While the original paper does have a limitations section in regards to their analysis.... a 0.5%, and increasing, amount of microplastics is so concerning that I'm not even sure how to process...
While the original paper does have a limitations section in regards to their analysis.... a 0.5%, and increasing, amount of microplastics is so concerning that I'm not even sure how to process this emotionally. I really, really hope that the brain ends up being more resistant in some way to these buildups. Or that this research ends up being proven wrong through the peer review as it is still in pre-print.
Regardless, we're seeing another ecological catastrophe happening parallel to climate change. But fortunately, both do share most of its origins at oil. That, we do need to tackle one way or another.
I’m feeling the same, I just don’t know how to process this at all, it’s potentially one of the most terrifying things I’ve ever read, but it seems like barely anybody knows about this or cares. I...
I’m feeling the same, I just don’t know how to process this at all, it’s potentially one of the most terrifying things I’ve ever read, but it seems like barely anybody knows about this or cares. I have a hard time believing the various governments of the world will do anything in time to stop it, considering we’ve known about global warming for decades and very little has been done about that, either.
It’s just really odd living in a time period where it seems the whole world is about to come apart in the next hundred or few hundred years.
I know it's not much of a reassurance, but even the black plague did not destroy Europe. Even as a third of Europe was wiped from the planet, society remains. We are going to meet hard times. But...
I know it's not much of a reassurance, but even the black plague did not destroy Europe. Even as a third of Europe was wiped from the planet, society remains.
We are going to meet hard times. But knowing the above, and my personal experience with talking to many, many suicidal people in the past there is one thing that I'm pretty damn sure of.
Humans are a whole lot stronger than we give ourselves credit for.
We can live in the desert and the artic, we've gone to the moon and are exploring the depths of the ocean. While our problems are indirectly causes by our technological dominance, so are our solutions.
While I did not wish to live in times like this, I don't think we're reaching into the end of civilization, let alone humanity.
Even Hiroshima and Nagasaki are thriving cities nowadays.
There are certainly worse times in history to live. I and everyone I know may have microplastics in their brain, but I still feel relatively alright (aside from a cold); my kids get free lunch at...
Exemplary
There are certainly worse times in history to live.
I and everyone I know may have microplastics in their brain, but I still feel relatively alright (aside from a cold); my kids get free lunch at school, they're relatively safe (let's talk about firearm's being the leading cause of death amongst children instead), my wife earns enough money that I can be a stay at home parent and directly influence my children's upbringing. I'm certainly not working in a factory where a machine will tear off my arm and then I'll be unceremoniously fired so that I can beg on the streets to support my family. I'm not being sent to war and being forced to go over the wall to certain death or having my lungs melted by mustard gas.
Things sure look calamitous right now and there are many things I'm concerned about, but we don't need to Chicken Little here, bemoaning our impending doom every day. I don't wish to deflate this article as an issue, but the catastrophizing I often see on the internet isn't helpful and ends-up being pretty tiresome after so long.
Microplastics alone may not be something to worry about but the thing I find truely worrying is how terrible we are at avoiding giving massive numbers of people mild cases of poisoning. It seems...
Microplastics alone may not be something to worry about but the thing I find truely worrying is how terrible we are at avoiding giving massive numbers of people mild cases of poisoning. It seems like the number of things we get exposed to have to have cumulative effects, do they not? A subset of those microplastics are PFAs, which we know are particularly bad for us to ingest, yet we use it to coat cookware! Here in the US, we have some items that are illegal to be in foods, yet the agency in charge of doing that is fairly permissive, allowing their use as long as it is “generally regarded as safe” instead of actually proven to be safe. Our water sources are frequently tainted; just look at the Flint Water Crisis as an example. And then realize that a number of municipalities have water systems that probably aren’t that great for long term health. We haven’t even gotten into the issues with industrial accidents (which are generally caused by neglect, usually as an attempt to save money), chemical companies just pouring their byproducts into rivers, and of course the cumulative effects of using combustion for energy.
I understand taking a break for mental health, but maybe we really aught to be more proactive about things like this?
I appreciate your outlook. And yeah, I agree that humans as a species will likely carry on for a long time, regardless, but I just fear we’re going to have a ton of problems in the near future...
I appreciate your outlook. And yeah, I agree that humans as a species will likely carry on for a long time, regardless, but I just fear we’re going to have a ton of problems in the near future that could have major consequences to our society. I don’t necessarily think 100% of us will die or anything, but major issues like global warming aren’t being addressed like they should and our poor handling of the Covid pandemic as a species has me being a bit pessimistic about the future, especially with other health issues like microplastics.
Is there an alternative? It seems all other non-organic material would have the same issue of breaking down to nano/micro scales and interfering with biological processes. Just a quick search it...
Is there an alternative? It seems all other non-organic material would have the same issue of breaking down to nano/micro scales and interfering with biological processes. Just a quick search it seems even glass has this issue: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2772416622000201
I mean... The Earth's crust is almost 60% silicates. Silicon Dioxide is more than 10%. I find claims that microglass pollution is a serious threat rather unconvincing from this perspective alone.
I mean... The Earth's crust is almost 60% silicates. Silicon Dioxide is more than 10%. I find claims that microglass pollution is a serious threat rather unconvincing from this perspective alone.
Before the boom of plastic packaging there was glass, foil, cardboard, waxed paper, and cloth. These things are all still used but to lesser degrees because of how light and cheap and variable oil...
Before the boom of plastic packaging there was glass, foil, cardboard, waxed paper, and cloth. These things are all still used but to lesser degrees because of how light and cheap and variable oil based plastics can be. So do alternatives have to be inorganic? There are plastics made from corn, pineapple leather, algae and all sorts of biological matter. Unfortunately, these are all more expensive options to oil plastics which means that public demand and support for alternatives needs to overwhelm the profit motive and spur governments to do the right thing.
This is something I’ve been curious about for a number of years now, and haven’t found a clear answer — does plastic from an organic source behave differently or have different properties (with...
There are plastics made from corn, pineapple leather, algae and all sorts of biological matter
This is something I’ve been curious about for a number of years now, and haven’t found a clear answer — does plastic from an organic source behave differently or have different properties (with regard to microplastics and how long it takes to break down) than oil plastic? Or is it still just as bad but “at least its production doesn’t fund Big Petro”?
I feel like in a much broader sense, the varied origin of a harmful product doesn’t change that it’s still a harmful product.
I think the big sell of bioplastics is that they're made of polymers that are biologically available (I think that's the term). So they have a makeup that makes it possible for bacteria to consume...
I think the big sell of bioplastics is that they're made of polymers that are biologically available (I think that's the term). So they have a makeup that makes it possible for bacteria to consume and digest them fully breaking them back down to CO2 and water. So while bioplastics are much more energy and land intensive to produce than conventional plastic, they shouldn't build up in our soil, water, and within organisms themselves. I'm not sure if they tend to be human digestible, but if soil bacteria can break them down, I'd be surprised if micro-bioplastics had much opportunity to remain in the body very long without something breaking them down.
Disclaimer, I'm not a chemist, but this is the way I understand it. That they are made from biologically available material doesn't matter in itself so much from the perspective of them degrading....
Disclaimer, I'm not a chemist, but this is the way I understand it.
That they are made from biologically available material doesn't matter in itself so much from the perspective of them degrading. That's more about not needing to drill for oil and if we burn them we're not introducing anyhing "new" into the atmosphere. There's also degradable bioplastics, but I think that that's an ortogonal issue (i.e. oilbased plastics could be degradable, and bioplastics can be non-degradable). Wikipedia has a pretty thorough article https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bioplastic.
Thanks for this. That's my misunderstanding. I thought there was something about building the polymers starting with starches that made them inherently biodegradable. But that absolutely makes...
Thanks for this. That's my misunderstanding. I thought there was something about building the polymers starting with starches that made them inherently biodegradable. But that absolutely makes sense you could just as easily create the same polymers as you'd get from processing petroleum or process petroleum to create a biodegradable polymer.
I did see a very interesting presentation on a possible plastic recycling method (currently in its research phase) that involved using enzymes to break down PET (though they mentioned you could create enzymes that could do it to any plastic type) to break it down into plastic building blocks (can't remember the exact parts, I think Glycol was one though), and then recreate PET from the enzyme byproducts. This is kind of unrelated to the micro plastic conversation here, but I was reminded of it thinking about deriving bioplastics. Unfortunately I'm not sure closing the loop on plastic production will be able to address the issue of micro plastics in our water and food supply since my understanding is most of that pollution comes from the small bits of plastic that break of from our food containers, tools, and during food production. :/ It's a shame that a material that's so useful has proven to be so destructive.
How is that even physically possible? I thought the blood-brain barrier prevents even the body's own blood supply from reaching the brain, let alone visible chunks of plastic. Sometimes I wonder...
How is that even physically possible? I thought the blood-brain barrier prevents even the body's own blood supply from reaching the brain, let alone visible chunks of plastic.
Sometimes I wonder whether an unsexy, low-visibility rolling disaster like mass low-level lead poisoning or microplastics contamination from tire particulates will be the death of society before something like nuclear war, pandemic, or climate change.
It also can fluctuate in how much it filters depending on your health and nutritional intake. I know someone that has to be careful what they eat because it causes issues with their blood-brain...
It also can fluctuate in how much it filters depending on your health and nutritional intake. I know someone that has to be careful what they eat because it causes issues with their blood-brain barrier. It isn't necessarily a noticeable issue until you factor in that they are highly reactive to nightshade... so tomatoes will suddenly be a huge problem for them because something else messed with their filter, while a week prior they were slamming down pico de gallo like it was nothing.
Obviously this is simplified to all hell because a) I don't know their diet issues extensively and b) there's way more factors that play into food digestion and reactions. But the blood-brain barrier isn't some catch all net that scoops up plastic and plastic isn't always a solid that can be scooped. This is all very terrifying as this can slowly start to alter how generations think without them knowing why or having direct control over it.
I believe that. There's an interesting interaction between mangoes and the barrier, where after eating a mango your marijuana becomes far more potent because it has an easier time crossing. That...
I believe that. There's an interesting interaction between mangoes and the barrier, where after eating a mango your marijuana becomes far more potent because it has an easier time crossing.
That tomato story sounds awful. I'm sure one learns to live with it but still, a small slip up and you're feeling sick to worse.
Apologies if I'm misinterpreting tone - but they're pretty teeny pieces of plastic. While original manuscript doesn't specify the size range of particles their technique can measure, authors do...
let alone visible chunks of plastic
Apologies if I'm misinterpreting tone - but they're pretty teeny pieces of plastic.
While original manuscript doesn't specify the size range of particles their technique can measure, authors do provide general definition (in intro) of micro- and nanoplastic particles as 1 nanometer to 500 micrometers from the literature; sure the upper end of that range is visible by eye, but a whole lot isn't.
The authors "suspected that much of the MNPs measured were actually in the nanoscale range". Using a type of microscopy, they found "innumerable particulates with shard-like appearance, often less than 200 nm in length."
There's lots of research on health impacts of particulate matter in general (e.g., PM10, PM2.5, PM1, where number = max size in micrometers); seems smaller sizes can get more places and are worse, so on the surface this would seem reasonable.
Not really sure how to end this, just wanted to give a little context.
While the original paper does have a limitations section in regards to their analysis.... a 0.5%, and increasing, amount of microplastics is so concerning that I'm not even sure how to process this emotionally. I really, really hope that the brain ends up being more resistant in some way to these buildups. Or that this research ends up being proven wrong through the peer review as it is still in pre-print.
Regardless, we're seeing another ecological catastrophe happening parallel to climate change. But fortunately, both do share most of its origins at oil. That, we do need to tackle one way or another.
I’m feeling the same, I just don’t know how to process this at all, it’s potentially one of the most terrifying things I’ve ever read, but it seems like barely anybody knows about this or cares. I have a hard time believing the various governments of the world will do anything in time to stop it, considering we’ve known about global warming for decades and very little has been done about that, either.
It’s just really odd living in a time period where it seems the whole world is about to come apart in the next hundred or few hundred years.
I know it's not much of a reassurance, but even the black plague did not destroy Europe. Even as a third of Europe was wiped from the planet, society remains.
We are going to meet hard times. But knowing the above, and my personal experience with talking to many, many suicidal people in the past there is one thing that I'm pretty damn sure of.
Humans are a whole lot stronger than we give ourselves credit for.
We can live in the desert and the artic, we've gone to the moon and are exploring the depths of the ocean. While our problems are indirectly causes by our technological dominance, so are our solutions.
While I did not wish to live in times like this, I don't think we're reaching into the end of civilization, let alone humanity.
Even Hiroshima and Nagasaki are thriving cities nowadays.
There are certainly worse times in history to live.
I and everyone I know may have microplastics in their brain, but I still feel relatively alright (aside from a cold); my kids get free lunch at school, they're relatively safe (let's talk about firearm's being the leading cause of death amongst children instead), my wife earns enough money that I can be a stay at home parent and directly influence my children's upbringing. I'm certainly not working in a factory where a machine will tear off my arm and then I'll be unceremoniously fired so that I can beg on the streets to support my family. I'm not being sent to war and being forced to go over the wall to certain death or having my lungs melted by mustard gas.
Things sure look calamitous right now and there are many things I'm concerned about, but we don't need to Chicken Little here, bemoaning our impending doom every day. I don't wish to deflate this article as an issue, but the catastrophizing I often see on the internet isn't helpful and ends-up being pretty tiresome after so long.
A dark take on a hopeful outlook. I like it. I tend to agree. "It might kill you, but you might be dying of something else already."
Microplastics alone may not be something to worry about but the thing I find truely worrying is how terrible we are at avoiding giving massive numbers of people mild cases of poisoning. It seems like the number of things we get exposed to have to have cumulative effects, do they not? A subset of those microplastics are PFAs, which we know are particularly bad for us to ingest, yet we use it to coat cookware! Here in the US, we have some items that are illegal to be in foods, yet the agency in charge of doing that is fairly permissive, allowing their use as long as it is “generally regarded as safe” instead of actually proven to be safe. Our water sources are frequently tainted; just look at the Flint Water Crisis as an example. And then realize that a number of municipalities have water systems that probably aren’t that great for long term health. We haven’t even gotten into the issues with industrial accidents (which are generally caused by neglect, usually as an attempt to save money), chemical companies just pouring their byproducts into rivers, and of course the cumulative effects of using combustion for energy.
I understand taking a break for mental health, but maybe we really aught to be more proactive about things like this?
I appreciate your outlook. And yeah, I agree that humans as a species will likely carry on for a long time, regardless, but I just fear we’re going to have a ton of problems in the near future that could have major consequences to our society. I don’t necessarily think 100% of us will die or anything, but major issues like global warming aren’t being addressed like they should and our poor handling of the Covid pandemic as a species has me being a bit pessimistic about the future, especially with other health issues like microplastics.
Also worth pointing out the paper is still a pre-print and hasn't yet undergone peer review.
Scientists from Missouri achieve more than 98% efficiency removing nanoplastics from water.
Thanks for linking that! If the technique scales, it could be a hugely important development in the coming decades.
It felt like this discussion needed some cheering up :P
Is there an alternative? It seems all other non-organic material would have the same issue of breaking down to nano/micro scales and interfering with biological processes. Just a quick search it seems even glass has this issue: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2772416622000201
I mean... The Earth's crust is almost 60% silicates. Silicon Dioxide is more than 10%. I find claims that microglass pollution is a serious threat rather unconvincing from this perspective alone.
Before the boom of plastic packaging there was glass, foil, cardboard, waxed paper, and cloth. These things are all still used but to lesser degrees because of how light and cheap and variable oil based plastics can be. So do alternatives have to be inorganic? There are plastics made from corn, pineapple leather, algae and all sorts of biological matter. Unfortunately, these are all more expensive options to oil plastics which means that public demand and support for alternatives needs to overwhelm the profit motive and spur governments to do the right thing.
This is something I’ve been curious about for a number of years now, and haven’t found a clear answer — does plastic from an organic source behave differently or have different properties (with regard to microplastics and how long it takes to break down) than oil plastic? Or is it still just as bad but “at least its production doesn’t fund Big Petro”?
I feel like in a much broader sense, the varied origin of a harmful product doesn’t change that it’s still a harmful product.
I think the big sell of bioplastics is that they're made of polymers that are biologically available (I think that's the term). So they have a makeup that makes it possible for bacteria to consume and digest them fully breaking them back down to CO2 and water. So while bioplastics are much more energy and land intensive to produce than conventional plastic, they shouldn't build up in our soil, water, and within organisms themselves. I'm not sure if they tend to be human digestible, but if soil bacteria can break them down, I'd be surprised if micro-bioplastics had much opportunity to remain in the body very long without something breaking them down.
Disclaimer, I'm not a chemist, but this is the way I understand it.
That they are made from biologically available material doesn't matter in itself so much from the perspective of them degrading. That's more about not needing to drill for oil and if we burn them we're not introducing anyhing "new" into the atmosphere. There's also degradable bioplastics, but I think that that's an ortogonal issue (i.e. oilbased plastics could be degradable, and bioplastics can be non-degradable). Wikipedia has a pretty thorough article https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bioplastic.
Thanks for this. That's my misunderstanding. I thought there was something about building the polymers starting with starches that made them inherently biodegradable. But that absolutely makes sense you could just as easily create the same polymers as you'd get from processing petroleum or process petroleum to create a biodegradable polymer.
I did see a very interesting presentation on a possible plastic recycling method (currently in its research phase) that involved using enzymes to break down PET (though they mentioned you could create enzymes that could do it to any plastic type) to break it down into plastic building blocks (can't remember the exact parts, I think Glycol was one though), and then recreate PET from the enzyme byproducts. This is kind of unrelated to the micro plastic conversation here, but I was reminded of it thinking about deriving bioplastics. Unfortunately I'm not sure closing the loop on plastic production will be able to address the issue of micro plastics in our water and food supply since my understanding is most of that pollution comes from the small bits of plastic that break of from our food containers, tools, and during food production. :/ It's a shame that a material that's so useful has proven to be so destructive.
How is that even physically possible? I thought the blood-brain barrier prevents even the body's own blood supply from reaching the brain, let alone visible chunks of plastic.
Sometimes I wonder whether an unsexy, low-visibility rolling disaster like mass low-level lead poisoning or microplastics contamination from tire particulates will be the death of society before something like nuclear war, pandemic, or climate change.
Some things pass through. It's more akin to a filter than a barrier. Plastics passing through is concerning though.
It also can fluctuate in how much it filters depending on your health and nutritional intake. I know someone that has to be careful what they eat because it causes issues with their blood-brain barrier. It isn't necessarily a noticeable issue until you factor in that they are highly reactive to nightshade... so tomatoes will suddenly be a huge problem for them because something else messed with their filter, while a week prior they were slamming down pico de gallo like it was nothing.
Obviously this is simplified to all hell because a) I don't know their diet issues extensively and b) there's way more factors that play into food digestion and reactions. But the blood-brain barrier isn't some catch all net that scoops up plastic and plastic isn't always a solid that can be scooped. This is all very terrifying as this can slowly start to alter how generations think without them knowing why or having direct control over it.
I believe that. There's an interesting interaction between mangoes and the barrier, where after eating a mango your marijuana becomes far more potent because it has an easier time crossing.
That tomato story sounds awful. I'm sure one learns to live with it but still, a small slip up and you're feeling sick to worse.
Apologies if I'm misinterpreting tone - but they're pretty teeny pieces of plastic.
While original manuscript doesn't specify the size range of particles their technique can measure, authors do provide general definition (in intro) of micro- and nanoplastic particles as 1 nanometer to 500 micrometers from the literature; sure the upper end of that range is visible by eye, but a whole lot isn't.
The authors "suspected that much of the MNPs measured were actually in the nanoscale range". Using a type of microscopy, they found "innumerable particulates with shard-like appearance, often less than 200 nm in length."
There's lots of research on health impacts of particulate matter in general (e.g., PM10, PM2.5, PM1, where number = max size in micrometers); seems smaller sizes can get more places and are worse, so on the surface this would seem reasonable.
Not really sure how to end this, just wanted to give a little context.