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Most people have microplastics in their body, and even babies in the womb are being exposed (https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0160412020322297

Most people have microplastics in their body, and even babies in the womb are being exposed (https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0160412020322297 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S016041202...). The most remote, otherwise pristine environments have microplastics due to atmospheric transport (https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/36868287/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/36868287/). It is too late.

amake 3y ago
I suppose it was too late to ban lead from gasoline because everyone alive at the time had already been exposed.
- jf22 3y ago
  I think the person meant it is too late to avoid consequences, but not too late to take action.
  - swalling 3y ago
    Correct. Eliminating plastic pollution will be a benefit not to us, but to our children's children. The same with reducing carbon emissions.
light_hue_1 3y ago
And of course if it doesn't help people who are currently alive only our children we should never do it and it's too late to bother?
- swalling 3y ago
  Plastic replacement isn’t like leaded gasoline or ozone-depleting substances where you had just a few applications to design alternatives for. It’s in fucking everything. Even just finding a realistic replacement for plastic in shoes is not being productized seriously. It’s going to take generations for it to be fixed, and it probably won’t happen until humans and other animals get much much sicker.
  - midoridensha 3y ago
    >Even just finding a realistic replacement for plastic in shoes is not being productized seriously. We can just go back to the material we used to use for shoes: leather. If there isn't enough cow skin for shoes for 8 billion people, we can just vastly increase the amount of cow farming we do. Oh wait...
    - mrob 3y ago
      Leather shoe soles have worse grip than plastic ones. Switching will increase the number of deaths and serious injuries from people slipping and falling on hard surfaces. Leather soles also wear out much faster.
      - tfourb 3y ago
        Are you kidding me? Even if that were true there are probably 500 ways of making leather soles equally grippy to plastic soles that would either eliminate or drastically reduce the use of these materials. There are also other biodegradable alternatives to plastic that could be used. Most plastic-based shoes are worn out much quicker than quality leather shoes would be. These are cheap excuses that are quite transparent in the attempt to justify simply changing nothing.
        mrob 3y ago
        I'm talking about synthetic elastomer soles specifically, not the tops and sides of shoes. They last for decades and have excellent grip. There's no way to make leather soles anywhere close to as good.
        tfourb 3y ago
        That may be the case, but the last few pairs of "normal" shoes I bought had to be discarded after a year or so, not sure if the sole was still ok, but it didn't matter: they were done and because of their construction you couldn't fix them. My last pair of quality leather shoes held up nicely for about three years and it's now relegated to construction and garden work. My current pair is spotless after two years. The soles on these are synthetic, but they degrade about as quickly as the tops. Not sure where you draw your experience from, they don't match with mine. EDITED TO ADD: Of course quality shoes can be refurbished with new soles, so even if a leather sole would only last a couple of years, you could simply get a new sole slapped on.
tfourb 3y ago
Even if it is "too late" for this generation or the next generation or the next 5 generations that is not a reason to simply don't care and continue to make the problem worse. That is the kind of attitude that kept us from doing anything against climate change when it still was cheap to do so (just 15 years ago). I really wish people would start seeing these problems as a positive challenge that can help transform society for the better instead of just another opportunity to spread fatalism.
- luxuryballs 3y ago
  climate change can’t be prevented, it’s a natural oscillating cycle on a grand scale, but not making plastic is totally on us, though perhaps we will all freeze or boil long before drowning the ecosystem in plastic, there is some real bitter irony in being hopeful that nature can take us out before we do even more harm, if it can’t then I guess Earth will have proven itself not so resilient, but I suspect on a long enough timeline the Earth will absorb it all deep into the white hot swirling depths for refinement, climate change may end up being a big part of the solution
  - tfourb 3y ago
    Man made (hint hint) climate change was first described more than 50 years ago and while the window of cheap opportunity arguably has closed by now, it could easily have been addressed without too much cost up until about the year 2000 or so and somewhat cheaply until about 2010. Most countries are now making concerted efforts to address it but now it costs a huge amount of money and we will experience some severe consequences nonetheless. Still better than doing nothing, which could render huge swathes of the globe uninhabitable for humans. I'm not really worried about "the earth." The planet and nature will continue to exist and even if we fuck up the ecosystem we are dependent on and billions will die as a consequence, "nature" will simply continue to exist. Pretty insects and rainforests don't have an intrinsic value to me but I care about them deeply as the basis for human existence and prosperity.
    - luxuryballs 3y ago
defrost 3y ago
> The most remote, otherwise pristine environments Microplastic pollution in the Himalayas I have travelled a fair bit and I think the days of describing the Himalayas as remote | pristine are long past. The area suffers from blow in micro plastics to be sure .. but as your linked article notes: Additionally, Himalayan region draws many domestic and international tourists throughout the year, resulting in generation of massive and unmanageable volume of plastics wastes and finally ending up in the open landscapes covering forests, river streams and valley. Fragmentation of these plastic wastes can lead to microplastic formation and accumulation in the Himalayas. The staging areas for an Everest ascent, for example, look like an open field rubbish dump with literal tonnes of waste that has been walked in and then abandoned. Southern Ocean coasts and beaches are far more remote in terms of fewer feet on the ground, they, of course, have volumes of washed up micro plastics. https://www.curtin.edu.au/news/media-release/the-worlds-most-remote-oceans-are-polluted-with-microplastics-study/ https://www.curtin.edu.au/news/media-release/the-worlds-most... https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-12-08/new-research-disturbing-truth-wa-south-coast-beaches/12958690 https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-12-08/new-research-disturbi... https://www.ccwa.org.au/microfibres https://www.ccwa.org.au/microfibres

amake 3y ago

I suppose it was too late to ban lead from gasoline because everyone alive at the time had already been exposed.

jf22 3y ago
I think the person meant it is too late to avoid consequences, but not too late to take action.
- swalling 3y ago
  Correct. Eliminating plastic pollution will be a benefit not to us, but to our children's children. The same with reducing carbon emissions.

light_hue_1 3y ago

And of course if it doesn't help people who are currently alive only our children we should never do it and it's too late to bother?

swalling 3y ago
Plastic replacement isn’t like leaded gasoline or ozone-depleting substances where you had just a few applications to design alternatives for. It’s in fucking everything. Even just finding a realistic replacement for plastic in shoes is not being productized seriously. It’s going to take generations for it to be fixed, and it probably won’t happen until humans and other animals get much much sicker.
- midoridensha 3y ago
  >Even just finding a realistic replacement for plastic in shoes is not being productized seriously. We can just go back to the material we used to use for shoes: leather. If there isn't enough cow skin for shoes for 8 billion people, we can just vastly increase the amount of cow farming we do. Oh wait...
  - mrob 3y ago
    Leather shoe soles have worse grip than plastic ones. Switching will increase the number of deaths and serious injuries from people slipping and falling on hard surfaces. Leather soles also wear out much faster.
    - tfourb 3y ago
      Are you kidding me? Even if that were true there are probably 500 ways of making leather soles equally grippy to plastic soles that would either eliminate or drastically reduce the use of these materials. There are also other biodegradable alternatives to plastic that could be used. Most plastic-based shoes are worn out much quicker than quality leather shoes would be. These are cheap excuses that are quite transparent in the attempt to justify simply changing nothing.
      - mrob 3y ago
        I'm talking about synthetic elastomer soles specifically, not the tops and sides of shoes. They last for decades and have excellent grip. There's no way to make leather soles anywhere close to as good.
        tfourb 3y ago
        That may be the case, but the last few pairs of "normal" shoes I bought had to be discarded after a year or so, not sure if the sole was still ok, but it didn't matter: they were done and because of their construction you couldn't fix them. My last pair of quality leather shoes held up nicely for about three years and it's now relegated to construction and garden work. My current pair is spotless after two years. The soles on these are synthetic, but they degrade about as quickly as the tops. Not sure where you draw your experience from, they don't match with mine. EDITED TO ADD: Of course quality shoes can be refurbished with new soles, so even if a leather sole would only last a couple of years, you could simply get a new sole slapped on.

tfourb 3y ago

Even if it is "too late" for this generation or the next generation or the next 5 generations that is not a reason to simply don't care and continue to make the problem worse. That is the kind of attitude that kept us from doing anything against climate change when it still was cheap to do so (just 15 years ago). I really wish people would start seeing these problems as a positive challenge that can help transform society for the better instead of just another opportunity to spread fatalism.

luxuryballs 3y ago
climate change can’t be prevented, it’s a natural oscillating cycle on a grand scale, but not making plastic is totally on us, though perhaps we will all freeze or boil long before drowning the ecosystem in plastic, there is some real bitter irony in being hopeful that nature can take us out before we do even more harm, if it can’t then I guess Earth will have proven itself not so resilient, but I suspect on a long enough timeline the Earth will absorb it all deep into the white hot swirling depths for refinement, climate change may end up being a big part of the solution
- tfourb 3y ago
  Man made (hint hint) climate change was first described more than 50 years ago and while the window of cheap opportunity arguably has closed by now, it could easily have been addressed without too much cost up until about the year 2000 or so and somewhat cheaply until about 2010. Most countries are now making concerted efforts to address it but now it costs a huge amount of money and we will experience some severe consequences nonetheless. Still better than doing nothing, which could render huge swathes of the globe uninhabitable for humans. I'm not really worried about "the earth." The planet and nature will continue to exist and even if we fuck up the ecosystem we are dependent on and billions will die as a consequence, "nature" will simply continue to exist. Pretty insects and rainforests don't have an intrinsic value to me but I care about them deeply as the basis for human existence and prosperity.
  - luxuryballs 3y ago

defrost 3y ago

> The most remote, otherwise pristine environments Microplastic pollution in the Himalayas I have travelled a fair bit and I think the days of describing the Himalayas as remote | pristine are long past. The area suffers from blow in micro plastics to be sure .. but as your linked article notes: Additionally, Himalayan region draws many domestic and international tourists throughout the year, resulting in generation of massive and unmanageable volume of plastics wastes and finally ending up in the open landscapes covering forests, river streams and valley. Fragmentation of these plastic wastes can lead to microplastic formation and accumulation in the Himalayas. The staging areas for an Everest ascent, for example, look like an open field rubbish dump with literal tonnes of waste that has been walked in and then abandoned. Southern Ocean coasts and beaches are far more remote in terms of fewer feet on the ground, they, of course, have volumes of washed up micro plastics. https://www.curtin.edu.au/news/media-release/the-worlds-most-remote-oceans-are-polluted-with-microplastics-study/ https://www.curtin.edu.au/news/media-release/the-worlds-most... https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-12-08/new-research-disturbing-truth-wa-south-coast-beaches/12958690 https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-12-08/new-research-disturbi... https://www.ccwa.org.au/microfibres https://www.ccwa.org.au/microfibres