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I don't deny that there is more and more research every day about the negative impacts of microplastics on the human body. From my place of relative ignorance,

I don't deny that there is more and more research every day about the negative impacts of microplastics on the human body. From my place of relative ignorance, it still seems that more sweeping claims like "Microplastics are responsible for the Flynn Effect and the male infertility crisis" are awfully bold. You throw obesity in there too, and doesn't it seem like folks are trying to pin all of society's ills on a single issue? It's like when people try to pathologize black people by arguing that all their social ills are actually just due to lead exposure. That has proven to be a very shaky argument, and one that has to plow through a lot of nuance and complex social phenomena to land on a materialist claim so simplistic that it's kind of infantilizing. Plus, the obsessive focus on IQ reeks of bad social science.

bhouston 3y ago
> it still seems that more sweeping claims like "Microplastics are responsible for the Flynn Effect and the male infertility crisis" are awfully bold You are making my original statements into a straw man argument. I didn't say they are fully responsible, but rather I think they are contributors. I even asked in my original post what else could be contributing: > I think microplastics along with forever chemicals/PFAS are two of the likely culprits and are probably fairly easy to deal with. > > I wonder what else could be contributing? Lead does reduce IQ and increase crime. Here is a meta-analysis that tries to tease out how much lead was responsible for crime and homicide: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0166046222000667 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S016604622... Banning lead gasoline was the right thing regardless. It was causing harm. It is hard at the time to know exactly how much. You then wrote: > You throw obesity in there too, and doesn't it seem like folks are trying to pin all of society's ills on a single issue? I do think we are poisoning ourselves in probably a few different ways -- we have made so many novel chemicals without significant safety testing that a good chunk of them are probably harmful and can also likely build up over time. If we can continue to deal with these harmful chemicals that have clear links to negative health outcomes, we will be better off as a society. The trick is to keep studying them and then act on those studies to mitigate the harms of those chemicals. The world is complex and there is usually not a singular cause of everything. But that doesn't mean we should just throw our arms up and say, oh no, I can not do anything it is all just too complex or overwhelming. No, instead you just have to do, as Anna says in Frozen II, "the next right thing:" https://youtu.be/kFkClV2gM-s?t=118 https://youtu.be/kFkClV2gM-s?t=118
- throw4847285 3y ago
  I think we agree more than we disagree. I believe we need to seriously study the effect of microplastics on the human body. I believe the federal government should follow California's example (at a minimum) and take a heavier hand in regulating PFAs and testing water for microplastics. Microplastics are causing a number of negative health effects, some of which are known, many of which are unknown. I don't think we should throw our hands up and give up, not at all. And yet the study you shared about lead actually proves my point. The meta-analysis showed that the impact of lead on crime is overstated in the literature. And I know a number of sociologists/criminologists, and (though this is anecdotal) they take the lead hypothesis far less seriously than this meta-analysis does. Partially that's due to the fact that this was written by economists, the natural enemy of sociologists. But I digress. My argument is that simple "scientific" answers to complex social problems get overstated, while the messy stuff gets overlooked. It's a cognitive bias that especially affects the kinds of people on this website, because it substitutes complex social scientific problems with "simple" chemical cause and effects. It doesn't means we we shouldn't address the very real public health crisis. But remember, Rome wasn't built in a day, and it wasn't destroyed by lead pipes. That's a myth.

bhouston 3y ago

> it still seems that more sweeping claims like "Microplastics are responsible for the Flynn Effect and the male infertility crisis" are awfully bold You are making my original statements into a straw man argument. I didn't say they are fully responsible, but rather I think they are contributors. I even asked in my original post what else could be contributing: > I think microplastics along with forever chemicals/PFAS are two of the likely culprits and are probably fairly easy to deal with. > > I wonder what else could be contributing? Lead does reduce IQ and increase crime. Here is a meta-analysis that tries to tease out how much lead was responsible for crime and homicide: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0166046222000667 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S016604622... Banning lead gasoline was the right thing regardless. It was causing harm. It is hard at the time to know exactly how much. You then wrote: > You throw obesity in there too, and doesn't it seem like folks are trying to pin all of society's ills on a single issue? I do think we are poisoning ourselves in probably a few different ways -- we have made so many novel chemicals without significant safety testing that a good chunk of them are probably harmful and can also likely build up over time. If we can continue to deal with these harmful chemicals that have clear links to negative health outcomes, we will be better off as a society. The trick is to keep studying them and then act on those studies to mitigate the harms of those chemicals. The world is complex and there is usually not a singular cause of everything. But that doesn't mean we should just throw our arms up and say, oh no, I can not do anything it is all just too complex or overwhelming. No, instead you just have to do, as Anna says in Frozen II, "the next right thing:" https://youtu.be/kFkClV2gM-s?t=118 https://youtu.be/kFkClV2gM-s?t=118

throw4847285 3y ago
I think we agree more than we disagree. I believe we need to seriously study the effect of microplastics on the human body. I believe the federal government should follow California's example (at a minimum) and take a heavier hand in regulating PFAs and testing water for microplastics. Microplastics are causing a number of negative health effects, some of which are known, many of which are unknown. I don't think we should throw our hands up and give up, not at all. And yet the study you shared about lead actually proves my point. The meta-analysis showed that the impact of lead on crime is overstated in the literature. And I know a number of sociologists/criminologists, and (though this is anecdotal) they take the lead hypothesis far less seriously than this meta-analysis does. Partially that's due to the fact that this was written by economists, the natural enemy of sociologists. But I digress. My argument is that simple "scientific" answers to complex social problems get overstated, while the messy stuff gets overlooked. It's a cognitive bias that especially affects the kinds of people on this website, because it substitutes complex social scientific problems with "simple" chemical cause and effects. It doesn't means we we shouldn't address the very real public health crisis. But remember, Rome wasn't built in a day, and it wasn't destroyed by lead pipes. That's a myth.