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Comment by JulianMorrison | Hacker News Reader

Also it seems likely at this point that the danger has been wildly underestimated.

The rallying cry against plastic used to be that "it takes hundreds of years to break down".

But now we know that when it breaks down, it gets worse. Microplastics are suspected to be bioaccumulating, carrying poisons and bacteria, and possibly could get into cells like asbestos. And the only way to dispose of the stuff that won't eventually become microplastic is incineration - putting all that carbon into the atmosphere, along with other unpleasant combustion products.

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> and possibly could get into cells like asbestos

To be clear, there is no current evidence that microplastics might share any mechanisms with asbestos/CNTs/etc, right?

I'm not sure what you mean by that, but I do know that people with cystic fibrosis have a bad habit of dying of infections from microorganisms that are usually not deemed infectious for most humans. When you google the names of the microorganisms in question, some of them are used by scientists for bioremediation of petrochemical spills.

In other words, they eat petrochemicals. They also think people with CF are tasty as hell while not much caring for "normal" humans, which looks rather suspect to me.

So I suspect that the defect in the CFTR allows plastics and petrochemicals generally, plus metals, to accumulate at higher than normal rates in the CF population. I have run this hypothesis past a guy with a PhD in Biology who suggested that it was not simply straight up crazy talk. He said the function of the CFTR should have some implication for how the body processes metals, IIRC.

(He's a member of HN and is more than welcome to chime in for accuracy's sake if he happens to see this remark, realizes DoreenMichele used to post as Mz and I am talking about him -- hello, nice person with PhD in Biology, and thank you for the awesome feedback.)

Our oceans are getting increasingly polluted with plastic and we increasingly see, for example, dead whales on beaches who are full of plastic and these two things are deemed not unrelated, from what I gather. So it seems that there comes a point past which "normal" humans with a normal CFTR who do not have CF may be unable to avoid similar bioaccumulation of plastics/petrochemicals and other toxic chemicals as I am hypothesizing drive some deadly infections in the CF population.

So, perhaps we can extrapolate from the experiences of the CF community that as our world gets increasingly toxic, it will negatively impact human health generally, including, but not limited to, making us more prone to infection from microogranisms that were never a problem before.

Arguably, this is probably already happening and may be contributing to the rise of Super Bugs. It may not be merely overuse of antibiotics causing this problem. It may also be widespread environmental changes, including but not limited to the increasing prevalence of microplastics across the entire world.

The life expectancy of people with cystic fibrosis in the west doubled in the last 40 years. Using them as a marker things are getting worse sounds questionable.

I'm not using them as a marker for things getting worse. That wasn't my point at all.

When people have chronic illnesses, they often times become immunocompromised, meaning their immune system weakens so much, microorganisms that are normally harmless get the opportunity to infect the host. That's why you see odd microorganisms.

Just because you see microorganisms in people that are also in petrochemical spills does not mean they are consuming petrochemicals within us. Many organisms have multiple metabolic pathways, meaning they can break different things down to get the energy they need. Heck, so many typically aerobic microbes don't even need oxygen all the time, producing lactic acid or alcohol instead.

I understand your concern for the unknown, but be careful about spreading information when you aren't yourself informed or sure of what you are saying.

I'm an environmental studies major who has a diagnosis of atypical cystic fibrosis. Avoiding petrochemicals has been beneficial to me.

I think I am informed and sure of what I am saying. I think I adequately qualified the statement to make sure it doesn't constitute misinformation.

As a science major you should be well acquainted with the dangers of anecdotal evidence. Making claims about cystic fibrosis on the basis of what is "beneficial for you" is bad science. Even with the qualifying your statement, you're implying causalities that you can't possibly justify.

It's a discussion in an online forum, not a thesis for a PhD.

If you can't engage the actual point with a meaty counterargument instead of a personal cheap shot, then you are the one failing at science, not me.

I would be thrilled to absolute pieces if anyone on HN would debate the actual points I sometimes try to make (or otherwise engage me in meaty discourse) instead of being dismissive of me personally. The shallow personal attacks are vacuous and tiresome and in no way help me firm up my understanding of the problem space.

Since I study CF because my actual life literally depends upon it, it would be a tremendous boon to my life to get meaty engagement on such topics. But that never, ever happens. Instead, I get what looks an awful lot like Mansplaining and sounds an awful lot like the subtext is "Meh, girls don't know nothing, so I can't be arsed to come up with anything to say about the actual hypothesis proposed. Besides, I'm not actually that knowledgeable."

Serious question: based on what we now know, does it make sense to revisit incineration of plastics particularly if we can update the stacks to do a better job of scrubbing?

Probably gasification instead, which is much cleaner but more energy intensive.

Incineration still produces tons of ash and chemical waste.

Then some more thinking on how to handle resulting gases.

Nordic countries incinerate almost all non-recycled municipal waste, to the point that they import waster from other countries to keep the incinerators well fed.

Any insights how this is handled there? They are pretty famous for having some of the strictest environmental and health regulations, so I assume these issues have solutions.

I wonder if it could be low-oxygen burned to non-poisonous charcoal? That could be put into the environment without toxicity. (Such as making Terra Preta soil.)

Yes, as usual those of us that told us the risk was low or non-existent were wrong again. How often do we have to be duped by so-called experts before we realize that the "experts" have actually no idea how to calculate risk, and that we can't rely on their "assurances"? It goes both ways, where scientists told us that salt and high fat diets were causing heart disease and now both of those have been walked back.

The experts were working with the facts as they were known at the time. Microplastic wasn't obvious. Most things, when they break down, aren't harmful. This isn't a problem of experts. This is a problem of hubristically creating a never seen before material and assuming it would have no impact.

Which experts are you talking about? Before 10 years ago or so I don't remember ever seeing a discussion about plastics in the environment one way or the other.

Problem is that you're putting all "experts" in one bucket. There has been "experts" talking against the use of plastic and single-use for a very long time, but by attacking all experts like you're doing, you make it sound that they are the same people. Clearly, environmentalist were not the ones promoting plastic?

Plastic is our new collective "Chernobyl".

One HBO show and boom: https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?geo=US&q=chernobyl

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