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A comment on Human Brain May Contain as Much as a Spoon's Worth of Microplastics. Parent comment

Re:Human Brain May Contain as Much as a Spoon's Worth of Mic... by roenxi on Wednesday February 05, 2025 @08:50PM (#42958000)
> 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.

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Re:Human Brain May Contain as Much as a Spoon's Worth of Mic... by rTX5CMRXIfFG on Wednesday February 05, 2025 @09:14PM (#42958185)
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.

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Re:Human Brain May Contain as Much as a Spoon's Worth of Mic... by card_zero on Wednesday February 05, 2025 @09:21PM (#42958225)
Seems like a more important problem, then, the part where people inevitably die. I mean compared to having some plastic in their heads.
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Re:Human Brain May Contain as Much as a Spoon's Worth of Mic... by johnnyanmac on Thursday February 06, 2025 @02:23PM (#42965593)
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.
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Re:Human Brain May Contain as Much as a Spoon's Worth of Mic... by itishappy on Wednesday February 05, 2025 @09:29PM (#42958294)
> 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."

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Re:Human Brain May Contain as Much as a Spoon's Worth of Mic... by roenxi on Wednesday February 05, 2025 @09:49PM (#42958422)
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.
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Re:Human Brain May Contain as Much as a Spoon's Worth of Mic... by SmirkingRevenge on Wednesday February 05, 2025 @09:23PM (#42958246)
Would be nice if just once these sorts of things could have beneficial effects.
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Re:Human Brain May Contain as Much as a Spoon's Worth of Mic... by card_zero on Wednesday February 05, 2025 @09:31PM (#42958298)
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.
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