I am busy and don’t have time to research all of the ways corporations have poisoned us.
What are some good rules on how to avoid microplastics?
Eat local foods? Avoid processed foods? Walk/bike? Use dry soaps? Don’t use any take away containers? Avoid walking near busy roads? Use cotton/wool for all clothing?
Short term: grow your own food.
long term: politics
The micro plastics are in the soil. If you live urban or suburban, your soil is likely more contaminated with micro plastics than food grown on a rural farm.
Can’t wait for the Water World future, these bags of dirt are gonna be worth a fortune.
The plastic particles are small enough to enter the cells of your body. No filter can let dirt through and block micro plastics.
I’ve found bits of plastic trash in almost all of the potting soil I’ve bought. I’m at the point where I think a heavily filtered hydroponic setup is one of the only ways to really minimize microplastics.
Short answer: very simple
Avoid plastic
You buy bottled water?
That has Microplastics.
You buy or store food in plastic?
Microplastics…
Use plastic straws?
Welp, Microplastics
Etc…
Basically it’s difficult to avoid it since we use plastic almost everywhere daily, but not impossible.
Microplastics have also been found in our drinking water. So maybe stop drinking water altogether.
I can confirm that if you stop drinking water, in 72 hours or so you won’t have to worry about microplastics.
All the plastic objects you listed are the long term cause of micro plastics. You don’t get micro plastics from the plastic wrap on food or plastic straws. Micro plastics come from the straws thrown away that slowly break down into micro plastics over decades.
So avoid plastic to help the environment, but that won’t change your micro plastics injested right now. It’s in the food itself.
This.
Avoiding plastic in your day to day might prevent leeching, which is nice, but you’ll still encounter it in the natural environment.
The problem is the plastics never really chemically break down. They do undergo mechanical weathering though, so it all breaks down into smaller and smaller pieces over time. Eventually these particles are microscopic, and make their way into everywhere and everything it seems, from soil to rainwater to your breakfast cereal and your testicles.
You can probably filter it out of your water, I imagine reverse osmosis is likely effective since plastic molecules are somewhat chonky. A HEPA filter should get at least the larger particles out of the air. I don’t know how effective it’d be with smaller particles, sometimes called nanoplastics. Avoiding synthetic fabrics probably would help somewhat, but I haven’t read anything about this.
You can’t get it out of your food though, we don’t know enough yet about reliable ways we could keep plants from taking it up through their root systems. From plants it gets into the food chain, and much like mercury with fish, it’ll likely end up concentrating in animals, like us. You could potentially grow your own food via aquaponics using filtered water and maybe keep it plastic-free, but this is a real reach here. And you’re basically vegan now and have to literally grow all your own food.
Note, I’m largely speculating regarding methods.
Some reading material, this first one is about plant uptake:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8618759/
Water filtration:
It’s reddit all over again. The top voted post is wrong. You post correct info with sources and you are buried at the bottom.
Avoid anything that comes in plastic packaging and distill your own water. You will still need to drink normal water but I can’t imagine any municipality is currently equipped to deal with microplastic so reducing your intake is probably a good idea.
Short of moving somewhere very rural and growing all your own food, it is close to impossible.
As a resident in a pretty rural area you might want to avoid moving to rural areas due to increased cancer rates due to pesticide use and poor water conditions. But don’t you worry about our poor corporations that are wrecking shit, our lovely governer passed legislation that prevents people from suing them. though her and the corporations assure us there is nothing to worry about. They pinky sweared and everything.
Clothing and textiles from natural fibres. No rubber tires as they are major shedders of micro plastics.
Tires are made of vulcanized “rubber” which is actually an oil product.
Rubber tires would be fine as rubber is a natural material but they would expensive and not as durable
They do still contain a good portion of rubber; the natural type farmed from trees.
I had a similar thought, but when I looked into it, the difference between natural and oil based rubber is not significant. Natural rubber would be just as bad.
Drive less would best the recommendation. Though I feel this doesn’t directly help yourself so much as everyone.
Trains use steel wheels (unless the government is in the pocket of Big Rubber, like the Michelin trains in Paris)
Don’t cook with Teflon or otherwise coated pans. Stainless steel, carbon steel or cast iron (can be enameled).
