These things are very hard to quantify, but all studies so far points to microplastic being bad. Not poisonous like lead, or deadly like uranium in ceramics. Instead they are a bit more sneaky. While plastic in itself is not so bad, all the other stuff in plastic is. Take BPA [1], a known endocrine disruptor. It is especially bad for humans in the early stages of development and has life long effects. Boys will have less testosterone (leading to multiple knock off effects) and girls will have earlier puberty, more breast and other types of cancer. Because the doses are so low the effect are not typically seen in individuals. Instead we detect them on population scale. An example is the testosterone levels of men is dwindling each year [2]. Of course correlation does not equal causation, but more and more studies are pointing to chemical disruption.

[1] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/21605673/ [2] https://academic.oup.com/jcem/article/92/1/196/2598434?login...

Coal power definitely saved a lot of lives, and probably more than it killed, but it introduced new problems, not worse one, highly probably less-bad problems, but problems nevertheless, shouldn't mean that we ban coal tomorrow, but that we should (as we somewhat are) work toward fixing the new problems.

The same goes for all technologies, they generally save a lot of people from A but then causes B which is a new, less efficient source of death. This is one of the situations where we should strive to have our cake and eat it too. Hell, asbestos probably helped save more lives than it took, we just found something less terrible to replace it with.

It does not mean that its use was a mistake, but it's continued use would be, as we have an intrinsic responsibility to always seek safer alternatives when we discover the negative effects-

So will we see the 1% swing back to wooden crockery? Of course, not that McTimber stuff laced with glue, but real wood. But what's in the varnish? Do we stick with unvarnished wood?

> After all, lead poisoning was suggested as one of the possible reasons for the decline of the Roman empire.

What are you trying to imply here? Microplastic -> Low Testorone -> Socialist government -> Decline of civilisation?

Now, there's obviously many benefits that may also be seen with a less aggressive or even less competitive population, but the basic principle doesn't seem insane here, it seems a bit of a stretch and requires some serious leaps that I'm not sure are remotely proven though...

The studies involved have a number of confounding factors, and notably the use of clinical manipulation of testosterone levels fails to find consistent effect.

I'm not sure how this accurate description of the entire history of human society is supposed to refute their hypothesis?

Anyway you should read the article before you comment. Its described in the article itself that microplastic attracts/collects toxins (heavy metals etc.). We already know that plenty of animals are dying because of plastic as well.

Also general speaking, while we live longer everyday, it still can mean that we live longer but worse due to microplastic and its affects on us. Sleep issues perhaps? Alzheimer perhaps? Depression?

For me personally speaking, this feels very unnatural (and i don't like this word at all normally) and its sickening to know that we produce a product and it is now floating in our bloodstreams and it doesn't need to be there.

We have had millions of years of an selfs sustainable ecosystem and we arrive, produce an enormous amount of plastic and taint our own environment in such an idiotic way. It is now everywhere. We found it in rainwater, on mountain tops etc.

1950 0 tones of plastic production per year vs. 2015 350 Million tons.

It also weirds me out a little bit to see that other people actually don't care or don't see any issues with it.

> “It is like having a cyborg baby: no longer composed only of human cells, but a mixture of biological and inorganic entities,” said Antonio Ragusa, director of obstetrics and gynaecology at the San Giovanni Calibita Fatebenefratelli hospital in Rome, and who led the study. “The mothers were shocked.”

From the text, 'toxins' are mentioned: "Further studies need to be performed to assess if the presence of microplastics may trigger immune responses or may lead to the release of toxic contaminants, resulting in harm."

Not sure if this is missleading if i add information i'm aware of.

You: 'Its described in the article itself that microplastic attracts/collects toxins (heavy metals etc.)' Article: 'Further studies need to be performed to assess if the presence of microplastics may trigger immune responses or may lead to the release of toxic contaminants'

Maybe and does is one difference. The absence of the mention of heavy metals which you state is from the article itself is another difference. I like the other stuff you said though.

At this point we're so inundated in plastic trash that it has now entered our bodies. Just let that sink in. There's so much garbage its overflowing into your body. Grotesque.

The biosphere has always taken care of our bio waste. No we are experiencing what happens when you dump non recyclables into the recyling!

If you read the modern news and take it at all seriously, you will live in a constant fear of doing just about anything. Drinking water? You're drinking scary microplastics. Walking outside? Don't do that, the air pollution is going to give you cancer or other nasty lung diseases. Stay in and have a meal? Don't eat bread/carbs/sugar/red meat/tuna/legumes/anything processed, that will give you heart disease or cancer too, inflammation. etc etc etc.

Basically everything you can put into your body or do with your time has been associated with death or otherwise making you sick and what can the average person do about it? Basically fucking nothing.

The average person can do nothing about microplastics except be afraid of them. Also the average person cannot afford to have a healthy diet or avoid plastic and in addition, their diets are usually so bad that even if microplastics have any deleterious health effect, it's liable to be several orders of magnitude less bad than the effects of junk food or alcohol.

All the above goes to say why I think microplastics are something for scientists to worry about now because I believe the psychological impacts of all this fear are far worse than the thing itself.

Anxiety and depression, undoubtedly made worse by all the fear driven media kill more people every year or otherwise reduce quality of life far more than I believe microplastics do.

We don't.

What the avg person could do? They could actually buy less plastic products; Can write to politician, to companies, as employees talk to collegues and bosses, as a boss make the right decision.

Everyone of us can do so much.

And honestly, if this is the first time its scientific proven that there is microplastic already in a fetus, thats news worthy to me.

I will also not get into your strawman argument; Other toxins, air pollution etc. is bad but doesn't make the microplastic situation any better or worse.

Based on what you write 'its not that i dont' care' why do you take so much effort to take the issue down? Its not that the issue will suddenly have theonly priority of our society just because you also think its wrong.

Are we so fragile that we can't handle the general anxiety and fear that stems from such articles. I think we humans have been having these emotions since the beginning of time. They ensured our survival in past and today we have far better techniques to manage these emotions.

The thing is fear and anxiety have been turned into hallmark of negative emotions by our society. As far as I understand those emotions are necessary for our survival. They are the pointers that something isn't working in individuals life and change is needed. Fear and anxiety throws a man into action. I think we should stop putting good/bad labels to human emotions. If they exist, they are serving some purpose. Embracing and facing them will improve the life of individuals and society as whole.

So, in summary, you think ignorance is bliss.

> The average person can do nothing about microplastics except be afraid of them. Also the average person cannot afford to have a healthy diet or avoid plastic and in addition, their diets are usually so bad that even if microplastics have any deleterious health effect, it's liable to be several orders of magnitude less bad than the effects of junk food or alcohol.

That's not actually true, or is only true if you inappropriately restrict yourself to uncoordinated individual action, and deny the possibility of collective action. Many people live in democracies, and a pretty well trodden path to change in them is:

1. popular awareness of an issue,

2. pressure put on political bodies to do something,

3. legislation or other political action addressing the issue.

This is not a clockwork process, and often nothing comes of it, but your idealized state of ignorance would prevent it completely.

Yes, like lead in gas/paint, radium in lipstick, freon, asbestos... why not assume it's good, it never backfired...

Feel free to read the thousands of studies on the subject (spoiler alert: none are concluding micro-plastics are good for us nor the environment in general)

https://scholar.google.de/scholar?q=microplastic+effect+huma...

> As far as I can tell, humans have been dying from the same illnesses for the past 100-200-300 years

We're talking long term effects of a very recent thing that potentially affects every single one of us. unless you have a crystal ball or studies backing up your skepticism this line of thought isn't very logical. It's like a 22 years old telling you smoking cigarettes is fine because he doesn't have a lung cancer or reduced lung capacity _yet_

The world is full of dangers, large and small, and it's normal for adults to discuss and evaluate them. For example, if I've left a cupboard open, I might say "oh hey, watch your head" as you walk into the kitchen -- even though it's less dangerous than a falling anvil. Microplastics are a relatively novel phenomenon, and therefore an active area of scientific research.

If you're feeling overwhelmed by the risks in the world, and the consequences of living in a society, maybe that's a sign that you should step away from the news for a while. Read a book, paint a picture, play an instrument, go fishing, or something that will get you and your attention away from computers and phones for an extended period.

Why are you so hung up on fear-mongering? The title of the article is plain neutral. The article just reports the results of a medical research and quotes some medical professionals. I don't see any fear-mongering here. Isn't it just your interpretation?

But prior to that in the article are statements like “It is like having a cyborg baby: no longer composed only of human cells, but a mixture of biological and inorganic entities,” and "the scientists said they could carry chemicals that could cause long-term damage or upset the foetus’s developing immune system"

The article presents these attention grabbing statements prior to some of the medical journal entries which is why they are likely accusing the article of "fear-mongering".

Sure, it sucks and I'm happy scientists can study this. But if I were running a government I would be putting all my money into improving air quality and reducing fossil fuel usage etc.

Ultimately there are always going to be many factors which are "killing humans" and a limited amount of money to spend to try and "fix things." By far the biggest "killer" right now is advertising and unhealthy foods so we should be focusing on that if we really care about the health of human beings. In addition, assuming we care about the maximum amount of human lives lengthened, we should be focusing on pollution, climate change, and the environment.

In comparison to these issues, worrying about microplastics is fucking meaningless. If you had 10 trillion dollars and wanted to increase the chances of humans becoming extinct, what would you spend it on, seriously? Who gives a fuck if we're breathing in toxic fumes all day or the planet is so hot we can barely walk outside?

Oh, I get it. Right, because there is one type of pollution and climate change due to massive amounts of CO2 waste, we shouldn't focus on plastic waste.

The planet is choking our on waste products because people keep arguing about what our top priority should be. Uh, how about addressing all of these massive problems we created? But we won't. Because replace "microplastics" with another topic and grab another internet troll off the shelf to argue we definitely don't need to worry about that one; rinse and repeat until we are completely paralyzed, incapable of any action whatsoever. Meanwhile, profit!

I like how in your first comment you try appearing a skeptic, upholder of science and yet you make unscientific guesses based on no evidence.

We know very little as of yet on how humans work, what is harmful and what isn't. Just look at all the research on various medicines...that 20 years later it turns out they were only as good as placebos.

Facts:

1. Microplastics appear to be everywhere now.

2. There is evidence that they are not inert molecules, passing through, instead they are chemically active.

Assumption: microplastics are bad for you.

Now if that causes debilitating fear to you that's a different issue, but sticking your head in the sand won't make the problem go away.

Also, your utalitarian logic is flawed.

I think microplastic is a problem. -> right?

Do you have the feeling every human needs to solve all problems?

We are big, we have in theory enough resources, why not saying something like:

we need to fix the microplastic issue; Its priority is behind air pollution and climate change.

Instead of:

Microplastic is not a problem!!111 Issue y and z are much bigger issues!!11

I personally think it should be feasable to work on all those topics in parallel as also often those issues can't be solved by everyone as not everyone is the expert in the same field.

https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/322165

We used to pump lead into all sorts of things and throw CFCs into the environment but we realized later these are bad for most us Earth dewllers. At the time, we didn't have abundant evidence of the negative effects and that got us into trouble.

Maybe microplastics are harmless but it may be a wise assumption to assume they are and proceed slowly and cautiously. Turning these things backwards may be incredibly difficult to nearly impossible (e.g. Chernobyl).

Scale is very important for experimenting if something is harmful or not. Its better to experiment with these things at small scale before rolling processes out globally. Some effects are only clear at full scale though, unfortunately.

I'd happily take the wager that removing lead from the environment around us was the right move. I might lose the bet, but I think it's a reasonable position.

Pipes I'm quite familiar with (lead/PVC). It's my understanding gas tends to use ethanol as a substitute, not plastics? No clue about paint. It's also my understanding the vast majority of microplastics found are for plastics designed to be small (e.g. micro beads in soaps) and clothing (e.g. polyester material strands) and not from fragments of larger plastic components (e.g. PVC pipes).

Ethanol was the original anti knock agent, but afaik was actually replaced by tetraethyl lead originally.

Its still standard having copper pipes here; we use plastic after the water arrives at the room.

Yeah, let's just assume that everything is good by default.

"Before It Was Dangerous, Lead Was The Miracle Metal That We Loved" https://www.npr.org/2016/04/06/473268312/before-it-was-dange...

"Representatives of the shoe retail industry denied claims of potential harm in newspaper articles and opinion pieces. They argued that the devices' use prevented harm to customers' feet that otherwise would have resulted from poorly-fitted shoes.", from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shoe-fitting_fluoroscope

Hands and feet can tolerate bigger radiation doses than our internal organs. Muscle and bone is not that sensitive, most damage will be on skin.

https://www.env.go.jp/en/chemi/rhm/basic-info/1st/03-02-07.h...

In any case shoe salesmen are actually in the business of telling customers their shoe fits even when it doesn't.

A relative who was a shoe salesman in the forties told me if the shoe was too small, tell them it'll fit in the morning because feet swell in the afternoon. If the shoe was too big say it had to have a distance between the toe and the end of the shoe of about one finger width.

In reality you should actually try on shoes until one actually fits comfortably.

I highly doubt this machine was actually used for finding better-fitting shoes as opposed to being a magical contraption used to give authority to the shoe salesman so he could sell more, more expensive shoes faster and with less work.

I.e. asbestos is harmless, and would be harmless if didn't remain in the lungs, and we just breathed it back out.

Hell, you can handle most radioactive isotopes quite safely provided they don't enter the body in a persistent way.

Plasticizers that leach out from the micro plastics maybe, but I have to think that there are so many things we should be more concerned about in our food. The dose of plasticizer from the macro plastics we store and transport all our food in seems like it would be a much bigger issue. BPA and other xenoestrogens should have leached out of micro plastics long before they get micro right?

Fish with plastic heavy diets have more tumors and liver problems. It would be pretty shocking if there wasn't an inflection point at which we see some heavy consequences for humans as well in terms of plastic concentration. Maybe we won't reach that level practically for a long time, maybe we will. I lean towards thinking we won't see too drastic of a consequence in the next 200 years (not backed up by anything) but I'd still say it's definitively a problem.

There is reason to believe that plastics may be a contributor to this phenomenon: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/may/24/toxic-americ.... https://www.gq.com/story/sperm-count-zero