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Just for comparison 6kg of plastic in a 60 ton animal is the same as 6g of plastic in a 60kg organism (or a little above one teaspoon of plastic ingested by a t
by erikig 8y ago
Just for comparison 6kg of plastic in a 60 ton animal is the same as 6g of plastic in a 60kg organism (or a little above one teaspoon of plastic ingested by a teenager).
- dawhizkid 8y agowhat are you saying...? that whatever toxicity of ingesting plastic is proportional across all living things by weight?
- PurpleBoxDragon 8y agoGenerally we measure how lethal something is by using an LD 50 that looks at mass of chemical per mass of body. There are exceptions to this, but as a first assumption it seems reasonable.
- jweir 8y agoYou are a moron. If you cut open your stomach and found a measurable amount of plastic you would known something was terribly wrong with your environment. You shouldn't have plastic in your stomach.
- sctb 8y agoIt's not OK to call names like that here. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- peteradio 8y agoI don't think toxicity (LD 50) is relevant for plastic consumption. This sort of stuff packs into the gut and doesn't move or decompose. So the animal has to vomit it up or get surgery because it won't move down. I think the relevant comparison is ratio of pyloric sphincter between two species (the exit of the stomach). I'd be curious to know what that ratio is and it might be surprisingly close to one almost certainly less than 10. I do not know what the skill with which a whale can vomit, I do know that my lab mix pup is especially skillful.
- PurpleBoxDragon 8y agoTo the same extent, the weight or mass of the plastic may not be relevant as well. The shape, density, and strength of the plastic would probably matter much more than the weight.
- peteradio 8y agoThere could also be a selection bias, the plastic found is what was stuck, smaller parts would have gone the whole way through.
- throwaway5752 8y agoPlastic is effectively nontoxic. The hazard is mechanical (digestive blockages)
- JoeAltmaier 8y agoAgreed, it seemed a trivial quantity for such a large animal.
- ryanmercer 8y ago>Agreed, it seemed a trivial quantity for such a large animal. Go swallow 6 grams of plastic. Let me know how that works out for you.
- tubbs 8y agoTo add to your point, a plastic grocery bag weighs in under 6 grams. I don't want that in my body.
- VBprogrammer 8y agoIt's a very good point and I'm glad the parent raised it. But wouldn't you find it distressing if teenagers were regularly found with a teaspoon full of plastic in their stomachs?
- mdpopescu 8y agoWe regularly find teenagers smoke behind the school (at least around here), we don't panic because of it.
- JoeAltmaier 8y agohttps://duckduckgo.com/?q=things+found+in+people's+stomachs&ia=images&iax=images https://duckduckgo.com/?q=things+found+in+people's+stomachs&...
- thrower123 8y agoThere is a laxative product that is commonly prescribed to childhood cancer patients that is just polyethylene glycol. You take about a teaspoon of plastic micropellets and stir them up in a glass of water and drink it.
- 8y ago
- alehul 8y agoWhile I understand the comparison you're trying to make, I'm not sure weight is the best estimation here. A whale can be heavier without being larger. While the whale may weigh 1000x more, it appears to be only around 10x as big (sperm whales are 40 feet long, and somewhat wider than humans). If you take a look at the picture in the article, and analyze what it had ingested: "115 drinking cups, four plastic bottles, 25 plastic bags and two flip-flops," it seems much less trivial than a teenager ingesting a teaspoon. A better comparison would be that, size-wise, it is the same as a teenager ingesting 2.5 plastic bags, 15 drinking cups; that alone seems like enough to cause serious health issues.
- nurumaik 8y agoShouldn't we compare by volume, not length?
- sdenton4 8y agoWorth noting that a greater proportion of a whales body is fat, to deal with the cold cold waters... The size of the digestive system probably isn't quite what one would expect from scaling purely by a volume ratio.
- no_you 8y agothey literally can not be heavier without being larger....
- Gorgor 8y agoBeside what others are saying, this whale does not look like a big sperm whale. According to Wikipedia [1], a 20-meter animal weighs up to 60 tons. This one looks closer to 10 meters and probably weighs less than 15 tons. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sperm_whale#External_appearance https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sperm_whale#External_appearanc...
- ainiriand 8y agoIf I cut your fingers from both hands is about 100g of your anatomy, but the distress for your life is enormous. Even being less than 0.1% of your body mass. So the question here is not about the toxicity vs. body mass. Is about the amount of material in your digestive system.
- spark3k 8y agoThat's a plastic shopping bag. Try swallowing a plastic shopping bag.
- strainer 8y agoNot a fair comparison. See[1] how a whales digestive tract can be a fraction of the size of a humans, relative to overall size. Also 6 grams can be three whole plastics cups - or a dozen lightweight bags, not that neat little teaspoon full. [1] https://duckduckgo.com/?q=sperm+whale+anatomy&t=ffsb&iar=images&iax=images&ia=images&iai=https%3A%2F%2Fs-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com%2Foriginals%2F33%2F1c%2Fd1%2F331cd18288af7af5a91b14f2f76e2add.jpg https://duckduckgo.com/?q=sperm+whale+anatomy&t=ffsb&iar=ima...
- YayamiOmate 8y agoI find it baffling, that parent comment made just a comparison without giving any opinion, and pretty much every sibling comment is telling them they are wrong... lol. Fascinating how people project their opinions onto others and argue with them. Parent even got called a moron and told to eat a plastic bag xD Pretty much every one assumed that on a human scale weight it's not that much, though still wrong. I wonder what's the name for this behaviour.
- scrollaway 8y ago> Parent even got called a moron and told to eat a plastic bag You know everyone can see the thread right? Lying about what's in it isn't going to work well for you. Either way yes, it's possible to be wrong by merely making a comparison. Try to think about why.
- dang 8y agoThis comment crosses into incivility and thus breaks the site guidelines. Please don't do that so we don't have to penalize your account again. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- jordache 8y agoweight? really? Go by the size & volume of the animals' digestive systems. It is the plastics relative to the digestive systems volumes that is the killer.