3 ms·

Citation needed. These comments read like Reddit/TikTok. Lots of frantic fearful hand waving, not a lot of evidence presented.

remarkEon 3y ago
I don't understand this perspective, the need to wait for mountains of published evidence that something is "bad", or "bad enough" to do something about it. Plastic is toxic, we all know this. It's everywhere, it's in the food and in the water. In reality it's the "Citation needed" reflex that's the reddit-tier reaction to stuff like this, because it pretends that humans can't or shouldn't make decisions unless we all sit around in a peer-review committee to review the "data". Perhaps in some contexts that perspective makes sense, but again, in this one, we all know plastic is bad (for us and the environment).
- atrus 3y ago
  > Plastic is toxic, we all know this. There are thousands of plastics, and a blanket statement like this is simply false. We should be working to figure out which plastics are toxic, and why. You're essentially looking at lead and coming to the conclusion that "Metal is toxic, we all know this."
  - mint2 3y ago
    That’s not a great comparison. If it was comparable to lead in terms of identifying toxicity, we wouldn’t be having this debate. So actually plastic is worse than lead in that it’s more insidious, some want to slowly kill things but it’s nearly impossible to tell which. If only it were like lead and upfront about it. So no, they are not saying “metal is toxic”. That is extending the analogy to another topic: identification
- chewmieser 3y ago
  I don't understand the perspective of criticizing a request for a citation? This is exactly how misinformation spreads. The parent hand-waved away the substantial differences between various plastics and made bold blanket statements on plastics as a whole that may or may not be true. There's plenty of material out there to cite with and providing a cite that supported your understanding would help the discussion. Here's a random one: https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acs.est.1c01103 https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acs.est.1c01103
gregwithtwogs 3y ago
Heating up plastics is thought to release microplastics but I've not seen much solid research on it either. According to the European Parliament, ~63% of microplastics come from laundering synthetic clothes and car tires [1]. 1. https://www.europarl.europa.eu/news/en/headlines/society/20181116STO19217/microplastics-sources-effects-and-solutions https://www.europarl.europa.eu/news/en/headlines/society/201...
- gitaarik 3y ago
  A recent study found that microwaving food in plastic packaging releases a lot of microplastic into the food: https://news.unl.edu/newsrooms/today/article/nebraska-study-finds-billions-of-nanoplastics-released-when-microwaving/ https://news.unl.edu/newsrooms/today/article/nebraska-study-...

remarkEon 3y ago

I don't understand this perspective, the need to wait for mountains of published evidence that something is "bad", or "bad enough" to do something about it. Plastic is toxic, we all know this. It's everywhere, it's in the food and in the water. In reality it's the "Citation needed" reflex that's the reddit-tier reaction to stuff like this, because it pretends that humans can't or shouldn't make decisions unless we all sit around in a peer-review committee to review the "data". Perhaps in some contexts that perspective makes sense, but again, in this one, we all know plastic is bad (for us and the environment).

atrus 3y ago
> Plastic is toxic, we all know this. There are thousands of plastics, and a blanket statement like this is simply false. We should be working to figure out which plastics are toxic, and why. You're essentially looking at lead and coming to the conclusion that "Metal is toxic, we all know this."
- mint2 3y ago
  That’s not a great comparison. If it was comparable to lead in terms of identifying toxicity, we wouldn’t be having this debate. So actually plastic is worse than lead in that it’s more insidious, some want to slowly kill things but it’s nearly impossible to tell which. If only it were like lead and upfront about it. So no, they are not saying “metal is toxic”. That is extending the analogy to another topic: identification
chewmieser 3y ago
I don't understand the perspective of criticizing a request for a citation? This is exactly how misinformation spreads. The parent hand-waved away the substantial differences between various plastics and made bold blanket statements on plastics as a whole that may or may not be true. There's plenty of material out there to cite with and providing a cite that supported your understanding would help the discussion. Here's a random one: https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acs.est.1c01103 https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acs.est.1c01103

gregwithtwogs 3y ago

Heating up plastics is thought to release microplastics but I've not seen much solid research on it either. According to the European Parliament, ~63% of microplastics come from laundering synthetic clothes and car tires [1]. 1. https://www.europarl.europa.eu/news/en/headlines/society/20181116STO19217/microplastics-sources-effects-and-solutions https://www.europarl.europa.eu/news/en/headlines/society/201...

gitaarik 3y ago
A recent study found that microwaving food in plastic packaging releases a lot of microplastic into the food: https://news.unl.edu/newsrooms/today/article/nebraska-study-finds-billions-of-nanoplastics-released-when-microwaving/ https://news.unl.edu/newsrooms/today/article/nebraska-study-...