Is this going to be one of those things where in a 100 years people laugh at us for putting everything in plastic like we look back at romans etc using lead and mercury for stuff
I don't think so, plastic wrapping is a massive boost for keeping food hygienic in transport and both to avoid waste and reduce pathogen contamination. Probably a much bigger benefit than the microplastic contamination.
It might be they will be like "shame they didn't have this awesome new material that has 0 environmental/health impact that we have today" though.
There are no clear substitutes for plastic in a lot of applications even when you disregard price.
They'll laugh at us for trusting any information we get from social media, too. It's the epistemological equivalent of licking the floor of a public restroom.
Are... you under the impression that people who actually study history mock the Romans for their... use of lead? You need to read more actual sources than the hindustanitimes.com listicles if you're coming to this impression.
And ironically the best way to get the plastics out of our systems is blood letting. So in the future, we are the backwards ones, and the modern peoples use leeches to make themselves healthy.
I'd say they did things that were harmful that they did not know they were harmful. Unless they did it in the face of clear evidence of the harm, what is there to mock?
I expect the people in 100 years from now will laugh at us for doing all of the things that we absolutely know are harming the environment right now. Perhaps they will even laugh at us for hand wringing about plastics on the possibility that they might be harmful while doing next to nothing about the things we do actually have evidence for,
This is interesting -- it does put into context some of what was hyped up recently in the news, for example, the Fairlife Core Power microplastics. While it is higher in Core Plastics, it's not off by an order of magnitudes compared with other milk products.
The other question I have -- what does someone who consumes very little microplastics look like? Increased lifespan, decreased risk of cancer (by how much), does it have lead-like outcomes, etc... Avoiding microplastics seems like a lot of inconvenience (at least for an individual) -- I'd want to make sure the payoff at the end is worth it.
This has to be judged against the alternative, which is… I’m not sure in many cases. As just one example, think about how much more of a pain it is to package/ store/ transport/ consume milk in bottles compared to plastic. Of course there’s also paperboard — I think (I Am Not A Packaging Expert) milk is actually easier to handle with noon-plastic than many other foods. Consider what it would mean to avoid plastic for selling meat I think that means going back to individually prepared paper packages, which would be much more expensive.
This is not to say it might not be worth it in some cases, just that it is a trade-off, and plastic is remarkably good at what it does.
I think about this a lot actually. I grew up with glass milk bottles and paper meat packaging.
Even being able to estimate this is incredibly far outside of my expertise or knowledge, but I suspect for most products plastic is only cheaper because the externalities are not factored into the price. It seems totally possible to me that for a lot of things glass packaging would be cheaper than plastic if plastic were priced appropriately.
Other things I'm not sure. We could probably approach it differently, using different plastics and requiring re-use. It would be interesting to hear a genuine packaging expert's opinion on the balance point here, I doubt it's truly zero plastic for food. But maybe.
FWIW I think any non-glass non-plastic food packaging is also actually plastic. Paperboard and aluminum & steel cans all have plastic linings at least. I think almost exactly everything does these days. Glass being the one exception still.
There are a few options but they are pretty radical departures. There are a few grocery stores, typically natural food co-op type places in the US, that will have no packaging. These places you weigh out your peanuts and put them into your own bag, or they might have burlap or similar. The issue is more when you get into wet things. Meat, cheese, etc. these can be wrapped in wax paper. But thats not going to work if you have a central butcher factory.
Yes! As an agriculturist I've been TRYING TO sound the alarm that every single food supply chain is contaminated with plastics.
EVERY SINGLE soil sample we've been testing has some amount of plastics.
Farmers are feeding plastic to our pigs, then spreading the waste as fertilizer. Imagine our farm fields being covered with a thin layer of partially digested micro plastics, neurotoxins and Roundup-like herbicides.
There is no longer any industrial food stream not heavily contaminated with plastics, the weird thing is no one seems to care at all!
I’d be surprised if there weren’t microplastics in the veggies I’m growing in my organic backyard garden. They are in the water and since uptake by plants has been shown[0] I’d assume they are basically unavoidably at this point. Of course limiting consumption is a goal so avoiding the industrial food system and eating mostly things at the bottom of the food chain are good ways to do that.
There's no escaping it. Every bag of store-bought soil I've used as a hobbyist over the past couple of years contained visible plastic scraps and who knows how many microplastics.
Well, people have never lived longer and basically starvation and even hunger for many people has been eliminated. People are far more likely to get sick from eating too much and acquiring a disease than they are from any of the things you’ve mentioned.
Everything is a tradeoff I guess. The question is if this is a good one and if so how can we make it a better one. Alarmism is going to fall on deaf ears when the reality isn’t as bleak.
I hate to doubt studies, but with advice like: "Invest in a zippered fabric bag and ask the dry cleaner to return your clothes in that instead of those thin sheets of plastic." I am doubtful. I assert that the number one source of microplastics in a house will be clothing. Your "lint trap" in a dryer? Largely microplastics.
Dust in your house? Again, largely made up of fabric fibers. Which are increasingly plastics. Especially so if you have a carpeted house.
I'm not fully against some of these ideas and studies. And I am all for reducing our exposure to microplastics, where we can. But folks largely ignore the microplastic lining in cans, thinking they are avoiding that plastic bottle. We seem to have done a great job of avoiding large plastics in the fear of microplastics. Meanwhile, folks have very little intuition on where the microplastics come from.
> Microplastics ... in glass bottles contain more microplastic particles than those in plastic bottles, cartons or cans. This was the surprising finding of a study conducted by the Boulogne-sur-Mer unit of the ANSES Laboratory for Food Safety. The scientists hypothesised that these plastic particles could come from the paint used on bottle caps. Water and wine are less affected than other beverages. [1]
Of course, in a world where we support corrupt legal concepts such as 'limited liability', this kind of thing was bound to happen and guaranteed to get worse.
I propose a new model; 'total liability'.
Every time something bad happens, you identify every person who contributed to the harm, calculate each person's liability and they have to pay. If some of the culprits cannot be identified, then the remaining culprits who can be identified have to absorb the unallocated liability... Not allocating full liability to people who do harm is akin to allocating it to everyone, including those who played no part in the harm. This is immoral and creates perverse incentives for continued harm.
For example, someone discards an empty plastic Coca Cola bottle on the ground in a public park, the person is fined maybe 95% but 5% of the fine is directed to the Coca Cola company for having made the decision to make the bottle out of plastic instead of tin or glass; thus being complicit in the harm. The money for any harm done, by any entity should go directly towards UBI and be paid out equally to all citizens.
The government could also use statistics to fine companies based on reasonable estimates of current harmful practices. For example, how much damage is microplastics causing in terms of medical costs globally? Make a list of all companies responsible, fine each one proportionally to their contribution to the harm.
People should be paid for identifying, reporting and successfully proving harmful practices (they deserve a commission, like a lawyer).
Identifying and reporting problems adds value to society and should be rewarded.
The majority of the proceeds should go to UBI. Why UBI? Because diffuse harms require diffuse remedies. It's not possible to award damages for widespread harm in a fair, non-corrupt way, so distributing to all citizens equally is the best approach. It's not perfect, but people know how to count and it's easier to identify and prove fraud if the rule is simple like 'each person gets the same amount of UBI'.
This article seems a bit breathless. I wonder if the author realises that plants grow in the dirt and risk having insects crawling all over them. And the sheer number of lifestyle diseases people have. It'll take more than plastic having negative health outcomes for it to be a problem; it'd need to be some pretty substantial problems to outweigh the use people get from plastics.
> One of the studies included in the new review found 1 liter of water — the equivalent of two standard-size bottled waters bought at the store — contained an average of 240,000 plastic particles from seven types of plastics
How many non-plastic particles? I've heard it said there's enough uranium in seawater that we can theoretically use it to generate power.
Best idea of a solution I can think of is modifying bacteria to consume microplastics and releasing them into the wild. Make them a permanent part of the ecosystem.
I started trying to reduce my exposure to plastic packaging a few years ago, but it’s hard to avoid it completely. Even when you buy “organic” or “sustainable” food, it’s often packaged in plastic.
Before food was packaged in plastic a lot of it wasn't packaged properly, went bad, and caused sickness and death. Plastic food packaging has saved innumberable lives and continues to do so. And that's not even considering the prevention of food waste.
If you know how to prepare it, a lot of food comes in its own packaging and you carry it in a basket or, well, walk it home and store it in a crate or a sack or on a shelf or in jars or hang it from the ceiling.
Also: plastics protect food from contamination and infection with biological agents that would cause sickness and death. The benefits far, far, far outweighs the slight downside that might exist.
The current zeitgeist is clearly anti-plastic. Only time will change their minds. Fortunately, the healthcare industry (hospitals) will always use plastic for preventing contamination in a very economical way.
I have adopted for the last 5 years glassware and stainless kitchen items to avoid plastic as much as I possibly can. But then I read something in the last week or so that said recently made glassware has more plastic leeching than some plastic containers...FFS....
we probably just need to train soil bugs to treat plastic like dead leaves. researchers like rillig(germany) and Ting Xu(berkeley) already did something there in this direction. next move maybe just making sure these bugs don’t mess with roots and stay alive in real farm dirt. if that clicks, soil fixes itself while we sleep literally
[+] [-] FugeDaws|9 months ago|reply
[+] [-] DanielHB|9 months ago|reply
It might be they will be like "shame they didn't have this awesome new material that has 0 environmental/health impact that we have today" though.
There are no clear substitutes for plastic in a lot of applications even when you disregard price.
[+] [-] tokai|9 months ago|reply
[+] [-] __alexs|9 months ago|reply
[+] [-] swayvil|9 months ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|9 months ago|reply
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[+] [-] p3rls|9 months ago|reply
[+] [-] _DeadFred_|9 months ago|reply
[+] [-] aa_is_op|9 months ago|reply
[+] [-] Lerc|9 months ago|reply
I'd say they did things that were harmful that they did not know they were harmful. Unless they did it in the face of clear evidence of the harm, what is there to mock?
I expect the people in 100 years from now will laugh at us for doing all of the things that we absolutely know are harming the environment right now. Perhaps they will even laugh at us for hand wringing about plastics on the possibility that they might be harmful while doing next to nothing about the things we do actually have evidence for,
[+] [-] strict9|9 months ago|reply
Whatever your gut tells you about what has the most or least plastic in the food you're eating is probably incorrect.
War rations from the 1950s had the most, along with fast food cheeseburgers and Whole Foods grass fed steak.
Kraft Mac and cheese was low, especially after microwaving.
[+] [-] kenjackson|9 months ago|reply
The other question I have -- what does someone who consumes very little microplastics look like? Increased lifespan, decreased risk of cancer (by how much), does it have lead-like outcomes, etc... Avoiding microplastics seems like a lot of inconvenience (at least for an individual) -- I'd want to make sure the payoff at the end is worth it.
[+] [-] metadat|9 months ago|reply
Plasticlist Report – Data on plastic chemicals in Bay Area foods https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42525633 - Feb 2025 (200 comments)
And another discussion for the same link is currently underway on the front page: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44366548
p.s. thank you, what a terrific resource
[+] [-] neves|9 months ago|reply
[+] [-] gcanyon|9 months ago|reply
This is not to say it might not be worth it in some cases, just that it is a trade-off, and plastic is remarkably good at what it does.
[+] [-] giraffe_lady|9 months ago|reply
Even being able to estimate this is incredibly far outside of my expertise or knowledge, but I suspect for most products plastic is only cheaper because the externalities are not factored into the price. It seems totally possible to me that for a lot of things glass packaging would be cheaper than plastic if plastic were priced appropriately.
Other things I'm not sure. We could probably approach it differently, using different plastics and requiring re-use. It would be interesting to hear a genuine packaging expert's opinion on the balance point here, I doubt it's truly zero plastic for food. But maybe.
FWIW I think any non-glass non-plastic food packaging is also actually plastic. Paperboard and aluminum & steel cans all have plastic linings at least. I think almost exactly everything does these days. Glass being the one exception still.
[+] [-] ecshafer|9 months ago|reply
[+] [-] westurner|9 months ago|reply
Which are most cost effective?
Who pays for The Ocean Cleanup, for example? That's an external cost.
[+] [-] unknown|9 months ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] kylebenzle|9 months ago|reply
EVERY SINGLE soil sample we've been testing has some amount of plastics.
Farmers are feeding plastic to our pigs, then spreading the waste as fertilizer. Imagine our farm fields being covered with a thin layer of partially digested micro plastics, neurotoxins and Roundup-like herbicides.
There is no longer any industrial food stream not heavily contaminated with plastics, the weird thing is no one seems to care at all!
[+] [-] roxolotl|9 months ago|reply
0: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10966681/
[+] [-] dns_snek|9 months ago|reply
[+] [-] nemo44x|9 months ago|reply
Everything is a tradeoff I guess. The question is if this is a good one and if so how can we make it a better one. Alarmism is going to fall on deaf ears when the reality isn’t as bleak.
[+] [-] graemep|9 months ago|reply
[+] [-] infecto|9 months ago|reply
[+] [-] floundy|9 months ago|reply
I'd imagine they come out in essentially the same condition they go in. :)
[+] [-] swayvil|9 months ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] taeric|9 months ago|reply
Dust in your house? Again, largely made up of fabric fibers. Which are increasingly plastics. Especially so if you have a carpeted house.
I'm not fully against some of these ideas and studies. And I am all for reducing our exposure to microplastics, where we can. But folks largely ignore the microplastic lining in cans, thinking they are avoiding that plastic bottle. We seem to have done a great job of avoiding large plastics in the fear of microplastics. Meanwhile, folks have very little intuition on where the microplastics come from.
[+] [-] chamsom|9 months ago|reply
This seems to make that cheap polyester shirt infinitely more of a risk origin than some cereal with microplastics.
[+] [-] baxtr|9 months ago|reply
Can you share a good source with some details on where the bulk of microplastic exposure comes from?
[+] [-] sebastiennight|9 months ago|reply
[+] [-] jakub_g|9 months ago|reply
> Microplastics ... in glass bottles contain more microplastic particles than those in plastic bottles, cartons or cans. This was the surprising finding of a study conducted by the Boulogne-sur-Mer unit of the ANSES Laboratory for Food Safety. The scientists hypothesised that these plastic particles could come from the paint used on bottle caps. Water and wine are less affected than other beverages. [1]
[1] https://www.anses.fr/en/content/caps-glass-bottles-contamina...
[+] [-] jongjong|9 months ago|reply
I propose a new model; 'total liability'.
Every time something bad happens, you identify every person who contributed to the harm, calculate each person's liability and they have to pay. If some of the culprits cannot be identified, then the remaining culprits who can be identified have to absorb the unallocated liability... Not allocating full liability to people who do harm is akin to allocating it to everyone, including those who played no part in the harm. This is immoral and creates perverse incentives for continued harm.
For example, someone discards an empty plastic Coca Cola bottle on the ground in a public park, the person is fined maybe 95% but 5% of the fine is directed to the Coca Cola company for having made the decision to make the bottle out of plastic instead of tin or glass; thus being complicit in the harm. The money for any harm done, by any entity should go directly towards UBI and be paid out equally to all citizens.
The government could also use statistics to fine companies based on reasonable estimates of current harmful practices. For example, how much damage is microplastics causing in terms of medical costs globally? Make a list of all companies responsible, fine each one proportionally to their contribution to the harm.
People should be paid for identifying, reporting and successfully proving harmful practices (they deserve a commission, like a lawyer).
Identifying and reporting problems adds value to society and should be rewarded.
The majority of the proceeds should go to UBI. Why UBI? Because diffuse harms require diffuse remedies. It's not possible to award damages for widespread harm in a fair, non-corrupt way, so distributing to all citizens equally is the best approach. It's not perfect, but people know how to count and it's easier to identify and prove fraud if the rule is simple like 'each person gets the same amount of UBI'.
[+] [-] roenxi|9 months ago|reply
> One of the studies included in the new review found 1 liter of water — the equivalent of two standard-size bottled waters bought at the store — contained an average of 240,000 plastic particles from seven types of plastics
How many non-plastic particles? I've heard it said there's enough uranium in seawater that we can theoretically use it to generate power.
[+] [-] whatsakandr|9 months ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|9 months ago|reply
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[+] [-] zdenulo|9 months ago|reply
[+] [-] ChaoPrayaWave|9 months ago|reply
[+] [-] deadbabe|9 months ago|reply
[+] [-] maxerickson|9 months ago|reply
[+] [-] superkuh|9 months ago|reply
[+] [-] gherkinnn|9 months ago|reply
[+] [-] petre|9 months ago|reply
[+] [-] nativeit|9 months ago|reply
[+] [-] superkuh|9 months ago|reply
[+] [-] KboPAacDA3|9 months ago|reply
[+] [-] honeybadger1|9 months ago|reply
[+] [-] ourmandave|9 months ago|reply
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SC2eSujzrUY
The safe allowable ppm counts are insanely low for this shit.
[+] [-] swayvil|9 months ago|reply
Now it's the vaccine.
[+] [-] b0a04gl|9 months ago|reply