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I remember when I found out that shit was plastic. I always assumed they were organic material of some kind, like the body scrubs with the crushed up walnut shell in it (which probably has fucking microplastic in it, too). So disgusting.
This is why we need to change how shit works. It shouldn’t go: company does some shit > fall out > government steps in. It should go: company has an idea > must get permission first from environmental agencies
Plastic is an organic material, trees are mostly plastic (lignin, a phenolic polymer, cellulose a polysaccharide polymer, hemicellulose an heteropolysaccharide and suberin a polyester-like polymer).
The problem we’re having is a naturalistic fallacy crossed with the unpleasant fact that almost everything we touch sheds dust and powder absolutely everywhere. This along with spores and yeast and other dusts constantly enter our bodies.
Plastic is only of note because we made it.
Any problems beyond that is speculative and will requires ginormous gobs of grant money to actually answer with anything than precautionary principle-based FUD.
Hydrocarbon based plastic absolutely isnt natural, there are many different kinds of plastic in existence but overwhelmingly stuff from the last 50 years has been the
inorganic hydrocarbonnon biodegradable hydrocarbon type which doesn’t break down and is likely a endocrinologal distruptor & a carcinogen.inorganic hydrocarbon
Hydrocarbons are, by definition, organic compounds made exclusively of carbon and hydrogen.
Do you know of any hydrocarbon that do not contain hydrogen nor carbon and that are relevant to this discussion ?
Care to not nitpick a slip of the mind (that’s already been pointed out and corrected) literally just after I had woken up and address the actual point?
current plastics not biodegradable is the same problem that trees had for 300 million years. I think it’s a matter of time before some yeast evolves the ability to eat plastic. Then all plastic will start to mold and rot like all other organic matter.
as for being “endocrinologal distruptor & a carcinogen”, yes so is a lot of other stuff, probably stuff in wood, again, like turpentine
We’re not going to ban all plastics until some company has a proprietary alternative that they can force us to buy by making all other products illegal to produce. But that new alternative doesn’t exist yet.
My advice, don’t eat electrical junction boxes
Ty for the response. I do agree we will likely wind up with some sort of plastic eating organism at some point, problem is how many centuries will that take. Might be a opportunity to apply gene editing at some point in the medium term future.
Fair point on turps but turps and other compounds from wood dont tend to linger in the enviroment for as long as plastic does currently.
Unfortunately any solutions will be taken by porkies and as you say regulatory captured into making our lives more expensive rather than for the betterment of humanity, should be govt ran labs looking into this sort of stuff not corpos with dollar signs in their eyes. Having saidthat some early stage alternatives such as a seaweed based biodegradable plastic could help hugely in the single use plastic department.
i assumed it was just glass or similar, maybe the same material as those moisture-absorbing silica packets
There are probably some with sand and other hard minerals, I think Dove had some soaps with aluminum oxide in it?
i’ve definitely seen things like that, i think mostly “artisanal” soaps with like ground coconut shell or something, but the thing is that it tends to look like shit.
Plastic gotta be this age’s lead/quicksilver.
It is. Along with PFAS.
The PFAS/PFOA controversy, is mostly about banning these commodity products so that the proprietary, non-commodity alternatives by western companies can become the only high temperature dry lubricant on sale.
Maybe in another 60 years we’ll have the same controversy about them !
No it isnt, its about the production precursors being literal poison for anything they get into with no chance of breaking down. Its a unusually harmful and persistive compound.
And the current goal is to ban them all
https://www.wcl.org.uk/transitioning-to-a-pfas-free-economy.asp
Leaving us only able to buy the proprietary alternative of an oligopoly, instead of regulating the production of this commodity.
End result, we pay for it all and get a degradation in quality.
Hey friend you know the chemicals they make those things from are like WILDLY carconogenic right? And that PFAs and their cousins last forever and don’t break down in the environment?
These chemicals are being banned because humans got too good at making super stable fuck-you-big molecules that just so happen to be wildly incompatible with anything that has DNA. These chemicals are literally everywhere with water treatment facilities having acceptable limits 2ppb or less. Yea, B, Billon. The thing with that amount though, is even THAT isn’t safe, its just regulable. Here’s an oversimplified video on the subject by Veritasium, the clickbait headline is just that. I believe this is also on nebula if you’d prefer to avoid youtube.
They should stop dumping it in the rivers
You should really watch that video. It addresses that point exactly. In short, they mostly aren’t, that isn’t the problem.
What’s the proprietary alternative?
some ptfe/ceramic/titanium/diamond metamatrial that tolerates way high temperatures, which you can use metal utensils on and is not as good as regular ptfe at stopping eggs from sticking to the pan.
But PTFE is used for more than nonstick pans.
Did you at some point read about how some of them, such as the ones used in frying pans, are unlikely to cause problems in the human body, and then completely stopped looking into it further?
It’s a massive group of compounds, some of which currently look to be quite safe, but a significant number of which also have fully verified dangers (especially some compounds required for production).
Yes, I read about it and the teflon on frying pan is explicitely NOT the problem. I understand that pointing to frying pans and saying “PTFE !!” is the attention grabbing thing to do. But there is no danger here.
The problem is the manufacturing plants leaking PFOA/PFAS into their surrounding environment !
Maybe lead with that, instead of the conspiracy angle.
That’s been well known for over 50 years, why do you think now, all of a sudden, this is becoming an issue now ? This is because there are new coatings, silicon based PTFE-free coatings and PTFE-based metamaterial that combine titanium, ceramic and/or PCD.
As the manufacturer invest in this new technology, they either restrict PTFE commodity manufacturers out of their market or merely stop funding lobbying that protects the PTFE.
This is not a conspiracy theory, simple emergent interests that do not require a coordination.
Cool.
But the reason you’re being downvoted, is that instead of commenting this, you made a comment that sounded like you were dismissing the dangers of PFAS, and dismissing it as the modern-day equivalent to lead, asbestos, and the like.
Which is what it is, and you clearly agree that it is.
Except plastic doesn’t really seem to do anything. It just “is there”. Unless you swallow enough of it to clog something, it doesn’t seem to do anything.
We’ve seens lots of “it might interefere with hormones”, but that part is always to be confirmed in the next research grant request and then we never hear about it again.
Plastics are a broad category. But specific plasticizers, like BPA, have been demonstrated to cause specific endocrine issues, up to and including a causal link to certain cancers, miscarriages, and other reproductive/immune issues. And it’s not just correlations being found, as the research is showing the mechanism of action by actually inducing the effects in vitro.
And so when a particular plasticizer has been shown to be harmful, the research goes into other chemically similar plasticizers to see whether they have biological effects, as well. BPS is another plasticizer that is being studied, as it is chemically similar to BPA.
So we haven’t shown that all microplastics are bad. I’m skeptical that these effects would extend to all plastics. But some common compounds that are present in many plastics are a cause for concern, and the difficulty in treating water or waste for microplastics in general means that some of those harmful compounds are present in lots of places where we’d rather not.
We moved from leaded gasoline to unleaded gasoline based on the specific dangers attributable to lead itself. We can do the same for the specific compounds in our plastics shown to be harmful. Maybe the end result is that we have a lot of safer plastics remaining. But your comment seems to suggest that we not even try.
I’m more concerned about useless and damaging, performative actions against plastic.
Of course what we need is plastic monomers that are neither carcinogenic nor hormone disrupters. We should stop dumping the stuff into the river. Poisonned blastic with bromine should be labelled in a was that makes it easy to identity. We should breed yeast that can east plastic and keep them in giesters.
I’m more concerned about useless and damaging, performative actions against plastic.
such as?
Don’t like thinking about how much of that probably made it to my brain, organs, and muscles :)
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-024-03453-1
This study released last year based on samples from cadavers suggests there’s enough in your brain to make a plastic spoon
“this is not what we meant by brain plasticity”
Sometimes I feel like my brain is a plastic spoon already
You don’t like glitter in your brain?
It’s not what microplasitcs are! Does anyone knows what micro is at this point?
a micron in size?
Used to?
Please, do name and shame.
That’s not micro though?
But they become micro as part of abrasion with your teeth.
Up to 5mm is still considered microplastics.
Seriously? That’s a lot of mm…
my microwave has been lying to me!?
This stuff still exists in my country, and the expensive toothpaste my mother bought is one of them 🙂
You know that old saying: If it’s stupid but it works it’s not stupid? This is the proof that it is incorrect.
I think my face scrub still has these. But I would have to check, it might be just sand they put in there. Works great tho.
Edit - I checked, the ingredients say it’s silica. So yes, they put sand into it.
And now its on your balls. That’s the tragedy.
Haha, my poorly googled current events assignment is highly relevant after all these years! Take that you dork try hards!
