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In Pictures: How much plastic are you eating?
- YetAnotherNick 6y ago> People could be ingesting the equivalent of a credit card of plastic a week, a 2019 study by WWF International concluded, mainly in plastic-infused drinking water but also via food like shellfish, which tends to be eaten whole so the plastic in their digestive systems is also consumed. It is what it is, could be. Yes the worst water in the world contains this much plastic, but I seriously doubt it is anywhere close to normal(I wouldn't mind to be wrong though)
- cbau 6y agoLink to WWF 2019 study: http://awsassets.panda.org/downloads/plastic_ingestion_press_singles.pdf http://awsassets.panda.org/downloads/plastic_ingestion_press... Link to press release for study: https://www.newcastle.edu.au/newsroom/featured/plastic-ingestion-by-people-could-be-equating-to-a-credit-card-a-week/how-much-microplastics-are-we-ingesting-estimation-of-the-mass-of-microplastics-ingested https://www.newcastle.edu.au/newsroom/featured/plastic-inges... > The literature was interrogated for several counts of microplastics in staples such as water, shellfish, fish, salt, beer, honey and sugar. This project did not take into account other possible direct ingestion sources such as the honey, fish, sugar (for which data was collated) or rice, pasta, bread, milk, utensils, cutlery, toothpaste, toothbrushes, food packaging and a multitude of other sources that would only add to the amount consumed. As such, there is confidence that based on the literature reviewed and subsequent analysis performed that up to 5 g/week of microplastic particles is potentially ingested by humans. Having said that, it should be stressed that the amount of the microplastics ingested by an individual will depend on a combination of parameters that is highly variable not only pertaining to the characteristics of the microplastics but also to each’s age, size, geographic location, demographics of the location, nature of development and life-style options. > This study is being reviewed for publication; the full methodology and supplementary data will be available upon acceptance. I believe the published paper is "Estimation of the mass of microplastics ingested – A pivotal first step towards human health risk assessment" (2020): https://sci-hub.do/10.1016/j.jhazmat.2020.124004 https://sci-hub.do/10.1016/j.jhazmat.2020.124004 (Same authors.) Table 6 in the study has the "5g of plastic/week" number quoted by the article. That number is the "global average rate of microplastics ingested" ("GARMI"). GARMI is calculated as: GARMI = Average Number of Microplastics Ingested (ANMP) x Average Mass of Individual Microplastic Particle (AMIMP) ANIMP can be calculated in different ways. It seems the average mass of microplastic particles found in drinking water was higher than the average mass of microplastic particles found in different foods. The study says 90% of ingested plastic particles come from drinking water, so it seems reasonable to use the AMIMP of water particles rather than food particles. ANMP_drinking_water = 91994 ("the amount of water consumed per person was assumed to be 0.6 L/day" "The figures assumed are well below the World Health Organisation's guidelines of 3 to 4 L/person/day". 0.6 L/day comes from minimum 0.45 L/day of tap water + 0.15 L/day of bottled water. 91,994 is calculated as average of min (9029 particles) and max (174,959). If you only drank tap water, this number would be 42,298.) AMIMP_aquatic = 2.8g / 1000 ANMP_drinking_water * AMIMP_aquatic = 257g 257 / 52 ~= 5g Challenging those variables would be where to start. But assuming they're right, probably makes sense to focus on filtering plastics from drinking water.
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- wyldfire 6y agoHmm. I'd be more curious about the mechanisms of how it's consumed and whether there's anything I could do to avoid it. Or changes in production that could be made to avoid it. Since there were big headlines ~2010 about food in plastic heated in microwaves, I've switched to using glass containers for leftovers. Does that decrease the amount described in this article? Or is this some other mechanism of plastic consumption?
- jacob019 6y agoOr why we should be concerned.
- wyldfire 6y agoWe should be concerned because the plastic acts like xenoestrogens in the body. Hormone disruption is bad.
- KMag 6y agoIs that also the case for BPA-free plastics? "Plastics" covers a wide range of chemicals, and I'm not up to date on the latest health information in this area.
- gruez 6y ago>Is that also the case for BPA-free plastics be careful, the "BPA free" plastic products on the market might have just replaced BPA with BPS (or other plasticizers), which might be as bad as BPA when it comes to your health. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bisphenol_S#Health_Effects https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bisphenol_S#Health_Effects
- jim-jim-jim 6y agoI'm using a wooden toothbrush handle with "BPA free" bristles and this potential switcheroo has me worried. Are there toothbrushes out there that avoid plastic entirely?
- ahwvd37js 6y agoVisa cards tend to be the tastiest, followed by American Express. Discover comes in a number of flavors, but they are all a bit spicy for my taste. Occasionally I’ll grate one over my lego sushi for a bit of a kick, otherwise I stick with the classics. And you can’t beat Julia Child’s original recipe for Beef Bourguignon with Braised Debit Card.
- rantwasp 6y agopeasants. I only eat metal credit cards (my chase CC is metal)
- wirthjason 6y agoDebit cards are like bay leaves. Add good flavor but need to pick them out before eating.
- TedShiller 6y agoThanks Coca Cola
- Proven 6y agoStop shilling. As multiple commenters to that nonsense story said, it's CC's customers, rather than CC, who litter. If they didn't litter Coke PET bottles they'd litter others (as they do, it's just that Coke has a big market share worldwide so they came out on top).
- nullorundefined 6y agois there a problem to eating microplastic? serious question
- xenihn 6y agolegalize it and regulate it
- grendelt 6y agoI too wonder this. Sure we're consuming it, but how much is retained? Aren't we passing much of it along undigested? Plastic is mostly inert, right? So even if we consume and retain it, what harm is there?
- veemjeem 6y agoWhen you buy food-safe plastic (BPA/BPS-free plastic) it won't contain one of many bad ingredients, but microplastic comes from many sources of plastic, some which do contain BPA/BPS. BPA is known to harm the brain & prostate, BPS is known to cause hormone disruption. BPA is found in lining of aluminum cans, toys, & polycarbonate. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bisphenol_A https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bisphenol_A I don't know how much is retained, but the plastics have been found in the meat of cows & fish, so it's likely spread all throughout our bodies as well.
- hh3k0 6y ago> The smallest microplastic particles are capable of entering the bloodstream, the lymphatic system, and may even reach the liver. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/oct/22/microplastics-found-in-human-stools-for-the-first-time https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/oct/22/micropla...
- grendelt 6y agoSo what do we do if it's everywhere?
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- pxeboot 6y agoI recently noticed plastic pieces getting into my food from a plastic cutting board I had used for several years. While this was easy to replace with wood, it's not going to be easy to replace plastic pipes, packaging and other materials that regularly contact our food.
- veemjeem 6y agoMicroplastics don't only come from plastics that touch your food. When you turn on your kitchen faucet to make chicken broth, plastic is coming from your faucet. If you eat fish or chicken, the plastic is found in the meat. When you wash your clothes, you are generating new microplastics that get dumped into the sewers that slowly make it back into the meats of chickens and your bottled water. If you want to completely avoid microplastics, you'll have to use reverse osmosis water for everything, grow animal feed using this purified water, raise chickens using this animal feed, etc. Live in a bubble where the air is ultra filtered.
- x87678r 6y agoNot sure if people should be worried about possible plastic they might be eating or the loads of junk food they're stuffing themselves with every day.
- hh3k0 6y agoNot "possible", you _definitely_ consume plastic one way or another.
- peteretep 6y agoSounds like a source of fibre
- coldtea 6y agoWhat about us who don't eat junk food in the first place? Ever thought of that possibility?
- ntsplnkv2 6y agoIt isn't a zero sum game and not everyone eats junk food.
- npsimons 6y ago> Not sure if people should be worried about possible plastic they might be eating or the loads of junk food they're stuffing themselves with every day. Why not both?
- Proven 6y agoEveryone is eating small amounts of plastic and very few people have issues that can be traced to that cause. Like with radiation or other alarmist nonsense, 99.99% of people have nothing to worry about. Nice try. I'm not going to click on that link.
- Fezzik 6y agoI also want to know how much I am drinking - the mesh filter in my faucet catches a significant amount of visible flakes of plastic, ones big enough that that I can roll them between my fingers. I think it goes without saying there is a lot more in that water that I cannot see.
- tartrate 6y agoWhich country do you live in? I had never heard of this happening anywhere before.
- Fezzik 6y agoMedford, OR. USA. I’ve been here 2.5 years and my faucet clogged about 8 months after I moved in to the house... with blue plastic particles. They have continued to show-up in my faucet filters every since, so it was not a one off incident. I called the county and sent photos, but who knows if that did anything. I’m lucky in that I have always had additional filtration systems for everything I drink. Edit: Jackson County, OR.
- samus 6y agoYou might want to overthink whether you want to drink that water at all - if such big particles make it through the system, what else does too?
- Fezzik 6y agoPersonally, I filter all the water I drink after it leaves the tap where I currently live... most of the population can’t afford additional filtration or has no idea that it may even be necessary. That’s what infuriates me.
- andi999 6y agoExcept if you have very specialized filtration systems, I doubt this helps. The over the counter ones I am pretty sure do not.
- haram_masala 6y agoI read articles like this and think, "It's time to give up 3D printing as a hobby."
- _def 6y agosame. I'm patiently watching the market for viable recycling solutions which can be used at home.
- Zebfross 6y agoI would rather it focused on the sources, so if the main source is drinking water, is it not being filtered out? What is the distribution around the whole US?
- DoingIsLearning 6y agoI am not sure the general public is aware of how pervasive this is. Microplastics have contaminated the _whole_ Earths' water cycle, including mountain glaciers. [1] The only difference between water supplies is just how big the concentration of these particles is. In practical terms you can assume all water sources are affected, water treatment facilities do not filter this. You can reverse osmosis the water you drink but all the vegetables, fish, animals in your food chain are equally contaminated. [1] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0269749119316422 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S02697...
- StartupTree 6y agoPlease don't post blogspam, especially from a source such as aljazeera. The actual article is here: https://widerimage.reuters.com/story/how-much-plastic-are-you-eating https://widerimage.reuters.com/story/how-much-plastic-are-yo...
- wyattpeak 6y agoWhat's wrong with Al Jazeera as a source? Reuters is a newswire, although you can get their work directly there's nothing untoward about a network republishing it: that's their principal business model.
- StartupTree 6y agoAl Jazeera is a clownish propoganada mouthpiece for the Qatar regime. You can read here: https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al_Jazeera https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al_Jazeera
- rcMgD2BwE72F 6y agoWrong link.
- 1337shadow 6y agoIt was just extracted on another page : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al_Jazeera_controversies_and_criticism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al_Jazeera_controversies_and_c... You had to click "controversies and criticism" at the bottom of the original link. Probably this section was getting so big it was promoted to having its own page. Anyway, even the aljazeera link ends with [Kim Kyung-Hoon/Reuters] and is a clearly a copy/paste from reuters.
- coldtea 6y ago>Al Jazeera is a clownish propoganada mouthpiece for the Qatar regime So, like CNN is for US interests, BBC for Britain, RT for Russia, and so on. Let's have some variety...
- Kosirich 6y agoI do applaud the article for using visual aids to show the 'size' of the problem. I do feel that there should have been mention of microplastic coming from tires and brakes and that it should be mentioned that not all 'plastic' is the same. (in chemical composition, chemical activity and by that the impact on nature/human health)
- jerrygoyal 6y agoI learned about the microplastic issue (coming from tyres) from my college professor. he argued that it's a major problem and yet most people don't know about. That's because stakeholders (global leaders) know there's nothing much that can be done to avoid this issue so they withhold this info from the general public.
- spapinwar 6y agoChill just wash your food before you eat it.
- vfinn 6y agoSaw this yesterday on Reddit ("First evidence of microplastics in human placenta"): https://www.reddit.com/r/worldnews/comments/kbwac0/first_evidence_of_microplastics_in_human_placenta/ https://www.reddit.com/r/worldnews/comments/kbwac0/first_evi...
- aaron695 6y agoSerious question. Why do people believe this article? (Nothing to do with Al Jazeera, I think it's a refreshing change from Western media and this article has also been in CNN and Fox)
- Mashimo 6y agoIt's from reuters who a citing a 2019 study by WWF International https://widerimage.reuters.com/story/how-much-plastic-are-you-eating https://widerimage.reuters.com/story/how-much-plastic-are-yo... Or was it more of a general questions, why do people believe the media?
- aaron695 6y agoI guess my question is, with perhaps my bad assumption - People know Reuters is not always correct. Why believe this story? Under what conditions do they not believe. Under what conditions do they believe. Again, perhaps a bad assumption, eating a credit card each week would not make sense to most people. Why believe it's true? When does media override personal beliefs?
- ben509 6y agoI didn't. The pictures show one meal, and then the plastic consumed over a week. They could have shown the amount of plastic likely to be in a single meal, but it wouldn't have been as dramatic. And I know that they explain it in the captions. That's a dodge, they know people don't read the captions and they certainly aren't emotionally influenced by the captions. So I immediately wrote it off as dishonest.
- aimor 6y agoWhat are practical things I can do to avoid eating plastic? Data about the source of the plastics seems very incomplete. The known advice seems to be: - avoid bottled water - avoid eating out of plastic containers - don't heat food with plastic
- newsgourmet 6y agoAren't we also eating lots of other things that are non-digestible (for example, tiny spores from algae in the water)? Maybe our bodies can handle the plastic, after all. Another simple example of indigestible things that could be in our food are stones and dirt.
- romanovcode 6y ago> could eat What does this mean? Without a reference this is pointless information. One could eat plastic because he/she is crazy.
- samwhiteUK 6y ago"Using the findings, Reuters news agency reported we ingest the weight of a 4×2 Lego brick in plastic in a month. In a year, that amounts to the plastic in a firefighter’s helmet." A firefighters helmet has the same amount of plastic as 12 Lego bricks? Bullshit.
- matzab 6y agoThey show the helmet design they are referring to in the gallery below (it's from the caption of the helmet picture on the Reuters site). It's obviously not the kind of helmet you'd fight a structural fire with.
- bjterry 6y agoI'm pretty sure that's a toy or costume helmet. Calling it a "firefighter's helmet" is hilariously, intentionally deceptive.
- zenexer 6y agoSo what? This is a legitimate question, not a dismissive hand-wave. So what? What does this mean? Is this bad? Why? Surely all that plastic doesn’t stick around forever—I’m fairly certain I don’t have any PVC pipes in my gut, though it’s been a while since I’ve checked. What are the consequences of eating this much plastic? They certainly aren’t obvious. I don’t want an article that just throws a bunch of analogies in my face with pictures of various comparably-sized plastic objects. Don’t get me wrong, I appreciate the artistic touch, but I’m much more interested in understanding what this means. Where’s the research to go along with this? I expect journalists to dig deeper. Interview some experts; summarize studies of the consequences. Don’t just tell me I eat a lot of plastic—on its own, that’s useless information.
- anotheryou 6y agoI'd be interested on how much dust, pollen and sand I eat in comparison.
- userbinator 6y ago...and insects.
- headmelted 6y agoSo you’re correct in saying you’d need more information to draw conclusions, but the big concern at this point in time is that we really have no idea what impact this has. This is potentially much worse than eating a bunch of plastic one time that you’ll ultimately pass right on through (given that these are microscopic particulates in the digestive tract). In essence the big concern here is cancer. We know that particulates at or around 0.3 microns (the Most Penetrating Particle Size) have been linked to a variety of abdominal cancers in humans throughout the last hundred years. Critically, these types of cancers can take up to 50 years to form and cause serious enough problems to be detected (and seldom less than a couple of decades), so although billions of people have consumed micro-plastics, we still have no way of knowing what impact that will have on their health in later years. This is exactly what happened in the case of asbestos - it took so long for the consequences to show up after exposure that it seemed far-fetched to draw a correlation between asbestos and the cancers it caused. When coupled with cover-ups of the evidence by mining companies, the common use of asbestos skyrocketed long after it was known how deadly it was in private - but before public awareness had sounded alarm bells. The worry is that accumulated micro-plastics could be deadly in later life, but that we don’t find that out until hundreds of millions of people have become terminally ill.
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- koziserek 6y agoThis is explaining all the weight I was putting on.
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- swiley 6y agoNone of the people whining about "plastic" ever really define it. Cellophane? No worse than paper. Poly Ethelene? Probably fine. PVC? Maybe not. ABS? No. Sometimes people who say "plastic" really mean paint. We could probably cut down but communicating precisely would help.
- oever 6y agoThe cited 5 grams is the upper limit in an estimate from a 2019 publication done for WWF Singapore. > "we estimated that globally on average, humans may ingest 0.1 to 5 g of microplastics weekly through various exposure pathways" https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0304389420319944 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S03043... http://awsassets.panda.org/downloads/plastic_ingestion_press_singles.pdf http://awsassets.panda.org/downloads/plastic_ingestion_press...
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- semi-extrinsic 6y agoWow. How this got published is beyond me. I'll have some of whatever the reviewers on this manuscript were smoking. """The interpretation of the 95% confidence intervals is that the "true" mass ingested for each food source and total mass will be within the ranges calculated (Table 7). However, this depends critically on the shape of the uniform distribution chosen and the assumed 50% relative uncertainty in number of particles and mass of particles. This uncertainty was chosen arbitrarily to help in understanding the sensitivity of the mass ingested to errors in the estimates reported.""" This is literally pulling numbers put of thin air, since no actual numbers exist. The upper limit of error propagation from a completely arbitrary estimate, which turns into three full orders of magnitude or uncertainty, then gets reported as "fact" by news outlets... I've said it before, the science of microplastics today is where chemistry was in the 17th century. The people working in this field seem to have very limited understanding of basic math, physics and chemistry. Either step up and do shit properly, or go home. This is just embarassing.
- dukeofdoom 6y agoTo quote Alex Jones, "Its making the frogs gay".