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Study Finds Microplastics in Nearly 90% of Proteins Sampled

oceanconservancy.org

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Re: Study Finds Microplastics in Nearly 90% of Proteins Sampled

#91

Post by haltist »

thereddaikon wrote: post #88
haltist wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You have a blood sample analysis indicating that's the case?

No but that's a silly standard. I can't go back in time and blood test my infant self. We have microplastics everywhere because of their widespread use. That's been occurring for a few generations now. There is no rational reason to think that we only accumulated them when we first noticed them. No the rational explanation is its been that way as long as we've been mass exposing ourselves to plastics which is right a…

Then there is nothing to worry about because everything since WW2 has been fine as far as cognition and general health is concerned. Although, IQs and sperm quality have been declining for a while now but it's probably unrelated to all the plastic pollution.

Re: Study Finds Microplastics in Nearly 90% of Proteins Sampled

#92

Post by [deleted] »

CharlesW wrote: post #66
jampekka wrote: post #53

Plastics, let alone microplastics, are a rather small problem that seem to get a lot of airspace. There are no established health effects of microplastics. There are magnitudes worse health problems in e.g. both under and overnutrition that cause a lot less panic and fuss. https://www.undp.org/kosovo/blog/microplastics-human-health-...

> There are no established health effects of microplastics. It'd be more true to say, "There are no established significant health effects of microplastics on humans ." FWIW, the article you linked to doesn't say "no effects", but "limited evidence for significant adverse health impacts". This seems concerning: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9885170/

[deleted]

Re: Study Finds Microplastics in Nearly 90% of Proteins Sampled

#93

Post by RyEgswuCsn »

jampekka wrote: post #53

Plastics, let alone microplastics, are a rather small problem that seem to get a lot of airspace. There are no established health effects of microplastics. There are magnitudes worse health problems in e.g. both under and overnutrition that cause a lot less panic and fuss. https://www.undp.org/kosovo/blog/microplastics-human-health-...

Just be patient. It takes some time for academic influencers to start jumping on the bandwagon.

Re: Study Finds Microplastics in Nearly 90% of Proteins Sampled

#94

Post by ironmagma »

psunavy03 wrote: post #86
ironmagma wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Stopping driving is only the beginning. Much more impactful would be to reduce the overall population's driving through legislation/taxation.

Ah, yes. Where adopting a fringe belief isn't enough, we need to force it on other people, too.

Whether it's fringe has no impact on whether it's true.

Re: Study Finds Microplastics in Nearly 90% of Proteins Sampled

#95

Post by ComplexSystems »

I sometimes have this feeling that in the future, when all of the science on this stuff is well established, our future enlightened society will simply take the view that plastic is poisonous. I think it'll be the same way that we think of lead, mercury, etc: like "wash your hands if you touch the stuff" levels of poisonous. I would not be surprised if society makes this shift in the next 20-30 years. Some of the recent results are really nuts:

- You eat a credit card sized amount of plastic every week: https://nautil.us/you-eat-a-credits-card-worth-of-plastic-ev... - 93% of bottled water has plastic in it: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16793888 - Plastic containers, even "safe" ones, release plastic into food: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36532812 - Car tires are depositing plastic everywhere, including oceans: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37726539

It goes on and on. There are studies showing it gets into the placenta, harms animals, affects behavior, stays in your system forever, bioaccumulates all the way up the food chain and makes its way into every organ, and so on. This is all within the last few years. It seems like bottled water is a vector for this stuff very similar to lead pipes, and tires are a vector similar to leaded gasoline, and that the evidence is basically all there and all that is needed is a big epidemiological "smoking gun" study to put it all together.

Of course not every single thing one could possibly call "plastic" need be equally unsafe. Probably some better plastic will be devised which is safer for use in tires and etc. Still, I think there will be a society-wide push against so-called "plastic", in general. People will probably push to replace everything made of plastic with something else: replacing saran wrap with parchment paper, Tupperware with glass, etc.

I'm not super interested in defending this rigorously as it's really just a hunch, but I'm curious if this is what happens.

Re: Study Finds Microplastics in Nearly 90% of Proteins Sampled

#96

Post by bordercases »

Reason077 wrote: post #54
epistasis wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Stop driving? Most microplastic in water come from tires. I've been trying to make small moves away from car infrastructure in my town and the response is, well, less than positive. We already tacitly accept that cars are one of the biggest causes of death. Reducing car infrastructure to reduce microplastics, where we don't even really know the harm, seems far far more challenging.

> ”Most microplastic in water come from tires.” And also synthetic clothes. According to the study they found more plastic fibres than plastic particles in many samples. These get released when you launder your clothes, ending up in the drain water and ultimately the ocean. Solution? Buy clothes with natural fibres (cotton, wool, etc) instead of plastics. And wash your clothes in a modern washing machine with a micro…

> And wash your clothes in a modern washing machine with a microfibre filter on its drain outlet.

That doesn't solve the whole problem because the microfibres eventually need disposal.

Re: Study Finds Microplastics in Nearly 90% of Proteins Sampled

#97

Post by serf »

ComplexSystems wrote: post #95

I sometimes have this feeling that in the future, when all of the science on this stuff is well established, our future enlightened society will simply take the view that plastic is poisonous. I think it'll be the same way that we think of lead, mercury, etc: like "wash your hands if you touch the stuff" levels of poisonous. I would not be surprised if society makes this shift in the next 20-30 years. Some of the rec…

> I sometimes have this feeling that in the future, when all of the science on this stuff is well established, our future enlightened society will simply take the view that plastic is poisonous. I think it'll be the same way that we think of lead, mercury, etc

I don't.

The effects of lead or mercury poisoning are fast-acting and obvious. All the links you provided talk about the release of plastics into the world, but the details on how that affects things are sketchier than say , mercury poisoning , because the symptoms are slowly accruing and ambiguous compared to lots of other environmental contaminants.

I agree we should do something about it.

Re: Study Finds Microplastics in Nearly 90% of Proteins Sampled

#98

Post by ethanbond »

thereddaikon wrote: post #83
ethanbond wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> people aren't just dropping dead inexplicably Another pretty decent hypothesis of plastic contamination's effects is obesity (it's been seen both in vitro and in non-human animals). People absolutely are dropping dead en masse of obesity and related complications, and while obesity is proximally explainable (calories), the explanation of why people are consuming so many more calories is contested, at best. So I don…

IIRC there is some evidence of hormonal changes related to some volatiles associated with certain types of plastics. That might have something to do with it. But Obesity can also easily be explained by more mundane things like terrible diet and lifestyle and there's a huge body of evidence to show that if you change those, you lose weight. >So I don't think we know enough to say confidently that people aren't just dr…

Here's what we have:

1) In-vitro and animal model data showing metabolic and reproductive harm from plastic contamination

2) Plastics continuing to be found contaminating more and more things that humans interact with or ingest

3) Strong evidence that this contamination bioaccumulates within individuals

4) Strong evidence that this contamination accumulates across generations

5) Strong evidence that this contamination is approximately impossible to remove from water and soil

6) Strong evidence of very similar metabolic and reproductive harms that have been found in-vitro and in animal models showing up across extremely broad swaths of the human species.

I would buy into the, "no alarm until we know it's dangerous" approach if there were a way to undo the harm after the fact, or if there were a way to quickly "know it's dangerous," or if this contamination wasn't covering pretty much the entire globe, but none of those things is true.

We have no method to ascertain population-scale danger prior to that danger being pretty much irreversibly realized.

I've identified what would change my position from alarmed to not-alarmed. What, concretely, would change your position from not-alarmed to alarmed? There is no way to do a randomized controlled trial of plastic poisoning. So what would constitute "knowing" it's bad for us?

Re: Study Finds Microplastics in Nearly 90% of Proteins Sampled

#99

Post by thereddaikon »

haltist wrote: post #91
thereddaikon wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No but that's a silly standard. I can't go back in time and blood test my infant self. We have microplastics everywhere because of their widespread use. That's been occurring for a few generations now. There is no rational reason to think that we only accumulated them when we first noticed them. No the rational explanation is its been that way as long as we've been mass exposing ourselves to plastics which is right a…

Then there is nothing to worry about because everything since WW2 has been fine as far as cognition and general health is concerned. Although, IQs and sperm quality have been declining for a while now but it's probably unrelated to all the plastic pollution.

I think there likely is little cause for concern. Is it contributing to poor health? Maybe but if it is then its a small contribution. There are much bigger issues like poor diet and lifestyle. HFCS for example was easy to link to poor health and it should probably be outlawed.
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