8 ms·

Correlation between fecal microplastics and inflammatory bowel disease (2021)

123 points by lxm 2y ago

jtbayly 2y ago
I think this is the first clear correlation I’ve seen between microplastics and any health issues. I’ve seen lots of guesses and assumptions about how they must be bad for us, but I’ve not seen anything like this. And of course, this is just a correlation so far. Causation hasn’t been proved. Have I missed others?
- vngzs 2y ago
  Experiments with human cells and mice have shown oxidative stress, neurotoxicity, reproductive toxicity, carcinogencity, and altered metabolism. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10151227/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10151227/ If you ask me, plastic is the new lead.
  - doctorpangloss 2y ago
    All my food interacts with plastic. I can go to Rainbow Grocery, and they are just doing me the favor of disposing of the plastic packaging somewhere else in the supply chain. Much plastic dust in my environment is from car tires. Both my neighbors solve problems with their roofs with disintegrating, $50 plastic tarps from Home Depot, filling my back yard with plastic. Multi million dollar homes in San Francisco! What am I really supposed to do? Speaking of lead, it's not like the city has forced anyone to replace the exterior lead paint or lead pipes. You are right, but if it's lead, it's bad news. The problem isn't that pollution is unknown, the problem is that the middle-aged members of my community, maybe every community, fucking suck as soon as something costs them a fucking dime.
    - b112 2y ago
      the middle-aged members of my community There's no need for prejudice, be it skin colour or age. Cheap and corner cutting exists across the entire spectrum of humanity.
      - spigottoday 2y ago
        Cheap and cutting corners might be better described as externalizing costs. As we know increasing shareholer value trumps all. That being said our civilization would have to roll back to something like the 1800s level of technology. I'm not advocating for this, medicine and transportation can not exist without plastic, but our clothing furniture and rugs and other items don't have to be. And plastic recycling doesn't have to be a joke. But we can't expect shareholders to interalize those costs and not get as rich as fast as possible, can we? After all it will be someone else who will be affected by the wanton distraction of the environment.
    - VancouverMan 2y ago
      Have you talked to your neighbors and offered to cover the cost of replacing their roofs, so they no longer need to use those tarps that are causing you problems? It shouldn't be that much of a financial burden on you if it'd only cost a "dime" or two to fix the problem properly.
  - hansvm 2y ago
    To be fair, if you poke a cell with sugars, amino acids, vitamin C, and all sorts of other essential nutrients you'll also see signs of oxidative stress, neurotoxicity, reproductive toxicity, carcinogenicity, and altered metabolism. In some ways it's the counterpart of "bullets cure cancer in a petri dish." Plastics are still probably bad (with a prior that most synthetic chemicals we're exposed to are known to be toxic and not "proven" to be so and actually banned for 20-100 years), but a cellular study showing that plastics damage those cells isn't very convincing on its own. Your linked study is a little broader, but it mostly summarizes studies with grandiose ideas or those summarizing those sorts of "poke a cell and find it doesn't like being poked" experiments I initially derided.
    - g15jv2dp 2y ago
      Do you think the people who performed the studies didn't think of that?
      - RandomCitizen12 2y ago
        Do you think that everyone who ever released a "bullets cure cancer in a petri dish" study didn't think of that? Whether or not they did, it's still a necessary part of the discussion.
      - xkcd-sucks 2y ago
        They probably did think of that, and they did it too: Science as it is practiced in the real world. This sort of stuff is related to our whining about replication crises, careerism, etc. But it can have its utility too, it's just more "defense from morons" instead "advancing the field". Or more neutrally filling in very predictable gaps in knowledge, like if you got something really unexpected but this stuff is all bog standard unhappy cells
  - Zenzero 2y ago
    It's worse than lead. Our planet has irreversiblely been polluted at so many levels of the food chain that it will be a wonder how future humans will figure out how to clean it all up. I'm convinced that at this point we have signed every lifeform up for an evolutionary pressure, and future generations will likely be selected for their resistance to whatever collection of illnesses are ultimately linked to microplastics.
- kelipso 2y ago
  Two months ago: An analysis of artery-clogging plaques in 257 patients found that the presence of these microplastics was associated with a roughly quadrupled risk of heart attack, stroke or death, researchers report March 7 in the New England Journal of Medicine. https://www.sciencenews.org/article/microplastics-nanoplastics-heart-attacks-strokes-health https://www.sciencenews.org/article/microplastics-nanoplasti...
- post_below 2y ago
  Some examples off the top of my head: - Many plastics contain known endocrine disrupters like BPA that have been shown to get into people's bodies and correlate with negative health impacts such as certain cancers, sex organ abnormalities and infertility - Microplastics can damage cardiovascular tissue and correlate with heart attack, stroke and premature death. - Microplastics correlate with infertility in men. - Microplastics absorb heavy metals in the environment and can then transport them into the food chain. Heavy metals of course having many established negative health impacts. These are just some examples, a quick search should get you many more (along with the sources on the above).
- coldtea 2y ago
  I saw different guys die from a piano falling on their head a couple of times, and there are some studies guessing or hinting at the 500kg piano affecting their health, but I'm not sure the piano falling on them caused their death. Could just be a correlation, which as we all know is not causation, maybe it was what they ate that die or something. Piano falling sounds benign after all, so unless we have 100% settled science on the matter, let's not jump into worrying!
  - TeMPOraL 2y ago
    Fortunately, microplastics seem to be more like dihydrogen monoxide. Great many studies show how DHMO is toxic and dangerous at both cellular and macro levels. This is a problem, because DHMO is even more ubiquitous in the environment than microplastics. There's kilograms of it in you and me right now!
    - coldtea 2y ago
      Yeah, microplastics, an industrial byproduct, are totally like dihydrogen monoxide, something essential for life, which we and all other species, evolved for billions of years to need for basic functioning. I mean, this kind of thoughtless rooting for any tech and tech byproductto the level of this comparison, similar to the chavinistic "my country, right or wrong" , is like those who were consuming radioactive stuff in the early 20th century to prove "it's completely safe". and "any tech is always good" is about as much scientific as flat-earth.
- ZeroGravitas 2y ago
  Hannah Ritchie, of OurWorldinData, has a new book and looks at various problems from a data/science perspective. Her take on microplastics was that there wasn't currently enough science on this to state there was a problem big enough to outweigh the benefits of plastics, but that we should probably be doing that science so we can be sure either way.
BaculumMeumEst 2y ago
I'm expecting that we will be hearing a lot of correlations about microplastics in the coming years. I am not necessarily expecting that they will hold up under scrutiny. I don't think present day academia is incentivized to be accurate, representative of the truth, or helpful in any way to the public, and the fact that this study is paywalled is reinforcing that belief.
- zug_zug 2y ago
  Yeah, there will be some incorrect papers. But there are errors in the other direction too. How many deleterious effects will never be proven scientifically because it's incredibly exhausting to get thousands of participants and quantify their subjective wellbeing in a controlled way?
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- squigz 2y ago
  You specify present-day academia. Do you feel as though there was a point in the past where this wasn't true? If so, when, and why do you think it's changed?
  - Covzire 2y ago
    My guess is pre-Moon Landings, pre-Peer Review and pre-DoEd.
    - squigz 2y ago
      What does the moon landing have to do with it?
      - Covzire 2y ago
        Nothing, it's a reference to the period not the event itself. Something went wrong in Academia sometime between the 60's and 80s, to the point where papers today routinely get both peer-approved and simultaneously can't be reproduced. Something is very wrong with our ethics.
zug_zug 2y ago
Wouldn't that be ironic, if after years of doubting and mocking the proliferation of food sensitivities it turned out it was because there was literal plastic in us.
ziggy_star 2y ago
The correlation does not mean the microplastics are the thing causing IBD. It probably means they are exasperating it for various reasons. Goddamit. Incidentally so do things like poppy seeds. I got hit with this at 10 years old. Suspiciously to me after returning from a year in the US, before that there was no sign of any problems. IBD presents all over the world and I'm guessing predates the microplastics phenomena. The other interesting correlation I know of is a lack of exposure to dirty things as a toddler. I've sort of given up any hope that it will be figured out in my lifetime despite occasional wiggles of hope from articles like this. Generally in the community people theorize all kinds of things about diet and some are lucky to reach and stay in remission by eating a narrow diet that agrees with them - but what exactly that is varies wildly across individuals. I've never found a common thread.
- tejohnso 2y ago
  > The correlation does not mean the microplastics are the thing causing IBS. It probably means they are exasperating it for various reasons. As mentioned in the abstract, it could also be that IBD exacerbates the retention of MPs.
- teekert 2y ago
  I’m no expert but is fecal transplant not an option? I think there is a link with the microbiome, right?
  - ziggy_star 2y ago
    That is a thing. I met a mother-daughter duo, they'd travel with a little bag and disappear to do that and it wasn't a big deal and they claimed results. Really no idea, there are quite of few of these potential treatments, people actively try and hack it. It depends on the specific situation what is appropriate to try. I'm in full remission for a very long time already against all odds. It completely ruined my childhood and I'm thankful for everyday and live with it as a sword of Damocles like so many others.
  - jessriedel 2y ago
    There are many on-going studies but so far none have found a protocol that clearly and reliably improves IBD. Many people find fecal transplants compelling because they seem safe and have a plausible (albeit vague) mechanism of action, a gastroenterologist emphasized to me: at least one (elderly) person has died from a fecal transplant and another got dangerously sick; they are not without risk.
ce4 2y ago
Needs a (2021) tag.
- dang 2y ago
  Added. Thanks!
ExMachina73 2y ago
It's tires. Millions of cars and their tire wear for literally the last hundred years. How can it not be in our bodies and causing issues at this point.
- tppiotrowski 2y ago
  It has to be PVC pipes. Once you cut one with a mitre saw and see all the plastic dust in the pipe that gets washed into the nearest water source Or the replacement of wool with polyester and nylon over the last 100 years Tires are a good thing to look into but a lot of things have change drastically in the last 100 years...
  - TaylorAlexander 2y ago
    Synthetic fibers has to be a big one.
- willy_k 2y ago
  That’s a factor for sure, especially with the finding (that was posted last week on HN) that there are tire compounds in leafy greens. But it’s almost certainly also due to the use of various plastics in everything; even if you’re drinking from a glass bottle it most likely passed through plastic at some point. I also entertain the idea that the “feminization” that appears to have occurred since the 50’s is due to (micro)plastics and PFAS being literal ligands of the estrogen receptor, and their well documented endocrine disrupting effects. I recall some study found that 100% of males tested had microplastics in their testes.
- nostromo 2y ago
  It’s clothes, linens, and bedding too. People use synthetic fabric sheets, pillow cases, not to mention mattresses. Most pillows are filled with plastic. We cover our bodies in plastic, then wash our clothes and microplastics enter the wastewater system.
- newsclues 2y ago
  From the replies maybe it’s everything? Food, water, medicine, homes, clothing, everything is plastic!
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
dang 2y ago
Discussed at the time: Microplastics in food and drink may be fueling a dramatic rise in bowel diseases - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29742132 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29742132 - Dec 2021 (13 comments)
TaylorAlexander 2y ago
As an engineer that relies on plastics in my product design, I’ve been wondering more and more if we’re creating the next global environmental disaster after climate change with our use of plastics. I recently saw a video of someone restoring a 100 year old vegetable shredder, and with some rust removal and fresh paint the thing was good as new. Of course it was all metal. Then I looked at Amazon for vegetable shredders and they’re almost all plastic. We could make our products out of more metal or all metal. Even so-called exotic metals like titanium are relatively abundant, and new manufacturing processes are lowering the cost of those parts. But we use so many plastic films that get used once and can’t be recycled, as have so many plastic products that fall apart and get sent to landfills because recycling is kind of a lie anyway. If you go to a big box store like Target, right at the entrance you see shelves of cheap plastic junk meant as some sort of novelty to be used once or twice and then forgotten and thrown out. Companies like Shien sell the cheapes polyester clothing possible which falls apart in to pieces which quickly become microplastics. EVs are supposed to save us from climate change but in doing so they’re delivering us faster wearing tires releasing more microparticles in to our environment. And I suspect that if we look at production, it’s accelerating. So just like when atmospheric carbon passed 300ppm and we said “what happens at 400ppm and higher”, what happens when ambient microplastics double, triple, or quadruple current levels? What would it look like to cut plastic production today? How could we even prepare to do that?
- supportengineer 2y ago
  I spend a lot of time reading /r/collapse, but I am pretty sure there won't be a "next global environmental disaster after climate change".
  - luckman212 2y ago
    That's good news! I don't think I could stomach another global disaster after the climate fails. /s
  - TaylorAlexander 2y ago
    Well maybe but obviously that subreddit is going to be biased towards stories of collapse, rather than telling the whole story. Those stories are terrifying and I’m also of the opinion that things are worse than we realize, but I also think that despite the many human and environmental catastrophes that climate change will continue to cause, society will persist.
talkingtab 2y ago
One problem I see is the way the choice of takeaway food vs home cooking is framed. Think popcorn. You can buy a bag of pre-popped popcorn - I guess that is take away. You can make popcorn at home putting a package in the microwave. Or you can put some popcorn kernels in a pot with oil and heat it. My guess is the microplastics from the microwave popcorn would be as high or higher than the bag or pre-popped popcorn. And I would guess that pop-it-yourself would expose you to much less. But the "home cooked" vs take away doesn't really work? Is that right?
- radicaldreamer 2y ago
  I think there are special cases here like popcorn, but for the vast majority of food, home cooked likely means less exposure to plastics (packaging), additives, excessive oil, less healthy oils, etc. Restaurant food tends to evolve to taste especially good or last a couple of days longer than usual or compete with other restaurant food etc., all of which is not desirable at home (or even worth optimizing for).
- r00fus 2y ago
  Microwave popcorn is an abomination: https://www.uclahealth.org/news/article/eating-microwave-popcorn-increases-the-level-of-pfas-in-body https://www.uclahealth.org/news/article/eating-microwave-pop... When they were old enough (like 6yo) I taught my kids to pop their own popcorn over the oven. 1 bag of kernels (dozens of servings) = the cost of a 6-pack of microwave popcorn, and the time it takes to pop isn't that much more. Plus you can salt/flavor them how you like - our house favorite is curry powder/garlic powder/olive oil.
refurb 2y ago
So healthy people had 28 particles per gram and unhealthy people 42 particles per gram? Where is the statistical analysis? This is usually in the abstract. Looking at how they controlled for confounding factors I see one question on diet “Do you usually cook at home or eat take away?”. I think I’m going to put this in the “low quality” research bucket.

123 points by lxm 2y ago

I think this is the first clear correlation I’ve seen between microplastics and any health issues. I’ve seen lots of guesses and assumptions about how they must be bad for us, but I’ve not seen anything like this. And of course, this is just a correlation so far. Causation hasn’t been proved. Have I missed others?

vngzs 2y ago
Experiments with human cells and mice have shown oxidative stress, neurotoxicity, reproductive toxicity, carcinogencity, and altered metabolism. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10151227/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10151227/ If you ask me, plastic is the new lead.
- doctorpangloss 2y ago
  All my food interacts with plastic. I can go to Rainbow Grocery, and they are just doing me the favor of disposing of the plastic packaging somewhere else in the supply chain. Much plastic dust in my environment is from car tires. Both my neighbors solve problems with their roofs with disintegrating, $50 plastic tarps from Home Depot, filling my back yard with plastic. Multi million dollar homes in San Francisco! What am I really supposed to do? Speaking of lead, it's not like the city has forced anyone to replace the exterior lead paint or lead pipes. You are right, but if it's lead, it's bad news. The problem isn't that pollution is unknown, the problem is that the middle-aged members of my community, maybe every community, fucking suck as soon as something costs them a fucking dime.
  - b112 2y ago
    the middle-aged members of my community There's no need for prejudice, be it skin colour or age. Cheap and corner cutting exists across the entire spectrum of humanity.
    - spigottoday 2y ago
      Cheap and cutting corners might be better described as externalizing costs. As we know increasing shareholer value trumps all. That being said our civilization would have to roll back to something like the 1800s level of technology. I'm not advocating for this, medicine and transportation can not exist without plastic, but our clothing furniture and rugs and other items don't have to be. And plastic recycling doesn't have to be a joke. But we can't expect shareholders to interalize those costs and not get as rich as fast as possible, can we? After all it will be someone else who will be affected by the wanton distraction of the environment.
  - VancouverMan 2y ago
    Have you talked to your neighbors and offered to cover the cost of replacing their roofs, so they no longer need to use those tarps that are causing you problems? It shouldn't be that much of a financial burden on you if it'd only cost a "dime" or two to fix the problem properly.
- hansvm 2y ago
  To be fair, if you poke a cell with sugars, amino acids, vitamin C, and all sorts of other essential nutrients you'll also see signs of oxidative stress, neurotoxicity, reproductive toxicity, carcinogenicity, and altered metabolism. In some ways it's the counterpart of "bullets cure cancer in a petri dish." Plastics are still probably bad (with a prior that most synthetic chemicals we're exposed to are known to be toxic and not "proven" to be so and actually banned for 20-100 years), but a cellular study showing that plastics damage those cells isn't very convincing on its own. Your linked study is a little broader, but it mostly summarizes studies with grandiose ideas or those summarizing those sorts of "poke a cell and find it doesn't like being poked" experiments I initially derided.
  - g15jv2dp 2y ago
    Do you think the people who performed the studies didn't think of that?
    - RandomCitizen12 2y ago
      Do you think that everyone who ever released a "bullets cure cancer in a petri dish" study didn't think of that? Whether or not they did, it's still a necessary part of the discussion.
    - xkcd-sucks 2y ago
      They probably did think of that, and they did it too: Science as it is practiced in the real world. This sort of stuff is related to our whining about replication crises, careerism, etc. But it can have its utility too, it's just more "defense from morons" instead "advancing the field". Or more neutrally filling in very predictable gaps in knowledge, like if you got something really unexpected but this stuff is all bog standard unhappy cells
- Zenzero 2y ago
  It's worse than lead. Our planet has irreversiblely been polluted at so many levels of the food chain that it will be a wonder how future humans will figure out how to clean it all up. I'm convinced that at this point we have signed every lifeform up for an evolutionary pressure, and future generations will likely be selected for their resistance to whatever collection of illnesses are ultimately linked to microplastics.
kelipso 2y ago
Two months ago: An analysis of artery-clogging plaques in 257 patients found that the presence of these microplastics was associated with a roughly quadrupled risk of heart attack, stroke or death, researchers report March 7 in the New England Journal of Medicine. https://www.sciencenews.org/article/microplastics-nanoplastics-heart-attacks-strokes-health https://www.sciencenews.org/article/microplastics-nanoplasti...
post_below 2y ago
Some examples off the top of my head: - Many plastics contain known endocrine disrupters like BPA that have been shown to get into people's bodies and correlate with negative health impacts such as certain cancers, sex organ abnormalities and infertility - Microplastics can damage cardiovascular tissue and correlate with heart attack, stroke and premature death. - Microplastics correlate with infertility in men. - Microplastics absorb heavy metals in the environment and can then transport them into the food chain. Heavy metals of course having many established negative health impacts. These are just some examples, a quick search should get you many more (along with the sources on the above).
coldtea 2y ago
I saw different guys die from a piano falling on their head a couple of times, and there are some studies guessing or hinting at the 500kg piano affecting their health, but I'm not sure the piano falling on them caused their death. Could just be a correlation, which as we all know is not causation, maybe it was what they ate that die or something. Piano falling sounds benign after all, so unless we have 100% settled science on the matter, let's not jump into worrying!
- TeMPOraL 2y ago
  Fortunately, microplastics seem to be more like dihydrogen monoxide. Great many studies show how DHMO is toxic and dangerous at both cellular and macro levels. This is a problem, because DHMO is even more ubiquitous in the environment than microplastics. There's kilograms of it in you and me right now!
  - coldtea 2y ago
    Yeah, microplastics, an industrial byproduct, are totally like dihydrogen monoxide, something essential for life, which we and all other species, evolved for billions of years to need for basic functioning. I mean, this kind of thoughtless rooting for any tech and tech byproductto the level of this comparison, similar to the chavinistic "my country, right or wrong" , is like those who were consuming radioactive stuff in the early 20th century to prove "it's completely safe". and "any tech is always good" is about as much scientific as flat-earth.
ZeroGravitas 2y ago
Hannah Ritchie, of OurWorldinData, has a new book and looks at various problems from a data/science perspective. Her take on microplastics was that there wasn't currently enough science on this to state there was a problem big enough to outweigh the benefits of plastics, but that we should probably be doing that science so we can be sure either way.

BaculumMeumEst 2y ago

I'm expecting that we will be hearing a lot of correlations about microplastics in the coming years. I am not necessarily expecting that they will hold up under scrutiny. I don't think present day academia is incentivized to be accurate, representative of the truth, or helpful in any way to the public, and the fact that this study is paywalled is reinforcing that belief.

zug_zug 2y ago
Yeah, there will be some incorrect papers. But there are errors in the other direction too. How many deleterious effects will never be proven scientifically because it's incredibly exhausting to get thousands of participants and quantify their subjective wellbeing in a controlled way?
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
squigz 2y ago
You specify present-day academia. Do you feel as though there was a point in the past where this wasn't true? If so, when, and why do you think it's changed?
- Covzire 2y ago
  My guess is pre-Moon Landings, pre-Peer Review and pre-DoEd.
  - squigz 2y ago
    What does the moon landing have to do with it?
    - Covzire 2y ago
      Nothing, it's a reference to the period not the event itself. Something went wrong in Academia sometime between the 60's and 80s, to the point where papers today routinely get both peer-approved and simultaneously can't be reproduced. Something is very wrong with our ethics.

zug_zug 2y ago

Wouldn't that be ironic, if after years of doubting and mocking the proliferation of food sensitivities it turned out it was because there was literal plastic in us.

ziggy_star 2y ago

The correlation does not mean the microplastics are the thing causing IBD. It probably means they are exasperating it for various reasons. Goddamit. Incidentally so do things like poppy seeds. I got hit with this at 10 years old. Suspiciously to me after returning from a year in the US, before that there was no sign of any problems. IBD presents all over the world and I'm guessing predates the microplastics phenomena. The other interesting correlation I know of is a lack of exposure to dirty things as a toddler. I've sort of given up any hope that it will be figured out in my lifetime despite occasional wiggles of hope from articles like this. Generally in the community people theorize all kinds of things about diet and some are lucky to reach and stay in remission by eating a narrow diet that agrees with them - but what exactly that is varies wildly across individuals. I've never found a common thread.

tejohnso 2y ago
> The correlation does not mean the microplastics are the thing causing IBS. It probably means they are exasperating it for various reasons. As mentioned in the abstract, it could also be that IBD exacerbates the retention of MPs.
teekert 2y ago
I’m no expert but is fecal transplant not an option? I think there is a link with the microbiome, right?
- ziggy_star 2y ago
  That is a thing. I met a mother-daughter duo, they'd travel with a little bag and disappear to do that and it wasn't a big deal and they claimed results. Really no idea, there are quite of few of these potential treatments, people actively try and hack it. It depends on the specific situation what is appropriate to try. I'm in full remission for a very long time already against all odds. It completely ruined my childhood and I'm thankful for everyday and live with it as a sword of Damocles like so many others.
- jessriedel 2y ago
  There are many on-going studies but so far none have found a protocol that clearly and reliably improves IBD. Many people find fecal transplants compelling because they seem safe and have a plausible (albeit vague) mechanism of action, a gastroenterologist emphasized to me: at least one (elderly) person has died from a fecal transplant and another got dangerously sick; they are not without risk.

ce4 2y ago

Needs a (2021) tag.

dang 2y ago
Added. Thanks!

ExMachina73 2y ago

It's tires. Millions of cars and their tire wear for literally the last hundred years. How can it not be in our bodies and causing issues at this point.

tppiotrowski 2y ago
It has to be PVC pipes. Once you cut one with a mitre saw and see all the plastic dust in the pipe that gets washed into the nearest water source Or the replacement of wool with polyester and nylon over the last 100 years Tires are a good thing to look into but a lot of things have change drastically in the last 100 years...
- TaylorAlexander 2y ago
  Synthetic fibers has to be a big one.
willy_k 2y ago
That’s a factor for sure, especially with the finding (that was posted last week on HN) that there are tire compounds in leafy greens. But it’s almost certainly also due to the use of various plastics in everything; even if you’re drinking from a glass bottle it most likely passed through plastic at some point. I also entertain the idea that the “feminization” that appears to have occurred since the 50’s is due to (micro)plastics and PFAS being literal ligands of the estrogen receptor, and their well documented endocrine disrupting effects. I recall some study found that 100% of males tested had microplastics in their testes.
nostromo 2y ago
It’s clothes, linens, and bedding too. People use synthetic fabric sheets, pillow cases, not to mention mattresses. Most pillows are filled with plastic. We cover our bodies in plastic, then wash our clothes and microplastics enter the wastewater system.
newsclues 2y ago
From the replies maybe it’s everything? Food, water, medicine, homes, clothing, everything is plastic!

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

dang 2y ago

Discussed at the time: Microplastics in food and drink may be fueling a dramatic rise in bowel diseases - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29742132 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29742132 - Dec 2021 (13 comments)

TaylorAlexander 2y ago

As an engineer that relies on plastics in my product design, I’ve been wondering more and more if we’re creating the next global environmental disaster after climate change with our use of plastics. I recently saw a video of someone restoring a 100 year old vegetable shredder, and with some rust removal and fresh paint the thing was good as new. Of course it was all metal. Then I looked at Amazon for vegetable shredders and they’re almost all plastic. We could make our products out of more metal or all metal. Even so-called exotic metals like titanium are relatively abundant, and new manufacturing processes are lowering the cost of those parts. But we use so many plastic films that get used once and can’t be recycled, as have so many plastic products that fall apart and get sent to landfills because recycling is kind of a lie anyway. If you go to a big box store like Target, right at the entrance you see shelves of cheap plastic junk meant as some sort of novelty to be used once or twice and then forgotten and thrown out. Companies like Shien sell the cheapes polyester clothing possible which falls apart in to pieces which quickly become microplastics. EVs are supposed to save us from climate change but in doing so they’re delivering us faster wearing tires releasing more microparticles in to our environment. And I suspect that if we look at production, it’s accelerating. So just like when atmospheric carbon passed 300ppm and we said “what happens at 400ppm and higher”, what happens when ambient microplastics double, triple, or quadruple current levels? What would it look like to cut plastic production today? How could we even prepare to do that?

supportengineer 2y ago
I spend a lot of time reading /r/collapse, but I am pretty sure there won't be a "next global environmental disaster after climate change".
- luckman212 2y ago
  That's good news! I don't think I could stomach another global disaster after the climate fails. /s
- TaylorAlexander 2y ago
  Well maybe but obviously that subreddit is going to be biased towards stories of collapse, rather than telling the whole story. Those stories are terrifying and I’m also of the opinion that things are worse than we realize, but I also think that despite the many human and environmental catastrophes that climate change will continue to cause, society will persist.

talkingtab 2y ago

One problem I see is the way the choice of takeaway food vs home cooking is framed. Think popcorn. You can buy a bag of pre-popped popcorn - I guess that is take away. You can make popcorn at home putting a package in the microwave. Or you can put some popcorn kernels in a pot with oil and heat it. My guess is the microplastics from the microwave popcorn would be as high or higher than the bag or pre-popped popcorn. And I would guess that pop-it-yourself would expose you to much less. But the "home cooked" vs take away doesn't really work? Is that right?

radicaldreamer 2y ago
I think there are special cases here like popcorn, but for the vast majority of food, home cooked likely means less exposure to plastics (packaging), additives, excessive oil, less healthy oils, etc. Restaurant food tends to evolve to taste especially good or last a couple of days longer than usual or compete with other restaurant food etc., all of which is not desirable at home (or even worth optimizing for).
r00fus 2y ago
Microwave popcorn is an abomination: https://www.uclahealth.org/news/article/eating-microwave-popcorn-increases-the-level-of-pfas-in-body https://www.uclahealth.org/news/article/eating-microwave-pop... When they were old enough (like 6yo) I taught my kids to pop their own popcorn over the oven. 1 bag of kernels (dozens of servings) = the cost of a 6-pack of microwave popcorn, and the time it takes to pop isn't that much more. Plus you can salt/flavor them how you like - our house favorite is curry powder/garlic powder/olive oil.

refurb 2y ago

So healthy people had 28 particles per gram and unhealthy people 42 particles per gram? Where is the statistical analysis? This is usually in the abstract. Looking at how they controlled for confounding factors I see one question on diet “Do you usually cook at home or eat take away?”. I think I’m going to put this in the “low quality” research bucket.