[FugeDaws]

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

[DanielHB]

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.

[quantified]

We will see. It's microplastics in semen and brains that may be seen as negligent pollution. Our generations haven't inherited much active pollution, futures have more opportunity for it.

The future is not known. Let's see. We obviously didn't all die of food poisoning before the invention of plastic.

[AlotOfReading]

I think most people would be okay if "only" the 80% of food that could manage paper packaging switched.

[pengaru]

> 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.

One can make even grander claims about having plumbing vs. the effects of lead poisoning.

[sunnybeetroot]

Isn’t the better material for transport, silicone?

[tokai]

Yes, but its going to be like the romans where their use of lead was nowhere as problematic as people like to think.

[__alexs]

Lead is so obviously bad for that we have known it for thousands of years.

[westward]

And it wasn't until the 1970s that the US banned lead paint in houses. 200 years after Ben Franklin wrote that it was bad.

Like, clearly plastics are bad. And yet, humans like the convenience, the utility.

[FugeDaws]

yet as late as the 19th century lead was in make up

[nikbackm]

Clean, beautiful lead.

[uncircle]

> Lead is so obviously bad

Yeah, though I’m much more concerned about those that are not so obviously bad, that we still don’t know how terrible they are. You know, the unknown unknows.

[nativeit]

…and yet we actively used it in water pipes, painted our walls with it, and poisoned the air by putting it in gasoline—all in the 20th-century.

[swayvil]

How does this obvious badness manifest, exactly?

I can drink water from a lead pipe all day and suffer not even a headache.

EDIT I'm serious. What is the obvious manifestation? Because the manifestations I've heard of aren't so obvious.

[swayvil]

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.

[p3rls]

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.

[_DeadFred_]

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.

[aa_is_op]

Like asbestos? Oh nevermind... that's legal again

[Cthulhu_]

I would like to thank the activists at r/asbestosremovalmemes for normalizing eating it, first step in normalizing it and making sure everyone will be entitled to compensation.

[Lerc]

Do we laugh at Romans for using lead and mercury?

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,

[pegasus]

Apparently, the smarter or more informed ones did know, or at least suspect, that lead is bad for you. There are writings from the time which mention this. Also, led pipes were not as bad as some imagine, since they would, after a while, become protected from leaching by a layer of calcium deposits.

[vladms]

It is optimistic to think they will "laugh" about the environments harm. That would mean they would not suffer a lot of the consequences of said harm. Let's hope it will not be that bad to become fanatical about it.

[nativeit]

I would be less inclined to laugh at Romans, since my grandparents still used lead in plenty of dangerous applications. Why do we need to go any further back than 100-years?

[lo_zamoyski]

And also "harmful compared to what?".

It is often the case that something with desired good effects also has undesirable bad side effects, but the good effects and their value outweigh the bad effects.

I don't know if the Romans made tradeoffs like this; they were well aware of its chronic toxicity which resulted in plumbism. But you have to remember that we're talking about a diverse ancient empire. People today know that stuffing your face with garbage food and in large amounts is bad for you, and the speed of communication and scope of regulation are might higher, but the "practice" is widespread anyway.

[cced]

What's interesting is, with the Internet, they will be looking back and seeing what we're saying we think they'll be saying about us.

Assuming archives are up, hello from the past! :wave:

[FugeDaws]

I mean laugh out of context I dont think anyones specifically laughing at something they didnt know but in the context of smuggness of what we know now

We wont do a damn thing about the dangers of micro plastic now until it gets incredibly bad that we cant ignore it.

Id say they would actually laugh at us for that though in the future

[realo]

The environment? In 100 years? Laughing?

Come on ...