2 ms·

> "No. Demographics can show you with extremely small error bars the aggregate health effects of smoking and (heavy) drinking. If there was an effect of that ma

> "No. Demographics can show you with extremely small error bars the aggregate health effects of smoking and (heavy) drinking. If there was an effect of that magnitude from other variables, we'd know for sure. Microplastics and pthalates and other related contaminants are real, and deserve study." How can you be so confident that a) the effects would be so clear, and b) we'd know for sure the cause of those effects was microplastics? We have an increase in early onset cancer, since the 1990s, more than can be explained by just earlier detection: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41571-022-00672-8 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41571-022-00672-8 and "There is a mysterious epidemic of kidney disease called chronic kidney disease of unknown etiology (CKDu) that is occurring in many parts of the world. Unrelated to known risk factors such as diabetes and hypertension, CKDu mostly affects the young and middle-aged" - https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8437007/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8437007/ and "Driven principally by aging [...] For most of human history, Parkinson has been a rare disorder. However, demography and the by-products of industrialization have now created a Parkinson pandemic" - https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/30584159/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/30584159/ And the obvious ones like heart disease - if you can claim a group of diseases are caused by "old age" and another group by "obesity and bad diet" - would we know if microplastics were a cause, an exacerbator, a trigger?

ajross 3y ago
None of those substantiate an effect of similar magnitude to smoking, though. Those are all (pretty much by definition, since it's newly-published work) detections that just barely rise above the threshold needed to be confident enough to publish. Needless to say if we were living 10 years less[1] because of some unknown contaminant in our environment, we'd know. As always, xkcd makes the point best: https://xkcd.com/882/ https://xkcd.com/882/ The world isn't falling apart. You're just digging around to find enough "maybes" to P-hack your way into believing it. [1] About the right order of magnitude for smoking all by itself.

ajross 3y ago

None of those substantiate an effect of similar magnitude to smoking, though. Those are all (pretty much by definition, since it's newly-published work) detections that just barely rise above the threshold needed to be confident enough to publish. Needless to say if we were living 10 years less[1] because of some unknown contaminant in our environment, we'd know. As always, xkcd makes the point best: https://xkcd.com/882/ https://xkcd.com/882/ The world isn't falling apart. You're just digging around to find enough "maybes" to P-hack your way into believing it. [1] About the right order of magnitude for smoking all by itself.