and it was permanently deposited in the lungs: 1000e3 kg/…

Stop wearing them and landfill them because we don't have much better plastic remediation options?

Buying fewer of them will result in fewer being made, which should result in fewer being landfilled, surely?

I don't know what the state of plastic recycling is these days, but it used to be terrible but with promising prospects.

Re: Tons of microplastic rain onto western US

#64

Post by dzhiurgis »

briefcomment wrote: post #11
scottlocklin wrote: post #4

I don't like plastic in the air any more than anyone else does, but 1) stop wearing those stupid fucking polyester hoodies (and other artificial fibers; aka your socks, gym shirts and underpants) -that's where most of it comes from. I'm looking at you, SF hacker nerds. 2) Even assuming the entire population of the Western US breathed all that plastic waste in and it was permanently deposited in the lungs: 1000e3 kg/…

Praying for cotton and wool to become stylish. And I hope we get creative with natural fibers like linen, beech fiber, spider silk, et.

If anyone looking for a particular brand - I swear by Icebreaker - mostly for underwear, base layers, hoodies and sweatpants, but others like tshirts. Allbirds is another one but they are unreliable and too warm for summer.

Re: Tons of microplastic rain onto western US

#65

Post by titzer »

scottlocklin wrote: post #7
faitswulff wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

10mg per year is potentially a much bigger problem due to biological magnification - i.e. everything below us in the food chain is exposed to the same 10mg per year, so we accumulate the sum of whatever our food sources have consumed.

You aren't absorbing 10g, 10mg or 1mg of plastic in your lungs every year. Most of it is falling on the ground and being turned into dirt. It's gross and people should do something about it, but it is a neurotic worry rather than a real problem. Most accounts (including this one) even have the temerity to try to link plastic bottles to it (which, also gross, are not a problem as far as plastic fibers in the environme…

Plastic bottles float. They float far and wide. There are billions of them in the oceans, right now, as we speak. Now imagine a plastic water bottle versus this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1m9EyXLDlu0

A 15 meter wave breaking in 1-2 meter deep water above an absolutely razor-sharp reef. A plastic water bottle--or really anything at all, will be absolutely obliterated by this. The oceans are full of a microplastic soup that is the ground-up dust from our massive garbage problem. That is now raining back on us. It's not hoodies, dude.

I'd like you to explain how these microplastics are being turned into "dirt". Do you have a specific chemical process in mind? Because I don't. Microplastic is alien to the biosphere. Nothing, short of some lab experiments, nothing processes microplastics. It just gets ground up smaller and smaller and bleached and flaked by UV. It will be around for centuries. It's not biologically inert, either. It's been show to be an endocrine disruptor and kill microorganisms. It hits the bottom of the foodchain. It attracts other pollutants and concentrates them, filling a role as a kind of carrier of poisons that absolutely do kill life of all kinds. It's bad shit.

You have a lot of anger in your comment. It's not neurotic to study carefully what our massive carelessness is doing to this planet. Rather, it is depressing to see how flippant and dismissive some people are because they are uncomfortable seeing the cost our economies are exacting on our home planet.

Re: Tons of microplastic rain onto western US

#66

Post by dungdongdang »

jbay808 wrote: post #41
scottlocklin wrote: post #4

I don't like plastic in the air any more than anyone else does, but 1) stop wearing those stupid fucking polyester hoodies (and other artificial fibers; aka your socks, gym shirts and underpants) -that's where most of it comes from. I'm looking at you, SF hacker nerds. 2) Even assuming the entire population of the Western US breathed all that plastic waste in and it was permanently deposited in the lungs: 1000e3 kg/…

This is obviously a huge overestimate. But go actually weigh out 10 grams of flour on your kitchen scale. Do you really think you have more diesel exhaust in your lungs than that?

Weight from a full Year? Absolutely. Volume - probably not.

It won't take up even close to as much space as the flour. That diesel exhaust also weighs much more than the hydro(1)carbon(12) chains flour is made from, simply because things like N(14)O(16) and metals in the particulate matter are much, much heavier.

Re: Tons of microplastic rain onto western US

#67

Post by titzer »

GaryNumanVevo wrote: post #43
scottlocklin wrote: post #4

I don't like plastic in the air any more than anyone else does, but 1) stop wearing those stupid fucking polyester hoodies (and other artificial fibers; aka your socks, gym shirts and underpants) -that's where most of it comes from. I'm looking at you, SF hacker nerds. 2) Even assuming the entire population of the Western US breathed all that plastic waste in and it was permanently deposited in the lungs: 1000e3 kg/…

Most consumer plastic ends up in a landfill and typically don't leech microplastics in to the watertable. Fishing nets on the other hand? Top polluter in the ocean https://www.nationalgeographic.com/news/2018/03/great-pacifi...

This is true. It's also true that far more than 99% of bullets fired in wars don't hit people.

Re: Tons of microplastic rain onto western US

#68

Post by dungdongdang »

minerjoe wrote: post #5

In some just universe, oil == pure evil. It's underground for a reason and poking a million painful needles into Mother Earth to suck it out and spew it into every biome is bound to have implications on our own health. As above, so below.

Things are not evil or good. They do not give birth, because they are things. A chair does not feel pain because it's not a person.

You seem to think nature is a person, with a purpose, and designs things for that purpose. There is a christian unintelligent design subreddit for that. I believe this site is for technical and scientific discussion.

Now, let's start a nice healthy 5-page discussion about appropriate harshness of tone, ending with a shadowban of the IP of this hilton hotel.

Re: Tons of microplastic rain onto western US

#69

Post by tluyben2 »

jogjayr wrote: post #35
chewz wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One cotton t-shirt equals 2,700 liters of water—what one person drinks in two-and-a-half years. Google about Aral Sea. Cotton farming is also responsible for 24 percent of insecticides and 11 percent of pesticides despite using about 3 percent of the world’s arable land. https://www.wri.org/blog/2017/07/apparel-industrys-environme...

We also need to buy less clothing overall. But this doesn't invalidate GP's assertion that natural fibers are more desirable.

Yep, but that requires a big mindset change; the insane amount of 'throwaway' clothes people buy is embarrassing. Not sure how you someone can be proud to own 50 pairs of shoes and 100 different outfits. I pity people who are that shallow (then again, I walk around like a vagrant, that's probably a bit too extreme as well), but it seems to become more normal vs less so as in; less fortunate people can (and do) do this now too. I know women and men in Philippines who make a few $100/month working online and spend almost everything on after market or knock off brand clothes and shoes. My colleague from the Philippines who is a coder and makes a fortune compared to the average there, buys new complete outfits for the wife, daughter and himself weekly (in the weekend they go clothes shopping and then to a family sunday lunch with that); they must have 100s of boxes of unused clothes stacked in their storage room (luckily they have a storage room?).

Re: Tons of microplastic rain onto western US

#70

Post by pjc50 »

titzer wrote: post #67
GaryNumanVevo wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most consumer plastic ends up in a landfill and typically don't leech microplastics in to the watertable. Fishing nets on the other hand? Top polluter in the ocean https://www.nationalgeographic.com/news/2018/03/great-pacifi...

This is true. It's also true that far more than 99% of bullets fired in wars don't hit people.

.. and then people spend the next century slowly cleaning up toxic lead and leftover explosives, like the "iron harvest" of WW1 battlefields.
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