Comment by southeastern | Hacker News Reader

Comment by southeastern | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

Many plastics are known endocrine disruptors. They mimic estrogen and their exact effects on the human body are unknown. But because of the nature of plastics, the don't decompose but just break down into smaller and smaller pieces. They find microplastics everywhere they look. In the Mariana Trench and on Mt Everest[1], and in 90% of table salt tested[2]. One recent study says the average person consumes about a credit card sized amount of microplastics every year[3]. While we're not certain it's dangerous, there are a lot of reasons to be very concerned

Edit: And just To make it clear, in my mind the danger is just about certain. I'm speaking conservatively with my claims, but I really believe this is a large concern. Especially for developing kids and teens.

1- https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/microplastics-pol...

2- https://www.google.com/amp/s/api.nationalgeographic.com/dist.... (Amp to get around reading limit;)

3-https://qz.com/1644802/you-eat-5-grams-of-plastic-per-week/

Microplastics are in literally every synthetic clothing item we wear. I don't see us ever getting rid, or cutting down on microplastics if thousands of companies, even self-proclaimed eco-friendly ones, sell these as their main product.

https://www.patagonia.com/stories/an-update-on-microfiber-po...

I appreciate the reply. I’ve given reasons in other responses that (it seems) the way to address this is to address poor waste management practices. That they’re the problem, not plastics per se.

Plastics create the management issue in the first place. That’s ok, we get value from plastics, so you’re right in that we can just better manage the plastic problem and have less of a problem. but the plastic problem, even if reduced, still scales with net plastic creation.

I can agree with you fully, and still think it’s a good idea to reduce plastic creation.

i’m curious why you don’t think it’s a reasonable value to also reduce plastics? if we tackle from both sides it’s even more effective.

(btw sorry i cannot give you what you want in terms of rigorous scientific proofs, i’m a philosophizer)

> i’m curious why you don’t think it’s a reasonable value to also reduce plastics?

If they’re not actually the problem, then why reduce them? Lots of things would be bad if sufficient quantities got into the environment, but we manage them well to avoid that, so don't consider them problems.

But say they are somewhat of a problem, we have to ask how much, and how this compares to alternatives. People talk of things like glass. But they tend to just imply that glass is better. Is it? For example, I think it requires much more energy to produce (and possibly to recycle). It’s heavier, so that means more energy used to transport it. I don’t know myself what the exact tradefoffs are. Again, I’d like to see rigorous arguments/evidence.

I'm not convinced this will work. Clearly it hasn't yet. Some people just can't be trusted to be responsible. Rather than teach people to be responsible with plastic, the most responsible thing might be to just put less out these. But I see where you're coming from. I think that can work in certain areas, maybe the more well to do ones

So, plastics are the actual "soy" right wingers were talking about.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com