Plastics, let alone microplastics, are a rather small problem that seem to get a lot of airspace.
There are no established health effects of microplastics. There are magnitudes worse health problems in e.g. both under and overnutrition that cause a lot less panic and fuss.
> There are no established health effects of microplastics.
It'd be more true to say, "There are no established significant health effects of microplastics on humans." FWIW, the article you linked to doesn't say "no effects", but "limited evidence for significant adverse health impacts".
Micro plastics is like CO2. Spread out everywhere, can't be sequestered or reversed.
Rather than saying it's not a problem now — it's worth saying what's the threshold beyond which health complications begin (that number can't be infinity), and based on current growth levels how far we're off from it. If that's like at current rate of growth we still have 5000 years, then yeah I would agree with you and ignore the news. But just saying retrogressively that there is no conclusive evidence based on what we're eating so far – unfortunately sounds only politically correct, without considering the spirit of doing science (exploring the horizons / where the limits are).
A lot of issues like you mention can be a big problem on the population level, but not in an individual level if you're conscious of what you eat. This doesn't seem to be the case with microplastics, they seem to be in everything.
You might call it panic to minimize it, and you'd be right to do so if we here were in charge of nutrition for a population; but I'm guessing most of us are in charge of our own nutrition and maybe a family's, so the information to deal with that is pretty valuable.
Can someone ELI5 this for me: how would microplastics passing through a digestive system end up in "proteins*"? Are they being stored directly in the fats, within cells, between muscle fibers...?
(* the article seems to be using the term "protein" in the culinary sense, not the molecular sense).
You know how mercury bioaccumulates up the food chain? It looks like microplastics are similar [1] [2], and they are everywhere in the food web [3]. It's even in the bottled water [4].
(edit: yes, yes, no surprise it's in the bottled water, maybe we shouldn't be selling bottled water if it's full of microplastics? Less bottled water, more water dispensers everywhere)
There was another posting within the last few months that showed the particular microplastic they studied fit into the same ‘lock’ per lock/key of a biological molecule interaction and prevented the desired molecules from working together. It could be that or a different mechanism.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38322944
The article only reports number of microplastics without reporting mass. This is particularly difficult to interpret when fibers are responsible for so much of the total:
Notably, across all samples, nearly half (44%) of the identified microplastics were fibers, which is consistent with other studies suggesting that fibers are the most prevalent form of microplastic in the environment.
Are 4 fibers of 50 micron length 4 times more dangerous than one 200 micron long fiber? There's no discussion of it in the article, but reporting microplastics by number of countable particles carries that implication.
I wonder how much of this stuff we inhale from our dryer exhaust when washing outdoor/athletic wear? I used the lint from my dryer as a fire-starter once and it definitely smelled like burning plastic.
Stop driving? Most microplastic in water come from tires.
I've been trying to make small moves away from car infrastructure in my town and the response is, well, less than positive.
We already tacitly accept that cars are one of the biggest causes of death. Reducing car infrastructure to reduce microplastics, where we don't even really know the harm, seems far far more challenging.
If you donate blood as soon as possible from your last blood donation (per federal regulations), you can remove 50% of your microplastic content per year. Some studies have also shown that going to saunas/sweat lodges also lower your microplastic content.
The graph makes sense to me, processed (plant-based or factory-breaded) and shrimp seem to be the main ones. Buy fresh and you’ll be alright is what I read from this.
I sometimes have this feeling that in the future, when all of the science on this stuff is well established, our future enlightened society will simply take the view that plastic is poisonous. I think it'll be the same way that we think of lead, mercury, etc: like "wash your hands if you touch the stuff" levels of poisonous. I would not be surprised if society makes this shift in the next 20-30 years. Some of the recent results are really nuts:
It goes on and on. There are studies showing it gets into the placenta, harms animals, affects behavior, stays in your system forever, bioaccumulates all the way up the food chain and makes its way into every organ, and so on. This is all within the last few years. It seems like bottled water is a vector for this stuff very similar to lead pipes, and tires are a vector similar to leaded gasoline, and that the evidence is basically all there and all that is needed is a big epidemiological "smoking gun" study to put it all together.
Of course not every single thing one could possibly call "plastic" need be equally unsafe. Probably some better plastic will be devised which is safer for use in tires and etc. Still, I think there will be a society-wide push against so-called "plastic", in general. People will probably push to replace everything made of plastic with something else: replacing saran wrap with parchment paper, Tupperware with glass, etc.
I'm not super interested in defending this rigorously as it's really just a hunch, but I'm curious if this is what happens.
> I sometimes have this feeling that in the future, when all of the science on this stuff is well established, our future enlightened society will simply take the view that plastic is poisonous. I think it'll be the same way that we think of lead, mercury, etc
I don't.
The effects of lead or mercury poisoning are fast-acting and obvious. All the links you provided talk about the release of plastics into the world, but the details on how that affects things are sketchier than say , mercury poisoning , because the symptoms are slowly accruing and ambiguous compared to lots of other environmental contaminants.
>Notably, across all samples, nearly half (44%) of the identified microplastics were fibers, which is consistent with other studies suggesting that fibers are the most prevalent form of microplastic in the environment.
Seems like one could live on a vegan diet and still be consuming a lot of plastic fiber. My favorite blankets, rugs, and t-shirts are all 100% polyester.
Even if I managed to use avoid plastics at home, plastic lint is everywhere in public too.
An even stranger but annoying problem is even if you buy 100% cotton, the stitching is usually a polyester. It is difficult to buy cotton threads for home sewing
Avoiding synthetics in clothing is indeed difficult. I buy 100% natural fibers where I can, but sadly often the best one can do is ~90% natural ~10% synthetic.
We are burning huge amounts of fossil fuels to run the economy. This economic boon leads to longer lifetimes, at a huge but externalized and delayed cost.
> it seems like most people are doing... just fine?
Where do you live?
Outside of affluent areas, I think most people these days would laugh at such an absurd claim. We are not fine, physically or mentally.
Our soil isn't fine. Our air isn't fine. Our water isn't fine - not our wells, our rivers, our lakes, our oceans, or even our icecaps. Our species are being made extinct at 1000x the background rate of extinction. Anyone fine with this is on the ignorant side of blissful.
Instead of looking for evidence of consumption risk at current/past levels — it would be good to know: what is the threshold of continuous daily ingestion beyond which microplastics are harmful. The answer can't be infinity of course, so it would be worth finding the threshold, and then how far we're off from that threshold based on current growth.
Not suggesting to have humans consume concentrated concoctions of plastics, but however ethically science allows.
On one hand, plastic reduces weight, transportation costs and the costs of things and is more versatile. On the other hand it causes another form of pollution. Modern life would be very different without plastic.
Have we been able to link any real harm to microplastics? I know it sounds bad intuitively. But can we draw a link to any diseases? What if this just amounts to fear mongering?
I have done zero research, am not at all qualified to say any such things… but I feel like microplastics will eventually be looked back on the way we look back on asbestos today. “People used to throw PLASTIC in the ocean?!” We are in that awkward period of being aware, yet the damage has been done, so now we wait for the long-term effects to manifest.
Again, probably wrong, not at all an opinion to be taken as fact, just a gut feeling. History tells us that there will at least be SOMETHING perceived as normal today that is later discovered to be not okay, anyway. Plastic, social media, hell, maybe even EV after 50 years of batteries rotting in landfills.
And if the exposure is as universal as it sounds, then we can place some upper bounds on the amount of harm. With asbestos, the exposure was somewhat limited, but had greater consewuences. With plastics, we are all getting it.
jampekka|2 years ago
There are no established health effects of microplastics. There are magnitudes worse health problems in e.g. both under and overnutrition that cause a lot less panic and fuss.
https://www.undp.org/kosovo/blog/microplastics-human-health-...
CharlesW|2 years ago
It'd be more true to say, "There are no established significant health effects of microplastics on humans." FWIW, the article you linked to doesn't say "no effects", but "limited evidence for significant adverse health impacts".
This seems concerning: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9885170/
rdsubhas|2 years ago
Micro plastics is like CO2. Spread out everywhere, can't be sequestered or reversed.
Rather than saying it's not a problem now — it's worth saying what's the threshold beyond which health complications begin (that number can't be infinity), and based on current growth levels how far we're off from it. If that's like at current rate of growth we still have 5000 years, then yeah I would agree with you and ignore the news. But just saying retrogressively that there is no conclusive evidence based on what we're eating so far – unfortunately sounds only politically correct, without considering the spirit of doing science (exploring the horizons / where the limits are).
broscillator|2 years ago
You might call it panic to minimize it, and you'd be right to do so if we here were in charge of nutrition for a population; but I'm guessing most of us are in charge of our own nutrition and maybe a family's, so the information to deal with that is pretty valuable.
ramblenode|2 years ago
An equally true statement is that there is no established safe concentration of microplastics in tissue.
RyEgswuCsn|2 years ago
s1gnp0st|2 years ago
rhplus|2 years ago
(* the article seems to be using the term "protein" in the culinary sense, not the molecular sense).
toomuchtodo|2 years ago
[1] https://www.euronews.com/next/2023/08/30/microplastics-could...
[2] https://www.uri.edu/news/2023/08/microplastics-infiltrate-al...
[3] https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...
[4] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38917410
(edit: yes, yes, no surprise it's in the bottled water, maybe we shouldn't be selling bottled water if it's full of microplastics? Less bottled water, more water dispensers everywhere)
stevenwoo|2 years ago
philipkglass|2 years ago
Notably, across all samples, nearly half (44%) of the identified microplastics were fibers, which is consistent with other studies suggesting that fibers are the most prevalent form of microplastic in the environment.
Are 4 fibers of 50 micron length 4 times more dangerous than one 200 micron long fiber? There's no discussion of it in the article, but reporting microplastics by number of countable particles carries that implication.
tppiotrowski|2 years ago
charliebwrites|2 years ago
Is there any way to remove microplastics from a person/animal once already ingested?
What technology if any is being worked on to help alleviate this?
epistasis|2 years ago
I've been trying to make small moves away from car infrastructure in my town and the response is, well, less than positive.
We already tacitly accept that cars are one of the biggest causes of death. Reducing car infrastructure to reduce microplastics, where we don't even really know the harm, seems far far more challenging.
polski-g|2 years ago
david422|2 years ago
bowmessage|2 years ago
evrimoztamur|2 years ago
ComplexSystems|2 years ago
- You eat a credit card sized amount of plastic every week: https://nautil.us/you-eat-a-credits-card-worth-of-plastic-ev... - 93% of bottled water has plastic in it: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16793888 - Plastic containers, even "safe" ones, release plastic into food: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36532812 - Car tires are depositing plastic everywhere, including oceans: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37726539
It goes on and on. There are studies showing it gets into the placenta, harms animals, affects behavior, stays in your system forever, bioaccumulates all the way up the food chain and makes its way into every organ, and so on. This is all within the last few years. It seems like bottled water is a vector for this stuff very similar to lead pipes, and tires are a vector similar to leaded gasoline, and that the evidence is basically all there and all that is needed is a big epidemiological "smoking gun" study to put it all together.
Of course not every single thing one could possibly call "plastic" need be equally unsafe. Probably some better plastic will be devised which is safer for use in tires and etc. Still, I think there will be a society-wide push against so-called "plastic", in general. People will probably push to replace everything made of plastic with something else: replacing saran wrap with parchment paper, Tupperware with glass, etc.
I'm not super interested in defending this rigorously as it's really just a hunch, but I'm curious if this is what happens.
serf|2 years ago
I don't.
The effects of lead or mercury poisoning are fast-acting and obvious. All the links you provided talk about the release of plastics into the world, but the details on how that affects things are sketchier than say , mercury poisoning , because the symptoms are slowly accruing and ambiguous compared to lots of other environmental contaminants.
I agree we should do something about it.
ProfessorLayton|2 years ago
Seems like one could live on a vegan diet and still be consuming a lot of plastic fiber. My favorite blankets, rugs, and t-shirts are all 100% polyester.
Even if I managed to use avoid plastics at home, plastic lint is everywhere in public too.
TSiege|2 years ago
jwells89|2 years ago
Solvency|2 years ago
I know PFAS are hormonal disrupters in research but it seems like most people are doing... just fine?
mandmandam|2 years ago
We are burning huge amounts of fossil fuels to run the economy. This economic boon leads to longer lifetimes, at a huge but externalized and delayed cost.
> it seems like most people are doing... just fine?
Where do you live?
Outside of affluent areas, I think most people these days would laugh at such an absurd claim. We are not fine, physically or mentally.
Our soil isn't fine. Our air isn't fine. Our water isn't fine - not our wells, our rivers, our lakes, our oceans, or even our icecaps. Our species are being made extinct at 1000x the background rate of extinction. Anyone fine with this is on the ignorant side of blissful.
adamweld|2 years ago
Ryan_IRL|2 years ago
So maybe a good % of the population could be doing more fine without the micro plastics?
rdsubhas|2 years ago
Not suggesting to have humans consume concentrated concoctions of plastics, but however ethically science allows.
tmccrary55|2 years ago
What if there's some kind of plastic cliff that most species in the universe don't survive?
We worry about virus epidemics, global warming, asteroids, etc.
Arrath|2 years ago
lgleason|2 years ago
stevenpetryk|2 years ago
seydor|2 years ago
thereddaikon|2 years ago
haltist|2 years ago
badcarbine|2 years ago
[deleted]
corytheboyd|2 years ago
Again, probably wrong, not at all an opinion to be taken as fact, just a gut feeling. History tells us that there will at least be SOMETHING perceived as normal today that is later discovered to be not okay, anyway. Plastic, social media, hell, maybe even EV after 50 years of batteries rotting in landfills.
epistasis|2 years ago
And if the exposure is as universal as it sounds, then we can place some upper bounds on the amount of harm. With asbestos, the exposure was somewhat limited, but had greater consewuences. With plastics, we are all getting it.
disney|2 years ago
Always a great way to start a sentence. (Intended in jest.)
riku_iki|2 years ago