2 ms·
>long term subtle effects The longer term, and subtler the effect is, the safer a substance is. My educated guess is that microplastics are going to cause a lo
by RcouF1uZ4gsC 7y ago
>long term subtle effects
The longer term, and subtler the effect is, the safer a substance is. My educated guess is that microplastics are going to cause a lot fewer human deaths and ingury than any of the following natural stuff:
Bees, coffee (see acrylamide), peanuts, mosquitoes, arsenic, mushrooms, and bodies of water.
- galangalalgol 7y agoThat is a good point, and I agree and would add cars, hammers, sodas, and bread mold. But acrylamide studies are all based on rat models to date. Human studies have not shown the same impact. We have been cooking food a long time and it would not surprise me if we have stumbled on and kept a mutation that makes it safe.
- ryanmercer 7y agoHumans aren't the only thing that will be directly affected though. Microplastics are effectively forever and are already in aquifers and falling from the sky like rain/snow. That means all life is going to become more and more exposed to microplastics as more and more breaks down. Sure, maybe it'll be not be so bad for a random human but what happens when this stuff starts getting into single cell and small organisms where it is in far greater concentrations? What happens when phytoplankton, or zooplankton start getting a lot in them and it negatively impacts them? Do you get a collapse of an ecosystem? What happens when pollinators like bees start getting large concentrations in them? What happens as it accumulates in soil to the hundreds-to-thousands of species that are found in the first couple of inches of an average square meter of soil? And here's the real problem... the plastic is already out there, it will break down into smaller and smaller pieces and if we entirely outlawed plastic today and no more was ever made in human history, the number of microplastic pieces would continue to grow for quite a long time before leveling off and then would appear to start vanishing as the pieces just got small enough to avoid detection via affordable methods.
- cwkoss 7y agoSeveral groups are working on engineering fungi to digest plastics, seems like a great idea to me.
- ryanmercer 7y agoYeah but that has its own issues. Instead of worrying about your steel car rusting, now you'll have to worry about washing it regularly to keep whatever they make from landing on your car/siding/computer monitor/clothes/carpet/curtains/blinds/window molding/etc from being weakened.
- copperx 7y agoWhat's dangerous about peanuts and store-bought mushrooms?
- ben509 7y agoPeanut allergies. And I imagine mushrooms weren't qualified as "store-bought" because there are plenty of lethal wild mushrooms.
- marcell 7y agoWell consider the median American, or the bottom 20th percentile in health American. They are likely to be overweight and maybe have diabetes. I’m not saying those are caused by microplastics, but it could be. There’s no cohort of people we can compare that isn’t exposed to microplastics.