5 ms·

Pretty much everywhere. Tap water in the us is perfectly safe in most places.

by empath75 8y ago

dmm 8y ago
The absence of specific dangers is not the same as safety, but the former is all that water supply testing can provide.
- rayiner 8y ago
  We test for things that are really dangerous (e. coli, arsenic, heavy metals, etc.). If microplastics were dangerous like those things, it would be pretty obvious by now.
  - okmokmz 8y ago
    >If microplastics were dangerous like those things, it would be pretty obvious by now. You're right, it is pretty obvious "The chronic biological effects in marine organisms results due to accumulation of microplastics in their cells and tissues. The potential hazardous effects on humans by alternate ingestion of microparticles can cause alteration in chromosomes which lead to infertility, obesity, and cancer." https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28815367 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28815367 "Not only is the potential migration of the plastics throughout our body a concern, but the additives in plastics may carry health risks. Many of these additives are known endocrine disrupters. According to Dr. Herbert Tilg, president of the Austrian Society of Gastroenterology and chair of the UEG Scientific Committee, microplastics could possibly be one of the factors contributing to inflammatory bowel syndrome or even colon cancer, which is on the rise among young adults." https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2018/10/22/659568662/microplastics-are-turning-up-everywhere-even-in-human-excrement https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2018/10/22/659568662/mi...
    - kodablah 8y ago
      You say pretty obviously as dangerous and then provide quotes about "potential hazardous effects", "can cause", "potential migration", "may carry", "could possibly", etc. That's quite different than being pretty obviously as dangerous as the other things mentioned.
      - justin66 8y ago
        In my view the deeper point of okmokmz's comment is that it's just crazy to only consider the most blatantly obvious health effects of pollutants. We're still learning a lot about the hormonal effects of consuming microplastics and plasticizers (among other things) but it's all pointing in some pretty nasty directions, and until recently we didn't have much awareness of how much of the stuff we were consuming. We have to decide how much of the stuff we're going to try and prevent from entering the environment and our water supply, and I wouldn't want the people making that determination to be informed by ideas like "well, it's not as dangerous as uranium or lead so let's just not worry about it."
  - ceejayoz 8y ago
    > If microplastics were dangerous like those things, it would be pretty obvious by now. E. coli, arsenic and heavy metals don't really have the same economic and lobbying power the plastic industry does. Tobacco and climate change give us better models for how easy it is to suppress or cast doubt on pretty solid evidence if there's a profit to be made in doing so.
  - mr_toad 8y ago
    Even the ancient Egyptians knew arsenic was toxic. Plastics haven’t been around nearly as long.
  - justin66 8y ago
    > We test for things that are really dangerous (e. coli, arsenic, heavy metals, etc.). If microplastics were dangerous like those things, it would be pretty obvious by now. Microplastics aren't necessarily dangerous like those things, but they've been shown to be potentially dangerous in different ways. Really acute problems of the sort you're thinking of, like long-term cancer risk and short-term infection risk, can be considered alongside reduced fertility in men and developmental problems in infants and children.
tshannon 8y ago
Ha. I live in cottage grove, and I assumed the same thing.
cronix 8y ago
More and more microplastics are showing up in drinking water because the particles are so small. They seem to be mostly coming from our clothing released during washing, which is increasingly made of synthetic materials. "The US had the highest contamination rate, at 94%, with plastic fibres found in tap water sampled at sites including Congress buildings, the US Environmental Protection Agency’s headquarters, and Trump Tower in New York. Lebanon and India had the next highest rates." https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/sep/06/plastic-fibres-found-tap-water-around-world-study-reveals https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/sep/06/plastic-...
- tshannon 8y ago
  Has there been any conclusive studies yet that say what impact if any microplastics have on us?
  - steve_adams_86 8y ago
    It can harm small organisms at the very least. Things like zooplankton can have their bodily processes interrupted by ingesting the materials. This indicates it can result in death: http://www.ices.dk/news-and-events/symposia/zp6/Pages/Effects-of-microplastics-on-zooplankton.aspx http://www.ices.dk/news-and-events/symposia/zp6/Pages/Effect... Other studies indicating harm are available, while others have shown mixed results. For example, one where polystyrene microplastics depress and then appear to stimulate growth of algae: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0045653518310270 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S004565351...
- steve_adams_86 8y ago
  People _really_ need to stop laundering synthetics. The amount of plastic and other material that sheds into our water is stunning.
  - blacksmith_tb 8y ago
    I think that blames the victims a bit too much, it's analogous to "people need to stop buying food in single-use plastics" - I would put the onus on the manufacturers to fix their products and their distribution, rather than the end users. What's the alternative to laundering your clothing, realistically?
okmokmz 8y ago
Wrong "Allaire found the amount of violations varied by year, affecting as many as 45 million people in some years, representing about 28% of the U.S. population." https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/health/2018/02/12/tens-millions-americans-exposed-unsafe-drinking-water-each-year/330516002/ https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/health/2018/02/12/tens-m... "Tainted tap water isn’t just a problem in Flint, Michigan. In any given year from 1982 to 2015, somewhere between 9 million and 45 million Americans got their drinking water from a source that was in violation of the Safe Drinking Water Act, according to a new study" http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2018/02/millions-americans-drink-potentially-unsafe-tap-water-how-does-your-county-stack http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2018/02/millions-americans-dr...
- kodablah 8y ago
  >> most places > Wrong [...] 45 million [...] 28% of the U.S. population I don't think it's fair to call the comment "Wrong". If anything, this supposed refutation is saying "Right".
  - ptero 8y ago
    I might be taking words out of context, but 45 million is nowhere near 28% of the US population; this is a little under 15%. I am not arguing for or against the problem of water pollution, but this is just seriously suspect math.
- vertexFarm 8y ago
  You've essentially proven their point. Outside a few problem areas, water in the US is remarkably safe and clean. The US population minus "nine to 45 million" definitely qualifies as "most places" in America. And that's not even close to 28%, by the way. Most people in the world have it far worse off than the US. We tend to easily fly into a panic and start drinking bottled water instead, which only pumps ever more plastic and carbon into the biosphere. That exact phenomenon happened in Austin recently. People went into a prepper panic and raided the grocery stores anyway, completely cleaning out all the bottled water in the city. Again. The water was perfectly fine, it turns out. My travels through the third world have made me more aware of how much we take our highly reliable infrastructure for granted. Of course we still have some problems to work out, but acting like most tap water is unsafe is hyperbolic and just not helpful.

Pretty much everywhere. Tap water in the us is perfectly safe in most places.

dmm 8y ago

The absence of specific dangers is not the same as safety, but the former is all that water supply testing can provide.

rayiner 8y ago
We test for things that are really dangerous (e. coli, arsenic, heavy metals, etc.). If microplastics were dangerous like those things, it would be pretty obvious by now.
- okmokmz 8y ago
  >If microplastics were dangerous like those things, it would be pretty obvious by now. You're right, it is pretty obvious "The chronic biological effects in marine organisms results due to accumulation of microplastics in their cells and tissues. The potential hazardous effects on humans by alternate ingestion of microparticles can cause alteration in chromosomes which lead to infertility, obesity, and cancer." https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28815367 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28815367 "Not only is the potential migration of the plastics throughout our body a concern, but the additives in plastics may carry health risks. Many of these additives are known endocrine disrupters. According to Dr. Herbert Tilg, president of the Austrian Society of Gastroenterology and chair of the UEG Scientific Committee, microplastics could possibly be one of the factors contributing to inflammatory bowel syndrome or even colon cancer, which is on the rise among young adults." https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2018/10/22/659568662/microplastics-are-turning-up-everywhere-even-in-human-excrement https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2018/10/22/659568662/mi...
  - kodablah 8y ago
    You say pretty obviously as dangerous and then provide quotes about "potential hazardous effects", "can cause", "potential migration", "may carry", "could possibly", etc. That's quite different than being pretty obviously as dangerous as the other things mentioned.
    - justin66 8y ago
      In my view the deeper point of okmokmz's comment is that it's just crazy to only consider the most blatantly obvious health effects of pollutants. We're still learning a lot about the hormonal effects of consuming microplastics and plasticizers (among other things) but it's all pointing in some pretty nasty directions, and until recently we didn't have much awareness of how much of the stuff we were consuming. We have to decide how much of the stuff we're going to try and prevent from entering the environment and our water supply, and I wouldn't want the people making that determination to be informed by ideas like "well, it's not as dangerous as uranium or lead so let's just not worry about it."
- ceejayoz 8y ago
  > If microplastics were dangerous like those things, it would be pretty obvious by now. E. coli, arsenic and heavy metals don't really have the same economic and lobbying power the plastic industry does. Tobacco and climate change give us better models for how easy it is to suppress or cast doubt on pretty solid evidence if there's a profit to be made in doing so.
- mr_toad 8y ago
  Even the ancient Egyptians knew arsenic was toxic. Plastics haven’t been around nearly as long.
- justin66 8y ago
  > We test for things that are really dangerous (e. coli, arsenic, heavy metals, etc.). If microplastics were dangerous like those things, it would be pretty obvious by now. Microplastics aren't necessarily dangerous like those things, but they've been shown to be potentially dangerous in different ways. Really acute problems of the sort you're thinking of, like long-term cancer risk and short-term infection risk, can be considered alongside reduced fertility in men and developmental problems in infants and children.

tshannon 8y ago

Ha. I live in cottage grove, and I assumed the same thing.

cronix 8y ago

More and more microplastics are showing up in drinking water because the particles are so small. They seem to be mostly coming from our clothing released during washing, which is increasingly made of synthetic materials. "The US had the highest contamination rate, at 94%, with plastic fibres found in tap water sampled at sites including Congress buildings, the US Environmental Protection Agency’s headquarters, and Trump Tower in New York. Lebanon and India had the next highest rates." https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/sep/06/plastic-fibres-found-tap-water-around-world-study-reveals https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/sep/06/plastic-...

tshannon 8y ago
Has there been any conclusive studies yet that say what impact if any microplastics have on us?
- steve_adams_86 8y ago
  It can harm small organisms at the very least. Things like zooplankton can have their bodily processes interrupted by ingesting the materials. This indicates it can result in death: http://www.ices.dk/news-and-events/symposia/zp6/Pages/Effects-of-microplastics-on-zooplankton.aspx http://www.ices.dk/news-and-events/symposia/zp6/Pages/Effect... Other studies indicating harm are available, while others have shown mixed results. For example, one where polystyrene microplastics depress and then appear to stimulate growth of algae: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0045653518310270 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S004565351...
steve_adams_86 8y ago
People _really_ need to stop laundering synthetics. The amount of plastic and other material that sheds into our water is stunning.
- blacksmith_tb 8y ago
  I think that blames the victims a bit too much, it's analogous to "people need to stop buying food in single-use plastics" - I would put the onus on the manufacturers to fix their products and their distribution, rather than the end users. What's the alternative to laundering your clothing, realistically?

okmokmz 8y ago

Wrong "Allaire found the amount of violations varied by year, affecting as many as 45 million people in some years, representing about 28% of the U.S. population." https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/health/2018/02/12/tens-millions-americans-exposed-unsafe-drinking-water-each-year/330516002/ https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/health/2018/02/12/tens-m... "Tainted tap water isn’t just a problem in Flint, Michigan. In any given year from 1982 to 2015, somewhere between 9 million and 45 million Americans got their drinking water from a source that was in violation of the Safe Drinking Water Act, according to a new study" http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2018/02/millions-americans-drink-potentially-unsafe-tap-water-how-does-your-county-stack http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2018/02/millions-americans-dr...

kodablah 8y ago
>> most places > Wrong [...] 45 million [...] 28% of the U.S. population I don't think it's fair to call the comment "Wrong". If anything, this supposed refutation is saying "Right".
- ptero 8y ago
  I might be taking words out of context, but 45 million is nowhere near 28% of the US population; this is a little under 15%. I am not arguing for or against the problem of water pollution, but this is just seriously suspect math.
vertexFarm 8y ago
You've essentially proven their point. Outside a few problem areas, water in the US is remarkably safe and clean. The US population minus "nine to 45 million" definitely qualifies as "most places" in America. And that's not even close to 28%, by the way. Most people in the world have it far worse off than the US. We tend to easily fly into a panic and start drinking bottled water instead, which only pumps ever more plastic and carbon into the biosphere. That exact phenomenon happened in Austin recently. People went into a prepper panic and raided the grocery stores anyway, completely cleaning out all the bottled water in the city. Again. The water was perfectly fine, it turns out. My travels through the third world have made me more aware of how much we take our highly reliable infrastructure for granted. Of course we still have some problems to work out, but acting like most tap water is unsafe is hyperbolic and just not helpful.