10 ms·

Well, you can forget about worrying about whether microplastics are harmful to the environment, because they are out there now, all over the damn place and ther

by titzer 8y ago

Well, you can forget about worrying about whether microplastics are harmful to the environment, because they are out there now, all over the damn place and there's no going back. Plastic is literally and figuratively the 20th century turning itself to dust and getting sucked up in Earth's massive recycling systems. It's in everything from seawater to freshwater to salt (https://www.nationalgeographic.com/environment/2018/10/microplastics-found-90-percent-table-salt-sea-salt/ https://www.nationalgeographic.com/environment/2018/10/micro...) to the air we breathe. It's in the entire food web--our food, our food's food, our food's food's food, and our feces of course (https://www.nationalgeographic.com/environment/2018/10/news-plastics-microplastics-human-feces/ https://www.nationalgeographic.com/environment/2018/10/news-...). And it's bad for everybody (https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/from-fish-to-humans-a-microplastic-invasion-may-be-taking-a-toll/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/from-fish-to-huma...). It will be in sediment for aeons, a permanent part of Earth's story, forever. There is absolutely zero chance of ever cleaning it all up. Good job, 20th century. And right on, 21st century! We really doubled down on money-making at the expense of the environment! After sifting through the dust, if they ever figured out that it was our refuse, future intelligent beings might well refer to us, quite aptly, as trash monkeys.

Not_anchovie 8y ago
Trash monkeys - sounds like a punk band.
whatshisface 8y ago
Don't worry, we can still worry - now the question is, how much more should we add to the environment beyond what is already there?
- aerique 8y ago
  Up to the point where our profits start to dip.
afarah 8y ago
Leaving aside the environmental damage, which is obvious albeit somewhat sensationalized in this comment, how is said plastic actually harming human health today? The article from Scientific America in the comment refers to the harm plastic can have in other animals in words such as "may", "might", "could". Has there been any study on how it is, now and actually, harming our health? Any measurements, case studies, or collective data from people suffering from any sort of disease related to plastic pollution?
- onion2k 8y ago
  Has there been any study on how it is, now and actually, harming our health? Any measurements, case studies, or collective data from people suffering from any sort of disease related to plastic pollution? No. Note that this does not mean they're safe. It means we don't know if they're safe, or the extent to which they're harmful if they're dangerous. It goes from "we got lucky, it's all going to be fine" to "literally everyone will die from the plastics equivalent of asbestosis in the near future". If that doesn't scare the living shit out of you then you've misunderstood the scale of the problem.
  - JoeAltmaier 8y ago
    But the environment is full of particulate matter. To fasten on this stuff as a special threat is, unreasonable? Sensationalist? Unscientific? Personally I have only so much emotional energy to spend, and I spend it on real issues. Not made-up ones.
    - titzer 8y ago
      In all honesty, you're probably right to not waste (a lot of) energy worrying about it. The best you can do is not use many plastics and advocate for better policies to reduce, reuse, and recycle the plastics are out there, as well as cleanup programs for the huge problems like the macroplastics in the ocean currently. As for "the environment is full of tons of stuff", microplastics are pretty new to the biosphere, so who knows what we should suspect? Personally I think microplastics are bad at all scales, and it'll just get worse. They weaken individuals, species, and whole ecosystems right as we're delivering them a big punch in the gut with habitat destruction, overfishing, and climate change. Are they what's going to kill the world? Nah, maybe only #4 on the list. Only!
DanAndersen 8y ago
Additionally, what I find particularly frightening and unsettling is the possibility that we'll never be able to know just how harmful microplastics are, due to the rapid loss of anything we could call a "control group" on the planet. Rapid industrialization and globalization has led to land, water, and sky all being infused with this stuff; are there populated areas anymore where we could point to and say "this place is untouched by microplastics" and compare the health of the people and ecosystem there to the affected areas?
- titzer 8y ago
  Indeed. And, whatever organisms are/were most likely to die out because of exposure to microplastics, probably already have, given this shit is everywhere now. Sobering thought!
  - EGreg 8y ago
    Insects
    - bencollier49 8y ago
      Good shout. Rather frightening thought.
      - titzer 8y ago
        Microplastics have been shown to concentrate environmental toxins, so maybe the microplastics absorb pesticides and deliver high-dosage kill pills to insects? It's a terrifying thought. I'm not an expert, so I couldn't say that is really happening, but it scares me.
        jtuente 8y ago
        > microplastics can leach hazardous chemicals, both those added to polymers during production and environmental pollutants like pesticides that are attracted to the surface of plastic It's not that they absorb pesticides, but that pesticides are attracted to the surface. Smaller microplastics have greater surface area to volume ratio than the equivalent volume of larger pieces. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/from-fish-to-humans-a-microplastic-invasion-may-be-taking-a-toll/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/from-fish-to-huma...
scotchmi_st 8y ago
Well, there are solutions. One is to breed bacteria and other organisms that can digest plastic. Not to say this is a solved problem, or something we shouldn't be concerned about, but the response "There is absolutely zero chance of ever cleaning it all up" here seems overly sensationalistic.
- anonymou2 8y ago
  Their numbers are probably only going to increase now anyway, so no need to breed them.
ataturk 8y ago
I cringe every time I go shopping--everything is packaged in shit. It's all shit. This is our legacy, a legacy of shit. But we can stop using plastics for literally every packaging need. It would be a start.
lm28469 8y ago
That's the price of running after (technological) progress at all cost. Nothing in our day to day life makes sense on an ecological level, nothing at all. Food, all our useless tech gadgets, ICE vehicles right next to where we live / sleep, being able to take the plane to go 1000km away for the price of a lunch in a restaurant, mass tourism, iot shit, 90% of startups, &c. But we're comfy and warm, plus at the end of the day we get to watch the new junk netflix produced this week on our 4k tablet. The very same tablet we'll have to dump in 18 months when the battery dies and it'll cost more to replace it than to buy the next iteration. We can even go on internet places like HN and Twitter to virtue signal about how bad we're treating the planet (as I'm doing right now) while sending 0s and 1s to servers all around the world, you know, the same servers used to share picture of cats and fake news while consuming terawatts of electricity. But I get my daily costa rican banana, my japanese tea, I can eat meat at every meal, my smart light bulbs know my location and switches on when I arrive home, my company sponsored laptop costs 5 time the annual age of a Chadian, everything's fine. We sacrificed the future for instant convenience and comfort, we more than deserve what's coming to us. https://www.spiegel.de/international/tomorrow/electronic-waste-in-africa-recycling-methods-damage-health-and-the-environment-a-1086221.html https://www.spiegel.de/international/tomorrow/electronic-was... https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-018-06610-y https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-018-06610-y https://www.boredpanda.com/award-winning-chinese-photographer-vanished-lu-guang-china-xinjiang/?utm_source=google&utm_medium=organic&utm_campaign=organic https://www.boredpanda.com/award-winning-chinese-photographe... https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2016/12/your-kitchen-and-the-planet-the-impact-of-our-food-on-the-environment https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2016/12/your-kitchen-and-the-... https://news.vice.com/en_us/article/43jgdn/you-can-blame-instagrammers-for-ruining-a-rare-poppy-super-bloom https://news.vice.com/en_us/article/43jgdn/you-can-blame-ins...
- NeedMoreTea 8y ago
  Financial progress - where progress is often change for change's sake - at all cost. Cheaper wins, more profitable wins, regardless of whether good or not. Frequently when we already knew it's not (leaded petrol, radium on watch dials etc). Far more quickly since the changes of the 1980s - deregulation, privatisation, and so forth. If it wasn't deregulated enough, move it out of sight and offshore it somewhere with weaker standards. So I would tend to say we sacrificed the future for an extra 0.5c on the dollar.
a3n 8y ago
The Plasticene.
balt_s 8y ago
"Give it fifty million years, and all that will be left of our era will be a layer of rock an eighth of an inch thick with an unusually large number of radioactive isotopes and some odd carbon compounds."
lexpar 8y ago
What's the deal with the over the top misanthropy we see in so many people with an environmental cause? Is it a cultural thing? Maybe it comes off as kind of edgy. Or maybe they're enjoying a preemptive "I told you so - idiots!" victory lap. This attitude does not make me take your point seriously. It sets off my ideologue detector.
- groby_b 8y ago
  Well, it's occasionally hard to see clear evidence that earth (or, specifically, tolerable conditions for human life on it) is rapidly heading towards the shitter - and there are plenty of people who'd rather go ad hominem than engage with the scientific evidence of the problem at hand. In other words: You are the deal.
  - lexpar 8y ago
    pointing out a pattern of strange behavior != denying scientific consensus.
  - mikestew 8y ago
    Way to make the parent's point with a misanthropic misunderstanding of what was actually said.
mr_overalls 8y ago
In the long run, the lack of a core mechanism to accurately price externalities will perhaps be the dominating failure mode of capitalism.
- avip 8y ago
  People go length before considering Capitalism may have failed as a framework for organizing society.
fjabre 8y ago
I couldn't agree more with the long term consequences. Maybe someday we will target these plastics with plastic eating microbes. Is warming not the more pressing issue? Given recent findings about permafrost decline in the artic? By some estimates we may have 50-100 years at best before things get really bad, and we are already undergoing a mass extinction event.
- tonyedgecombe 8y ago
  >Maybe someday we will target these plastics with plastic eating microbes. I expect they will come along on their own.
gomi7321 8y ago
I completely agree with your point! It's so important for all of us to change our lifestyles, but nobody wants to trade in convenience for long-sightedness if they have the choice. What makes me more angry than anything else are the obviously evitable things like the sprinkle pool in San Francisco's Museum of ice cream. This kind of pollution could so easily be avoided without making huge changes to our lifestyle: https://www.sfgate.com/local/article/San-Francisco-Museum-of-Ice-Cream-Instagram-fine-12488531.php https://www.sfgate.com/local/article/San-Francisco-Museum-of...
TausAmmer 8y ago
I am fine with this, another twist in humanity's play.

by titzer 8y ago

Not_anchovie 8y ago

Trash monkeys - sounds like a punk band.

whatshisface 8y ago

Don't worry, we can still worry - now the question is, how much more should we add to the environment beyond what is already there?

aerique 8y ago
Up to the point where our profits start to dip.

afarah 8y ago

Leaving aside the environmental damage, which is obvious albeit somewhat sensationalized in this comment, how is said plastic actually harming human health today? The article from Scientific America in the comment refers to the harm plastic can have in other animals in words such as "may", "might", "could". Has there been any study on how it is, now and actually, harming our health? Any measurements, case studies, or collective data from people suffering from any sort of disease related to plastic pollution?

onion2k 8y ago
Has there been any study on how it is, now and actually, harming our health? Any measurements, case studies, or collective data from people suffering from any sort of disease related to plastic pollution? No. Note that this does not mean they're safe. It means we don't know if they're safe, or the extent to which they're harmful if they're dangerous. It goes from "we got lucky, it's all going to be fine" to "literally everyone will die from the plastics equivalent of asbestosis in the near future". If that doesn't scare the living shit out of you then you've misunderstood the scale of the problem.
- JoeAltmaier 8y ago
  But the environment is full of particulate matter. To fasten on this stuff as a special threat is, unreasonable? Sensationalist? Unscientific? Personally I have only so much emotional energy to spend, and I spend it on real issues. Not made-up ones.
  - titzer 8y ago
    In all honesty, you're probably right to not waste (a lot of) energy worrying about it. The best you can do is not use many plastics and advocate for better policies to reduce, reuse, and recycle the plastics are out there, as well as cleanup programs for the huge problems like the macroplastics in the ocean currently. As for "the environment is full of tons of stuff", microplastics are pretty new to the biosphere, so who knows what we should suspect? Personally I think microplastics are bad at all scales, and it'll just get worse. They weaken individuals, species, and whole ecosystems right as we're delivering them a big punch in the gut with habitat destruction, overfishing, and climate change. Are they what's going to kill the world? Nah, maybe only #4 on the list. Only!

DanAndersen 8y ago

Additionally, what I find particularly frightening and unsettling is the possibility that we'll never be able to know just how harmful microplastics are, due to the rapid loss of anything we could call a "control group" on the planet. Rapid industrialization and globalization has led to land, water, and sky all being infused with this stuff; are there populated areas anymore where we could point to and say "this place is untouched by microplastics" and compare the health of the people and ecosystem there to the affected areas?

titzer 8y ago
Indeed. And, whatever organisms are/were most likely to die out because of exposure to microplastics, probably already have, given this shit is everywhere now. Sobering thought!
- EGreg 8y ago
  Insects
  - bencollier49 8y ago
    Good shout. Rather frightening thought.
    - titzer 8y ago
      Microplastics have been shown to concentrate environmental toxins, so maybe the microplastics absorb pesticides and deliver high-dosage kill pills to insects? It's a terrifying thought. I'm not an expert, so I couldn't say that is really happening, but it scares me.
      - jtuente 8y ago
        > microplastics can leach hazardous chemicals, both those added to polymers during production and environmental pollutants like pesticides that are attracted to the surface of plastic It's not that they absorb pesticides, but that pesticides are attracted to the surface. Smaller microplastics have greater surface area to volume ratio than the equivalent volume of larger pieces. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/from-fish-to-humans-a-microplastic-invasion-may-be-taking-a-toll/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/from-fish-to-huma...

scotchmi_st 8y ago

Well, there are solutions. One is to breed bacteria and other organisms that can digest plastic. Not to say this is a solved problem, or something we shouldn't be concerned about, but the response "There is absolutely zero chance of ever cleaning it all up" here seems overly sensationalistic.

anonymou2 8y ago
Their numbers are probably only going to increase now anyway, so no need to breed them.

ataturk 8y ago

I cringe every time I go shopping--everything is packaged in shit. It's all shit. This is our legacy, a legacy of shit. But we can stop using plastics for literally every packaging need. It would be a start.

lm28469 8y ago

That's the price of running after (technological) progress at all cost. Nothing in our day to day life makes sense on an ecological level, nothing at all. Food, all our useless tech gadgets, ICE vehicles right next to where we live / sleep, being able to take the plane to go 1000km away for the price of a lunch in a restaurant, mass tourism, iot shit, 90% of startups, &c. But we're comfy and warm, plus at the end of the day we get to watch the new junk netflix produced this week on our 4k tablet. The very same tablet we'll have to dump in 18 months when the battery dies and it'll cost more to replace it than to buy the next iteration. We can even go on internet places like HN and Twitter to virtue signal about how bad we're treating the planet (as I'm doing right now) while sending 0s and 1s to servers all around the world, you know, the same servers used to share picture of cats and fake news while consuming terawatts of electricity. But I get my daily costa rican banana, my japanese tea, I can eat meat at every meal, my smart light bulbs know my location and switches on when I arrive home, my company sponsored laptop costs 5 time the annual age of a Chadian, everything's fine. We sacrificed the future for instant convenience and comfort, we more than deserve what's coming to us. https://www.spiegel.de/international/tomorrow/electronic-waste-in-africa-recycling-methods-damage-health-and-the-environment-a-1086221.html https://www.spiegel.de/international/tomorrow/electronic-was... https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-018-06610-y https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-018-06610-y https://www.boredpanda.com/award-winning-chinese-photographer-vanished-lu-guang-china-xinjiang/?utm_source=google&utm_medium=organic&utm_campaign=organic https://www.boredpanda.com/award-winning-chinese-photographe... https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2016/12/your-kitchen-and-the-planet-the-impact-of-our-food-on-the-environment https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2016/12/your-kitchen-and-the-... https://news.vice.com/en_us/article/43jgdn/you-can-blame-instagrammers-for-ruining-a-rare-poppy-super-bloom https://news.vice.com/en_us/article/43jgdn/you-can-blame-ins...

NeedMoreTea 8y ago
Financial progress - where progress is often change for change's sake - at all cost. Cheaper wins, more profitable wins, regardless of whether good or not. Frequently when we already knew it's not (leaded petrol, radium on watch dials etc). Far more quickly since the changes of the 1980s - deregulation, privatisation, and so forth. If it wasn't deregulated enough, move it out of sight and offshore it somewhere with weaker standards. So I would tend to say we sacrificed the future for an extra 0.5c on the dollar.

a3n 8y ago

The Plasticene.

balt_s 8y ago

"Give it fifty million years, and all that will be left of our era will be a layer of rock an eighth of an inch thick with an unusually large number of radioactive isotopes and some odd carbon compounds."

lexpar 8y ago

What's the deal with the over the top misanthropy we see in so many people with an environmental cause? Is it a cultural thing? Maybe it comes off as kind of edgy. Or maybe they're enjoying a preemptive "I told you so - idiots!" victory lap. This attitude does not make me take your point seriously. It sets off my ideologue detector.

groby_b 8y ago
Well, it's occasionally hard to see clear evidence that earth (or, specifically, tolerable conditions for human life on it) is rapidly heading towards the shitter - and there are plenty of people who'd rather go ad hominem than engage with the scientific evidence of the problem at hand. In other words: You are the deal.
- lexpar 8y ago
  pointing out a pattern of strange behavior != denying scientific consensus.
- mikestew 8y ago
  Way to make the parent's point with a misanthropic misunderstanding of what was actually said.

mr_overalls 8y ago

In the long run, the lack of a core mechanism to accurately price externalities will perhaps be the dominating failure mode of capitalism.

avip 8y ago
People go length before considering Capitalism may have failed as a framework for organizing society.

fjabre 8y ago

I couldn't agree more with the long term consequences. Maybe someday we will target these plastics with plastic eating microbes. Is warming not the more pressing issue? Given recent findings about permafrost decline in the artic? By some estimates we may have 50-100 years at best before things get really bad, and we are already undergoing a mass extinction event.

tonyedgecombe 8y ago
>Maybe someday we will target these plastics with plastic eating microbes. I expect they will come along on their own.

gomi7321 8y ago

I completely agree with your point! It's so important for all of us to change our lifestyles, but nobody wants to trade in convenience for long-sightedness if they have the choice. What makes me more angry than anything else are the obviously evitable things like the sprinkle pool in San Francisco's Museum of ice cream. This kind of pollution could so easily be avoided without making huge changes to our lifestyle: https://www.sfgate.com/local/article/San-Francisco-Museum-of-Ice-Cream-Instagram-fine-12488531.php https://www.sfgate.com/local/article/San-Francisco-Museum-of...

TausAmmer 8y ago

I am fine with this, another twist in humanity's play.