pleasestopaskingMicroplastics will be the "boomers all have lead poisoning" of millennials
roofuskitMicroplastics cause neurological damage and anti social violent behavior?
We don’t know about the longer term consequences yet, just like we didn’t about lead.
Not saying it’s a definite but I wouldn’t be surprised.
No, people knew lead was poisonous even back near Roman days. Though just like how humans constantly do stupid things for some benefit, they kept using it as a sweetener for ages.
Also mercury in relation to, “as mad as a hatter”. It’s just mercury was very good for the job.
To play devil’s advocate, we always knew lead was toxic, but we didn’t know the only healthy dose was 0
Yes, but plastic is a very new invention and a lot less studied than something like Pb or Hg, which are natural elements.
Natural in no way what so ever should imply more healthy. Especially in the context of lead and mercury.
In a similar vein, asbestos is “all natural”, especially compared to fiber glass and foam, but it’s still unhealthy as fuck.
Not sure where I said natural = better. All I said was natural things are generally more studied because they existed for lot longer.
It’s existed long enough that serious effects would’ve been obvious by now. Multiple generations have already passed. Multiple. It is already clearly not as serious as lead or mercury regardless of what effects are found.
But we know plastic is inert
MalReynoldsplastic is inert
wat? In no way is it inert.
Plastic has been around for 80 years. Shouldn’t we know something by now
If it was going to be as bad as fearmongers want it to be, absolutely.
I don’t think the impacts of microplastics are quite as catastrophic, they can’t be or we would already know.
Which isn’t to say they aren’t bad just damn lead is realllly bad.
The concentration of them is rising exponentially, that’s the part that terrifies me.
It’s possible we just haven’t crossed a threshold yet.
My non-professional guess is that they will eventually sterilize us by disrupting our sperm’s ability to function properly.
Maybe kids will need to be carefully sheltered from plastics until they are old enough to freeze their sperm.
this reads like the next step is to force them to freeze theirs
No, this will likely just be for the rich.
It’ll end up blocking vital neurotransmitters leaving us zombified and giving us an insatiable craving for brains
'Twould be sweet irony and a blessing for the earth.
Although the best method for removing it I’ve found is donating plasma (PFAs down 30% in 6 months of regular donation, the hope is nanoplastics are also removed…) so it might be the poors (in USA) and generous that get to have kids, so that’s nice…
We are just beginning to understand how much the chemical Imbalances that lead to depression, anxiety, and other mental health disorders originate in the digestive tract and how microplastics from food may disrupt the processing of these chemicals.
Millennials? More like GenX. We’ve been eating out of microwaved tupperware since the sixties.
So have the millennials who were breast fed.
And formula fed
Midnight WolfMmmm, tasty math.
The worst part: postpartum women have lower levels of microplastics than other adults.
So you’re saying the baby took some of the plastic out of them, that’s horribly depressing at least they got 10 to 15 point IQ boost in return
Might be that. Although your body goes into absolute overdrive during pregnancy, and it’s not beyond the realms of possibility that some of the immune system reactions that kick in manage to eject some level of plastic microparticulates
Seems Like something people should be definitely looking into to find out why, with the state of science in America It’s probably not going to be here
I’ve thought more about it. I bet there’s fucking loads in the placenta.
That was my question too, I wonder if there is a reliable way to measure where it all went, or if it’s just diluted in the increased blood volume.
There’s also the possibility that with are more careful with their intake during pregnancy, but that could be controlled for in survey data.
Most likely its the same reason blood donation lowers microplastic levels in blood. Production of new cells that aren’t tainted with it. A woman’s blood volume increases by 40% during pregnancy. Of course ill freely admit thats just a hypothesis and you’re probably right, there would be benefit into studying it.
I was reading somewhere you can lower the level of PFAS in your blood by donating it.
It looks like the cumulative total of plastics produced by the 80’s was around 2-3 trillion tons, whereas now it’s probably more like 20-30T.
Eliminating lead products has been a lot more feasible than the impossible task of eliminating microplastics. They are in everything. So unfortunately Gen Z and onward will suffer with us millennials.
This one’s gonna last a few (the final few?) generations.
Nah, because every future generation will have it too.
OP, you are in for a seriously rough time if you think containing micro plastics is as simple as removing lead from gasoline and paint.
Nobody said it would be.
IninewCrowPffft! … at least microplastics take decades or a lifetime of accumulation to affect your body, mind and health
Social media rots your brain and mental capacity in a matter of years or months
And the person responsible for both issues is the same dude Roy J. Plunkett
Freon too?! Some people really want to watch the world burn.
and teflon. don’t forget about teflon.
I’m crazy. Mark My Words. In 20 years, we’ll have so many microbes capable of consuming plastic people will be bitching about their packages not being able to effectively protect their goods from spoiling. The goldfish has spoken.
I’ve run across at least three separate articles now of researchers from across the world discovering plastic eating bacteria in the wild. Short plastic. Its days are numbered.
Based solely on your comment, I’m looking forward to watching a scene where Christian Bale goes around Wall Street collecting mugs in The Big Short 2: Polymer Boogaloo.
Honestly I don’t think we’re socially responsible enough to end something like lead poisoning these days.
rem26_artfor the past few months ive started to think we're like a couple years away from putting lead back in the gasoline
I’m all with you. But it feels like they did.
CoelacanthTrump deregulating gas and paint to put lead back in both would be so unsurprising it won’t even garner a reaction from me.
Leaded gas is still used in small airplanes with internal combustion engines. If you live near a General Aviation airport you are being showered in lead so some rich guy can play pilot.
Someone will call not wanting lead poisoning woke and that will be that.
etherphonImagine trying to stop the hole in the ozone today. We’d have people spraying CFCs in the air just to spite the effort.
As someone just old enough to remember, we did have that with CFCs. Might not have been super mainstream, and nobody who would have done it out of spite really had the disposable income to actually do it.
I grew up in a Fundamentalist Christian “cult” and I remember the adults around me “joking” about it all the time. I remember a Missionary to northern Canada visiting our church (in rural America) to try to raise support talking about the temperatures and joking that it’s so cold that he wanted to stand outside with an aerosol can in each hand to try to bring on some global warming, and that getting a laugh from the congregation. You might think that maybe it was a “harmless” joke that maybe as a child I didn’t pick up on the sarcasm, but there were absolutely adults there who fully believed that there was nothing humans could do to damage the earth, because God takes care of it. “And how dare the government and these evolutionists try to tell us how to live.”
🔍🦘🛎There’s actually a lot of work going into documenting and replacing lead service lines in the US. EPA required every state to make sure every waterworks submitted an inventory by last October, with grant money through the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law to pay for it.
Is plastic really better? PVC, ABS,polyethylene and the rest get brittle after some time depending on conditions. All the degradation byproducts are in the water
If it was more in the zeitgeist, kids would be huffing it on tiktok.
BlackmistYou’d have people saying they like the lead and deliberately putting more of it in. Pussy-ass liberals trying to take their god given lead away…
What’s replacing plastic. Good luck.
What kind of generational hazard would you like to have growing up, kids? :D