3 ms·

I'm neither convinced that's true (I'm not aware of scientific consensus on it) or would it matter if it was. So sure, let's say the persistence is what makes i

• contravariant 4y ago
  I'm not too sure it is that different. If a sufficient amount of microplastics is harmful to humans then it's a similar threat to our wellbeing when it bioaccumulates. It's the dose that makes the poison, and if the dose is increasing over time it's going to become a problem if we don't stop it in time.
  • dataflow 4y ago
    > If a sufficient amount of microplastics is harmful to humans The "sufficient amount" you're referring to for plastics so far appear to be of very different orders of magnitude than with PFAS. In fact, I don't recall seeing a single report indicating visible toxicity to large organisms (be they humans, cattle, or other large animals) from the amount of microplastics in our environment right now. Certainly nothing even remotely similar to what I've seen about PFAS, which includes e.g. cows getting organ defects. Sure, if you eat rubber every day then presumably you'll die a painful death (and I'm not going to wait for a double-blinded RCT on humans to prove I shouldn't eat rubber for lunch before I believe it), so you could also call plastics toxic if you really insist on "p > 0" defining what a toxin is. Dose makes the poison and all that. But we're not proving math theorems here so that's not interesting as a definition or discussion.