Not to mention that all spoons are different. I always get confused about “half a spoon”. Is it half of a “pile” or there must be half of its surface visible from above, while the subject matter is flat in the spoon (i.e. the lateral projection shows only the spoon). And should you account for the pile slope in case of bulk materials? And then when you figure that out, your spoon may be anywhere 0.5-1.5x in size/depth than someone else’s. It may be literally 3x times more or less. But even that is still less inexact than measurement extrapolation methods that the article uses, according to the top commenter.

I was trying to figure out from the headline if they meant enough microplastics to fill the bowl of a spoon or microplastics equivalent to a plastic spoon. I don't know why everyone is allergic to weights and measures.

If they're going for shock value they should use something more sinister than a spoon. Like enough plastic to make a little decorative Halloween spider. People would be more frightened by a spider than a spoonful of plastic.

> unmitigated potential risk

The risk does seem fairly mitigated, most of us will make it through today fine. The only part of my brain I can account for now is the 1x credit card worth of plastic, all the other bits are a mystery. Death was inevitable before the microplastics, remains inevitable after the microplastics and things seem fine so far.

We don't know much about the risks of anything. People regularly douse themselves with mind-altering substances and ingest the weirdest variety of stuff.

Shortening your period of observation so that the effects have not occurred yet does not mean it’s “mitigated”.

And your philosophy of your own mortality is just as reductive, because humans have been trying to survive since time immemorial and do not actively work on their deaths unless in an unhealthy mental state.

Seems like a more important problem, then, the part where people inevitably die. I mean compared to having some plastic in their heads.

I mean, what are we really going to do about it? So much chaos in the world, I don't think many are focusing on keeping plastics out of our body. No one's championing it.

> The risk does seem fairly mitigated, most of us will make it through today fine.

This is an incorrect usage of the word "mitigate." To mitigate means to lessen the risk. Mitigation requires action.

I suspect you mean that the risks are "overstated."

I barely think the risks have been stated at all. They found a correlation between high levels of microplastics in the brain and dementia. There is a correlation between a bunch of things and dementia. I expect there is a correlation between good health and dementia, unhealthy people would tend to die off young without the time to fall apart mentally.

Would be nice if just once these sorts of things could have beneficial effects.

Like the ship-produced aerosols that seeded clouds, increased albedo, and cooled the planet, in what James Hansen has called a "Faustian bargain". We successfully stopped that with regulations.

To me, the spoon sounds scarier. But I don't think there's a right answer to how scary a new phenomenon should be made to sound. You want it to sound scarier, this thing we don't know much about? Won't that happen naturally since everybody's ready to be scared of news anyway? Is it being downplayed? Relative to what, hunches? The information should be presented dispassionately, but engagingly, and that is an impossible combination, so it what we'll actually get is always something with the wrong overtones.

> Nobody is going to stop driving. Car tires are the largest source of microplastics.

many already have, bicycles and public transport ftw

There's realistically fewer than twenty metro areas in the US where the majority of commuters could rely solely on biking and public transit for everything. Twenty might be generous, even.

That may be true, but you don’t have to rely on biking for “everything.” Some biking is better than no biking.

I live in a small college town a couple of miles from the college. I walk, run, or bike to work nearly every day. But I am not a purist about it. We have a snowstorm forecast for tomorrow so I am going to drive (my EV). Would it be better for the environment if I walked? Probably? Does one trip really make that much of a difference though? Probably not.

I think there are likely many many places where people can walk or bike to some of the things if not all of the things. People really should do that more (not the least reason because biking is wonderful). Biking to the grocery store is mostly impractical for me as it is many miles away. But that’s ok! I am doing other things.

Since the pandemic passenger car miles, airline miles are back at pre-pandemic levels.

Transit use is at 80% of pre-pandemic levels.

https://ti.org/antiplanner/?p=22722

Farebox recovery ratios have consequently become even worse.

The new US government is also presumably not going to fund much transit expansion.

It'd be interesting to see if more people work from home on a given day than use mass transit to get to work.

It's also pretty similar in Australia at least and probably in more places around the world.

There is a positive spin on this: the majority of Americans already live in or near dense urban centers. If we had solid public transportation only within these centers and to adjacent suburbs we would eliminate most car trips. That's bot much physical area to cover.

Depends on what you consider "in or near".

I live "in" a major American city. Well, a reasonably major Midwestern city. It's roughly a third the size of Rhode Island. It has half a million people in it.

still rubber so still microplastics?

Less!

Unfortunately a bicyclist on the road will be exposed to far more tire microplastics than drivers in their enclosed cabins with filtered and recirculated air.