> which are too small to be seen with the naked eye
Though likely a given, I wonder what the difference in outcome would be if consumers could see the issue with their own eyes. Maybe we'll need microplastic detectors at some point. It feels like a problem too easy to ignore while the effects pile up globally.
gsf_emergency_6 14 hours ago [-]
Cheap, rudimentary, microscopes exist which can be used at home, automate the following?
Nothing. Look at the deathscape polluted smoggy skies in India as people walk around without masks coughing.
woleium 14 hours ago [-]
You can see smog, but it still requires government intervention to effect change.
rjdj377dhabsn 12 hours ago [-]
Governments respond to populist pressure. I think most people just aren't aware of how bad air pollution can be or that it even exists.
I was recently in a small Asian village where the pollution gets very bad for a couple months when farmers burn the sugar cane and rice fields. I mentioned it to some locals, and they thought the thick haze was just harmless "mist" from the winter weather patterns.
Lutger 7 hours ago [-]
If it presents a threat to comfort, lifestyle or wealth, people can fiercely resist becoming aware even when presented with overwhelming evidence.
In the Netherlands, millions of people burn wood in stoves or fireplaces, just for coziness, or use it for heating where alternatives are readily available. The evidence for its massive detrimental health effects is overwhelmingly clear. When you dare to even present this evidence, you will get flamed and ridiculed as if you are an evil luddite out to take away their small pleasures in life.
We are slowly getting rational about the effects of smoking, but choking out your neighbors (and children) by burning wood is still something people feel is their human right.
rjdj377dhabsn 12 hours ago [-]
I wonder how the amount compares to other fine particulate pollution.. would it move the needle on a pm2.5 sensor? And would a standard air filter remove most of it?
userbinator 14 hours ago [-]
Not that I believe any of this BS in the first place, but I've always found it quite amusing that traditional blown-film plastic bags are being replaced with "reusable" ones... which are also made of the same plastics, except in textile form and thus easily shed fibers everywhere.
roxolotl 12 hours ago [-]
You can buy microscopes for pretty cheap if you’d like to look for microplastics yourself. But regardless I’m curious what you think happens to the plastic you use. Where does the little bit you scrape away go when you cut on a plastic cutting board? What happened to the fluffy fleece jacket that’s no longer fluffy? This stuff doesn’t biodegrade so it’s gotta go somewhere.
userbinator 11 hours ago [-]
It's going back where it came from. I really don't give a shit about this new hysterical idiocy.
Lutger 6 hours ago [-]
So it turns itself back into oil and seeps into the well where it originated from? You know this sounds like putting your hands on your ears shouting 'lalala I can't hear you'?
The thing I'm wondering is, if you don't care, why make the effort to comment at all? Clearly you care enough to do so. What are you afraid will happen by merely acknowledging what is the case? Whenever someone presents the finding of facts as hysterical, I'm left wondering who is actually the hysterical one.
The microplastic particles in our air aren't hysterical. They are just there. Research revealing they are present isn't hysterical either, nor is research about the consequences. At most, such research is more or less accurate, or distorted. I'm starting to think you are the one who is hysterical in this matter.
But for what reason? I can only think of only three:
you agree with the dangers but find it so overwhelming that you want to shut it down
you fear losing the benefits of plastic and want to undermine any action on the subject
you just can't take any kind of panic, regardless of the reasons and to maintain your sanity, you vehemently push away anything that might otherwise makes you feel alarmed
pluralmonad 10 hours ago [-]
Where do you think it came from and how does it get back there?
adammarples 5 hours ago [-]
Due to the inevitable march of entropy, sadly nothing really goes back where it came from. Living things are a beautiful and noteable exception.
esseph 10 hours ago [-]
> Detection of microplastics in human tissues and organs: A scoping review
> Conclusions
> Microplastics are commonly detected in human tissues and organs, with distinct characteristics and entry routes, and variable analytical techniques exist.
> In addition, we found that atmospheric inhalation and ingestion through food and water were the likely primary routes of entry of microplastics into human body.
This seems obvious to me why the heavier bags are better. They don't immediately blow away to the ocean or wherever else. We're also charged $1.50 for them where I am or you get a paper bag so people who want to save $4.50+ on a grocery run (which is a ton of people) will bring their own.
rincebrain 2 hours ago [-]
The problem with that is, in places where delivery is ubiquitous, people use the reusable bags the same as they used the single-use bags, and there's no way to return them, so now people are disposing of much more resource-intensive bags the same way they did the single-use ones.
esafak 14 hours ago [-]
Cloth bags exist.
leoh 14 hours ago [-]
Okay, feel free to ignore everything about PFAS, etc.
userbinator 11 hours ago [-]
A century of progress is getting destroyed thanks to radical misguided "environmentalism".
metalman 4 hours ago [-]
not in China, progress there is picking up pace, powered by solar.
China is also prempting the loss of labour as people get older, and are building out fully robotic factories ,"dark factories" for the fact that the lights are turned off, not on, when they are running, as there are no humans on the floor.
On the plastic's side China is by far the largest manufacurer of all things plastic, and buys load after load of US natural gas that gets pumped strait into cracking plants to be converted into polymers, but you can be sure that they, and others are working along sytematicaly to find a ploymer with the right properties for use, but that then
iether breaks down comlpletly, or is inhearantly benign, and inert.
My main point is that China, and nowhere else will decide how the whole plastic thing goes, and what we are loosing here in the west, is agency and credibility.
11 hours ago [-]
Rendered at 15:40:43 GMT+0000 (Coordinated Universal Time) with Vercel.
Though likely a given, I wonder what the difference in outcome would be if consumers could see the issue with their own eyes. Maybe we'll need microplastic detectors at some point. It feels like a problem too easy to ignore while the effects pile up globally.
https://old.reddit.com/r/AskScienceDiscussion/comments/mi9bw...
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S016599361...
I was recently in a small Asian village where the pollution gets very bad for a couple months when farmers burn the sugar cane and rice fields. I mentioned it to some locals, and they thought the thick haze was just harmless "mist" from the winter weather patterns.
In the Netherlands, millions of people burn wood in stoves or fireplaces, just for coziness, or use it for heating where alternatives are readily available. The evidence for its massive detrimental health effects is overwhelmingly clear. When you dare to even present this evidence, you will get flamed and ridiculed as if you are an evil luddite out to take away their small pleasures in life.
We are slowly getting rational about the effects of smoking, but choking out your neighbors (and children) by burning wood is still something people feel is their human right.
The thing I'm wondering is, if you don't care, why make the effort to comment at all? Clearly you care enough to do so. What are you afraid will happen by merely acknowledging what is the case? Whenever someone presents the finding of facts as hysterical, I'm left wondering who is actually the hysterical one.
The microplastic particles in our air aren't hysterical. They are just there. Research revealing they are present isn't hysterical either, nor is research about the consequences. At most, such research is more or less accurate, or distorted. I'm starting to think you are the one who is hysterical in this matter.
But for what reason? I can only think of only three:
you agree with the dangers but find it so overwhelming that you want to shut it down
you fear losing the benefits of plastic and want to undermine any action on the subject
you just can't take any kind of panic, regardless of the reasons and to maintain your sanity, you vehemently push away anything that might otherwise makes you feel alarmed
> Conclusions
> Microplastics are commonly detected in human tissues and organs, with distinct characteristics and entry routes, and variable analytical techniques exist.
> In addition, we found that atmospheric inhalation and ingestion through food and water were the likely primary routes of entry of microplastics into human body.
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC11342020/