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Comment by adamgordonbell | Hacker News Reader

A question I have is what is today's lead?

Maybe lead is a bad example, because it was known to be bad for a long time... But what is the thing that looking back will turn out to be horrible for us and pervasive in the environment?

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I’d say micro plastics and other related chemicals like PTFEs. They’re incredibly common and found throughout the human body and in every ecosystem. I have a feeling a lot of modern diseases, the ones relegated to “developed” countries are created or exacerbated by plastic chemical pollution. We know they can disrupt hormones and who knows what else. Worst of all they’re impossible to avoid

Plain old atmospheric CO2. We've upped the amount in our atmosphere to well over 400ppm. Drowsiness becomes noticeable at over 1000ppm but with the now higher atmospheric CO2 and the fact that many of us now live and work indoors where poor ventilation can increase CO2 levels you have a recipe for subtle cognitive problems similar to what lead caused.

Here are a few candidates:

1) Environmental contaminants in water, food, and air https://slimemoldtimemold.com/2021/07/13/a-chemical-hunger-p...

2) Xenoestrogens in plastics, pesticides, toiletries, perfumes, polyester and nylon clothing https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3947648/

3) Mass consumption of pharmaceutical drugs

4) Vegetable seed oils https://chriskresser.com/how-industrial-seed-oils-are-making...

5) Sugar and hyper palatable foods https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/04/25/book-review-the-hungry...

6) Endemic pathogens like toxoplasmosis https://www.hardtowrite.com/pathogens/

4) needs a better source. He apparently has a history of claiming things not backed by science.

https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Chris_Kresser

He does sound a bit "out there" but mainstream science says that vegetable/seed oils are safe to eat, so anyone who says they are not is going to be "anti-science."

There are plenty of mainstream science studies on oils, not all of them favourably disposed, and "is ingredient x bad for you" has never been something that's been difficult to get mainstream funding for. If it was the case that the only indication of negative health consequences of cooking oils came from an "out there" self-publicist that would be a [weak] prior in favour of the safety if oils, not a reason to pay particular attention to the "anti-science" arguments of the "out there" guy on this topic.

He cites no sources for any claim of adverse health effect. Also, evolutionary mismatch is the kind of nonsense common in alternative circles that we can do well without.

I’ve read #1 and #5 so far, and they were both fascinating. Thanks for sharing this! I figure the actual answer is a combination of many things, but reading each of these little pieces is really valuable info.

I suspect nothing - Lead is unique in that the cognitive effects of exposure can cause societal collapse if widespread enough.

We have other environmental contaminants that are bad but broadly, they don't have the cognitive effects of Lead - biologically you can survive lead exposure - meaning you wont die - but the cognitive exposure of Lead in my opinion puts it in a category of its own.

Phthalates seem to have similar society-collapsing potential through population decline. Different mechanism but I'm not sure the outcome is different in a meaningful way.

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