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Okay - newsflash. Microplastics are everywhere already. In the water you drink from tap. In the wild caught (or farmed) fish you eat. Soon we’ll be told they ar
by sheepscreek 1y ago
Okay - newsflash. Microplastics are everywhere already. In the water you drink from tap. In the wild caught (or farmed) fish you eat. Soon we’ll be told they are also present in the fruits and vegetables we eat, maybe even in milk and eggs! Pretty sure meat and chicken already contain them to varying degrees.
So yeah, sure, there are microplastics in drinks in glass bottles. But to say they contain “more” microplastics than plastic containers sounds like the BS concocted by packaging lobby.
Here’s a fun fact: did you know that a good RO system can filter out most microplastics from the tap water, but it also releases some (of its own) into the filtered water! We really dug ourselves into a big hole by using plastics for just about everything.
- ASalazarMX 1y agoThe comforts of modern life will take a very significant hit if we really want to undo our polluting way of life. It can be done, but many people will vote with their wallets to keep those comforts as long as possible, and companies will fight to earn that profit as long as they can. I think nothing short of a global catastrophe will change people's minds.
- wpollock 1y ago> I think nothing short of a global catastrophe will change people's minds. You mean like global warming and how the climate change catastrophe we are experiencing has changed human behavior to stop polluting? <sarcastic mode> I can't imagine that anything will change the minds of the majority of people to the point where they drastically change their lifestyles.
- ASalazarMX 1y agoWell, it's not a catastrophe until it affects you. It needs to severely hit a critical mass of the population in developed countries; and by that time it may be too late. Anything less than critical mass can be swept under the rug by governments until your term is over.
- sorcerer-mar 1y agoThis is why we make governments, to solve coordination problems.
- card_zero 1y agoIt's not usually an option, whether to have a government or not. And when it's deliberate, the motivation is invariably protection from somebody else's government.
- Loughla 1y agoThe nice things about micro plastic is that it'll be slow and steady. So there's not a good chance of a catastrophe! Pretty sweet!
- grugagag 1y agoIm sure the concentration of microplastics is going to go up. Right now we’re talking just about microplastics but soon we’ll see stats showing how steady it’s accumulating everywhere.
- sheepscreek 1y agoOr a really solid better-in-every-way yet ecologically sound alternative. Then again, the battle is not on one turf - we need alternatives for a whole host of plastics and synthetic plastic like compounds (nylon, rayon, Teflon and friends…). Think PVC pipes, the rubbery insulation on wires, tires (which can have nylon and other synthetic materials other than rubber), high quality ropes/harnesses, nets, clothing of-course - the list is endless and each use case is unique. So what we might see is - an early adoption in some industries and use-cases and a slower adoption in others while better materials are invented/discovered. On a brighter note, with all the kick-ass compute we’ll have in triple digit billion dollar AI facilities, that opens up scope for new discoveries in science. Hopefully, accelerating its pace.
- zo1 1y agoWe can buy ourselves a huge amount of time if we just stopped letting countries dump metric millions of tonnes of plastic into bodies of water for them to be endlessly ground-down into micro-sizes. As it is now, we're watching like deer in headlights, as the third-world pollutes the entire world with plastic. Micro-plastics and forever chemicals will be this century's Lead.
- illiac786 1y agoDo you have any reference for this? My understanding is that the bigger consumer of plastic are first world countries, by far. And since decades.
- zo1 1y agohttps://www.weforum.org/stories/2018/06/90-of-plastic-polluting-our-oceans-comes-from-just-10-rivers/ https://www.weforum.org/stories/2018/06/90-of-plastic-pollut... And the paper: https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acs.est.7b02368 https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acs.est.7b02368
- illiac786 1y agoI understand where the plastic ends, I am saying that is the not who where it is bought and thrown away. Developed countries consume (buy and throw away) most of the plastic. Then, on top of it, they ship their trash to third world countries.
- chneu 1y ago>We really dug ourselves into a big hole by using plastics for just about everything. We should be moving to ban plastics in consumer goods but because they have become so ubiquitous there is basically zero chance of that ever happening
- grafmax 1y agoA long as we continue to prioritize industry over general well-being, then yes.
- sva_ 1y ago> Soon we’ll be told they are also present in the fruits and vegetables Old news https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0013935120305703 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S001393512... > maybe even in milk https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-021-03458-7 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-021-03458-7 https://journals.lww.com/kleu/fulltext/2024/17020/qualitative_and_quantitative_analysis_of.11.aspx https://journals.lww.com/kleu/fulltext/2024/17020/qualitativ... > eggs https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/35930965/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/35930965/
- userbinator 1y agoJust like radio waves, which had (and somewhat still has) the same fearmongering for a while. And yet we survived -- or rather, significantly improved our living standards. Pretty sure meat and chicken already contain them to varying degrees. Ironically, biological structures are made of the same or very similar polymers as synthetic plastics.
- sorcerer-mar 1y agoHow much do you know about bioaccumulation and endocrine disruption as it pertains to microplastics?
- userbinator 1y agoA century of improved living conditions.... which is going to start regressing thanks to this idiotic paranoia.
- sorcerer-mar 1y agoAh, sorry, I was excited to hear this opinion from someone who has any clue what they're talking about. The search continues!
- guelo 1y ago> BS concocted by packaging lobby It's not BS. This is a government lab. The scientists clearly identified the source of the extra microplastics, the paint on the bottle caps.
- davidcox143 1y ago> a good RO system can filter out most microplastics from the tap water, but it also releases some (of its own) into the filtered water Home distillation is cheaper than RO (esp. if you have solar) and doesn't release microplastics. Just remineralize with a high-quality salt
- ruph123 1y agoDo you have any concrete products you can recommend for home tap water distillation? Searching for such a solution mostly yields DIY results for me.
- sheepscreek 1y agoYou bet - I’m sure it’s the only fool proof way to get rid of all microplastics. Cumbersome though. But realistically, I no longer think they can be avoided. Probably already lodged all the way up in my brain waiting to cause some nuisance as I get older :-/ Our best hope is nanotechnology and bots or maybe even bioengineered cells or microorganisms that can get in there and eat them or at least reroute them out of the human body through natural pathways.
- scheme271 1y agoHome distillation probably only works if you have all copper plumbing instead of the PVC or PEX plumbing that a lot of homes have. But copper plumbing is probanly going to leach various metals into the water.
- water-data-dude 1y agoNo? Your plumbing shouldn’t matter if you’re distilling the water. Some volatiles are going to come through (which can be mostly mitigated with an activated charcoal filter at some point in the process), but you’re vaporizing the water and condensing it back into a liquid, leaving behind stuff like metal and microplastics.
- scheme271 1y agoSure, but unless you're distilling the water at point of use, you'll have plumbing to distribute it. The typical setup is to have a distillation plant, some storage for the water and then plumbing to distribute it. Anything else quickly becomes infeasible.
- soramimo 1y agoYeah, reverse osmosis systems adding microplastics themselves is a scary fact I also learned on hacker news a few months ago. Does anyone here know if they are RO systems that don't have that problem?
- rajnathani 1y agoTIL from the parent comment, even I am curious now about RO systems which do not have this problem.
- Gigachad 1y agoMicroplastics are just unavoidable at this point, they all use plastic tanks and tubing. But RO will still remove heavy metals and PFAS.