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Remember that car tire degredation is a significant portion of microplastics in the environment. Investing in mass transit is as imperative as it was to move aw
by Kapura 2y ago
Remember that car tire degredation is a significant portion of microplastics in the environment. Investing in mass transit is as imperative as it was to move away from leaded gasoline.
- mythrwy 2y agoMove away from big cities and high traffic areas in the meantime is my solution.
- dymk 2y agoHope you never have to drive to the grocery store
- forgetfreeman 2y agoHope you never have to haul a family of 4 worth of groceries on a bus.
- dashundchen 2y agoI do on a bike or walking weekly, it's not that crazy. In a prewar US mid sized city, the density supports multiple grocery stores I can reach in about the same time as driving and finding parking.
- forgetfreeman 2y agoGroceries. For a family of four (4). On a bicycle. Sure. How many times a day do you make the trip?
- andrewshadura 2y agoWhat's so crazy about that? Never seen a bicycle with panniers and a basket? Or a cargo bicycle?
- forgetfreeman 2y agoI've seen what a week's worth of groceries looks like for four people and short of a rickshaw you ain't getting all of that on a bicycle with or without panniers. I'm fairly certain the respondent is coyly ignoring the headcount requirement in my original sneer.
- ta8903 2y ago>I've seen what a week's worth of groceries looks like for four people >short of a rickshaw you ain't getting all of that on a bicycle with or without panniers Four Americans, maybe.
- forgetfreeman 2y agoPfft. 56,000 calories doesn't pack but so dense unless you're routinely feeding your family pemmican.
- dashundchen 2y agoI make at least trip one trip a week. Why would I need to go every day? I may stop by a store again during the week for a smaller trip if there's something I really need, or pop to a corner store if I need to grab something like drinks for guests, but it's not out of my way. It's really not a big deal. Bike panniers can hold a ton.
- hombre_fatal 2y agoTrivial if you leave near a grocery store. If you live in most US cities, much more the suburbs, then being dependent on your vehicle to do literally anything is part of the problem. In very few places in the US can you choose to do otherwise.
- mc3301 2y ago15 minute cities is the answer.
- bilbo0s 2y agoNot only that, but if you're close to a road at all, you'll intake the micro-plastics and nano-plastics. So you really need to move away from roads. That's possible, but it's really hard to do in most developed nations. Just moving away from a city won't get you to where you need to be. Even when you get there, you have other issues. Like, food, energy, water/sewage treatment, etc. I don't think people realize how difficult it would be to get away from this particular pollutant in our environment. I mean most of us don't own 500 acres in the Brazilian, Namibian, or Ghanaian countryside that we can retreat to. Even Brazil may be too far gone at this point to be honest. And Brazil is enormous. A lot of space. The number of tolerable nations that would have unaffected areas is decreasing fast. This really is a global problem. ETA: Some remote parts of Canada and Alaska might fit the bill? Assuming you're not big on quality of life.
- idiotsecant 2y agoYou can have really very good quality of life in remote areas. You just might die before you get help if you have a heart attack or something. But the rest of the time it's great!
- mythrwy 2y agoI don't think you understand where I'm living. "Microplastic Free", no, there is no such thing right now. But I'm very far from any major roads/interstates and hundreds of miles to any big city. I didn't move out here to avoid microplastics though, it just (maybe) turned out that way. I'm actually not terribly afraid of microplastics at all, I just don't like urban environments.
- epistasis 2y agoImagine a grocery store that is within a short walking distance, such that you don't need to haul a weeks worth of groceries but can get fresh food every single day. US supermarkets are massive, take forever to buy small amounts of groceries, and even the walk to and from the car is long. A better world is possible! (If better grocery stores constitute a "better world")
- bluefirebrand 2y ago> you don't need to haul a weeks worth of groceries but can get fresh food every single day I lived that life in my 20s Turns out I don't actually want to go to the grocery store every day. I want to go once a week and stock up, which I can do thanks to inventions like the refrigerator and the automobile
- lurking_swe 2y agono judgment on you in particular, but i’m not a fan of this thought process. I believe it’s a major cause for why americans (statistically) are so obese. and i say this as an american that lives in a city but has family in the suburbs. running errands with your own two feet every day by walking, cycling, etc keeps people healthy and lean. this country has a major car problem. it’s sad. of course one can go to the gym to stay lean and healthy, but that’s even more time consuming than stopping by the store for 5 minutes on the way home, and it requires extreme motivation. Hardly an improvement i’d say.
- imp0cat 2y agoone can go to the gym And by that you mean drive to the gym, right? ;)
- bluefirebrand 2y ago> running errands with your own two feet every day by walking, cycling, etc keeps people healthy and lean. this country has a major car problem I did live this exact lifestyle in my 20s. I was definitely more active but my diet was way worse. I was closer to a lot of restaurants, and I was closer to a lot of bakeries and convenience stores and such as well. A healthy lifestyle also requires a healthy diet and city living gave me far too much easy access to snacks and junk food. A lot of "it's only 5 minutes to go buy a snack". Daily stops for coffee that often included a pasty Yeah, the walkable city does mean people are more active It doesn't necessarily mean they are much more healthy. It still requires other forms of self control (which I admit, I struggled with)
- nozzlegear 2y agoMy grocery store is literally in another town 20 miles away. I have an EV but apparently those are even worse for microplastic generation. Am I screwed?
- raddan 2y agoAn EV is objectively not worse for the environment. And virtually all vehicles contain large amounts of plastic (eg PVC). I recently heard model year 2024 vehicles are ~30% plastic by weight. I’d wait until somebody can clearly state what the demonstrated harms of microplastics are before you conclude that there’s nothing you can do. An EV reduces emissions that we KNOW are bad, and over their lifetimes, the reduction is huge compared to an ICE vehicle. If you’re worried, though, walk or bike whenever you can. Biking to grocery store is not an option for you, but you can still make a difference if you think about it. Eg, go to the store less frequently. Switch to a chest freezer for perishables. And so on. Draw up an energy budget and do the math. There is a cost to human life, sure. But you can make it work if you really care enough. You are definitely not screwed.
- shironandonon_ 2y agoDoesn’t work. It’s in the rainwater. No rainwater on earth is safe to drink. https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-62391069 https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-62391069
- mythrwy 2y agoDoes osmosis remove? Is it in all groundwater? Because I have a well. A deep one. And an osmosis system.
- card_zero 2y agoI guess the polyamide filter in that system isn't putting microplastic particles in the water? Probably not.
- idiotsecant 2y agoDo you consume drinks? Meat? Produce? All these things are chock full of their own micro plastics. It's unavoidable. We can probably reduce contamination but our children's children's children won't be free of it, not until organisms evolve to efficiently eat it. Then we'll have whole other sets of problems.
- mythrwy 2y agoDo I consume drinks? No, except water and instant coffee, no soda, no beer. Meat? Yes in small quantities and much of it comes from the local environment. I grow most of my own produce, with RO water. Yes they are unavoidable, just the plastic containers etc probably give some and I do eat candies and imported bananas and bread etc. But pretty sure I get a lot lower dose than most people. However I'm not sure it matters that much until a mechanism of actual damage is established.
- raddan 2y ago> However I'm not sure it matters that much until a mechanism of actual damage is established. This is the thing about all the microplastics articles I see popping up: they rarely include any description of harm. If they even mention it, it is only speculative, as in this article. Until I read a scientific article about real harms, I am going to regard most of the microplastics news as fearmongering. Humanity has been surrounded by vast quantities of plastic for decades; if there was a big effect, wouldn’t we have seen it by now? If it has big effects, those effects would be surprising, which means that the evidence would have to be strong. I don’t see a lot of strong evidence. If anyone reading this has a paper like this, please share.
- hammock 2y agoAnd we need more lightweight cars , not heavier, since tire wear is proportional to vehicle weight to the fourth power. Ironically, CAFE regulations and EV incentives both did the opposite
- kijin 2y ago> tire wear is proportional to vehicle weight to the fourth power. Does this mean that a bus that weighs 10 times as much as a small car will produce 10000 times as much tire dust? If it does, I'm not sure if investing in buses will reduce tire dust at all. A bus can replace a lot of cars, but 10000 is a stretch. We need more trains.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- penjelly 2y agotrams were popular in tons of places before, I understand they improved traffic significantly compared even to today, and they'd still have a positive effect now, I think. But most places shifted towards a car centric focus and we lost those.
- zamadatix 2y agoI think the root observation here comes from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fourth_power_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fourth_power_law which really talks about the inferred stress to the road for given weight on the axle, not tire wear based on vehicle weight. The above seems to be using a simplification based on passenger cars staying with 4 tires across 2 axles but how this relates to tire wear is going to be a bit more complicated when you start talking about vehicles which can have more axles, more tires per axle, and significantly larger tires. I'd believe buses have a lot of tire wear compared to an individual car but I wouldn't use that relation as proof of just how many times so.
- ethagnawl 2y agoI'm not sure why you're being down voted for suggesting a practical and fact based solution. The USA is, regrettably, not making a pivot towards public transportation anytime in the near future. So, lighter cars are one way to address this issue. You didn't expound upon your point about the unintended consequences of CAFE standards but they're very real. Instead of making smaller and more efficient sedans per the guidelines, car makers opted start making all of their vehicles "light trucks" -- 80%+ of new vehicles are SUVs or bubbly looking "crossovers" -- which are not subject to the same demanding standards. Small sedans also cost less and would require ongoing R&D to continue to meet the CAFE standards. The end result, as this thread is interested, is heavier vehicles with bigger tires and more plastic in the environment and our brains.
- hackernoops 2y ago[flagged]
- throwaway81523 2y agoHow did the amount of brain microplastic manage to double between 2016 and 2025? The amount of cars hasn't changed that much.
- JKCalhoun 2y agoUser hammock, in this thread, may have suggested an answer.
- markerz 2y agoPerhaps you're thinking our body is at equilibrium with the amount of plastic in our environment, but the reality may be that our body accumulates microplastics from the environment and they become concentrated over time. Kind of like how we can't get rid of heavy metals from our body, so eating lots of fish accumulates mercury to toxic levels. But eating fish is a conscious decision whereas microplastic exposure is an unavoidable fact of life now.
- throwaway81523 2y agoThe hope is that the subjects in both samples have about the same age distribution. If they didn't, then the statistics are dubious.
- njarboe 2y agoYou can probably reduce microplastic consumption, but it is quite a pain and more expensive. Try buying everything at the store not wrapped/bottled in plastic. This does not even work as well as you might think as many things are wrapped in plastic and then presented as if they were not. For example, breakfast sausages in the meat display at my local Whole Foods are wrapped in paper when they give it to you, but come to the store in ~1lb plastic wrapped packages.
- meindnoch 2y agoThe weight of the average car is steadily increasing though. SUVs, electrics, giant trucks, etc.
- o_nate 2y ago
- newsclues 2y agoI love breathing brake dust too!
- 7e 2y agoOr one could just mandate that tires contain only biodegradable ingredients. That seems an inevitable step since wheel isn't going away no matter what the level of public transportation is. Some public transit, like busses and some subways, use rubber tires today.
- 7e 2y agoDownvotes for suggesting biodegradable tires. What a site of wankers we have here.
- CommanderData 2y agoGovernment could force car tyre companies to invest in developing plastic free tyre alternatives? If there's no regulation then there's no will or urgency to waste money doing so.
- meindnoch 2y agoMass rail transit.
- Kapura 2y agoDidn't want to come off as too foamer ;)
- niceice 2y agoWhat percentage is that?