Comment by eigenspace
21 hours ago
So, I think that while it's true that we haven't really demonstrated any tangible harms of microplastics, and there is a lot of alarmism around it, I think the concern is more rational than it might appear.
If it's true that microplastics are everywhere and in everything (which maybe that's now not actually the case), even a very small chance that there's some serious harm we're not aware of should be taken extremely seriously, because at this point there's (apparently) no practical way to avoid or get away from them, or to even stop producing them. And since they're such a new phenomenon in these quantities, we haven't really had the time to really drill down and figure out *if* there are longterm negative effects.
IMO, we should be intellectually humble about our lack of knowledge on these microplastics, and part of that humility should involve being cautious about introducing them to our bodies and environment.
> and part of that humility should involve being cautious about introducing them to our bodies and environment.
What does that look like today, pragmatically speaking?
asking, for all tasks shown to introduce large amounts of microplastics in our bodies and environment, "can we accomplish this task in a way that doesn't introduce microplastics in our bodies and environment"?
For example, using a reusable metal gourd instead of plastic water bottles for the task of 'portable hydration'.
and because this is Hacker News, I'll kindly welcome the comment: 'well actually metal gourds have some toxic substance in the lining that's worse than microplastics' and reply: ok, Cardboard bottles then. Or a gourd made of a sheep's bladder like back in the good ol' days, whatever they used back in the bronze age.
I think we avoid the whole "personality responsibility" and "these paper straws fucking suck" angle with water bottles and the like and instead focus on "do we need a factory in China making 15,000,000 plastic trinkets for happy meals" or "does literally every single item for sale on the entire planet have to come in plastic wrapping", etc
Gourds were made from gourds back in the day. Or possibly ceramic.
We aren't really looking. In the most well known case we were able to identify they were killing salmon because the salmon were dieing and worked back from that, not because some study led there first.
https://www.ehn.org/toxic-tire-chemicals-threaten-salmon-as-...
That is a case of a specific chemical in tires, not microplastics generally, or even rubber tire particles generally.
Isn't [bad thing is happening] let's work backwards and find [difficult to find cause] a really solid approach?
Good when the damage is done, bad as a method of approving new chemicals.
I agree very strongly with intellectual humility. I just wish the microplastic fear mongerers would also take that lesson.
Given the track record of other things we introduced to the environment in mass quantities only to realize later were horrifyingly detrimental (CFCs and tetraethyl lead, etc) -- i think people are right that we should not take such a thing lightly
Not that it really matters, climate driven ecological collapse will probably make it irrelevant by the time it would matter