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Comment by zenexer | Hacker News Reader

So what?

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.

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So you’re correct in saying you’d need more information to draw conclusions, but the big concern at this point in time is that we really have no idea what impact this has. This is potentially much worse than eating a bunch of plastic one time that you’ll ultimately pass right on through (given that these are microscopic particulates in the digestive tract).

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.

The example of asbestos is interesting, because it was actually know since the roman empire that it was toxic. Juvenal wrote about the disease suffered by asbestos miners in the beginning of the 2nd century!

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…

Currently, I don't like the comparison to asbestos.

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

I actually agree with you in part - if this were anything like as bad as asbestos per capita surely we would know that by now.

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 don't disagree, but 50 years is a very unintuitive number to give because it makes it sound like you're going to die of natural causes before the cancer causes you harm, which is pretty harmless as cancers go.

Not if you die at 50. Or 40.

> 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.

It is certainly establishes an obligation to be good ancestors.

Already fucked up there.

A society grows great when old men plant trees whose shade they know they shall never sit in.

The time is always now.

The first problem reported with plasticizers was endocrine disruption [1]. This has been linked to the reduction of fetal anogenital distance, a key marker in determining the sex of a fetus [2]. This causes various reproductive disorders [3].

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

Your comment about the political climate made me remember this. I cannot find the specific reference but in one of his lectures (on Youtube), Sapolsky talks about how some gay people felt offended in the 70's by research about the relation between brain structure and sexual orientation, since they felt it treated their sexual orientation as a pathology. Sapolsky contrasts it with the more recent enthusiasm about similar research, because people felt it would prove being gay was not a matter of choice or bad nurture. In political contexts, people blindly replace connotation for implication. Whereas implication is a concern of Logic (and hence, Science), connotation is a concern of intuition (or should I say, instinct) about constantly changing cultural ideals.

I have seen that lecture and it's great but please see my comment below and consider that the parent may not be that lone hero of hard science and facts against the politics of emotion which I suspect is the narrative it's trying to establish. (It's a trap ;)

>the apparent feminization of human societies

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.

Parent is unintentionally supporting grandparent's point.

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.

Average testicle size has been shrinking for decades too. And as you say, nobody knows why.

I don’t know, but they may be referring to studies that postulate environmental (as well as other) factors contributing to the general lowering of testosterone and fertility in men over the past few decades.

https://uk.reuters.com/article/health-testosterone-levels-dc...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bisphenol_A?wprov=sfla1

It was used in baby bottle mouthpieces and dummys as a plasticizer.

> apparent feminization of human societies

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.

The plastic/oil industry likely subsidizes that political stuff so the pitchforks will not come for them.

If you'd prefer to read one of a million articles that lay out what you suggest (most say we need more data), then I suggest you google the topic. I'd imagine more people will do just that, thanks to this piece!

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.)

>So what?

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?

https://ecologycenter.org/factsheets/adverse-health-effects-...

I'd be interested on how much dust, pollen and sand I eat in comparison.

...and insects.

> Don’t just tell me I eat a lot of plastic—on its own, that’s useless information.

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.

One thing that scares me is that this amount of plastic consumption is only increasing as we dump more and more plastic. I’m not sure when it will reach that point that it’s clearly too much even if the amount we consume isn’t harmful for now. Many of these plastics take thousands of years to break down completely.

My lay understanding is that we don't know about the plastics themselves as other commenters have said. However, apparently, other toxic chemicals in the environment bond readily to the plastics and that becomes a mechanism by which those chemicals get into our bodies.

I'm equally curious. Lets say for the sake of argument that I eat as much plastic per year as I do clay and sand. How would that affect me in ways that those other minerals don't.

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