5 ms·
As a medicinal chemist working on human reproduction I can give a little perspective (though not as much as a bio chemist with knowledge of human reproduction).
by Knufen 6y ago
As a medicinal chemist working on human reproduction I can give a little perspective (though not as much as a bio chemist with knowledge of human reproduction).
These things are very hard to quantify, but all studies so far points to microplastic being bad. Not poisonous like lead, or deadly like uranium in ceramics. Instead they are a bit more sneaky. While plastic in itself is not so bad, all the other stuff in plastic is. Take BPA [1], a known endocrine disruptor. It is especially bad for humans in the early stages of development and has life long effects. Boys will have less testosterone (leading to multiple knock off effects) and girls will have earlier puberty, more breast and other types of cancer. Because the doses are so low the effect are not typically seen in individuals. Instead we detect them on population scale. An example is the testosterone levels of men is dwindling each year [2]. Of course correlation does not equal causation, but more and more studies are pointing to chemical disruption.
[1] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/21605673/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/21605673/
[2] https://academic.oup.com/jcem/article/92/1/196/2598434?login=true https://academic.oup.com/jcem/article/92/1/196/2598434?login...
- Orthw2020 6y agoI wonder if reduced testosterone will in turn lead to voting in even more liberal/socialist governments in the west? After all, lead poisoning was suggested as one of the possible reasons for the decline of the Roman empire.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- magic-chicken 6y agoWhat? Are you suggesting that left-leaning voters have a lower level of testosterone than right-leaning voters? > After all, lead poisoning was suggested as one of the possible reasons for the decline of the Roman empire. What are you trying to imply here? Microplastic -> Low Testorone -> Socialist government -> Decline of civilisation?
- tomp 6y ago> Are you suggesting that left-leaning voters have a lower level of testosterone than right-leaning voters? That's obviously true - women vote more left than men, women have much lower testosterone than men. The question is, of course, whether correlation equals causation or not. It could be more connected to other sex differences (e.g. in agreeableness or neuroticism), or to life experience, or something completely different.
- arsome 6y agoI mean I can sort of follow the logic - testosterone tends to cause more aggressiveness which can often lead to competitiveness, and arguably the basis for capitalist society is putting competitiveness to work. If you decrease the average interest in competitiveness you may see an uptick in socialist leanings and, many capitalists would argue, a decline in overall productivity. Now, there's obviously many benefits that may also be seen with a less aggressive or even less competitive population, but the basic principle doesn't seem insane here, it seems a bit of a stretch and requires some serious leaps that I'm not sure are remotely proven though...
- XorNot 6y ago
- throw89323432 6y agoI do not think society cares about low testosterone. Effects of phytoestrogens from soy and similar chemicals from plastics, are well described. But sadly only anecdotally, nobody made conclusive study. And doctor will tell teenager, it is ok to have a hormonal level of 70 years old...
- dekhn 6y agounfortunately, none of this is convincing enough for a scientific skeptic to say that there is actually a true human health impact from microplastics.
- starkd 6y agoI think what's missing is a risk/benefit approach. No doubt concerning evidence it's harmful, but does the harm outway the benefits we've seen from plastics? And there have been benefits. Not just convenience, but the ability to scale packaging as well as better hygiene as a prevention from infectious diseases.
- dusted 6y agoI don't think one is needed. Plastics helped us to get here, now we're ready to look for the next step, or solutions to the current problem. Most of the technologies have had a more positive effect than negative, but that's no reason to ignore the new negative effects. Coal power definitely saved a lot of lives, and probably more than it killed, but it introduced new problems, not worse one, highly probably less-bad problems, but problems nevertheless, shouldn't mean that we ban coal tomorrow, but that we should (as we somewhat are) work toward fixing the new problems. The same goes for all technologies, they generally save a lot of people from A but then causes B which is a new, less efficient source of death. This is one of the situations where we should strive to have our cake and eat it too. Hell, asbestos probably helped save more lives than it took, we just found something less terrible to replace it with.
- starkd 6y agoOfcourse. Any new technology or product will have negative repercussions. Just a question of the extent. But don't assume newer is necessarily is better. There's also a perverse incentive among litigation enthusiasts just to find harm a product does and then amplify it out of proportion. It's kind of a cottage industry. Asbestos was an incredibly efficient insulation. I don't think anything has matched it. Just not when its mishandled.
- dusted 6y agoYes, that's the thing, a lot of people died of asbestos, but more people would likely have frozen or burned to death without it.. It's good that we're getting rid of it, because we now have the technology to replace almost all of its uses with sufficiently effective and less dangerous alternatives. It does not mean that its use was a mistake, but it's continued use would be, as we have an intrinsic responsibility to always seek safer alternatives when we discover the negative effects-
- spitfire 6y agoWhat do you mean uranium in ceramics? I have a decorative piece of uranium glass behind me - Light it up with a UV light and it glows. Is that considered dangerous now?
- labawi 6y agoIf you use it for drinking/eating, especially for acidic (or basic) food, or ingest/inhale its fragments/dust, then quite probably yes.
- nikolay 6y agoAll potassium-containing foods are radioactive - think bananas and potatoes. All mushrooms, Brazil nuts, and many others are as well. Every time you get on a transcontinental flight, you get irradiated, too.
- contingencies 6y agoall studies so far points to microplastic being bad. Not poisonous like lead, or deadly like uranium in ceramics. So will we see the 1% swing back to wooden crockery? Of course, not that McTimber stuff laced with glue, but real wood. But what's in the varnish? Do we stick with unvarnished wood?