Cross posted from: https://slrpnk.net/post/12562892
And guess who will deny this, call it “fake news,” and fight to give MORE power to plastic polluters? Can ya guess?
Don’t forget everyone… It’s not the manufacturers fault, it’s YOURS for not recycling properly and not reusing your packaging that comes with every purchase!
No, it’s a tactics used by the oil industry to shift the blame to the consumer.
I tried to write the most biased scaremongering paper about microplastics for a college course and I couldn’t find much directly linking human health to microplastics that was peer reviewed.
The main paper in this article, the one claiming its human brain samples are 0.5% plastic, is preprint - not peer reviewed. So, reporting on it like this is unethical tbh.
Truthfully, scientists have been looking for this sort of link in animals, and they can’t find earthshaking evidence of it. Most of the papers I found showed weak evidence of harm to animals. Most of the scarier papers have to do with how these plastics absorb chemical pollution in sea water, fish then eat the particles and are harmed. These papers point out they have trouble separating general harm from pollution from harm from microplastics pollution.
Microplastics don’t seem to go up the food chain either, seems most plastics people eat are introduced through processing it. So, stop eating processed food. Stop wearing polyester while you’re at it, a lot of microplastics come from laundry.
I’m not saying microplastics aren’t bad for human health. It’s just incredibly hard to study and it’s definitely not as bad as lead or asbestos. If it was, scientists would have found that link already.
The worst news I ran across was that there is no human control group for this stuff. Everyone is full of microplastics. Those are the only peer reviewed human studies this article mentions - the sort that are like “Of samples from 20 different people, they were all full of plastics! We need grant money for more study”.
I hope they get that grant money.
Inb4 we’re hunting uncontacted tribespeople to collect unpolluted samples, and they are also polluted.
Weird idea, but is there anyone we know of from very early in the space race who died in space and is still up there in a capsule or something like that?
They might not be completely free of micro plastics but it might give us something to compare ourselves against at least (IE how much micro plastic is in someone from say 1962 compared to now).
Wow, a genuine, high quality post from lemmy.ml instead of the usual authoritarian propaganda.
Wow, a calamity of epic proportions, who could’ve predicted it? /s
But for real, plastic manufacturers have a lot to answer for.
Oh come on, micro plastics are organic compounds how bad can they really be? I mean essentially they are made from dinosaurs, and dinosaurs are cool right? Plus, thing of all the cool things you can do being more flexible! Not to mention, society is far too reliant on them for you to cut our profits enough to really care about the consequences! Besides, there’s no known way to remove them from your body, so might as well enjoy it while we have it! (/s)
