4 ms·

How to breathe in fewer microplastics in your home

78 points by vinni2 6mo ago

rusch 6mo ago
I wonder when and if microplastics will get it's Asbestos moment. Obviously they are not as carcinogenic, but it seems we don't have the full picture, and microplastics are present at an insanely higher degree than asbestos where.
- phyzome 6mo ago
  TV ads 20 years from now: "If you or a family member have suffered from Spandex Kidney, you may be entitled to compensation..."
- sigmoid10 6mo ago
  Given the fact that they are so ubiquitous and yet no causal relation between microplastics and any health issue whatsoever has been identified in any rigorous study until today [1], I'd say a lot of this reporting is fear mongering by the eco/organic industry, aimed at gullible people who know very little about science. Not as insane and unphysical as electro smog, but definitely nowhere near asbestos. The linked article even goes into detail how warped the perceptions are among the general population and how doctors should educate people better, because there are real risks from other things out there. If you're really concerned about health effects of common pollutants, there are much bigger risks with actual proven causal effects in everyday compounds. [1] https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC12620896/ https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC12620896/
  - strogonoff 6mo ago
    > BPA is a known endocrine disruptor. Although initially considered to be a weak environmental estrogen, more recent studies have demonstrated that BPA may be similar in potency to estradiol in stimulating some cellular responses. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/21605673/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/21605673/ > In 2017 the European Chemicals Agency concluded that BPA should be listed as a substance of very high concern due to its properties as an endocrine disruptor.[30] In 2023, the European Food Safety Authority re-evaluated the safety of BFA and significantly reduced tolerable daily intake (TDI) to 0.2 nanograms (0.2 billionths of a gram), 20,000 times lower than the previous TDI from 2015. > In 2012, the United States' Food and Drug Administration (FDA) banned the use of BPA in baby bottles intended for children under 12 months.[31] The Natural Resources Defense Council called the move inadequate, saying the FDA needed to ban BPA from all food packaging. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Health_effects_of_Bisphenol_A https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Health_effects_of_Bisphenol_A > This followed another paper in early 2024, where a group of Italian researchers identified microplastics in plaques found in the carotid arteries – a pair of major vessels which deliver blood to the brain – of people with early-stage cardiovascular disease. This linked their presence to worsening disease progression. Over the following three years, individuals carrying these microplastics in their plaques had a 4.5-fold greater risk of stroke, heart attack or sudden death. > Then in February 2025, another group of scientists identified microplastics in the brains of human cadavers. Most notably, those who had been diagnosed with dementia prior to their death had up to 10 times as much plastic in their brains compared to those without the condition. "We were shocked," says Matthew Campen, a University of New Mexico toxicology professor who led this study. https://www.bbc.co.uk/future/article/20250723-how-do-the-microplastics-in-our-bodies-affect-our-health https://www.bbc.co.uk/future/article/20250723-how-do-the-mic...
    - sigmoid10 6mo ago
      This is exactly the kind of fear mongering reporting I was talking about and explains the general public's warped perception described in the research review I linked above. If you look at the brains of dead people with dementia, you'll also find more aluminum, which has caused people to panic about antiperspirants. But there is zero actual causal evidence that Al exposure causes dementia, if you do the science right. The same goes btw. for amyloid plaques, which has actually hindered real Alzheimer's research. So not even scientists are safe from the correlation!=causality problem. You can make up all kinds of potential hazards by comparing similar molecules and inventing bioavailability pathways. But at the end of the day this is just speculation and you need hard data to prove these assumptions.
      - OutOfHere 6mo ago
        The aluminum relations are easily explained with the observation that healthy kidneys excrete aluminum well, whereas unhealthy kidneys don't and so it accumulates. There might also be similar variations in aluminum deposition in the brain depending on the brain's innate ability to wash out chemicals. In contrast, the excretory mechanisms of plastics seems less trustworthy. The user is deliberately and blatantly ignoring a wealth of scientific literature that exists. Also, plastics come bundled with numerous other harmful classes of chemicals, e.g. phthalates, bisphenols, etc. The risk is not merely in the brain, but also in blood vessels, including those adjacent to the heart. Beware the plastics industry shills on this page. They will have you ignore the science, become infertile, and then have you die, all for their temporary gain.
        sigmoid10 6mo ago
        It doesn't change the fact that there is no actual causal evidence. Perhaps the demented brains simply suck at flushing out microplastics as well. If you ever find people with more microplastics exposure have more dementia (like they did for asbestos and lung cancer), then you're onto something. But no rigorous study has found this yet. And if they do, you will hear of it immediately for sure, given how much reporting there is for microplastics=bad for you.
- dijit 6mo ago
  I think microplastics has been directly linked to the decrease of male hormones and an sperm quality. source: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1186/s12989-022-00453-2 https://link.springer.com/article/10.1186/s12989-022-00453-2 So, it's having an effect of some kind.
  - sigmoid10 6mo ago
    This was in mice that were given up to 1000 mg/L of microplastics in their drinking water. If you have this level of contamination, you probably should stop whatever it is you are doing anyways, disregarding your testicles. But even then, there is no evidence for this in humans. Research shows that most microplastics simply passes through your digestive system unhindered.
    - dijit 6mo ago
      Yeah, typically we test adverse effects in mice before doing trials on larger animals. That we haven't observed such extreme behaviour in a scientific way in humans doesn't mean it isn't there, it's just that we haven't yet scientifically observed anything. That there is some evidence in favour of it having adverse effects somewhat defeats the idea that it's "provably non-harmful", which is your current stance. It might be interesting; instead of downplaying the harm, to see if we can observe any patterns that fit with these findings over the course of human history with the introduction of microplastics... and if we were to do that, we'd find some interesting correlation, even if it's not provably causation yet. https://www.healio.com/news/endocrinology/20120325/generational-decline-in-testosterone-levels-observed https://www.healio.com/news/endocrinology/20120325/generatio... We also know that plastics are a source of hormone disrupting chemicals; https://health.clevelandclinic.org/how-environmental-toxins-can-impact-your-health https://health.clevelandclinic.org/how-environmental-toxins-... Bury your head I guess? Just make sure it's not a polyester pillowcase.
      - sigmoid10 6mo ago
        Sorry, I still subscribe to science and not speculation. But I guess I am increasingly alone with that idea on HN. And to be clear if someone points out a rigorous causal link, I'd be onboard immediately. But this purely speculative fear mongering based on random scientific observations targeted at non-scientists is similar to what you see in the homeopathy and energeticism circles. Except noone here would believe that 5G makes you sick, because techies know at least this kind of science a little bit.
- shubhamjain 6mo ago
  Probably never. I think it's been at least a decade since the fear over them became mainstream. Yeah, it's possible these things can take time to show up but considering the scale of their presence and how long we have been using them, we would have at least seen some definite relationship between them and some serious health concern. Look at the article itself, the health impact is conveniently buried in the last section, and it just repeats over and over how they can found everywhere in the body but nothing on what can possible happen. So much of the scare revolves around the same framing, "microplastic" have been found in breast milk/blood whatever, but never seen one mentioning what it can possibly cause. Is it too hard to fathom that the answer is "nothing"?
- bertil 6mo ago
  Not as long as there are powerful car lobbies and the main source of microplastic will remain car tires. Instead, you have articles like this trying to tell people to look away from that main source of problem, and blame, say, indoors or food preparation, and skip details like how the homes with the most microplastic in them are… close to the highway.
  - pocksuppet 6mo ago
    Powerful oil lobbies didn't stop the important guy from starting a dumb war that tripled the price of gasoline. Why not?
- scotty79 6mo ago
  I wonder when celulose and silica will get their microplastics moment and it turns out we were always full of micro garbage.
schiffern 6mo ago
https://archive.ph/UcCq6 https://archive.ph/UcCq6 Saying HEPA filters remove "99%" of microplastic is pretty misleading. Most of the mass in airborne particles is in the larger sizes of visible dust. However these particles will "fall out" before they reach the air purifier. The best advice isn't "use only HEPA" or (an odd one, from this article) "use filters with multiple stages," it's to have an air purifier where the Clean Air Delivery Rate (CADR) is matched to room size. For filtering large dust you need a lot of air flow, aim for 6-8 Air Changes per Hour (ACH). Also the CADR on the box is always on the highest fan speed, which is always way too loud for constant use in an occupied room. So ideally you want to size the air purifiers assuming a fan speed generating 45 decibels or less. HouseFresh is an excellent review site that publishes these numbers. Most people dramatically undersize their air purifiers, or run them on a very low fan setting, and then they throw up their hands and say that air purifiers don't work.
- smallerize 6mo ago
  The therm "microplactics" includes particles up to 5mm. And I think the bulk of the material is probably made of these larger particles. But I guess you're less likely to inhale something that large. So while air filters will remove most of the plastic you might inhale, you will still have to clean up most of the mass of microplastics in your house.
- himata4113 6mo ago
  You don't really want to use HEPA either, you want to maximize airflow. PC fans with low MERV type filter do great since the smaller the particle (I think this effect kicks in below 5 microns) the better it is at filtering it so if it can pass 10 times more air than a hepa filter it's as effective as one while being able to filter more air faster and keeping the particles airbone. The only downside is that small range of particles where lower merv filters aren't good enough to filter so upwards of 70% of the particles pass through
  - ajb 6mo ago
    That sounds worth knowing; however when I looked MERV up, it seems that it's a rating system, not a type of filter. Could you be more specific abot the kind of filter you mean?
neuroelectron 6mo ago
[dead]
dijit 6mo ago
Realistically, the best thing you can do to reduce your microplastics intake seems to be to avoid microwaving in plastic bowls and to avoid using plastic bottles for soft drinks and water. (Though cans actually use a thin film of plastic inside too.. so, maybe just avoid packaged water?) Beyond your personal intake though there's bigger fish. Car tyres are the #1 source for microplastics entering rivers, and it's not even close (they're thought to be the source of up to 85% of all environmental microplastics). Those particulates don't just vanish, they end up in the soil and the waterways and it ends up inside you, no matter what you do.
- cubefox 6mo ago
  The article says this is probably wrong. We breathe in much more.
- Carrok 6mo ago
  Curious why you say this when the linked article says the best thing you can do is avoid synthetic textiles
  - dijit 6mo ago
    the article lists several things including textiles, plastic packaging, and avoiding tyre particles. I led with containers/bottles because that's where the most concentrated single exposures seem to be (microwaving in plastic, bottled water), but you're right that textiles are up there too, especially for airborne microfibres. The exposure from food packaging is many times more prominent than polyester, which slows down leeching over time.
    - deleted 6mo ago
      [deleted]
  - scotty79 6mo ago
    The article focuses on the airways. The commenter probably takes more hollistic approach and you are gonna eat way more palstic in yoir life than you breathe in.
oharapj 6mo ago
I wonder if this means that going to the gym is a huge source of exposure then. Enclosed environment with rubber mat flooring and weights constantly banging against it..
- _ink_ 6mo ago
  IIRC there was a study that concluded that boulder gyms have more rubber in the air than exits of motorways.
a3w 6mo ago
Half the microplastics in our body is from cars. So move to a car-free city district or remote cabin (and then driving train+bike so not to contribute to the problem?).
- alt227 6mo ago
  If cars are causing microplastic pollution, Im sure bikes and trains are too. Im seems using rubber/plastic compounds for tyres and brakes is always going to cause this issue on any vehicle.
  - scotty79 6mo ago
    With cars there are higher energies involved, and things like that tend to grow with square or cube of the energy. I wouldn't be surprised if car was causing orders of magnitude more plastic pollution than a bike per person per mile.
    - alt227 6mo ago
      Thats obvious and goes without saying, but then I didnt state any specific metrics, only that they both casue the same thing even in different amounts
      - scotty79 6mo ago
        The dose makes the poison.
    - Gigachad 6mo ago
      It’s quite intuitive to think about. The entire tread of the tire becomes ground up plastic dust. Cars burn through significantly more KGs of tires in a year than a bicycle.
  - bertil 6mo ago
    The amount of damage to tires is proportional to the fourth power of the weight per axel. That means that for the same journey, a bike sheds (3000 kg / 80 kg)ˆ4 so about 20 million times less. Assuming that the rubber is the same—and not that it has proprietary chemistry that may or may not contain carcinogens. Eight orders of magnitude of difference feels relevant. Almost every train I know use metal wheels. We can look at the few that don’t, but something tells me people who raise that argument don’t want to look at alternative wheel composition, but rather hope to seed doubt and, in private, lobby replace one metro with thousands of cars, and I’m not sure that’s a good idea. So, please, don’t come in here with that bullshit.
himata4113 6mo ago
If anyone is looking into getting an air filter I recommend winix it was tested by project farm and scored the highest. also I am the owner of two and they've been working great for 4 years now I run them using auto and never worry about them again, the automatic sleep mode is bliss. replacements are cheap on aliexpress coming at around $30 (per year). You don't need true hepa replacements, you can skip carbon filters if you don't have odor problems or have lots of ventilation. the filters are pitch black every time I replace them so they're definitely doing something. I do however recommend skipping all of that and just getting a box fan with a lower-tier merv filter since at the end of the day airflow matters the most and it turns itself back on if the power goes out plus it gives you the ability to tie it into home automation.
scotty79 6mo ago
Indoor air has way less particulates than outside air. I'll take polipropylene dust over rubber and silicw dust and chimney and tailpipe exhaust any day of the week.
NitpickLawyer 6mo ago
I've heard that removing latex gloves when breathing might help...
- bertil 6mo ago
  Classic case of PR leveraging a real, anecdotic observation on one single result, but completely flipping it to pretend it’s a systematic result, to saw doubt on all scientific findings around microplastic. The same companies behind this last story have done the same thing to slow down regulation to limit the impact of smoking, alcohol, processed foods, oil refinery, global warming, lead pipes…
  - NitpickLawyer 6mo ago
    ... or just a benign joke. Not everything is that serious, you know...
    - bertil 6mo ago
      I wish the millions of people killed by delaying safety legislation for decades knew that pretending to make jokes (what became known as the "stochastic asshole" approach) was also a common tactic taught by those PR firms, to make critics sound like sour-puss.
      - NitpickLawyer 6mo ago
        Whatever deamons you're fighting, they are not here in the room with us, friend. Be well.
        bertil 6mo ago
        Do you know what a "useful idiot" is, in the Soviet manipulation tradecraft? Someone who repeats, jokingly or not, an argument that was placed somewhere deniable. One lab, looking at a small study, published a correction saying their estimates were wrong because they didn’t realize how their gloves accounted for it. Do you know who knew about that? Every intern in every lab ever. This was a minor correction that should never has reached anyone except the 10 readers of their original report. But, strangely, that story got a wide coverage in the press: the usual “science” publication, the trade press, even widespread media. Why? Because it was presented as a “They are making things up about micro-plastics” piece, and those can go really far. And that kind of coverage doesn’t happen by accident. So no, I don’t think you did that deliberately. But I know you read about it recently; I know you didn’t check what that original story was that triggered the coverage; I know you found that quaint—and I have no reason to think you deliberately tried to spread misinformation. But, you did. Because the people who want to sow doubt know what they are doing.
_ink_ 6mo ago
Is there a brand that makes pullovers / hoodies, that are made 100% from natural materials?
perrygeo 6mo ago
What amazes me about the plastic health debacle is that any rational decision making process would have identified these compounds as entirely novel, with no evolutionary correlate. The precautionary principle should have applied; the burden should have been on corporations to prove these compounds safe. Instead, they were incorrectly assumed to be safe, deployed at scale, and now the burden is on us to deal with the impacts. This was an experiment run without consent, and without accountability. Much like our experiment with atmospheric CO2, these companies are making profits by dumping the liabilities onto the public.
xnx 6mo ago
I'm all for improving indoor air quality (IAQ), but microplastics are a very minor concern compared to other pollutants (VOCs, CO2, etc.). Filtered outdoor air exchange is the best fix for most of them.

78 points by vinni2 6mo ago

rusch 6mo ago

I wonder when and if microplastics will get it's Asbestos moment. Obviously they are not as carcinogenic, but it seems we don't have the full picture, and microplastics are present at an insanely higher degree than asbestos where.

phyzome 6mo ago
TV ads 20 years from now: "If you or a family member have suffered from Spandex Kidney, you may be entitled to compensation..."
sigmoid10 6mo ago
Given the fact that they are so ubiquitous and yet no causal relation between microplastics and any health issue whatsoever has been identified in any rigorous study until today [1], I'd say a lot of this reporting is fear mongering by the eco/organic industry, aimed at gullible people who know very little about science. Not as insane and unphysical as electro smog, but definitely nowhere near asbestos. The linked article even goes into detail how warped the perceptions are among the general population and how doctors should educate people better, because there are real risks from other things out there. If you're really concerned about health effects of common pollutants, there are much bigger risks with actual proven causal effects in everyday compounds. [1] https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC12620896/ https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC12620896/
- strogonoff 6mo ago
  > BPA is a known endocrine disruptor. Although initially considered to be a weak environmental estrogen, more recent studies have demonstrated that BPA may be similar in potency to estradiol in stimulating some cellular responses. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/21605673/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/21605673/ > In 2017 the European Chemicals Agency concluded that BPA should be listed as a substance of very high concern due to its properties as an endocrine disruptor.[30] In 2023, the European Food Safety Authority re-evaluated the safety of BFA and significantly reduced tolerable daily intake (TDI) to 0.2 nanograms (0.2 billionths of a gram), 20,000 times lower than the previous TDI from 2015. > In 2012, the United States' Food and Drug Administration (FDA) banned the use of BPA in baby bottles intended for children under 12 months.[31] The Natural Resources Defense Council called the move inadequate, saying the FDA needed to ban BPA from all food packaging. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Health_effects_of_Bisphenol_A https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Health_effects_of_Bisphenol_A > This followed another paper in early 2024, where a group of Italian researchers identified microplastics in plaques found in the carotid arteries – a pair of major vessels which deliver blood to the brain – of people with early-stage cardiovascular disease. This linked their presence to worsening disease progression. Over the following three years, individuals carrying these microplastics in their plaques had a 4.5-fold greater risk of stroke, heart attack or sudden death. > Then in February 2025, another group of scientists identified microplastics in the brains of human cadavers. Most notably, those who had been diagnosed with dementia prior to their death had up to 10 times as much plastic in their brains compared to those without the condition. "We were shocked," says Matthew Campen, a University of New Mexico toxicology professor who led this study. https://www.bbc.co.uk/future/article/20250723-how-do-the-microplastics-in-our-bodies-affect-our-health https://www.bbc.co.uk/future/article/20250723-how-do-the-mic...
  - sigmoid10 6mo ago
    This is exactly the kind of fear mongering reporting I was talking about and explains the general public's warped perception described in the research review I linked above. If you look at the brains of dead people with dementia, you'll also find more aluminum, which has caused people to panic about antiperspirants. But there is zero actual causal evidence that Al exposure causes dementia, if you do the science right. The same goes btw. for amyloid plaques, which has actually hindered real Alzheimer's research. So not even scientists are safe from the correlation!=causality problem. You can make up all kinds of potential hazards by comparing similar molecules and inventing bioavailability pathways. But at the end of the day this is just speculation and you need hard data to prove these assumptions.
    - OutOfHere 6mo ago
      The aluminum relations are easily explained with the observation that healthy kidneys excrete aluminum well, whereas unhealthy kidneys don't and so it accumulates. There might also be similar variations in aluminum deposition in the brain depending on the brain's innate ability to wash out chemicals. In contrast, the excretory mechanisms of plastics seems less trustworthy. The user is deliberately and blatantly ignoring a wealth of scientific literature that exists. Also, plastics come bundled with numerous other harmful classes of chemicals, e.g. phthalates, bisphenols, etc. The risk is not merely in the brain, but also in blood vessels, including those adjacent to the heart. Beware the plastics industry shills on this page. They will have you ignore the science, become infertile, and then have you die, all for their temporary gain.
      - sigmoid10 6mo ago
        It doesn't change the fact that there is no actual causal evidence. Perhaps the demented brains simply suck at flushing out microplastics as well. If you ever find people with more microplastics exposure have more dementia (like they did for asbestos and lung cancer), then you're onto something. But no rigorous study has found this yet. And if they do, you will hear of it immediately for sure, given how much reporting there is for microplastics=bad for you.
dijit 6mo ago
I think microplastics has been directly linked to the decrease of male hormones and an sperm quality. source: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1186/s12989-022-00453-2 https://link.springer.com/article/10.1186/s12989-022-00453-2 So, it's having an effect of some kind.
- sigmoid10 6mo ago
  This was in mice that were given up to 1000 mg/L of microplastics in their drinking water. If you have this level of contamination, you probably should stop whatever it is you are doing anyways, disregarding your testicles. But even then, there is no evidence for this in humans. Research shows that most microplastics simply passes through your digestive system unhindered.
  - dijit 6mo ago
    Yeah, typically we test adverse effects in mice before doing trials on larger animals. That we haven't observed such extreme behaviour in a scientific way in humans doesn't mean it isn't there, it's just that we haven't yet scientifically observed anything. That there is some evidence in favour of it having adverse effects somewhat defeats the idea that it's "provably non-harmful", which is your current stance. It might be interesting; instead of downplaying the harm, to see if we can observe any patterns that fit with these findings over the course of human history with the introduction of microplastics... and if we were to do that, we'd find some interesting correlation, even if it's not provably causation yet. https://www.healio.com/news/endocrinology/20120325/generational-decline-in-testosterone-levels-observed https://www.healio.com/news/endocrinology/20120325/generatio... We also know that plastics are a source of hormone disrupting chemicals; https://health.clevelandclinic.org/how-environmental-toxins-can-impact-your-health https://health.clevelandclinic.org/how-environmental-toxins-... Bury your head I guess? Just make sure it's not a polyester pillowcase.
    - sigmoid10 6mo ago
      Sorry, I still subscribe to science and not speculation. But I guess I am increasingly alone with that idea on HN. And to be clear if someone points out a rigorous causal link, I'd be onboard immediately. But this purely speculative fear mongering based on random scientific observations targeted at non-scientists is similar to what you see in the homeopathy and energeticism circles. Except noone here would believe that 5G makes you sick, because techies know at least this kind of science a little bit.
shubhamjain 6mo ago
Probably never. I think it's been at least a decade since the fear over them became mainstream. Yeah, it's possible these things can take time to show up but considering the scale of their presence and how long we have been using them, we would have at least seen some definite relationship between them and some serious health concern. Look at the article itself, the health impact is conveniently buried in the last section, and it just repeats over and over how they can found everywhere in the body but nothing on what can possible happen. So much of the scare revolves around the same framing, "microplastic" have been found in breast milk/blood whatever, but never seen one mentioning what it can possibly cause. Is it too hard to fathom that the answer is "nothing"?
bertil 6mo ago
Not as long as there are powerful car lobbies and the main source of microplastic will remain car tires. Instead, you have articles like this trying to tell people to look away from that main source of problem, and blame, say, indoors or food preparation, and skip details like how the homes with the most microplastic in them are… close to the highway.
- pocksuppet 6mo ago
  Powerful oil lobbies didn't stop the important guy from starting a dumb war that tripled the price of gasoline. Why not?
scotty79 6mo ago
I wonder when celulose and silica will get their microplastics moment and it turns out we were always full of micro garbage.

schiffern 6mo ago

https://archive.ph/UcCq6 https://archive.ph/UcCq6 Saying HEPA filters remove "99%" of microplastic is pretty misleading. Most of the mass in airborne particles is in the larger sizes of visible dust. However these particles will "fall out" before they reach the air purifier. The best advice isn't "use only HEPA" or (an odd one, from this article) "use filters with multiple stages," it's to have an air purifier where the Clean Air Delivery Rate (CADR) is matched to room size. For filtering large dust you need a lot of air flow, aim for 6-8 Air Changes per Hour (ACH). Also the CADR on the box is always on the highest fan speed, which is always way too loud for constant use in an occupied room. So ideally you want to size the air purifiers assuming a fan speed generating 45 decibels or less. HouseFresh is an excellent review site that publishes these numbers. Most people dramatically undersize their air purifiers, or run them on a very low fan setting, and then they throw up their hands and say that air purifiers don't work.

smallerize 6mo ago
The therm "microplactics" includes particles up to 5mm. And I think the bulk of the material is probably made of these larger particles. But I guess you're less likely to inhale something that large. So while air filters will remove most of the plastic you might inhale, you will still have to clean up most of the mass of microplastics in your house.
himata4113 6mo ago
You don't really want to use HEPA either, you want to maximize airflow. PC fans with low MERV type filter do great since the smaller the particle (I think this effect kicks in below 5 microns) the better it is at filtering it so if it can pass 10 times more air than a hepa filter it's as effective as one while being able to filter more air faster and keeping the particles airbone. The only downside is that small range of particles where lower merv filters aren't good enough to filter so upwards of 70% of the particles pass through
- ajb 6mo ago
  That sounds worth knowing; however when I looked MERV up, it seems that it's a rating system, not a type of filter. Could you be more specific abot the kind of filter you mean?

neuroelectron 6mo ago

[dead]

dijit 6mo ago

Realistically, the best thing you can do to reduce your microplastics intake seems to be to avoid microwaving in plastic bowls and to avoid using plastic bottles for soft drinks and water. (Though cans actually use a thin film of plastic inside too.. so, maybe just avoid packaged water?) Beyond your personal intake though there's bigger fish. Car tyres are the #1 source for microplastics entering rivers, and it's not even close (they're thought to be the source of up to 85% of all environmental microplastics). Those particulates don't just vanish, they end up in the soil and the waterways and it ends up inside you, no matter what you do.

cubefox 6mo ago
The article says this is probably wrong. We breathe in much more.
Carrok 6mo ago
Curious why you say this when the linked article says the best thing you can do is avoid synthetic textiles
- dijit 6mo ago
  the article lists several things including textiles, plastic packaging, and avoiding tyre particles. I led with containers/bottles because that's where the most concentrated single exposures seem to be (microwaving in plastic, bottled water), but you're right that textiles are up there too, especially for airborne microfibres. The exposure from food packaging is many times more prominent than polyester, which slows down leeching over time.
  - deleted 6mo ago
    [deleted]
- scotty79 6mo ago
  The article focuses on the airways. The commenter probably takes more hollistic approach and you are gonna eat way more palstic in yoir life than you breathe in.

oharapj 6mo ago

I wonder if this means that going to the gym is a huge source of exposure then. Enclosed environment with rubber mat flooring and weights constantly banging against it..

_ink_ 6mo ago
IIRC there was a study that concluded that boulder gyms have more rubber in the air than exits of motorways.

a3w 6mo ago

Half the microplastics in our body is from cars. So move to a car-free city district or remote cabin (and then driving train+bike so not to contribute to the problem?).

alt227 6mo ago
If cars are causing microplastic pollution, Im sure bikes and trains are too. Im seems using rubber/plastic compounds for tyres and brakes is always going to cause this issue on any vehicle.
- scotty79 6mo ago
  With cars there are higher energies involved, and things like that tend to grow with square or cube of the energy. I wouldn't be surprised if car was causing orders of magnitude more plastic pollution than a bike per person per mile.
  - alt227 6mo ago
    Thats obvious and goes without saying, but then I didnt state any specific metrics, only that they both casue the same thing even in different amounts
    - scotty79 6mo ago
      The dose makes the poison.
  - Gigachad 6mo ago
    It’s quite intuitive to think about. The entire tread of the tire becomes ground up plastic dust. Cars burn through significantly more KGs of tires in a year than a bicycle.
- bertil 6mo ago
  The amount of damage to tires is proportional to the fourth power of the weight per axel. That means that for the same journey, a bike sheds (3000 kg / 80 kg)ˆ4 so about 20 million times less. Assuming that the rubber is the same—and not that it has proprietary chemistry that may or may not contain carcinogens. Eight orders of magnitude of difference feels relevant. Almost every train I know use metal wheels. We can look at the few that don’t, but something tells me people who raise that argument don’t want to look at alternative wheel composition, but rather hope to seed doubt and, in private, lobby replace one metro with thousands of cars, and I’m not sure that’s a good idea. So, please, don’t come in here with that bullshit.

himata4113 6mo ago

If anyone is looking into getting an air filter I recommend winix it was tested by project farm and scored the highest. also I am the owner of two and they've been working great for 4 years now I run them using auto and never worry about them again, the automatic sleep mode is bliss. replacements are cheap on aliexpress coming at around $30 (per year). You don't need true hepa replacements, you can skip carbon filters if you don't have odor problems or have lots of ventilation. the filters are pitch black every time I replace them so they're definitely doing something. I do however recommend skipping all of that and just getting a box fan with a lower-tier merv filter since at the end of the day airflow matters the most and it turns itself back on if the power goes out plus it gives you the ability to tie it into home automation.

scotty79 6mo ago

Indoor air has way less particulates than outside air. I'll take polipropylene dust over rubber and silicw dust and chimney and tailpipe exhaust any day of the week.

NitpickLawyer 6mo ago

I've heard that removing latex gloves when breathing might help...

bertil 6mo ago
Classic case of PR leveraging a real, anecdotic observation on one single result, but completely flipping it to pretend it’s a systematic result, to saw doubt on all scientific findings around microplastic. The same companies behind this last story have done the same thing to slow down regulation to limit the impact of smoking, alcohol, processed foods, oil refinery, global warming, lead pipes…
- NitpickLawyer 6mo ago
  ... or just a benign joke. Not everything is that serious, you know...
  - bertil 6mo ago
    I wish the millions of people killed by delaying safety legislation for decades knew that pretending to make jokes (what became known as the "stochastic asshole" approach) was also a common tactic taught by those PR firms, to make critics sound like sour-puss.
    - NitpickLawyer 6mo ago
      Whatever deamons you're fighting, they are not here in the room with us, friend. Be well.
      - bertil 6mo ago
        Do you know what a "useful idiot" is, in the Soviet manipulation tradecraft? Someone who repeats, jokingly or not, an argument that was placed somewhere deniable. One lab, looking at a small study, published a correction saying their estimates were wrong because they didn’t realize how their gloves accounted for it. Do you know who knew about that? Every intern in every lab ever. This was a minor correction that should never has reached anyone except the 10 readers of their original report. But, strangely, that story got a wide coverage in the press: the usual “science” publication, the trade press, even widespread media. Why? Because it was presented as a “They are making things up about micro-plastics” piece, and those can go really far. And that kind of coverage doesn’t happen by accident. So no, I don’t think you did that deliberately. But I know you read about it recently; I know you didn’t check what that original story was that triggered the coverage; I know you found that quaint—and I have no reason to think you deliberately tried to spread misinformation. But, you did. Because the people who want to sow doubt know what they are doing.

_ink_ 6mo ago

Is there a brand that makes pullovers / hoodies, that are made 100% from natural materials?

perrygeo 6mo ago

What amazes me about the plastic health debacle is that any rational decision making process would have identified these compounds as entirely novel, with no evolutionary correlate. The precautionary principle should have applied; the burden should have been on corporations to prove these compounds safe. Instead, they were incorrectly assumed to be safe, deployed at scale, and now the burden is on us to deal with the impacts. This was an experiment run without consent, and without accountability. Much like our experiment with atmospheric CO2, these companies are making profits by dumping the liabilities onto the public.

xnx 6mo ago

I'm all for improving indoor air quality (IAQ), but microplastics are a very minor concern compared to other pollutants (VOCs, CO2, etc.). Filtered outdoor air exchange is the best fix for most of them.