In Pictures: How much plastic are you eating?
aljazeera.com
aljazeera.com
This is a legitimate question, not a dismissive hand-wave. So what? What does this mean? Is this bad? Why?
Surely all that plastic doesn’t stick around forever—I’m fairly certain I don’t have any PVC pipes in my gut, though it’s been a while since I’ve checked. What are the consequences of eating this much plastic? They certainly aren’t obvious.
I don’t want an article that just throws a bunch of analogies in my face with pictures of various comparably-sized plastic objects. Don’t get me wrong, I appreciate the artistic touch, but I’m much more interested in understanding what this means. Where’s the research to go along with this? I expect journalists to dig deeper. Interview some experts; summarize studies of the consequences. Don’t just tell me I eat a lot of plastic—on its own, that’s useless information.
In essence the big concern here is cancer. We know that particulates at or around 0.3 microns (the Most Penetrating Particle Size) have been linked to a variety of abdominal cancers in humans throughout the last hundred years.
Critically, these types of cancers can take up to 50 years to form and cause serious enough problems to be detected (and seldom less than a couple of decades), so although billions of people have consumed micro-plastics, we still have no way of knowing what impact that will have on their health in later years.
This is exactly what happened in the case of asbestos - it took so long for the consequences to show up after exposure that it seemed far-fetched to draw a correlation between asbestos and the cancers it caused. When coupled with cover-ups of the evidence by mining companies, the common use of asbestos skyrocketed long after it was known how deadly it was in private - but before public awareness had sounded alarm bells.
The worry is that accumulated micro-plastics could be deadly in later life, but that we don’t find that out until hundreds of millions of people have become terminally ill.
But even if this scenario were to happen, is there anything we can do about it? Maybe it is already too late and we can only analyze what we could have made better, not what we can.
As you mentioned, the problem is never knowledge: it's the political fact between wealthy corporations and people's interest. Companies try to cover their mess up for as long as they can, by every possible mean. They know it won't last forever, but it doesn't really matter since they banked up their profits in the meantime and people in charge almost never suffer legal consequences for their actions…
Asbestos was known early to be bad. Early mining towns lives were shorter[0]. Information was slow to communicate and I 100% agree there was a lot of money to keep the dangers from being known by the general public.
But asbestos, has a long and clear history of being bad.
Plastics are no where near as bad and are pretty much ubiquitous.
I think the opioid crisis or even sugar is more closely related to asbestos's style of danger combined with misinformation.
As this whole thread is discussing, the jury is still out, but there seems to be hardly the study that can point to an asbestos level problem.
If we all start developing cancer in about 20 years, I'll be the first to raise my hand admitting I didn't see that coming.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asbestos#Discovery_of_toxicity
The point I was trying to make was that so very many people, essentially everyone, are being exposed to micro-plastics that even if this were several orders of magnitude less toxic than asbestos that's still a major health crisis.
That and as you've said we just don't know what we don't know really.
I am convinced that this contributes to the apparent feminization of human societies, a topic that apparently cannot be brought up for discussion in the US due to the ludicrous contemporary political climate.
1: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S001664801...
2: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/16079079/
3: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00204-018-2350-5
Wow, could you elaborate or backup this claim? Do you mean that it explains that there are more female born than male? Probably not since you say it can't be talked about so you're hinting at a more ideological and thus controversial claim : That masculine values are on the down or something of that kind. If that's your opinion, well it is a classic overheard reactionary argument about the pacification of social relationships and how war forge "real" men and you just disappointed me.
It was used in baby bottle mouthpieces and dummys as a plasticizer.
In any event the secular testosterone decline[1] corresponds roughly with the mass production of consumer plastic goods. No way to tease apart all the confounding variables though so it could be something else causing that.
[1] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/17895324/ and many many many others.
https://uk.reuters.com/article/health-testosterone-levels-dc...
I have heard something similar is happening to domestic dogs too, which is very interesting, but makes sense as they will be exposed to a lot of what we are. I have no idea what to search for to bring that study up though. I did find one study about BPA levels in canned food causing marked changes just after a few weeks but that's a very small part of the whole picture.
Many plasticizers mimic the function of hormones like estrogen. Would you like to dose yourself with unregulated amounts of hormone analogs and hope it all works out?
I personally have done that reading and so was already familiar with micro plastics. However, I had never had a good sense of the quantity until these photos visualized it. I hope this "In Pictures" article introduces more people to this subject because most people aren't aware of this being a potential issue.
(The person down thread who noted this piece uses upper limits without noting it has a valid critique.)
Is it though? I don't think I've read an article that quantifies how much plastic we ingest in relatable terms or quantities. Most people may even be unaware that we ingest any appreciable amount.
Many people remember the BPA bottle recalls and know what/why everything says BPA free on it these days. And I think this article would inspire people to start asking themselves if that's a problem.
Not everyone gets upset and dismissive when something they read isn't a one stop shop for any and all information on a subject. They do occasionally seek additional information.
Since there were big headlines ~2010 about food in plastic heated in microwaves, I've switched to using glass containers for leftovers. Does that decrease the amount described in this article? Or is this some other mechanism of plastic consumption?
be careful, the "BPA free" plastic products on the market might have just replaced BPA with BPS (or other plasticizers), which might be as bad as BPA when it comes to your health. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bisphenol_S#Health_Effects
I’ve consumed minimum 1 cup soy milk almost my entire life. No man boobs and my sperm works just fine.
What’s funny is people usually warn me that eating soy will somehow harm my masculinity, yet they aren’t aware milk, eggs, and meat also contain phytoestrogens https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/jf801344x
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phytoestrogen#Food_sources
But soy gets all the press. People believe what they desire to believe...
And good on you. I too drink 1/2 Liter of Westsoy Unsweetened Soymilk daily. Silk just came out with an unsweetened variety too! :-)
What matters is the quantity of phytoestrogens in foods, and soy products happens to have significantly higher phytoestrogens than other foods.
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/24284429_Phytoestro...
> Phytoestrogens were detected in all foods analyzed; bread contained the highest amount of phytoestrogens-many as isoflavones-with an average content of 375 +/- 67 microg/100 g wet weight (excluding soya-linseed bread with 12,000 microg/100 g).
This is what I'm saying. You are comparing 375 and 12,000 and saying the difference doesn't matter. It's a two orders of magnitude difference.
So no, what you're saying is not true. Soy products have significantly higher levels of phytoestrogens than other foods.
http://www.pkdiet.com/pdf/pld/phytoestrogen.pdf
Thank you for enlightening me.
We might already be seeing effects but haven’t yet made the connection.
AFAIK that's for BPA? I don't think microplastics are generated just by having the food being in contact with the plastic, so I doubt that makes a difference. If you read the study[1], it looks like most of the plastic comes from the drinking water, not through food.
[1] https://www.dropbox.com/s/nxvyl3v5s9d0a1v/PLASTIC%20INGESTIO...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2kttVyakHN4
Chewing gum / Bubble gum uses a mix of synthetic rubber and plastic as its base.
Same
> Or changes in production that could be made to avoid it.
Not as interested in this, as its a moot point. Corporations that make things have my worst incentives as their goals, so if they found out, they might learn to make it even worse for me. God forbid the health care industry find out (I'm sure they have and we'll find out the effects decades down the road, similar to cigarettes).
I've worn merino wool underpants on trips where - for various reasons - I took barely anything except the clothes I wore. Hanging the underpants in the steamy bathroom while taking a shower will almost completely refresh them. Heck, even keeping them on in circumstances where showers weren't available didn't seem to pick up any odors, at least for a couple of days.
Not that I would normally recommend regularly wearing underwear for several days or even a week, but wool is clearly superior to cotton or synthetic fabrics.
Furthermore, I kinda think that this must be solved on a political level. It’s good if more and more people ask for plastic-free products, but don’t think that this changes anything on the individual level, especially if you consider that a lot of plastic in the oceans come from fishing nets.
It might actually make more sense to stop eating fish, if you want to have less plastic in your ocean.
So generelly: yes, try to reduce plastic, but also make it vocally (and vote) that this is important to you/all of us.
I also have some military surplus (Finnish M65) wool pants, which are made primarily for warmth and durability, not so much for soft comfort. Even after a sorely-needed rejuvenation with lanolin, they are still made from thick and somewhat coarse wool, which is obviously better for winter pants than silky soft merino.
Personally I don't find wool to be annoyingly scratchy. While I certainly do feel it a little bit when I put on a coarse wool flannel shirt before it warms to my body temperature, but it doesn't bother me. I know some people absolutely can't stand it, but I don't think anyone would have issues with good merino.
Quoted from Colgate's site [1]:
> Because microbeads aren't biodegradable, they pose a significant environmental concern. Research from the New York State Office of the Attorney General shows that microbeads can escape undetected into rivers and oceans after being washed down the drain, since their small size means they often aren't captured by regular sewage treatment systems. The report found that approximately 19 tons of microbeads are washed down New York drains each year!
> The beads can be mistaken as food by fish, birds and other wildlife. When animals fill their stomachs with microbeads, they may spread the plastic up the food chain. This can lead to contamination of the fish we eat, since microplastics soak up pollutants in waterways, according to the Australian Department of Environment and Energy. Once in the environment, microbeads are almost impossible to remove.
[1] https://www.colgate.com/en-us/oral-health/brushing-and-floss...
> "we estimated that globally on average, humans may ingest 0.1 to 5 g of microplastics weekly through various exposure pathways"
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S03043...
http://awsassets.panda.org/downloads/plastic_ingestion_press...
"""The interpretation of the 95% confidence intervals is that the "true" mass ingested for each food source and total mass will be within the ranges calculated (Table 7). However, this depends critically on the shape of the uniform distribution chosen and the assumed 50% relative uncertainty in number of particles and mass of particles. This uncertainty was chosen arbitrarily to help in understanding the sensitivity of the mass ingested to errors in the estimates reported."""
This is literally pulling numbers put of thin air, since no actual numbers exist. The upper limit of error propagation from a completely arbitrary estimate, which turns into three full orders of magnitude or uncertainty, then gets reported as "fact" by news outlets...
I've said it before, the science of microplastics today is where chemistry was in the 17th century. The people working in this field seem to have very limited understanding of basic math, physics and chemistry. Either step up and do shit properly, or go home. This is just embarassing.
It is what it is, could be. Yes the worst water in the world contains this much plastic, but I seriously doubt it is anywhere close to normal(I wouldn't mind to be wrong though)
Link to press release for study: https://www.newcastle.edu.au/newsroom/featured/plastic-inges...
> The literature was interrogated for several counts of microplastics in staples such as water, shellfish, fish, salt, beer, honey and sugar. This project did not take into account other possible direct ingestion sources such as the honey, fish, sugar (for which data was collated) or rice, pasta, bread, milk, utensils, cutlery, toothpaste, toothbrushes, food packaging and a multitude of other sources that would only add to the amount consumed. As such, there is confidence that based on the literature reviewed and subsequent analysis performed that up to 5 g/week of microplastic particles is potentially ingested by humans. Having said that, it should be stressed that the amount of the microplastics ingested by an individual will depend on a combination of parameters that is highly variable not only pertaining to the characteristics of the microplastics but also to each’s age, size, geographic location, demographics of the location, nature of development and life-style options.
> This study is being reviewed for publication; the full methodology and supplementary data will be available upon acceptance.
I believe the published paper is "Estimation of the mass of microplastics ingested – A pivotal first step towards human health risk assessment" (2020): https://sci-hub.do/10.1016/j.jhazmat.2020.124004 (Same authors.)
Table 6 in the study has the "5g of plastic/week" number quoted by the article. That number is the "global average rate of microplastics ingested" ("GARMI"). GARMI is calculated as:
GARMI = Average Number of Microplastics Ingested (ANMP) x Average Mass of Individual Microplastic Particle (AMIMP)
ANIMP can be calculated in different ways. It seems the average mass of microplastic particles found in drinking water was higher than the average mass of microplastic particles found in different foods. The study says 90% of ingested plastic particles come from drinking water, so it seems reasonable to use the AMIMP of water particles rather than food particles.
ANMP_drinking_water = 91994 ("the amount of water consumed per person was assumed to be 0.6 L/day" "The figures assumed are well below the World Health Organisation's guidelines of 3 to 4 L/person/day". 0.6 L/day comes from minimum 0.45 L/day of tap water + 0.15 L/day of bottled water. 91,994 is calculated as average of min (9029 particles) and max (174,959). If you only drank tap water, this number would be 42,298.)
AMIMP_aquatic = 2.8g / 1000
ANMP_drinking_water * AMIMP_aquatic = 257g
257 / 52 ~= 5g
Challenging those variables would be where to start. But assuming they're right, probably makes sense to focus on filtering plastics from drinking water.
https://widerimage.reuters.com/story/how-much-plastic-are-yo...
Reuters is a newswire, although you can get their work directly there's nothing untoward about a network republishing it: that's their principal business model.
You had to click "controversies and criticism" at the bottom of the original link. Probably this section was getting so big it was promoted to having its own page.
Anyway, even the aljazeera link ends with [Kim Kyung-Hoon/Reuters] and is a clearly a copy/paste from reuters.
So, like CNN is for US interests, BBC for Britain, RT for Russia, and so on. Let's have some variety...
> Please submit the original source.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
And anyway:
> For years, critics have assailed what they see as anti-Semitic, anti-American bias in the channel's news content. In the wake of 9/11, Al Jazeera broadcast statements by Osama bin Laden and reported from within the ranks of the Taliban, earning a reputation as a mouthpiece for terrorists. In October 2001, a New York Times editorial took Al Jazeera to task for reporting Jews had been informed in advance not to go to work at the World Trade Center the day of the attacks.
Source : https://web.archive.org/web/20120120215822/http://ajr.org/Ar...
And: https://twitchy.com/gregp-3534/2017/05/31/al-jazeera-english...
I wonder if we can find comparable content in BBC controversies...
So no, there's no comparison whatsoever with CNN or BBC and it's a problem that articles and information from AJ is shared without any caution.
Yes, in the sense that the US (CNN) and the UK (BBC) have had and have their gruby hands all over the globe, in occupation, colonisation, invansions, interventions, trade wars, national interests, resource grubbing, etc., whereas the Qatari interests are somewhat limited.
So, I'd take the AJ editorials on most matter with smaller grains of salt than CNN and BBC.
Also, throwing all news sources affiliated with a national government into the same basket is like throwing all the media, or all of humanity, into the same basket. Obviously they are not all the same or guilty of equivalent sins. It is the fair starting place, but it is only a good place to remain if you are too lazy, ignorant, uninterested, or incompetent to go further. If the accuracy of statements means something to you and you are capable of doing better you don't stick with "let's assume they are all the same".
This made sense in newspaper times (since compiling your news from multiple sources was hard), but in the internet age I don't see why it would.
The closer to the actual source the better (HN policy I strongly agree with).
As if aljazeera is a bad source?
https://www.reddit.com/r/worldnews/comments/kbwac0/first_evi...
- avoid bottled water
- avoid eating out of plastic containers
- don't heat food with plastic
Why not both?
Edit: Jackson County, OR.
If it goes in your mouth, it goes through reverse osmosis first.
Just get used to the fact that your house needs two water supplies, the one you drink and the one you use to shower and flush your toilet. Human population has grown far too much for us to be able to keep the latter supply as clean as the former supply.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bisphenol_A
I don't know how much is retained, but the plastics have been found in the meat of cows & fish, so it's likely spread all throughout our bodies as well.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/oct/22/micropla...
I'll use two comparisons, one positive and one negative for fairness sake. Before we knew that there wasn't much COVID spread in schools, did it make sense to close them just based on the uncertainty involved? Here's an example from the other end: Before we knew for sure leaded gasoline was a bad idea, should it have been banned? The impact of all the lead, particularly on children, was incredibly damaging and had lifelong effects that continued after the science was in.
Obviously, you want to take action based on data. But before we've got enough information to know, what do you do? I'd imagine the risk analysis has something to do with the rate at which micro plastics are being introduced and how far we are from an answer.
It doesn't have to be all or nothing. For example, it could be that items that cause the most issues are taxed a bit more to slow the growth of this potential issue. (Not suggesting that specifically; I don't know enough to say if action should be weaker or more severe.)
Generally speaking when it comes to health stuff, we know disappointingly little, and the stuff we do know is often from past mistakes (e.g. smoking). We don't have enough knowledge to say what the effects of something will be usually, so unless there are obvious correlations and an obvious control group (again think smoking) we might never really know.
What the FDA will do, with pesticides for example, is test an 1000x dose on a rat, and look for immediate effects. If they don't see immediate effects, then perhaps it doesn't do longterm damage to humans. It's not very convincing, but it historically things used to be much worse.
But we consume a lot of stuff unintentionally. Fine sand is blown around and deposited on food that we consume. But sand is "natural" so it's ok. But it's really just silicon dioxide mixed with other random minerals. Is that a problem? We know inhaling silicon dioxide is bad for you, but eating it? It is an approved food additive.
Edit: regarding non-organics, it took a long time to realize that inhaling fine dust causes long-term health problems, and quite longer until dust filters became required and commonplace. We are still not done regarding fine dust emitted by traffic.
I guess my point is - sure, maybe we'll find out one day that plastics are causing cancer, but we have a lot of data to suggest they don't at this point.
Cellophane? No worse than paper. Poly Ethelene? Probably fine. PVC? Maybe not. ABS? No.
Sometimes people who say "plastic" really mean paint. We could probably cut down but communicating precisely would help.
If you want to completely avoid microplastics, you'll have to use reverse osmosis water for everything, grow animal feed using this purified water, raise chickens using this animal feed, etc. Live in a bubble where the air is ultra filtered.
A firefighters helmet has the same amount of plastic as 12 Lego bricks? Bullshit.
Another simple example of indigestible things that could be in our food are stones and dirt.
Microplastics have contaminated the _whole_ Earths' water cycle, including mountain glaciers. [1]
The only difference between water supplies is just how big the concentration of these particles is. In practical terms you can assume all water sources are affected, water treatment facilities do not filter this.
You can reverse osmosis the water you drink but all the vegetables, fish, animals in your food chain are equally contaminated.
[1] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S02697...
What does this mean? Without a reference this is pointless information. One could eat plastic because he/she is crazy.
Why do people believe this article?
(Nothing to do with Al Jazeera, I think it's a refreshing change from Western media and this article has also been in CNN and Fox)
Or was it more of a general questions, why do people believe the media?
Why believe this story?
Under what conditions do they not believe. Under what conditions do they believe.
Again, perhaps a bad assumption, eating a credit card each week would not make sense to most people. Why believe it's true? When does media override personal beliefs?
And I know that they explain it in the captions. That's a dodge, they know people don't read the captions and they certainly aren't emotionally influenced by the captions.
So I immediately wrote it off as dishonest.