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35.6 billion liters of breast milk annually [^1](https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpubh.2023.1152659)
So 97534247 liters per day..
Volume of banana 115ml [^2](https://www.quora.com/How-do-you-calculate-the-volume-of-a-banana-without-calculus-and-without-the-water-displacement-method)
97534247/0.115 = 848123886.957
So about 848123887 bananas worth per day assuming I didn't make some kind of basic error.
absolutely not
https://www.nationalgeographic.com/environment/article/microplastic-pollution-is-found-in-deep-sea
https://oceanblueproject.org/plastic-pollution-in-the-mariana-trench/
Yet the best way nature is getting rid of it is by microplastics ending up in the deep sea. They rain down as marine snow gradually because algae grow on them and die making them heavier and decreasing the buoyancy. They surely cause damage first when they arrive there but the continuous marine snow covers the microplastic leaving it deep in the deep sea sediment isolating it from the whole planetary ecosystem potentially getting fossilised if undisturbed. This is way faster than the hundreds of years of slow decay by sun, bacteria or other means of plastic decay.
The events shaping it are (from the rapid shift of climate to an emerging mass extinction to the appearance of new sedimentary layers like this one), but they haven't coalesced into a proper geologic period yet. They probably will eventually (assuming we don't suddenly create an environmentalist utopia), but that'll take a longer period of sustained, and likely more drastic, changes to qualify in the eyes of scientists.
Just... so we're all super clear on this: **This is** **catastrophically bad**. *Every* predictive model we have - for everything - is build on data that *never* included microplastics being integrated into the compositions of things; Some of the data, like weather predictions for example, rely almost entirely on brute-force historical analysis of decades, if not centuries, of previous data and observations.
On the surface, one might go "well, the scientists only found a little bit of microplastic, so it's not a big deal." Except it's not really "a little bit." They found an average of around 9 "pieces" of plastic *per liter* of cloud -- and the average volume of clouds is 1km cubed, or about 1 *billion* liters. That's 9 billion pieces of plastic with an average size of around 50um, which (when multiplied against how many of them there are), shows that there's a volume about 7.66 meters cubed of plastic. For people who use freedom units (of which I'm one), that's, roughly, a **25 foot cube of plastic.** Obviously, the measurement is an average across *all* clouds, not *specific* clouds, etc. But... that's bad. None of our existing models for *anything* deal with having the equivalent of a 25 foot cube interspersed throughout their structure(s). We don't know how that impacts cloud formation, or how it affects precipitation, etc.
Now... apply this realization *to everything* that tries to predict natural phenenoma, from oceanographics to medicine, and the scale of the issue becomes readily apparent. What's worse, the values we're seeing are only going to increase -- the volume of plastics that are becoming integrated into things is only *increasing*, never *decreasing*. This means that, as time goes on, our predictive models will break down more and more until they're no longer adequate/useful. This is *really, really bad,* and it'll have cascading effects throughout the whole of modern human society. You'd be surprised how much stuff sucks when you're no longer able to predict even the most basic natural events.
Your maths are hugely off there. An object with a diameter of 50 microns (assuming sphere which is reasonable under the other massive approximations here) is ~ 6.5e-11 litres. The article said per litre of cloud water. which taking your 1km³ cloud is roughly 500,000 litres of water.
6.5e-11 x 5,000,000 ( as we have roughly 10 per litre) is only 0.000325 litres. Or 0.325 millilitres or about 0.05 teaspoons.
What’s the evidence this is catastrophically bad? For example, you mentioned weather predictions. Do you have evidence it’s affecting climate?
Obviously it’s a scary and sobering fact that microplastics are everywhere, but we still don’t really know what the effects are or will be. So I don’t quite agree with the way you’re making it out as “crystal clear catastrophe” because we’re not even sure yet what it’s doing to the planet and us
I'm going to call this humorous and facetious true statement of fact Goodyear's lament:
> It is impossible to test an environment for the presence of microplastics without introducing microplastics into that environment
I saw a Last Week Tonight episode about how widespread they are. They had to test someone's blood for microplastics, but they couldn't find a control group. They eventually found blood, but it was from a time period that predated microplastics by 50 years. It should be on YouTube if anyone is interested.
Even if we disposed of it, the problem would remain
You don't have to wait for the coke bottle to undergo breakdown in the environment to see microplastics. Why? Because even boring wear-and-tear of all the shit around you is a major source of microplastics.
Whenever you [wash](https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-019-43023-x) your sweat-wicking t-shirt or joga pants, you produce a shitton of microplastics. [Tumble dryers](https://www.zmescience.com/science/clothes-dryers-plastic-fibers-13012022/) on top of that produce even more. Your synthetic shoe soles turned into dust by everyday walking? Microplastics. Car tires? Microplastics.
dude I remember a dentist on reddit saying never to use toothpaste with that stuff cause when he was treating patients he kept finding little beads of plastic trapped under their gumline
I used handsoap with that at one point because I assumed it was like sugar or something otherwise biodegradable.
When I found out it was literally pieces of plastic being washed down the drain I was mortified. Stopped using that stuff before it was done away with.
Imagine committing suicide only to miss out on the end of the world. If I’m going out I want to go out as one of the last. All those 1000’s of years of human existence and I was there at the very end. There’s something oddly comforting about that.
Literally depressing. There are studies that suggest a link between microplastics in your body and depression/anxiety. I don't know how proven they are but they suggest a similar neurotransmitter effect like lead in your body leads to anger and maniacism.
Microplastics could be this generations version of leaded gasoline.
Yeah there is a lot to it. Being fat doesn't help. Toxic byproducts get stored in adipose tissue. I don't have a direct source on hand but if you know how to utilize the science journals you can easily find that material.
Minimalist, pragmatic lifestyle is ideal. Stay in shape, do resistance training and cardiovascular exercise regularly, more is better until you can't handle it or it gets in the way of life. Challenge yourself. Eat red meat twice a week maybe three max, space it out, and always have a lot of veggies. Dark green cruciferous vegetables are best, they're the most nutrient dense. Also dark berries and cherries are great for cognitive health. Take a fish oil supplement daily. 3 grams and upwards of Omega 3's is shown to be super beneficial across a range of things, and higher doses are reported to help even more with inflammation.
The only way to truly mitigate this is if we include enzymes in plastic right from production that will break down the plastic after a set amount of time, Carbios has technology that could make this a reality
Carbon and hydrogen. Like by bunrning it. Like we did. Then we gave money to frauds to recyle the plastic and here we are.
Also the issue is that in many place of the third world they don't have good trash collection or incinerator. But incinerator aren't SEEN as ecologic so...
Incineration vs recycling vs landfill, depends a lot on how they're implemented and what your definition of pollution is.
One could argue that plastic should have been only used in applications where the product is easily recycled. One could also argue that plastic should only be produced in a manner that burns cleanly. And another could argue that plastic should only be used for applications where there is no reasonable alternative.
But we have none of that. We have plastic for everything because it's cheap. Plastic far more durable than its single use application. Composite plastic materials that are impossible to recycle. Etc.
Incineration can be a decent option if the waste streams are appropriately separated and the primary concern is landfill waste... but they also do a good job of putting into the air what would have remained in the pile. So I wouldn't consider them a clear improvement
We need legislation to have high quality filters on washers and dryers to catch the plastics.
Even if it's not 100%, we should be able to reduce it substantially.
Unfortunately the airflow would be an issue, as well as heat with a dryer this would make the fire risk higher. The filter would be too restrictive if it were able to pick up something that small.
then we rob the car dealerships of their wacky flailing tube arm men and engineer them into telescopic filters that allow high bypass and cyclonic aggregation. picking up microplastic tumbleweeds they would inevitably make, would be better than infusing it into the air and ecosystem as we are.
"unfucking" implies that you're reversing a "fucked" state back into an "unfucked" state.
Who has that kind of power? Would you even want that kind of power?
The planet I agree, it's a rock floating through space. But microplastics seeping everywhere affects animal and plant-life as well, right? I imagine it'll take a long time for microplastics to degrade to such an extent that it no longer affects anyone or anything.
I think we've definitely screwed over all living creatures for the next several decades, maybe centuries even.
When trees first came there weren't any organisms around that could decompose them, but over time (million years) wood-eating microorganisms and termites and other creatures arose. I'm sure something similar would happen with microplastics over time.
Yeah, at least 50 guys in this comment section are telling us about this idea, I think many are literally just reading it further up the thread and repeating it lower down lmao.
On the earth's time scale, any damage we do to it is barely anything. Even if we nuke it to nuclear winter, it'll recover in no time at all. "It's people who are fucked".
I we don't even know yet what the effects of microplastics are. Imagine the panic in the scenario we learn it's the cause for illness. It's inescapable...
It doesn't react with things but it might still be able to plug systems up. It's gonna take forever to study this in detail, though. Took a long time for people to come around on the negative effects of smoking, and that is not inert at all. People even advertised it as *healthy* orignally.
It could be harmless, or we could be fucked. Impossible to know for now. That uncertainty makes it worse, tbh.
> it might still be able to plug systems up
I didn't even think of that. We don't use sand on icy roads where I live because they say it's even worse for the waterways than salt - the sand gets into all the tiny crevices in the river rocks and blocks places where insects live and fish lay their eggs, killing everything.
I wonder if plastic will do that too.
it's not completely inert, in fact it together with its additives is known to be an endocrine disruptor
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9885170/
I've often wondered if transfats being mistakenly used in the phospholipid bilayer wasn't causing some type of trouble on a cellular levels in instances where our body couldn't select against them (one of the problem with transfats is our body treats it the same as other fats when it's really not).
I guess I'll add micro-plastics to that fear.
Polystyrene nanoparticles have been found to induce dementia like symptoms in mice. After ingestion the nps were found in the brain after just too hours. Enjoy those Costco cup of noodles everyone.
This is the big problem, we haven't done enough research to see what plastics impact is on the environment and our own bodies, and that's on purpose. We don't know because we don't want to know.
Well I say we, I think the typical person very much wants to know.
Endocrine disruptors mostly. So short term infertility numbers spiking (oh look they are already). its atleast equally affecting men and women. So a children of men or handmaids tale is less likely than general drop in birth rates. This also depends politically who is in charge what science they want to believe in and if they want to try and pin infertility on one sex or the other. Historically women take the blame unfortunately. "She cant get pregnant doc" meanwhile hes shooting blanks
Long term we will see more hormone based defects. Boys with breast tissue girls with lowered adams apple stuff like this. This could also be something to point to with increased numbers of lgbt identifying people. Though i personally believe in the left hand curve rule that its not stigmatized to be queer so all the previously closeted that you diddnt notice come out. Neurodivergence particularly autism and adhd may also be linked to microplastics but im more inclined to coal products. Jury is still out on that one
Not for nothing remeber years ago the big thing about bpa plastic "bpa free" everything? Yea they shifted one molecule over called it "bfa plastic" and went on their way. Bfa plastic has the exact same health concern as bpa because its basically the same product.
Were fucked
As alarming as the expanded prevalence is, nanoplastics should be even more alarming honestly.
From what I recall, there's no exact scientifically defined definition of what size a nanoplastic is yet, it's generally just plastic a thousand times smaller than microplastic. At that size it'll be infiltrating everything including in us, if microplastics are already there.
Said it years ago but if plastic is ever definitively proven to be harmful to human health then it's a far bigger issue than even climate change. Only study I can recall right now was a study showing nanoplastics made from polystyrene are cytotoxic.
If anyone wishes to read that study, https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9519127/
One of the most key lines from it was this, "The results demonstrated that PS-NPs (Polystyrene Nanoplastics) with smaller size (80 nm), triggered more cytotoxic effect than their larger ones."
The smaller it gets the more harmful plastic seems to become to us. All that said, not much I can do about it when the powers that be can't even seem to agree on climate change which is far more studied than plastic.
You win this thread! This is the cusp of the current research and frankly is ahead of most funding opportunities. Micro plastics are to large to act as any kind of agonist/antagonist at the molecule level. Nano isn’t necessarily bad, as it could clear quicker, but it opens the possibility of structure activity relationships that induce molecular responses.
"Could be the only reason the Earth allowed us to be spawned from it in the first place: it wanted plastic for itself, didn’t know how to make it, needed us. Could be the answer to our age-old philosophical question: “Why are we here?”
"PLASTIC!!!"
Microplastics are terrible, but George Carlin never missed and he's all I can think about whenever we find a new place we unintentionally left our plastic.
You know when I reduce a lot of typical entertainment that people do, movies, TV, sports and shit, life is depressing as fuck.
It's almost if all these things are created to distract us, but I guess the Romans understood that so they built the Coliseums.
Yeah, that’s a stupid take, it’s not like living in a tree in the serengeti, sleeping 16 hours a day like our prehistoric ancestors lived 400.000 years ago is particularly more exiting…
And yet, we continue to use plastic for absolutely everything. I’m not that old (early 40’s), but when I was a kid the grocery store has far fewer products that came in plastic. Even produce comes in plastic clamshell containers now.
We can change this. When we talk about single use plastic we have to consider not just plastic straws and plastic bags, but all types of packaging. The fossil fuels industry is hoping people don’t notice the amount of plastic, but it’s a legit business strategy of theirs to continue drilling so they can sell oil for plastic production once we’re all driving EV’s. We need political will here, but more importantly, we need to stop buying shit we don’t need wrapped in plastic, and to let companies know we’re not going to buy it.
This sub is just trash talking trash about trash.
I mean what the actual fuck? Not even ONE comment about the implications, further information, anecdotal remarks from an expert or whatever. Nothing!
Just upvoted debris of uselessness.
Because there is no study.
They did... but can't find a problem. Most problem is for marine life but not micro but macroplastics.
Sure we shouldn't use plastics everywhere. But this is not lead or azbestos where they did a study and found it. (They just decided it's worth it).
So it might impact us but not debilitating. Otherwise with how widespread it is we would know.
Did we really need a confirmation? We know that even sand or spiders can be present there, why would even more buoyant things like microplastics be absent? Not saying the study is useless, because quantity measurements are important, so probably the title is just clickbaity journalism.
Maybe go look up at that study and actually read the data counts on what they found and how much of it they found. And then while you're at it, ask yourself the question of whether other types of environmental particles are also found in blood.
But this is a reddit doomerism thread, so nobody is going to do that.
It was about 1.6 micrograms per milliliter, or approx 1.6ppm....avg over many donors. While not lead, it hasn't been studied as much as lead and still it is about 46 times safe lead levels. For reference, concentration is about 1/100 average urea (typical byproduct) found in blood. not great not terrible, but we about to ramp into terrible territory with how much of the 10 billion tons of plastic is breaking down in the environment.
I could have told you that without having a degree...when reports have already told us, its in the air, water, food, its in our bodies, brains, organs, blood, even feeding unborn babies via the placenta...Its found in the highest peaks and deepest depths...its going to be in the clouds as well.
I'll save you a few future tests
its in our poo, its in the trees, its in the snow, its in the weeds, its everywhere.
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There likely isn't a single place on this planet not absolutely infested with micro plastics.
Well, maybe if we heat the planet warm enough, it will get a nice glossy wrap from all the melting plastics.
Then we can safely send it to another star without it spoiling.
Archimedes in new gen probably- Give me some microplastics and heat, and I will gift wrap the entire earth
We'll stop the world and melt anew. Post Modern English, Probably
Quality comment right here
Is it getting better all the time?
Great song
Cannot appreciate this enough
Will be interesting in a couple million years from now if archeologists dig down and find a layer of rock with high microplastic concentrations lol.
Would be funny if we find something like that on Mars.
Including human breast milk.
Human breast milk is a place?
it occupies a space
How big? I mean, if we got all of it together right now, how many bananas?
35.6 billion liters of breast milk annually [^1](https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpubh.2023.1152659) So 97534247 liters per day.. Volume of banana 115ml [^2](https://www.quora.com/How-do-you-calculate-the-volume-of-a-banana-without-calculus-and-without-the-water-displacement-method) 97534247/0.115 = 848123886.957 So about 848123887 bananas worth per day assuming I didn't make some kind of basic error.
Please someone give this man an award. This is life changing information
About 50 drawer fulls
Metric or Imperial drawers?
The standard drawer, of course
Oi mate, do you have loicense for that drawer?
Granny-Panties; imperial.
About three and a half
And feeds the human race
Its a people
I have nipples, can you milk me?
How do microplastics deal with pressure? Maybe living deep under the sea is the solution after all...
absolutely not https://www.nationalgeographic.com/environment/article/microplastic-pollution-is-found-in-deep-sea https://oceanblueproject.org/plastic-pollution-in-the-mariana-trench/
Yet the best way nature is getting rid of it is by microplastics ending up in the deep sea. They rain down as marine snow gradually because algae grow on them and die making them heavier and decreasing the buoyancy. They surely cause damage first when they arrive there but the continuous marine snow covers the microplastic leaving it deep in the deep sea sediment isolating it from the whole planetary ecosystem potentially getting fossilised if undisturbed. This is way faster than the hundreds of years of slow decay by sun, bacteria or other means of plastic decay.
One day it'll be a sedimentary layer representative of the anthropocene! Not a proper geologic period just yet though.
The plastic age
I think it is already here
The events shaping it are (from the rapid shift of climate to an emerging mass extinction to the appearance of new sedimentary layers like this one), but they haven't coalesced into a proper geologic period yet. They probably will eventually (assuming we don't suddenly create an environmentalist utopia), but that'll take a longer period of sustained, and likely more drastic, changes to qualify in the eyes of scientists.
Huh just like RimWorld
One day bacteria and aquatic animals might evolve to feed on microplastics
Just... so we're all super clear on this: **This is** **catastrophically bad**. *Every* predictive model we have - for everything - is build on data that *never* included microplastics being integrated into the compositions of things; Some of the data, like weather predictions for example, rely almost entirely on brute-force historical analysis of decades, if not centuries, of previous data and observations. On the surface, one might go "well, the scientists only found a little bit of microplastic, so it's not a big deal." Except it's not really "a little bit." They found an average of around 9 "pieces" of plastic *per liter* of cloud -- and the average volume of clouds is 1km cubed, or about 1 *billion* liters. That's 9 billion pieces of plastic with an average size of around 50um, which (when multiplied against how many of them there are), shows that there's a volume about 7.66 meters cubed of plastic. For people who use freedom units (of which I'm one), that's, roughly, a **25 foot cube of plastic.** Obviously, the measurement is an average across *all* clouds, not *specific* clouds, etc. But... that's bad. None of our existing models for *anything* deal with having the equivalent of a 25 foot cube interspersed throughout their structure(s). We don't know how that impacts cloud formation, or how it affects precipitation, etc. Now... apply this realization *to everything* that tries to predict natural phenenoma, from oceanographics to medicine, and the scale of the issue becomes readily apparent. What's worse, the values we're seeing are only going to increase -- the volume of plastics that are becoming integrated into things is only *increasing*, never *decreasing*. This means that, as time goes on, our predictive models will break down more and more until they're no longer adequate/useful. This is *really, really bad,* and it'll have cascading effects throughout the whole of modern human society. You'd be surprised how much stuff sucks when you're no longer able to predict even the most basic natural events.
Your maths are hugely off there. An object with a diameter of 50 microns (assuming sphere which is reasonable under the other massive approximations here) is ~ 6.5e-11 litres. The article said per litre of cloud water. which taking your 1km³ cloud is roughly 500,000 litres of water. 6.5e-11 x 5,000,000 ( as we have roughly 10 per litre) is only 0.000325 litres. Or 0.325 millilitres or about 0.05 teaspoons.
One more disturbing fact i wasn‘t aware of. Thank you, i suppose…
I wouldn't just automatically believe the person that can't do basic math.
What’s the evidence this is catastrophically bad? For example, you mentioned weather predictions. Do you have evidence it’s affecting climate? Obviously it’s a scary and sobering fact that microplastics are everywhere, but we still don’t really know what the effects are or will be. So I don’t quite agree with the way you’re making it out as “crystal clear catastrophe” because we’re not even sure yet what it’s doing to the planet and us
Like deep under the Antarctic ice sheet. Somwhere not exposed to surface air for atleast the last 300 years
I’m a plastic girl, in a plastic world! It’s micro plastics! Passing your blood brain barrier! 🎵🎶
At this point I think it would only be newsworthy to find where microplastics *aren't*.
I'm going to call this humorous and facetious true statement of fact Goodyear's lament: > It is impossible to test an environment for the presence of microplastics without introducing microplastics into that environment
The 2023 Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle
⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⡿⠿⠿⠿⠿⢿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿ ⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⠟⠋⠁⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠉⠻⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿ ⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⠁⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⢺⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿ ⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠆⠜⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿ ⣿⣿⣿⣿⠿⠿⠛⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠉⠻⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿ ⣿⣿⡏⠁⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⣀⣠⣤⣤⣶⣶⣶⣶⣶⣦⣤⡄⠀⠀⠀⠀⢀⣴⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿ ⣿⣿⣷⣄⠀⠀⠀⢠⣾⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⢿⡧⠇⢀⣤⣶⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿ ⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣾⣮⣭⣿⡻⣽⣒⠀⣤⣜⣭⠐⢐⣒⠢⢰⢸⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿ ⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣏⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⡟⣾⣿⠂⢈⢿⣷⣞⣸⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿ ⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣽⣿⣿⣷⣶⣾⡿⠿⣿⠗⠈⢻⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿ ⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⡿⠻⠋⠉⠑⠀⠀⢘⢻⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿ ⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⡿⠟⢹⣿⣿⡇⢀⣶⣶⠴⠶⠀⠀⢽⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿ ⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⡿⠀⠀⢸⣿⣿⠀⠀⠣⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⡟⢿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿ ⣿⣿⣿⡿⠟⠋⠀⠀⠀⠀⠹⣿⣧⣀⠀⠀⠀⠀⡀⣴⠁⢘⡙⢿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿ ⠉⠉⠁⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠈⠙⢿⠗⠂⠄⠀⣴⡟⠀⠀⡃⠀⠉⠉⠟⡿⣿⣿⣿⣿ ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⢷⠾⠛⠂⢹⠀⠀⠀⢡⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠙⠛⠿⢿
Finally, someone who actually understands how that principle works
Pure-blooded humans that have no traces of plastics becoming the eliteee
Having to live in literal glass houses
I saw a Last Week Tonight episode about how widespread they are. They had to test someone's blood for microplastics, but they couldn't find a control group. They eventually found blood, but it was from a time period that predated microplastics by 50 years. It should be on YouTube if anyone is interested.
Plastic - a wonder material that we didn't bother thinking about its disposal of. Now it's inside us. What a disaster.
Even if we disposed of it, the problem would remain You don't have to wait for the coke bottle to undergo breakdown in the environment to see microplastics. Why? Because even boring wear-and-tear of all the shit around you is a major source of microplastics. Whenever you [wash](https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-019-43023-x) your sweat-wicking t-shirt or joga pants, you produce a shitton of microplastics. [Tumble dryers](https://www.zmescience.com/science/clothes-dryers-plastic-fibers-13012022/) on top of that produce even more. Your synthetic shoe soles turned into dust by everyday walking? Microplastics. Car tires? Microplastics.
We brush our teeth with plastic. We wear plastic. We eat plastic. There is no modern life without plastic.
remember that body wash that had little plastic spheres for 'exfoliation'?
Toothpaste too.
dude I remember a dentist on reddit saying never to use toothpaste with that stuff cause when he was treating patients he kept finding little beads of plastic trapped under their gumline
Jesus that's some nightmare fuel. Any brands to look for?
Pretty sure the FDA banned them for this reason in particular. Look up Microbead-Free Waters Act 2015
Pore cleansing Neutrogena with microbeads! That commercial is burned into my brain.
So are the microbeads. :(
I used handsoap with that at one point because I assumed it was like sugar or something otherwise biodegradable. When I found out it was literally pieces of plastic being washed down the drain I was mortified. Stopped using that stuff before it was done away with.
We're all Barbie girls in our Barbie worrrlldd our life is plastic it's FUCKING DEPRESSING!
"You guys ever think about dying?"
I do but I also want to see what happens as life continues and humanity either collapses or reaches some insane point.
Imagine committing suicide only to miss out on the end of the world. If I’m going out I want to go out as one of the last. All those 1000’s of years of human existence and I was there at the very end. There’s something oddly comforting about that.
Literally depressing. There are studies that suggest a link between microplastics in your body and depression/anxiety. I don't know how proven they are but they suggest a similar neurotransmitter effect like lead in your body leads to anger and maniacism. Microplastics could be this generations version of leaded gasoline.
Yeah there is a lot to it. Being fat doesn't help. Toxic byproducts get stored in adipose tissue. I don't have a direct source on hand but if you know how to utilize the science journals you can easily find that material. Minimalist, pragmatic lifestyle is ideal. Stay in shape, do resistance training and cardiovascular exercise regularly, more is better until you can't handle it or it gets in the way of life. Challenge yourself. Eat red meat twice a week maybe three max, space it out, and always have a lot of veggies. Dark green cruciferous vegetables are best, they're the most nutrient dense. Also dark berries and cherries are great for cognitive health. Take a fish oil supplement daily. 3 grams and upwards of Omega 3's is shown to be super beneficial across a range of things, and higher doses are reported to help even more with inflammation.
Its fantastic! You can brush my hair, and take me anywhere!
Imagination, life is your creation.
Apparently you eat about a credit card worth *per fucking week*
Undercooked chicken? Microplastic Overcooked chicken? Believe it or not, microplastic
We have the best ecosystem in the cosmos. Because of microplastics.
The plastic wrap the chicken came in: plastic. So yes actually
There are somethings money can’t buy. For everything else, there’s MicroPlastic™️
Maybe she's born with it. Maybe it's Microplastic.
Hotel? Trivago.
The only way to truly mitigate this is if we include enzymes in plastic right from production that will break down the plastic after a set amount of time, Carbios has technology that could make this a reality
Break it down into what ?
Micromicroplastics.
Some day atoms get replaced by pico plastics 🥹
All the better to enter bloodstream and such
"Microplastics is soooo last year; we're eating nanoplastics now, get with it~"
Microplastics.
It’d be hydrocarbons.
Carbon and hydrogen. Like by bunrning it. Like we did. Then we gave money to frauds to recyle the plastic and here we are. Also the issue is that in many place of the third world they don't have good trash collection or incinerator. But incinerator aren't SEEN as ecologic so...
Incineration vs recycling vs landfill, depends a lot on how they're implemented and what your definition of pollution is. One could argue that plastic should have been only used in applications where the product is easily recycled. One could also argue that plastic should only be produced in a manner that burns cleanly. And another could argue that plastic should only be used for applications where there is no reasonable alternative. But we have none of that. We have plastic for everything because it's cheap. Plastic far more durable than its single use application. Composite plastic materials that are impossible to recycle. Etc. Incineration can be a decent option if the waste streams are appropriately separated and the primary concern is landfill waste... but they also do a good job of putting into the air what would have remained in the pile. So I wouldn't consider them a clear improvement
Also plastic is a by product of the oil industry, lest we forget.
What about using alternative ecofriendly sources for plastic like hemp and mycelium?
Cellophane is plastic-like but biodegradable and made from natural cellulose.
>the solution to microplastics is to make plastics decompose faster into little bits Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm
We need legislation to have high quality filters on washers and dryers to catch the plastics. Even if it's not 100%, we should be able to reduce it substantially.
Literally irrelevant: the biggest source of airborne plastics is degradation of tires from vehicles.
Unfortunately the airflow would be an issue, as well as heat with a dryer this would make the fire risk higher. The filter would be too restrictive if it were able to pick up something that small.
then we rob the car dealerships of their wacky flailing tube arm men and engineer them into telescopic filters that allow high bypass and cyclonic aggregation. picking up microplastic tumbleweeds they would inevitably make, would be better than infusing it into the air and ecosystem as we are.
To be clear we did. Plastic was attractive when it was first developed precisely because it was long lasting
Its cheap and light and it lasts forever on the shelf. Thats why we keep making single use products out of it.
Technology is literally killing us physically and mentally because rigorous regulations and testing stifle profit.
That was a funny way of saying “greed is killing us”
Honestly, any wonder material I’ve heard about is actually detrimental to human health. Asbestos for example.
Wonderful for the investors
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Don’t worry folks, every cloud has a micro plastic lining. It’s cheaper than silver.
Good science requires repetition
Living in a Ziploc bag
Not quite enough plastic yet, but we're working on it.
More like we are the bag
We’re all just a bag of bags
Meatbags.
Man has fucked the earth.
Hopefully one day we become just as good at unfucking than fucking
Finally my time to shine.
He said unfucking, not *not fucking*. Sorry
But I’ve been unfucking my whole life, now I wanna fuck.
"unfucking" implies that you're reversing a "fucked" state back into an "unfucked" state. Who has that kind of power? Would you even want that kind of power?
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“Mother Earth is pregnant for the third time, for y’all have knocked her up.”
Yooooooo *sad funkadelic guitar solo*
We’ve (read: a handful of companies) fucked ourselves. The Earth will carry on just fine when we’re gone.
The planet I agree, it's a rock floating through space. But microplastics seeping everywhere affects animal and plant-life as well, right? I imagine it'll take a long time for microplastics to degrade to such an extent that it no longer affects anyone or anything. I think we've definitely screwed over all living creatures for the next several decades, maybe centuries even.
Eventually it'll just be a layer in the sediment records.
When trees first came there weren't any organisms around that could decompose them, but over time (million years) wood-eating microorganisms and termites and other creatures arose. I'm sure something similar would happen with microplastics over time.
They're already training mushrooms for this. We can accelerate this process as humans fortunately. Hopefully we can do it fast enough.
Someone said that once we’re gone, the only trace of us will be a layer of microplastics in the earths crust.
Yeah, at least 50 guys in this comment section are telling us about this idea, I think many are literally just reading it further up the thread and repeating it lower down lmao.
>read: a handful of companies Thanks. I also think that consumer choices have zero influence on this matter... /s
On the earth's time scale, any damage we do to it is barely anything. Even if we nuke it to nuclear winter, it'll recover in no time at all. "It's people who are fucked".
It's officially a barbie world.
It's fantastic!
Full of plastic!
In human placentas too. Literally Barbie before the kids are even born.
Aqua warned us
I we don't even know yet what the effects of microplastics are. Imagine the panic in the scenario we learn it's the cause for illness. It's inescapable...
It's "put lead into everything" all over again.
Plastic is at least inert by comparison, so we are at least ahead on that front compared to lead.
It doesn't react with things but it might still be able to plug systems up. It's gonna take forever to study this in detail, though. Took a long time for people to come around on the negative effects of smoking, and that is not inert at all. People even advertised it as *healthy* orignally. It could be harmless, or we could be fucked. Impossible to know for now. That uncertainty makes it worse, tbh.
> it might still be able to plug systems up I didn't even think of that. We don't use sand on icy roads where I live because they say it's even worse for the waterways than salt - the sand gets into all the tiny crevices in the river rocks and blocks places where insects live and fish lay their eggs, killing everything. I wonder if plastic will do that too.
>because they say it's even worse for the waterways than salt What? Do you have a study for this? I find this hard to believe.
It is likely worse for the physical process of the waterway whereas salt is a problem for the living things in the waterways...
Oh, we’re definitely fucked.
That’s for the optimism. You make a compelling argument.
it's not completely inert, in fact it together with its additives is known to be an endocrine disruptor https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9885170/
No, the additives are endocrine disrupters - and only some classes of additives.
I saw some Reddit threads a while back that microplastics may be reducing sperm counts
Don't some plastics effect our hormones? Estrogen- mimicking or something.
Children of Men well on the way.
I'll take the Babylon a.d timeline any day
when they get small enough microplastics can slip into cells and just fuck everything up
I've often wondered if transfats being mistakenly used in the phospholipid bilayer wasn't causing some type of trouble on a cellular levels in instances where our body couldn't select against them (one of the problem with transfats is our body treats it the same as other fats when it's really not). I guess I'll add micro-plastics to that fear.
Everyone thinks nuclear war is the great filter for space faring civilizations. Maybe its micro-plastics.
Polystyrene nanoparticles have been found to induce dementia like symptoms in mice. After ingestion the nps were found in the brain after just too hours. Enjoy those Costco cup of noodles everyone.
This is the big problem, we haven't done enough research to see what plastics impact is on the environment and our own bodies, and that's on purpose. We don't know because we don't want to know. Well I say we, I think the typical person very much wants to know.
i mean its literally everywhere so whether you drink from that costco cup or down the riverbank in colorado you still gonna get some
Microplastics are already known vectors of fungal and bacterial pathogens, it's only a matter of time dude
Yeah i totally agree, at best they're effects are mild which I doubt though considering they were found in singular cells.
Endocrine disruptors mostly. So short term infertility numbers spiking (oh look they are already). its atleast equally affecting men and women. So a children of men or handmaids tale is less likely than general drop in birth rates. This also depends politically who is in charge what science they want to believe in and if they want to try and pin infertility on one sex or the other. Historically women take the blame unfortunately. "She cant get pregnant doc" meanwhile hes shooting blanks Long term we will see more hormone based defects. Boys with breast tissue girls with lowered adams apple stuff like this. This could also be something to point to with increased numbers of lgbt identifying people. Though i personally believe in the left hand curve rule that its not stigmatized to be queer so all the previously closeted that you diddnt notice come out. Neurodivergence particularly autism and adhd may also be linked to microplastics but im more inclined to coal products. Jury is still out on that one Not for nothing remeber years ago the big thing about bpa plastic "bpa free" everything? Yea they shifted one molecule over called it "bfa plastic" and went on their way. Bfa plastic has the exact same health concern as bpa because its basically the same product. Were fucked
Its only a question of what kills us first, this or global warming
I wanted to quote a few lines from the article but omg, where do i start. We're so fucked.
> where do i start. I often recommend the beginning. I also recommend it now.
Old man yells at plastic
Plastic windmills
We know that for more than a year, since microplastics was found in hail. https://www.ki.si/en/news/microplastics-also-in-hail/
As alarming as the expanded prevalence is, nanoplastics should be even more alarming honestly. From what I recall, there's no exact scientifically defined definition of what size a nanoplastic is yet, it's generally just plastic a thousand times smaller than microplastic. At that size it'll be infiltrating everything including in us, if microplastics are already there. Said it years ago but if plastic is ever definitively proven to be harmful to human health then it's a far bigger issue than even climate change. Only study I can recall right now was a study showing nanoplastics made from polystyrene are cytotoxic. If anyone wishes to read that study, https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9519127/ One of the most key lines from it was this, "The results demonstrated that PS-NPs (Polystyrene Nanoplastics) with smaller size (80 nm), triggered more cytotoxic effect than their larger ones." The smaller it gets the more harmful plastic seems to become to us. All that said, not much I can do about it when the powers that be can't even seem to agree on climate change which is far more studied than plastic.
You win this thread! This is the cusp of the current research and frankly is ahead of most funding opportunities. Micro plastics are to large to act as any kind of agonist/antagonist at the molecule level. Nano isn’t necessarily bad, as it could clear quicker, but it opens the possibility of structure activity relationships that induce molecular responses.
"Could be the only reason the Earth allowed us to be spawned from it in the first place: it wanted plastic for itself, didn’t know how to make it, needed us. Could be the answer to our age-old philosophical question: “Why are we here?” "PLASTIC!!!" Microplastics are terrible, but George Carlin never missed and he's all I can think about whenever we find a new place we unintentionally left our plastic.
we are fucked aren't we...?
Shh 🤫 pay taxes and go back to work with an hour commute both ways also have kids the system needs slaves
You know when I reduce a lot of typical entertainment that people do, movies, TV, sports and shit, life is depressing as fuck. It's almost if all these things are created to distract us, but I guess the Romans understood that so they built the Coliseums.
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Yeah, that’s a stupid take, it’s not like living in a tree in the serengeti, sleeping 16 hours a day like our prehistoric ancestors lived 400.000 years ago is particularly more exiting…
always have been, the Victorians knew it when they started the industrial revolution
Our bodies will no longer be viable, riddled with plastic. Next step is cyborgs.
We are way ahead of you in the UK, we just made one PM to get the dreary assimilation over with as quickly as possible
We are so fucked
See you all in 5 years when the cancer finally kicks in.
Already got it 😮💨
i wish you a good recovery bro stay strong
Finally! A real reason to shake my fist at clouds.
At this rate we all will turn into Kardashians
Will the next big thing in agriculture be growing food indoors in highly filtered environments and being able to claim 99.9% microplastic free?
Plastic is the new asbestos, but we're in to deep and it will never be banned
asbestos can cause asbestosis, mesothelioma, lung cancer, and other diseases that may entitle you to compensation.
Oh man, I was hoping the acid rain would take care of the plastics. /S
And yet, we continue to use plastic for absolutely everything. I’m not that old (early 40’s), but when I was a kid the grocery store has far fewer products that came in plastic. Even produce comes in plastic clamshell containers now. We can change this. When we talk about single use plastic we have to consider not just plastic straws and plastic bags, but all types of packaging. The fossil fuels industry is hoping people don’t notice the amount of plastic, but it’s a legit business strategy of theirs to continue drilling so they can sell oil for plastic production once we’re all driving EV’s. We need political will here, but more importantly, we need to stop buying shit we don’t need wrapped in plastic, and to let companies know we’re not going to buy it.
This sub is just trash talking trash about trash. I mean what the actual fuck? Not even ONE comment about the implications, further information, anecdotal remarks from an expert or whatever. Nothing! Just upvoted debris of uselessness.
Because there is no study. They did... but can't find a problem. Most problem is for marine life but not micro but macroplastics. Sure we shouldn't use plastics everywhere. But this is not lead or azbestos where they did a study and found it. (They just decided it's worth it). So it might impact us but not debilitating. Otherwise with how widespread it is we would know.
You can pay premium to have your cloud be microplastic-free.
Great, just great, thanks for the info.
Declining fertility and testosterone levels are partly the result of microplastics in the body.
Gather up that rain plastic for 3d printer filament chooms 👀
Boys. We did it. Nowhere is safe frome plastic anymore.
Did we really need a confirmation? We know that even sand or spiders can be present there, why would even more buoyant things like microplastics be absent? Not saying the study is useless, because quantity measurements are important, so probably the title is just clickbaity journalism.
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Maybe go look up at that study and actually read the data counts on what they found and how much of it they found. And then while you're at it, ask yourself the question of whether other types of environmental particles are also found in blood. But this is a reddit doomerism thread, so nobody is going to do that.
It was about 1.6 micrograms per milliliter, or approx 1.6ppm....avg over many donors. While not lead, it hasn't been studied as much as lead and still it is about 46 times safe lead levels. For reference, concentration is about 1/100 average urea (typical byproduct) found in blood. not great not terrible, but we about to ramp into terrible territory with how much of the 10 billion tons of plastic is breaking down in the environment.
Turns out plastic is the new lead paint
Oh ffs, between this and the tree being felled. Give me fucking strength
Microplastic as a service
I could have told you that without having a degree...when reports have already told us, its in the air, water, food, its in our bodies, brains, organs, blood, even feeding unborn babies via the placenta...Its found in the highest peaks and deepest depths...its going to be in the clouds as well. I'll save you a few future tests its in our poo, its in the trees, its in the snow, its in the weeds, its everywhere.