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Some chemicals could act as fake hormones or mimicking grow factors, for example

• refurb 4y ago
  Most plastics are just polypropylene or polystyrene. It's just long chains of hydrocarbons and is inert. Plastics sometimes have plasticizers added, but if you're talking about microplastics, the amount of those chemicals in a microscopic piece of plastic is negligible.
  • pvaldes 4y ago
    > Most plastics are [safe] Then the problem should be in the rest.
  • more_corn 4y ago
    Plasticizers act as endocrine disruptors and are active at levels comparable to hormones. Namely extremely low quantities. An analogy is to compare the voltage levels of our electric grid to the voltage levels of our communication systems. It’s possible to really screw up communication by inserting tiny bits of voltage into the wrong parts of the system. Small is not always negligible.
    • refurb 4y ago
      Doses of hormones are in the milligram range to have a biological effect. Please explain how a 50 microgram piece of microplastic contains enough endocrine disruptor to have a biological effect?
      • pvaldes 4y ago
        > Doses of hormones are in the milligram range to have a biological effect. Not even close. This is grossly overstated unless you talk about the full amount in the organism, that is an useless measure. Hormones act locally and trigger profound irreversible consequences in really tiny doses > Please explain me how a 50 microgram piece of plastic contains enough endocrine disruptor to have a biological effect? Adding its effects to the rest of the microplastics. A handbook of Endocrinology will explain it much better, with tables, graphs and images.