4 ms·

It turns out making everything out of toxic plastic and eating garbage food full of random chemicals that were never really tested is a bad idea. I’m not parti

It turns out making everything out of toxic plastic and eating garbage food full of random chemicals that were never really tested is a bad idea. I’m not particularly shocked. This is our century’s lead paint moment. If anyone survives the fertility crisis and the burning and the famine and they can still read and write then they’re going to be wondering what we were thinking. We basically just roll things out as they’re discovered and never stop to think about the consequences. Well here are the consequences.

sbarre 4y ago
Ahhh there's nothing like getting lectured on a Sunday morning by that one person who thinks they knows all the things that no one else knows. edit: to stay on topic, I find these comments are useless, and do not contribute to the discussion in any way. It's not backed up with evidence or any kind of data, it's just an opinion, and a hand-wavey one at that.
- bruce343434 4y ago
  If "we" already "know" this then why does it fucking keep happening?
  - endemic 4y ago
    Corporations make more money by selling trash.
- syzarian 4y ago
  Most of the things you believe are not backed evidence that you are personally aware of. Each of believes things to be even though we have at best only a heuristic argument to support them. It is clear to me that the American diet is poison. We add sugar to everything. It’s hard to buy bacon without sugar added. Our bread is more like pastry. When I lived in Germany the diet felt much better. It would not surprise me to find out that part of the rise of cancer is our over engineered food products.
- somenameforme 4y ago
  But I think the vast majority of the world "knows"? Poll people on whether they're happy with various chemicals being added or ending up in their food, and the overwhelming majority would oppose it. You might simply claim they're all ignorant. Run that same poll on whether people would approve of dihydrogen monoxide [1] being added to their food, and it'd be right up their on the chopping block for banning. But I don't think trying to trick people proves much. Obviously things like diisononyl phthalate [2] is not just a scary name for an otherwise innocuous substance. It's a scary name for a scary compound that has indeed been proven to be harmful. Nonetheless people are consuming it in large quantities, and governments are remiss to do anything. And it's just one compound among many. Companies making billions of dollars off these products (or other products that contain them) have far more time, motivation, and ability to influence or "influence" government officials than literally anybody else. Science can help somewhat, but it's also regularly coopted as a part of the same influence game. Grants, donations, first party science, and more gray-zone areas of influence are all perfectly standard. In any case, things like diisononyl phthalate have been proven harmful in countless studies. It doesn't matter. [1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dihydrogen_monoxide_parody https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dihydrogen_monoxide_parody [2] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diisononyl_phthalate https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diisononyl_phthalate
echelon 4y ago
We don't know the mechanism. It could be sitting on our asses for all we know. Or, more plausibly, lots more anal sex (which is great for a few reasons - we know how to stop viruses and more sex is good). We have more homework to do.
- JKCalhoun 4y ago
  > Or, more plausibly, lots more anal sex That's not "ringing true" for me. Is there evidence of this?
- localplume 4y ago
  [dead]
dehrmann 4y ago
> It turns out making everything out of toxic plastic We've been doing this since the 50's. It should have surfaced much earlier.
- throw_away1525 4y ago
  This is absolutely not true. In the 1950's food was packaged in glass or paper. Polymer science was in its infancy.
  - dehrmann 4y ago
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tupperware https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tupperware At-home food storage was switching to plastic in the 50s.
    - throw_away1525 4y ago
      Fair point. Still, I think the reference point for plastic ubiquity comes quite a while after the 1950s. Plus, there are many different types of polymers and plasticizers and processed food is exposed to plastic at many points during its production and packaging. I would expect to find very different microplastic concentrations in leftovers from a home-cooked meal stored in a 1950's tupperware container and a modern frozen lasagna (or whatever) microwaved in its own plastic packaging.

sbarre 4y ago

Ahhh there's nothing like getting lectured on a Sunday morning by that one person who thinks they knows all the things that no one else knows. edit: to stay on topic, I find these comments are useless, and do not contribute to the discussion in any way. It's not backed up with evidence or any kind of data, it's just an opinion, and a hand-wavey one at that.

bruce343434 4y ago
If "we" already "know" this then why does it fucking keep happening?
- endemic 4y ago
  Corporations make more money by selling trash.
syzarian 4y ago
Most of the things you believe are not backed evidence that you are personally aware of. Each of believes things to be even though we have at best only a heuristic argument to support them. It is clear to me that the American diet is poison. We add sugar to everything. It’s hard to buy bacon without sugar added. Our bread is more like pastry. When I lived in Germany the diet felt much better. It would not surprise me to find out that part of the rise of cancer is our over engineered food products.
somenameforme 4y ago
But I think the vast majority of the world "knows"? Poll people on whether they're happy with various chemicals being added or ending up in their food, and the overwhelming majority would oppose it. You might simply claim they're all ignorant. Run that same poll on whether people would approve of dihydrogen monoxide [1] being added to their food, and it'd be right up their on the chopping block for banning. But I don't think trying to trick people proves much. Obviously things like diisononyl phthalate [2] is not just a scary name for an otherwise innocuous substance. It's a scary name for a scary compound that has indeed been proven to be harmful. Nonetheless people are consuming it in large quantities, and governments are remiss to do anything. And it's just one compound among many. Companies making billions of dollars off these products (or other products that contain them) have far more time, motivation, and ability to influence or "influence" government officials than literally anybody else. Science can help somewhat, but it's also regularly coopted as a part of the same influence game. Grants, donations, first party science, and more gray-zone areas of influence are all perfectly standard. In any case, things like diisononyl phthalate have been proven harmful in countless studies. It doesn't matter. [1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dihydrogen_monoxide_parody https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dihydrogen_monoxide_parody [2] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diisononyl_phthalate https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diisononyl_phthalate

echelon 4y ago

We don't know the mechanism. It could be sitting on our asses for all we know. Or, more plausibly, lots more anal sex (which is great for a few reasons - we know how to stop viruses and more sex is good). We have more homework to do.

JKCalhoun 4y ago
> Or, more plausibly, lots more anal sex That's not "ringing true" for me. Is there evidence of this?
localplume 4y ago
[dead]

dehrmann 4y ago

> It turns out making everything out of toxic plastic We've been doing this since the 50's. It should have surfaced much earlier.

throw_away1525 4y ago
This is absolutely not true. In the 1950's food was packaged in glass or paper. Polymer science was in its infancy.
- dehrmann 4y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tupperware https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tupperware At-home food storage was switching to plastic in the 50s.
  - throw_away1525 4y ago
    Fair point. Still, I think the reference point for plastic ubiquity comes quite a while after the 1950s. Plus, there are many different types of polymers and plasticizers and processed food is exposed to plastic at many points during its production and packaging. I would expect to find very different microplastic concentrations in leftovers from a home-cooked meal stored in a 1950's tupperware container and a modern frozen lasagna (or whatever) microwaved in its own plastic packaging.