6 ms·

So it seems that a concentration of microplastics that's 50 million times higher than a toddler would get still leaves 20% of cells alive? To me this implies th

So it seems that a concentration of microplastics that's 50 million times higher than a toddler would get still leaves 20% of cells alive? To me this implies that normal exposure levels to microplastics are likely completely harmless.

Dalewyn 3y ago
I wouldn't frame it as "harmless", but it is probably accurate to say any harm is insignificant at worst.
- nucleardog 3y ago
  If it's a single, acute exposure sure. I'm no doctor or microbiologist or anything, but there definitely seems to be a strong connection between "things that cause cellular damage" and "increased risk of cancer with long term exposure".
  - sfn42 3y ago
    Yeah but cellular damage in the body is not the same as cellular damage in a petri dish. I bet water kills cells in a petri dish. It's just a really useless test to do, that at absolute best gives a vague hint at something that may be true. It's not useful to talk about in any capacity other than "let's explore this further with better experiments".
  - cowl 3y ago
    We don't know if it can be a long term exposure. We don't know at what rate they are expelled from a live person. And One thing is for sure. Cell Death that this experiment showed off at the unreasonbly hight concentration is still quite the opposite of Cancer. Cancer is Uncontrolled cell multiplication not death. So according to this we could use nanaplastics to kill cancer. See How easy it is to draw any conclussion that you want if you forget to factor the real conditions?
peteradio 3y ago
Sleeping next to abandoned nuclear batteries will give you radiation burns and kill you in a few weeks to months, exposure to high radon will give you cancer in decades. Unrealistically high dosages can hint at problems that might occur at low levels.
- sfn42 3y ago
  Drinking a shitload of water can kill you, not drinking water will certainly kill you. In fact having a shitload of just about anything is likely to harm or kill you. Unrealistically high doses imply absolutely nothing about lower doses.
  - pseudosaid 3y ago
    Read better please
  - john-radio 3y ago
    This comment is unhelpful; the person you're replying to clearly is not claiming that "absolutely everything that's harmful in large doses is harmful in small doses." > Unrealistically high doses imply absolutely nothing about lower doses. The example they give of nuclear radiation is a clear illustration of how a useful hint can be drawn from the high-level example of harm, a pattern which microplastics might very well follow.
    - s1artibartfast 3y ago
      Models can breakdown at huge scales because they introduce other non-representative factors or nonlinear responses. Sending an astronaut to the center of the Sun and concluding their death is from radiation would be a pretty bad model. Hitting a person with a car would be a pretty bad model for a fly landing on them. The first model is bad because the sun is doing more than just exposing them to radiation. The second model is bad because there's a nonlinear response to force applied to a human body.
      - 3y ago

Dalewyn 3y ago

I wouldn't frame it as "harmless", but it is probably accurate to say any harm is insignificant at worst.

nucleardog 3y ago
If it's a single, acute exposure sure. I'm no doctor or microbiologist or anything, but there definitely seems to be a strong connection between "things that cause cellular damage" and "increased risk of cancer with long term exposure".
- sfn42 3y ago
  Yeah but cellular damage in the body is not the same as cellular damage in a petri dish. I bet water kills cells in a petri dish. It's just a really useless test to do, that at absolute best gives a vague hint at something that may be true. It's not useful to talk about in any capacity other than "let's explore this further with better experiments".
- cowl 3y ago
  We don't know if it can be a long term exposure. We don't know at what rate they are expelled from a live person. And One thing is for sure. Cell Death that this experiment showed off at the unreasonbly hight concentration is still quite the opposite of Cancer. Cancer is Uncontrolled cell multiplication not death. So according to this we could use nanaplastics to kill cancer. See How easy it is to draw any conclussion that you want if you forget to factor the real conditions?

peteradio 3y ago

Sleeping next to abandoned nuclear batteries will give you radiation burns and kill you in a few weeks to months, exposure to high radon will give you cancer in decades. Unrealistically high dosages can hint at problems that might occur at low levels.

sfn42 3y ago
Drinking a shitload of water can kill you, not drinking water will certainly kill you. In fact having a shitload of just about anything is likely to harm or kill you. Unrealistically high doses imply absolutely nothing about lower doses.
- pseudosaid 3y ago
  Read better please
- john-radio 3y ago
  This comment is unhelpful; the person you're replying to clearly is not claiming that "absolutely everything that's harmful in large doses is harmful in small doses." > Unrealistically high doses imply absolutely nothing about lower doses. The example they give of nuclear radiation is a clear illustration of how a useful hint can be drawn from the high-level example of harm, a pattern which microplastics might very well follow.
  - s1artibartfast 3y ago
    Models can breakdown at huge scales because they introduce other non-representative factors or nonlinear responses. Sending an astronaut to the center of the Sun and concluding their death is from radiation would be a pretty bad model. Hitting a person with a car would be a pretty bad model for a fly landing on them. The first model is bad because the sun is doing more than just exposing them to radiation. The second model is bad because there's a nonlinear response to force applied to a human body.
    - 3y ago