3 ms·

The 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

• deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
• semi-extrinsic 6y ago
  Wow. 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.