It's raining plastic: microscopic fibers fall from the sky in Rocky Mountains

Ebola is really small too!

More seriously, to your point about historical growth + pollution -- (1) this stuff is cumulative and (2) the world is polluting more now than it ever has.

Here's an article on how small pieces of plastic is unhealthy: https://www.insurancejournal.com/magazines/mag-features/2016...

The increase in lifespan is more due to childhood mortality falling sharply in those years.

I've always found average lifespan to be problematic. Most of the deaths weren't from 65 being the age where old age started to kill. It was on account of how many more infants and children started reaching 5 on account of vaccines.

The reason it can recover is the biodiversity, according to an ecology book I read once. As we reduce our biodiversity, the recovery is slightly less certain in an extreme case. Our attempts at biodomes show (at least as of 15 years ago when I read about it) that we don’t actually understand what the minimum mix of species needed for sustainability is

Nearly everything you put in body like silicone, plastic, titanium have known negative effects.

Isn't that more about the solvents that are used when manufacturing them? I would expect them to be gone by the time they turn to such small particles

Yes, and filling the environment with lots of plastic eating bacteria will also make it useless as a durable packaging material.

I think the word is 'vindicated'

It's hard for me to write this well, so before I begin I hope you don't take offense. I think it's easy to feel shame if someone disagrees with you and especially if they take the time to back up their argument with some evidence as the responder to your statement did. However, I think it's kind of an unfortunate reaction. That person gave you a gift -- they spent time out of their day to explain to you why they disagreed. It's not meant to beat you back, or to make you seem stupid (at least from my perspective). Your original comment didn't have any supporting evidence: it was just a statement. While it may very well be true, it's really hard for a reader to judge. I don't know you. I don't know how well you understand the field. If you make a statement, I'm always going to be a bit wary -- because there are a lot more people who are mistaken on the internet when they think they know something, than people who actually know something.

As much as possible, I'd like to encourage you to take the time and effort to back up your statements and to share your knowledge in a way that people like me can appreciate. I know it takes time and you may be thinking, "If I need to back up everything I say, then I won't have time to say anything!". However, I think it's fine to pick and choose your moments (BTW, as you might gather from this message, this is something I also struggle with!) If everyone who read HN posted their opinion without spending the time to show how they arrived at that opinion, we would be buried in meaningless arguments. That's why it is so important for people like you, who seem to know something about the subject matter, to spend that time to make a really quality reply. Everyone will benefit, I feel.

Perhaps you will disagree, but at the very least I hope you come away with the feeling that it is not necessary to experience shame if someone disagrees with you -- indeed, even if you happen to be wrong. Especially if you are wrong, you are the one that benefits the most because you can learn something new. It really is all good.

This oddly makes me feel less anxious about this issue. If everyone is ingesting microplastics all the time for a while now, it proves that at least in the short term there aren't any really bad effects. Otherwise we would've noticed it by now.

I do worry about atmospheric plastic particles, but...

I suspect that reported air quality metrics like PM10/PM2.5 measure this already. I'm doubtful that 10k plastic particles are landing inside your house simply because external air turnover isn't that fast (only a few per day). Either it's coming from inside your house or the density outside is anomalously high.

The total volume would be <10m3 and peak PM10 is typically less than 5ug/m³ (often less than 1 where I live). A 10um diameter particle is a few nanograms so 10,000 would mean all of the particles in the air are plastic. We know that dust, smoke, and other sources are significant as well.

He/she probably meant a particle filter mask, but it's always good to point out that this is something comoletely different from a surgical mask. Sadly a lot of people that really should depend on the particle filtration don't understand this, and wear surgical masks instead.