4 ms·

note how all of those have a horrifying story Tell the horrifying plastic story (if there is one)

• ethanbond 3y ago
  Uhh no. Lead, mercury, radioactivity, thalidomide, and asbestos poisoning are not detectable as “my child put a toy in their mouth and their tongue fell off.” These were uncovered over the course of years by statistical analysis, prompted by suspicions created by (noisy, often non-human) information about the mechanisms. Similarly, we have tons of data supporting a bunch of theories of micro plastic harm in the lab. The waiting revelation isn’t going to be “omg all these people are sick and we didn’t know it,” it’s going to be “all these people have been sick and we didn’t know why.” Which is exactly the form of the sperm quality/fertility theory as well as obesity. We know these compounds cause fertility and metabolism issues in cell cultures and in animal models. We know we are facing civilization-scale problems with obesity and fertility. Drawing the connection between these types of observations is always extremely noisy because there are obviously trillions of variables affecting “does a specific individual become infertile or obese,” or “does a person have an elevated risk of birth defects.” I’m not necessarily on the side of an immediate and total ban, but this “we’ll see the problems if they exist” attitude is profoundly ignorant and arrogant. The historical examples appear obvious to you because you saw the results of extremely deep study prompted from initially low-quality suspicions.
• STRML 3y ago
  Does lead exposure have a "horrifying" story? It has measurable effects over years and decades, but very little acute effect.