Ask Lemmy

Yes, something realistic that can be actually done.

It takes a very long time for evolution to adapt to changing environments. We've littered the planet with microplastics in less than a century. I'm not sure it can adapt that quickly.

Yeah it's a bit of a buzzword, there's no real evidence yet that it's a problem and a few areas we'd expect to see them already - plastic factory workers and similar seem to be no less healthy than counterparts in other industries for example.

It feels bad hearing micro plastic is found on ocean floors but really it's just going to vanish under a layer of other creatures trash like shells and bones or the dirt drifting in the currents until it finally settles. We need to look after the planet but it's worth remembering she's a tough old egg.

Go to any VA hospital. Some people can live through being shot. Some people can live a full life with their legs blown off. Ask them about the "unevolved" people who couldn't handle loving with a bullet hole in their body.

Go to a rehab facility and ask people what it's like when most of their cells find a way to keep living.

Go to a graveyard and ask how many people didn't survive lung disease or smoking related cancer.

My siblings and I often marvel that we survived growing up in the 1950s and 60s. DDT, leaded petrol, lead paint, asbestos fake snow, most adults smoking like chimneys, coal fires.... My brother recently got through a type of leukaemia linked to the glue he used to make model planes.

On the other hand, plastic was rare back then. Containers were metal, glass, wood, ceramic. Shopping was carried in string bags or wicker baskets. The butcher wrapped meat in paper, lined with a sheet of waxed paper if it was bleeding. When plastic arrived big style it was cool, convenient, modern. In the 70s everyone had Tupperware - argh, those parties...

This was all in New Zealand btw, something of a conservative backwater. The Australian time zone joke ran: "If it's 7pm in Sydney, it's 1956 in Auckland."

I mean, every person who has died from cigarette related lung conditions might disagree that we've evolved past it. That's just survivor bias.

But also, micro plastics can get past the blood brain barrier and as far as we know, there's no way for our bodies to clean them out. Nano plastics are also getting imedded in lung tissue. We don't know yet the repressions of this but I avoid buying plastic any time there is an alternative. Yes, it's unavailable that we consume it, but that doesn't mean I'm going to bring it into my house.

These days plastic products are sold at huge profit. It blows my mind to see a polyester shirt and a cotton shirt selling for the same price when the polyester probably cost a couple cents to produce.

A recent study indicated they appear to contribute to strokes and heart attacks.

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2024/mar/06/microscopic-plastics-could-raise-risk-of-stroke-and-heart-attack-study-says

Plastic at the microscopic level, if they aren't doing anything chemically interesting, really ought to function about like "rock, but light". Most organisms don't run into trouble because there are tiny bits of rock in the world, so I would expect tiny bits of plastic not to be a huge problem. Which is sort of backed up by how we have noticed microplastics everywhere and we haven't seen huge problems resulting from it (most people are still alive, most children still develop to adulthood, etc.).

But it's entirely possible that some of these plastics are not chemically inert, and that they emit chemicals that do exciting and unwanted things in people's bodies. If we can't keep our plastics from becoming microplastics, we probably need to discontinue the manufacture of non-implantable plastics, since all the plastics will end up in someone's body at some point.

And it's also possible that the microplastics physically do do something interestingly bad. I think there was a recent study to this effect on heart disease. But at this point, that's the question we need to be asking. How many or what kind of microplastics does it take to give a ferret epilepsy? Not "are there microplastics in my all brands of peanut butter?"

The reality is that we do not know what the long term effects are. But nonetheless, without knowing what the consequences are, we managed to contaminate most of the planet including our food and water supply with them. Thats what is worrying because there are many cases where we did something similar with disastrous consequences.

Exactly my take. "Plastic" is a huge word covering thousands of compounds. I'm no chemist, but all the plastics I deal with day to day are inert, which is much of the reason we use them.

Spoken like a true person under 40