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Is there any credible evidence about harm caused by microplastics? I’ve seen a lot of stuff about how ubiquitous it is, but very little about its actual effects

Is there any credible evidence about harm caused by microplastics? I’ve seen a lot of stuff about how ubiquitous it is, but very little about its actual effects.

mediaguilt 5y ago
It would probably not be an issue if it was just plastic. The problem is most plastics contain other chemicals. Many are harmful like BPA or flame retardants. And the these plastics are recycled with their chemicals and made into new plastics and more chemicals, etc…
franklovecchio 5y ago
From 2016 - https://science.sciencemag.org/content/351/6277/1039.1.full https://science.sciencemag.org/content/351/6277/1039.1.full seems to point to a paywall link https://pubs.acs.org/doi/full/10.1021/acs.est.5b05478 https://pubs.acs.org/doi/full/10.1021/acs.est.5b05478 > They show that environmentally relevant microplastic concentrations led to reduced earthworm growth and elevated mortality as compared to a control. Futhermore, earthworms may transport microplastics into soils, from which they may leach into surface waters.
01100011 5y ago
Unrelated, I would love to hear the reasoning of the folks downvoting your question. Is it because they think you're insinuating that microplastics are just fine(you do not appear to be)? I think most HN readers would appreciate a chance to have a conversation on this and perhaps enlighten some people. Please folks, use the downvote thoughtfully.
chana_masala 5y ago
Yes, as one example: disrupts hormones in many animals - including fish and humans.
- jazzyjackson 5y ago
  just to back you up with one citation: "Microplastics Cause Endocrine Disruption and Respiratory Damage in Fish" https://www.technologynetworks.com/immunology/news/microplastics-cause-endocrine-disruption-and-respiratory-damage-in-fish-332123 https://www.technologynetworks.com/immunology/news/microplas... Chronic Microfiber Exposure in Adult Japanese Medaka (Oryzias latipes). Lingling Hu, Melissa Chernick, Anna M. Lewis, P. Lee Ferguson and David E. Hinton. PLoS ONE, March 9, 2020. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0229962 https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0229962.
- eurasiantiger 5y ago
  There is an entire society devoted to researching this area. https://www.endocrine.org/topics/edc/what-edcs-are https://www.endocrine.org/topics/edc/what-edcs-are
irjustin 5y ago
Very fair question - It's a mixed bag. Too easy to point to studies that point one way or another. One study[0] shows that microplastics can cause irritation which could lead to problems. Any underlying condition, this could make it worse. But it's hard to identify conclusive evidence. You'll find pretty equal amount of studies claiming harm vs no-harm, which makes a lot of the whole thing suspect. Clearly plastics are extremely stable so our bodies breaking them down into the chemical components is basically zero. A lot of the question of microplastics stems around whether or not your body holds onto them long term after ingestion and more importantly if that leads to any significant issues. Personally, I'm still not concerned. It's not nearly as clear as asbestos in terms of health issues. The risk-reward model of plastics makes me believe it's here to stay for a long time. [0] https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-020-64464-9 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-020-64464-9
- DoingIsLearning 5y ago
  > The risk-reward model of plastics Risk for whom, and reward for whom? You imply that it is the people exposed to the risk that largely benefit when it is mostly a margin/profit reward for companies who continue to externalize the environmental costs of plastic onto everybody else. Reminder that Coca-Cola alone produces more than 110 _billion_ PET bottles a year, without any responsability for their collection or safe disposal. [0] Disposal of plastic, should be an operational cost for the likes of Coca-Cola, Nestle, Pepsico, Unilever, Kraft, Mars, etc. [0] https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/oct/02/coca-cola-increased-its-production-of-plastic-bottles-by-a-billion-last-year-say-greenpeace https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/oct/02/coca-col...
  - eru 5y ago
    > You imply that it is the people exposed to the risk that largely benefit when it is mostly a margin/profit reward for companies who continue to externalize the environmental costs of plastic onto everybody else. That argument would work for plastics that are used internally inside eg Coca-Cola. But your next example talks about bottles handed out to customers. The benefit here is to those customers. If eg customers were demanding glass bottles (because of some benefit), and demanding them enough to pay the difference in production costs (including shipping costs etc), Coca-Cola would gladly sell them glass bottles. In any case, corporations are just legal shells. The real stakeholders are still people. Customers, shareholders, creditors, suppliers, rank-and-file workers and, most important in practice, managers.
morpheos137 5y ago
No. It is mostly inert dust. Despite the hysteria. Unless you are talking vinyl monomer or something.
- formerly_proven 5y ago
  ^ This is correct. PP and PE account for more than 2/3 of microplastics and are biologically completely inert, which only leaves physical tissue irritation to get an effect (like e.g. the very different Asbestos fibers do). Another 10 % is PET where it is not as easy to tell (because it is a much more complex plastic than PE and PP), however, I have not seen any credible evidence that PET is biologically active (e.g. as an EDC) except for a few bacteria which apparently digest it. As far as I know even the monomers of PET aren't endocrine disrupting, which is overall a rare property in plastics (the monomers of many plastics are pretty nasty stuff and so if the process control is bad, there is a good chance that precursor chemicals end up unbound in the finished plastic). Overall this means ~80 % or so of microplastics are pretty much what parent says: biologically inert dust.
  - eurasiantiger 5y ago
    Except, of course, for the plasticisers within…
    - formerly_proven 5y ago
      Plasticizers are very rarely used for polymers whose name is not PVC.
strainer 5y ago
If someone introduced microplastics to your house while you had no part in it - so you find yourself eating and breathing little bits of hydrocarbon chemicals which none of your ancestors in natural history have ever ingested. No mites can digest it, no moulds can compost it, nothing has ever lived with it, its just a new mysterious stuff that you and your children are going to be surrounded by, and get in your lungs and blood and live within from now on ... And you feel fine about it until convinced by science that you shouldnt. Against the advertisements and persuasions of a big industry, how long did it take to establish that cigarette smoke was dangerous? Leaded petrol? AGW? Ay but its probably fine! We can only imagine, chick skeletons full of plastic beads, certain species of sea creatures and microbiota due to perish because they mistake plastic for food, ecologicaly distruptively novel microbiota evolving which may capable of digesting the different kinds of plastic and additives which are alien to life - after billions of years, an alien substance everywhere. No probs, no 'credible evidence' of probs. Carry on then.
- formerly_proven 5y ago
  The funny thing about tobacco is that it was widely known to be very toxic for hundreds of years before cigarettes were invented. Likewise people realized that leaded petrol (and its fumes) would be toxic, the state and petrol industry disregarded this because leaded petrol was seen as alternativlos. Science has a fairly decent track record at finding these things. Policy has a fairly shit track record at responding.
  - Gravityloss 5y ago
    Lead paint was banned here in 1929. I think in USA in the seventies?
    - marcosdumay 5y ago
      Yet lead was known to be toxic since ancient times. As the GP said, science has a good track record of identifying those things.

Is there any credible evidence about harm caused by microplastics? I’ve seen a lot of stuff about how ubiquitous it is, but very little about its actual effects.

mediaguilt 5y ago

It would probably not be an issue if it was just plastic. The problem is most plastics contain other chemicals. Many are harmful like BPA or flame retardants. And the these plastics are recycled with their chemicals and made into new plastics and more chemicals, etc…

franklovecchio 5y ago

From 2016 - https://science.sciencemag.org/content/351/6277/1039.1.full https://science.sciencemag.org/content/351/6277/1039.1.full seems to point to a paywall link https://pubs.acs.org/doi/full/10.1021/acs.est.5b05478 https://pubs.acs.org/doi/full/10.1021/acs.est.5b05478 > They show that environmentally relevant microplastic concentrations led to reduced earthworm growth and elevated mortality as compared to a control. Futhermore, earthworms may transport microplastics into soils, from which they may leach into surface waters.

01100011 5y ago

Unrelated, I would love to hear the reasoning of the folks downvoting your question. Is it because they think you're insinuating that microplastics are just fine(you do not appear to be)? I think most HN readers would appreciate a chance to have a conversation on this and perhaps enlighten some people. Please folks, use the downvote thoughtfully.

chana_masala 5y ago

Yes, as one example: disrupts hormones in many animals - including fish and humans.

jazzyjackson 5y ago
just to back you up with one citation: "Microplastics Cause Endocrine Disruption and Respiratory Damage in Fish" https://www.technologynetworks.com/immunology/news/microplastics-cause-endocrine-disruption-and-respiratory-damage-in-fish-332123 https://www.technologynetworks.com/immunology/news/microplas... Chronic Microfiber Exposure in Adult Japanese Medaka (Oryzias latipes). Lingling Hu, Melissa Chernick, Anna M. Lewis, P. Lee Ferguson and David E. Hinton. PLoS ONE, March 9, 2020. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0229962 https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0229962.
eurasiantiger 5y ago
There is an entire society devoted to researching this area. https://www.endocrine.org/topics/edc/what-edcs-are https://www.endocrine.org/topics/edc/what-edcs-are

irjustin 5y ago

Very fair question - It's a mixed bag. Too easy to point to studies that point one way or another. One study[0] shows that microplastics can cause irritation which could lead to problems. Any underlying condition, this could make it worse. But it's hard to identify conclusive evidence. You'll find pretty equal amount of studies claiming harm vs no-harm, which makes a lot of the whole thing suspect. Clearly plastics are extremely stable so our bodies breaking them down into the chemical components is basically zero. A lot of the question of microplastics stems around whether or not your body holds onto them long term after ingestion and more importantly if that leads to any significant issues. Personally, I'm still not concerned. It's not nearly as clear as asbestos in terms of health issues. The risk-reward model of plastics makes me believe it's here to stay for a long time. [0] https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-020-64464-9 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-020-64464-9

DoingIsLearning 5y ago
> The risk-reward model of plastics Risk for whom, and reward for whom? You imply that it is the people exposed to the risk that largely benefit when it is mostly a margin/profit reward for companies who continue to externalize the environmental costs of plastic onto everybody else. Reminder that Coca-Cola alone produces more than 110 _billion_ PET bottles a year, without any responsability for their collection or safe disposal. [0] Disposal of plastic, should be an operational cost for the likes of Coca-Cola, Nestle, Pepsico, Unilever, Kraft, Mars, etc. [0] https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/oct/02/coca-cola-increased-its-production-of-plastic-bottles-by-a-billion-last-year-say-greenpeace https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/oct/02/coca-col...
- eru 5y ago
  > You imply that it is the people exposed to the risk that largely benefit when it is mostly a margin/profit reward for companies who continue to externalize the environmental costs of plastic onto everybody else. That argument would work for plastics that are used internally inside eg Coca-Cola. But your next example talks about bottles handed out to customers. The benefit here is to those customers. If eg customers were demanding glass bottles (because of some benefit), and demanding them enough to pay the difference in production costs (including shipping costs etc), Coca-Cola would gladly sell them glass bottles. In any case, corporations are just legal shells. The real stakeholders are still people. Customers, shareholders, creditors, suppliers, rank-and-file workers and, most important in practice, managers.

morpheos137 5y ago

No. It is mostly inert dust. Despite the hysteria. Unless you are talking vinyl monomer or something.

formerly_proven 5y ago
^ This is correct. PP and PE account for more than 2/3 of microplastics and are biologically completely inert, which only leaves physical tissue irritation to get an effect (like e.g. the very different Asbestos fibers do). Another 10 % is PET where it is not as easy to tell (because it is a much more complex plastic than PE and PP), however, I have not seen any credible evidence that PET is biologically active (e.g. as an EDC) except for a few bacteria which apparently digest it. As far as I know even the monomers of PET aren't endocrine disrupting, which is overall a rare property in plastics (the monomers of many plastics are pretty nasty stuff and so if the process control is bad, there is a good chance that precursor chemicals end up unbound in the finished plastic). Overall this means ~80 % or so of microplastics are pretty much what parent says: biologically inert dust.
- eurasiantiger 5y ago
  Except, of course, for the plasticisers within…
  - formerly_proven 5y ago
    Plasticizers are very rarely used for polymers whose name is not PVC.

strainer 5y ago

If someone introduced microplastics to your house while you had no part in it - so you find yourself eating and breathing little bits of hydrocarbon chemicals which none of your ancestors in natural history have ever ingested. No mites can digest it, no moulds can compost it, nothing has ever lived with it, its just a new mysterious stuff that you and your children are going to be surrounded by, and get in your lungs and blood and live within from now on ... And you feel fine about it until convinced by science that you shouldnt. Against the advertisements and persuasions of a big industry, how long did it take to establish that cigarette smoke was dangerous? Leaded petrol? AGW? Ay but its probably fine! We can only imagine, chick skeletons full of plastic beads, certain species of sea creatures and microbiota due to perish because they mistake plastic for food, ecologicaly distruptively novel microbiota evolving which may capable of digesting the different kinds of plastic and additives which are alien to life - after billions of years, an alien substance everywhere. No probs, no 'credible evidence' of probs. Carry on then.

formerly_proven 5y ago
The funny thing about tobacco is that it was widely known to be very toxic for hundreds of years before cigarettes were invented. Likewise people realized that leaded petrol (and its fumes) would be toxic, the state and petrol industry disregarded this because leaded petrol was seen as alternativlos. Science has a fairly decent track record at finding these things. Policy has a fairly shit track record at responding.
- Gravityloss 5y ago
  Lead paint was banned here in 1929. I think in USA in the seventies?
  - marcosdumay 5y ago
    Yet lead was known to be toxic since ancient times. As the GP said, science has a good track record of identifying those things.