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I think it's pretty clear the microplastics fear-mongering doesn't have a lot of credible evidence to back it. Of course no one wants tiny plastic particles flo

I think it's pretty clear the microplastics fear-mongering doesn't have a lot of credible evidence to back it. Of course no one wants tiny plastic particles floating around the environment. But the claim here is... does it harm you? Is it toxic? How dense are the particulates per millilitre? Very little to suggest anything substantial. Just a reminder that the holistic and wellness industry that sells you detoxes for this stuff is worth 4.5 trillion dollars (more than big pharma, even). They are incentivized to drum up fear; plastics are killing you, aspartame is killing you. I've heard them claim even fresh fruit is killing you. Evidence-based decisions matter.

tedajax 2y ago
Also most microplastics in the environment are from rubber tires grinding away on road surfaces so the food packaging stuff is a little forest for the trees imo.
- AnimalMuppet 2y ago
  I don't lick the road, though. In terms of it's ability to get into my body, food packaging has a much better pathway than tires.
  - kragen 2y ago
    food packaging doesn't produce microplastics, and you inhale tire dust
    - AnimalMuppet 2y ago
      Doesn't it? Got any evidence for that claim?
      - kragen 2y ago
        no, it doesn't. no, i don't have any evidence it doesn't. if you go looking for evidence that it does, though, you won't find any evidence for that, either
        Tade0 2y ago
        Of course it does - plastics used in packaging scratch easily. That's enough to produce microplastics. Additionally polypropylene degrades under sunlight, becoming brittle. The process takes several months.
        kragen 2y ago
        oh, sure, they can produce microplastics after you take the food out. but you aren't going to get plastic dust in your lettuce the most common plastics used in packaging are pet, polypropylene, and polyethylene, which have exceptional elongation at break. when you scratch them, you don't produce microplastics; you produce a burr on the surface
        Tade0 2y ago
        You're gonna get it in your yoghurt and food packed in tupperware though, as metal utensils can and will scrape some of the plastic off. Anyway, they're already present in tap water, so your lettuce is also already infused with microplastics.
        kragen 2y ago
        that's a good point about the tap water, and you're probably right about polystyrene yogurt cups and tupperware, though i still think you won't find any evidence of it unless you do the experiment yourself
stouset 2y ago
Evidence-based decisions matter, but so does extreme caution when considering the scale and widespread impact. There was no evidence against leaded gasoline… right up until there was, and by then everyone had been breathing exponentially-increasing amounts of lead. So maybe let's be conservative when considering compounds that live permanently in the environment, are damn near impossible to remove, and are spreading widely to every part of the ecosystem yeah?
- kragen 2y ago
  there was excellent evidence against leaded gasoline even before it was commercialized. lead had been known to be toxic for two thousand years, many of the workers in the pilot tetraethyl lead plant died, and midgley (the inventor) gradually became paralyzed, probably as a result of his exposure. people used leaded gasoline to kill insects, and accidental human deaths from ingestion were fairly common there are in fact cases where people used something harmful for a long time before there was good evidence that it was harmful (examples include kohl, sassafras, trans fats, maybe asbestos, radium, twitter, and facebook) but leaded gasoline is not one of them there are very many more cases where people used something for a long time before there was good evidence about whether it was harmful, and it wasn't. almost everything ever invented falls under this rubric conservatism like yours was the default stance for thousands of years, which is why human life was impoverished and short during that time. during the 19th and 20th centuries, we took a break from it, and the result was a leap in human prosperity to previously unimaginable heights. now people want to bring it back. i'm not a fan
  - mightyham 2y ago
    >conservatism like yours was the default stance for thousands of years, which is why human life was impoverished and short during that time. The ridiculousness of this claim is basically self-evident. The obvious reason for impoverished and short life spans was a low level of technological development, not conversative social attitudes. It begs the question, how exactly could modern liberal attitudes even exist in an era that lacked the technology required to have a modern liberal society?
Dig1t 2y ago
What’s the metric for harm? It’s a fact that these chemicals behave similarly to, and bind to the same receptors as, sex hormones. It’s a proven fact that exposure to these chemicals increases sexual dysfunction during development in animal models and in humans. It’s also proven that these chemicals have made their way into every single food item and most cosmetic products we buy at the store. If you just Google for papers on phthalates and endocrine disruption, there are decades of research papers supporting it. Here’s an example of one such study in frogs and rabbits: https://cfpub.epa.gov/ncer_abstracts/index.cfm/fuseaction/display.abstractDetail/abstract_id/2238/report/F https://cfpub.epa.gov/ncer_abstracts/index.cfm/fuseaction/di... Conclusions for almost all papers like this are the same.

tedajax 2y ago

Also most microplastics in the environment are from rubber tires grinding away on road surfaces so the food packaging stuff is a little forest for the trees imo.

AnimalMuppet 2y ago
I don't lick the road, though. In terms of it's ability to get into my body, food packaging has a much better pathway than tires.
- kragen 2y ago
  food packaging doesn't produce microplastics, and you inhale tire dust
  - AnimalMuppet 2y ago
    Doesn't it? Got any evidence for that claim?
    - kragen 2y ago
      no, it doesn't. no, i don't have any evidence it doesn't. if you go looking for evidence that it does, though, you won't find any evidence for that, either
      - Tade0 2y ago
        Of course it does - plastics used in packaging scratch easily. That's enough to produce microplastics. Additionally polypropylene degrades under sunlight, becoming brittle. The process takes several months.
        kragen 2y ago
        oh, sure, they can produce microplastics after you take the food out. but you aren't going to get plastic dust in your lettuce the most common plastics used in packaging are pet, polypropylene, and polyethylene, which have exceptional elongation at break. when you scratch them, you don't produce microplastics; you produce a burr on the surface
        Tade0 2y ago
        You're gonna get it in your yoghurt and food packed in tupperware though, as metal utensils can and will scrape some of the plastic off. Anyway, they're already present in tap water, so your lettuce is also already infused with microplastics.
        kragen 2y ago
        that's a good point about the tap water, and you're probably right about polystyrene yogurt cups and tupperware, though i still think you won't find any evidence of it unless you do the experiment yourself

stouset 2y ago

Evidence-based decisions matter, but so does extreme caution when considering the scale and widespread impact. There was no evidence against leaded gasoline… right up until there was, and by then everyone had been breathing exponentially-increasing amounts of lead. So maybe let's be conservative when considering compounds that live permanently in the environment, are damn near impossible to remove, and are spreading widely to every part of the ecosystem yeah?

kragen 2y ago
there was excellent evidence against leaded gasoline even before it was commercialized. lead had been known to be toxic for two thousand years, many of the workers in the pilot tetraethyl lead plant died, and midgley (the inventor) gradually became paralyzed, probably as a result of his exposure. people used leaded gasoline to kill insects, and accidental human deaths from ingestion were fairly common there are in fact cases where people used something harmful for a long time before there was good evidence that it was harmful (examples include kohl, sassafras, trans fats, maybe asbestos, radium, twitter, and facebook) but leaded gasoline is not one of them there are very many more cases where people used something for a long time before there was good evidence about whether it was harmful, and it wasn't. almost everything ever invented falls under this rubric conservatism like yours was the default stance for thousands of years, which is why human life was impoverished and short during that time. during the 19th and 20th centuries, we took a break from it, and the result was a leap in human prosperity to previously unimaginable heights. now people want to bring it back. i'm not a fan
- mightyham 2y ago
  >conservatism like yours was the default stance for thousands of years, which is why human life was impoverished and short during that time. The ridiculousness of this claim is basically self-evident. The obvious reason for impoverished and short life spans was a low level of technological development, not conversative social attitudes. It begs the question, how exactly could modern liberal attitudes even exist in an era that lacked the technology required to have a modern liberal society?

Dig1t 2y ago

What’s the metric for harm? It’s a fact that these chemicals behave similarly to, and bind to the same receptors as, sex hormones. It’s a proven fact that exposure to these chemicals increases sexual dysfunction during development in animal models and in humans. It’s also proven that these chemicals have made their way into every single food item and most cosmetic products we buy at the store. If you just Google for papers on phthalates and endocrine disruption, there are decades of research papers supporting it. Here’s an example of one such study in frogs and rabbits: https://cfpub.epa.gov/ncer_abstracts/index.cfm/fuseaction/display.abstractDetail/abstract_id/2238/report/F https://cfpub.epa.gov/ncer_abstracts/index.cfm/fuseaction/di... Conclusions for almost all papers like this are the same.