> But our brains are designed to keep things out ... researchers behind the brain plastics study think the tiny shards of plastic hitch a ride on fat molecules to get [past the blood-brain barrier] inside brain cells ... The researchers estimated that the average brain studied had about seven grams of microplastics in it.
Having 7g of _anything_ foreign inside my brain seems like cause for concern to me.
Conclusion: "Parachute use did not reduce death or major traumatic injury when jumping from aircraft in the first randomized evaluation of this intervention."
It's hard to scientifically prove some things!
I’m not sure that they are as clever as they think they are. Maybe I’m not academic enough for the joke.
This study shows the difficulty in studying the effectiveness of entrenched practices, especially when there is good reason to suspect that not using the practice will result in extremely significant harm at high probability. Here we have a study with enormous self-selection bias.
They did ask candidates mid-flight in commercial aircraft if they would be willing to participate at their current altitude and speed, and obviously all declined. On the other hand a number of candidates found on private planes that were not moving were willing to participate.
This study also shows how statistical techniques can be misused, as here in a study where the adverse results in question occurred in literally zero participants of the control group is obviously worthless, but one can still run the stats to conclude no statistically significant difference was detected.
Lastly it brings up questions about best available evidence. Many researchers tend to automatically assume that an RCT is better than other evidence. Now if they read the study closely and notice flaws they often change their mind, but if they just skim the abstract they can miss this. This is an example of a case where the only available RCT is total garbage, and we have far better evidence in the form of accident statistics from skydivers. Accidents where no chute was packed, or the chute (and any backups) completely fail to deploy are a very good proxy in practice for jumping without one at all.
"The main analytical method used in this study was pyrolysis gas chromatography-mass spectrometry. This method can give false results when used to measure plastics because fats (which the brain is mainly made of) give the same pyrolysis products as polyethylene (the main plastic reported)"
And then you have something like this: pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32882126
Kids that has been eating the 'healthy' "bio" food had, on average, unhealthy amounts of lead, heavy metals and other chemicals in their blood. The kids that didn't eat "bio" food didn't.
So I ask you, where should the average EU person go to?
Was there any explanation given? Could be that besides the bio/normal food, also the diet composition is completely different?
This is not about eating fast food vs eating healthy. This is about groups of people eating the same food, only that one is labeled 'bio/organic' and the other isn't.
When these people were subjected to tests, and the foods themselves were tested, it was quantifiably proven to be less healthy.
It is infuriating how many times this needs to be said. Too many people pretend this is not a problem.
Most cancers happen from DNA mutations, and most DNA mutations happen during cell division, and cells divide well... when there is ample nutrients. The world we live in today, is very different than our distant ancestors. Calories are absurdly abundant compared to our evolutionary past, or even 100 years ago.
Fatpositivity is a hell of a mental state. they are trying to frame it as not only not a problem but as a good thing. they are just playing into agrocorporations that want to continue pumping sugar into everything we eat.
It’s a difficult problem. People get sick of being told 300x “why don’t you just do x”
1. stop drinking soda and juice. 2. eat only unprocessed food 3. go for a 30 min walk every day.
its really hard to go over 300 lbs if you cook your own meals, don't load up on 300 calorie sugar bombs and take basic responsibility for your own health. and I say this as someone who used to be very fat.
How is depression causing childhood cancers?
Did we have something like that during 2021 few months after developing new vaccine when milion of doses was distributed?
Look at graphs in 15-44y catgeory. Still increasing mortality since 2020. Why? https://euromomo.eu/graphs-and-maps
Isn’t that curve you show trending down?
In 15-44y category its going up with excessive deaths.
https://dupri.duke.edu/news-events/news/20th-century-lead-ex...
>> A plastics fire in Indiana spewed various toxic chemicals into the air, including hydrogen cyanide and benzene, according to test results from the Environmental Protection Agency.
>> Officials said Friday that air monitors detected hydrogen cyanide, benzene, chlorine, carbon monoxide and volatile organic compounds in the ground-level smoke.
Because it's often clear, folks often think that plastic is inert like glass. It is far from it.
Obviously water bottles should be made from plastics that don't leach anything harmful into the water when left in a hot car. To the extent they do, it should be easy to come up with specific arguments to prohibit specific substances. Just blaming "plastics" in general is a category error, since not all plastics are proven to be harmful in this regard.
https://www.bennettplastics.com/is-it-safe-to-microwave-my-f...
Do we except polystyrene as carcinogenic, if consumed? So don't eat it. Yet we've banned lead paint, because paint chips flake off. So eating paint chips or inhaling paint dust causes lead toxicity. Admittedly we don't think plastic is nearly as toxic, but some scientists argue it's understudied.
https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acsomega.2c03453
>> These adverse effects of PS-MPs [polystyrene] on human kidney and liver cells suggest that ingesting microplastics may lead to toxicological problems on cell metabolism and cell–cell interactions. Because exposing human kidney and liver cells to microplastics results in morphological, metabolic, proliferative changes and cellular stress, these results indicate the potential undesirable effects of microplastics on human health.
Lead has been around for a long time, and well studied. The cumulative "we" are just now coming to terms with microplastics. I think the concern is valid for what these microplastics might be doing to our cells.
https://sustainability.yale.edu/explainers/yale-experts-expl...
>> Anastas goes on to explain that our bodies are accustomed to breaking down, processing, and disposing of natural polymers every day, but newer man-made polymers come with many unknowns. “We just don’t know to what degree these human-made polymers are different and affect our bodies differently,” Anastas explains. “Our bodies evolved to process all of these other natural polymers over countless years, but our bodies and the environment have not been given the chance to evolve to process these man-made polymers.”
Asbestos? Cigarette smoke? BRUH lol.
The phenomenon is worth studying, but it's not hugely surprising given how ubiquitous they are (another thing you find in every human, probably in higher quantities, is sand). But despite tons of scrutiny, there are no studies showing that it's actually hurting us.
We've done some really sketchy things in the early days of industry (leaded gasoline, etc), and have gotten into this overdrive where we're jumping the gun on a lot of substances that are probably not bad. Every year, you have several headlines in the mold of "X is everywhere and might be killing us"... but never really followed by that "oh yeah, it was really killing us" part.