6 ms·

Leaving aside the environmental damage, which is obvious albeit somewhat sensationalized in this comment, how is said plastic actually harming human health toda

by afarah 7y 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 7y 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 7y 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 7y 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!
    - JoeAltmaier 7y ago
      No, maybe #220, if they're on the list at all. An nth-order effect.
    - jchrisa 7y ago
      If we treat microplastics as a symptom of business-as-usual, then they are a marker, and we can think of them as the canary in the coal mine. Entropically, we dug up a bunch of dead stuff and either burned it into the air or refined it into plastic, which we are now mixing into the biosphere at all scales. What other effluents are we dispersing that will have unwanted effects? Structurally, we concentrate exotic materials and then disperse them. Nothing like that has ever happened at global scale to life before. The economic changes to achieve a system that doesn't make this its default trend are almost unthinkable. That's what I see as the real #4 (or whatever) on the list.
  - travisporter 7y ago
    It is by no means unreasonable or unscientific to suspect whether plastics in your stool, the air and water around is a special threat. Animal studies have shown cause for concern. Sensationalist? Perhaps. I've used this information to try to eke out my single use plastic use. (Use of single use plastic? single plastic use?)
    - JoeAltmaier 7y ago
      Here's a study:http://www.fao.org/3/a-i7677e.pdf http://www.fao.org/3/a-i7677e.pdf The cause for concern? "Adverse effects of microplastics ingestion have only been observed in aquatic organisms under laboratory conditions, usually at very high exposure concentrations that exceed present environmental concentrations by several orders of magnitude"
      - travisporter 7y ago
        [deleted]
- justin66 7y ago
  This is utterly bizarre. Do you literally believe no epidemiological study of the effects of plastics on human health has occurred? Googling epidemiological study of the effects of plastics on human health is a decent place to start. Asking about it here on hn is very definitely not.
  - onion2k 7y ago
    Do you literally believe no epidemiological study of the effects of plastics on human health has occurred? The question was about plastic pollution, and specifically the effect of micro plastic particulates on humans. I couldn't find anything after a cursory search, although to be honest I don't really know what terms I should be searching for.
lm28469 7y ago
> words such as "may", "might", "could". It's Earth, not a deployment you can rollback, we don't get to play that game. We're talking hundreds or thousands of years before we'll know how bad we fucked up. Almost every life forms on the planet are linked one way or another, every changes has an impact. Remember when DDT, asbestos and lead plumbing were harmless to humans ? Then they were classified as "could" be dangerous or "may" be harmful. Now they're straight up banned everywhere. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5918521/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5918521/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4780651/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4780651/ 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... https://www.healthline.com/health-news/how-dangerous-are-microplastics-to-your-health https://www.healthline.com/health-news/how-dangerous-are-mic... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Endocrine_disruptor https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Endocrine_disruptor https://environmentjournal.online/articles/microplastic-pollution-number-one-threat-to-humankind/ https://environmentjournal.online/articles/microplastic-poll...
- dsfyu404ed 7y ago
  >It's Earth, not deployment you can rollback, we don't get to play that game. >We're talking hundreds or thousands of years before we'll know how bad we fucked up. Almost every life forms on the planet are linked one way or another, every changes has an impact. >Remember when DDT, asbestos and lead plumbing were harmless to humans ? Then they were classified as "could" be dangerous or "may" be harmful. Now they're straight up banned everywhere. This is exactly the kind of emotional appeals the GP is complaining about. There are tons of different substances you come into contact with on a day to day basis. Most of them will not be harmful in any reasonable quantity. If paper or cotton clothing was invented today the parchment and wool industries would be talking up how it's not proven to not be harmful. Yes, some plastics are probably bad even in small concentrations. Just from a common sense point of view it's highly unlikely that all plastics are bad in all concentrations. No you shouldn't ingest it intentionally. Yes, I'd like to see less plastics in the world. No I don't think it's going to be a massive future problem. If it really does turn out to be a serious problem we'll find a way to solve it. Remember when CFCs were going to deplete the ozone and give us all skin cancer?
tapland 7y ago
I think the point is that we might not know the dangers, but regardless of if they are dangerous, they are here. So figuring out the danger is just a matter of telling us how screwed we are, when we usually want to find ways to prevent a possible disaster in advance. It is a bit fatalistic. We still have to care about things not getting worse and all degrees of severity matter.
pulisse 7y ago
> Any measurements, case studies, or collective data from people suffering from any sort of disease related to plastic pollution? Plasticizers are endocrine disruptors. Sperms counts have been decreasing world-wide for decades (if you're male, your sperm count is almost certainly significantly lower than your father's), and epidemiologists believe plastics in the environment are the cause.[0] [0] https://www.gq.com/story/sperm-count-zero https://www.gq.com/story/sperm-count-zero
- geomark 7y ago
  Seems like that might solve the problem then. Lower fertility leading to decrease in population and less pollution. Only being slightly sarcastic.
DanBC 7y ago
Microplastics have a large surface area, and that gets covered with other pollutants. Animals eat the plastic (which can pass through them without much harm, or can get lodged in their guts causing harm to that animal). When the animal has eaten the plastic they're also eating the other contaminents, and these get taken up b y the animal and anything that eats the animal.
armitron 7y ago
Allergies, asthma and autoimmune disease rates are skyrocketing and it's not at all clear as to why.
yomly 7y ago
Weirdly, as a scientist by training, I am quite unscientific when it comes to these kinds of things. Nature is exquisitely subtle and it can be really hard to "measure" these things when you may not even know what to measure for. That said, I know full well that physiological chemistry can be sensitive with reaped to down isotopic distributions due to competing kinetic pathways, even though isotopes are supposed to "behave the same". Meanwhile, we're just about realizing that gut fauna can influence a bunch of stuff that ought to be "orthogonal". So when it comes to wide scale exposure to things like this I typically keep an open mind because biology is crazy complex and most our models are woefully simplistic. In any case global spread of microplastics can't really be good...
- yomly 7y ago
  Whoops s/"can be sensitive with reaped to"/"can be sensitive"

by afarah 7y ago

onion2k 7y 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 7y 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 7y 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!
  - JoeAltmaier 7y ago
    No, maybe #220, if they're on the list at all. An nth-order effect.
  - jchrisa 7y ago
    If we treat microplastics as a symptom of business-as-usual, then they are a marker, and we can think of them as the canary in the coal mine. Entropically, we dug up a bunch of dead stuff and either burned it into the air or refined it into plastic, which we are now mixing into the biosphere at all scales. What other effluents are we dispersing that will have unwanted effects? Structurally, we concentrate exotic materials and then disperse them. Nothing like that has ever happened at global scale to life before. The economic changes to achieve a system that doesn't make this its default trend are almost unthinkable. That's what I see as the real #4 (or whatever) on the list.
- travisporter 7y ago
  It is by no means unreasonable or unscientific to suspect whether plastics in your stool, the air and water around is a special threat. Animal studies have shown cause for concern. Sensationalist? Perhaps. I've used this information to try to eke out my single use plastic use. (Use of single use plastic? single plastic use?)
  - JoeAltmaier 7y ago
    Here's a study:http://www.fao.org/3/a-i7677e.pdf http://www.fao.org/3/a-i7677e.pdf The cause for concern? "Adverse effects of microplastics ingestion have only been observed in aquatic organisms under laboratory conditions, usually at very high exposure concentrations that exceed present environmental concentrations by several orders of magnitude"
    - travisporter 7y ago
      [deleted]
justin66 7y ago
This is utterly bizarre. Do you literally believe no epidemiological study of the effects of plastics on human health has occurred? Googling epidemiological study of the effects of plastics on human health is a decent place to start. Asking about it here on hn is very definitely not.
- onion2k 7y ago
  Do you literally believe no epidemiological study of the effects of plastics on human health has occurred? The question was about plastic pollution, and specifically the effect of micro plastic particulates on humans. I couldn't find anything after a cursory search, although to be honest I don't really know what terms I should be searching for.

lm28469 7y ago

> words such as "may", "might", "could". It's Earth, not a deployment you can rollback, we don't get to play that game. We're talking hundreds or thousands of years before we'll know how bad we fucked up. Almost every life forms on the planet are linked one way or another, every changes has an impact. Remember when DDT, asbestos and lead plumbing were harmless to humans ? Then they were classified as "could" be dangerous or "may" be harmful. Now they're straight up banned everywhere. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5918521/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5918521/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4780651/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4780651/ 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... https://www.healthline.com/health-news/how-dangerous-are-microplastics-to-your-health https://www.healthline.com/health-news/how-dangerous-are-mic... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Endocrine_disruptor https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Endocrine_disruptor https://environmentjournal.online/articles/microplastic-pollution-number-one-threat-to-humankind/ https://environmentjournal.online/articles/microplastic-poll...

dsfyu404ed 7y ago
>It's Earth, not deployment you can rollback, we don't get to play that game. >We're talking hundreds or thousands of years before we'll know how bad we fucked up. Almost every life forms on the planet are linked one way or another, every changes has an impact. >Remember when DDT, asbestos and lead plumbing were harmless to humans ? Then they were classified as "could" be dangerous or "may" be harmful. Now they're straight up banned everywhere. This is exactly the kind of emotional appeals the GP is complaining about. There are tons of different substances you come into contact with on a day to day basis. Most of them will not be harmful in any reasonable quantity. If paper or cotton clothing was invented today the parchment and wool industries would be talking up how it's not proven to not be harmful. Yes, some plastics are probably bad even in small concentrations. Just from a common sense point of view it's highly unlikely that all plastics are bad in all concentrations. No you shouldn't ingest it intentionally. Yes, I'd like to see less plastics in the world. No I don't think it's going to be a massive future problem. If it really does turn out to be a serious problem we'll find a way to solve it. Remember when CFCs were going to deplete the ozone and give us all skin cancer?

tapland 7y ago

I think the point is that we might not know the dangers, but regardless of if they are dangerous, they are here. So figuring out the danger is just a matter of telling us how screwed we are, when we usually want to find ways to prevent a possible disaster in advance. It is a bit fatalistic. We still have to care about things not getting worse and all degrees of severity matter.

pulisse 7y ago

> Any measurements, case studies, or collective data from people suffering from any sort of disease related to plastic pollution? Plasticizers are endocrine disruptors. Sperms counts have been decreasing world-wide for decades (if you're male, your sperm count is almost certainly significantly lower than your father's), and epidemiologists believe plastics in the environment are the cause.[0] [0] https://www.gq.com/story/sperm-count-zero https://www.gq.com/story/sperm-count-zero

geomark 7y ago
Seems like that might solve the problem then. Lower fertility leading to decrease in population and less pollution. Only being slightly sarcastic.

DanBC 7y ago

Microplastics have a large surface area, and that gets covered with other pollutants. Animals eat the plastic (which can pass through them without much harm, or can get lodged in their guts causing harm to that animal). When the animal has eaten the plastic they're also eating the other contaminents, and these get taken up b y the animal and anything that eats the animal.

armitron 7y ago

Allergies, asthma and autoimmune disease rates are skyrocketing and it's not at all clear as to why.

yomly 7y ago

Weirdly, as a scientist by training, I am quite unscientific when it comes to these kinds of things. Nature is exquisitely subtle and it can be really hard to "measure" these things when you may not even know what to measure for. That said, I know full well that physiological chemistry can be sensitive with reaped to down isotopic distributions due to competing kinetic pathways, even though isotopes are supposed to "behave the same". Meanwhile, we're just about realizing that gut fauna can influence a bunch of stuff that ought to be "orthogonal". So when it comes to wide scale exposure to things like this I typically keep an open mind because biology is crazy complex and most our models are woefully simplistic. In any case global spread of microplastics can't really be good...

yomly 7y ago
Whoops s/"can be sensitive with reaped to"/"can be sensitive"