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Comment by mcv | Hacker News Reader

Every time I see an article about a new place where microplastics have been found (blood, brains, babies), I feel like this is a battle we already lost before we even knew it was a battle.

Although this article seems to be more about particles from wear and tear on tires and clothes, which I always felt was a separate issue from plastic packaging that ends up in sea. But maybe I'm wrong about that.

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I agree that the news is depressing, I go for two things: First, yes, there’s microplastics everywhere, but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t stop putting more out there. As the saying goes, the best time to stop polluting the environment was twenty years ago, the second best time is now.

More directly and less, uh, platitudinally - we’ve found microbes capable of digesting and breaking down things we didn’t think were possible and we’re getting better at engineering/encouraging them to do so - I think there’s a legitimate possibility that we can actually solve this problem within our lifetimes.

Time for a SF novel: those engineered/encouraged microbes became so efficient over time at adapting to new materials that some mutations began to attack cellulose... Fast forward a few years, and everywhere in the world our forests started turning into stinky and bubbling yellow mud...

Well we already have those sorts of microbes. They're all over. It's why things rot.

It's actually kinda bad enough if they start breaking down plastics. We use plastics in a lot of places specifically because they're resistant to microbial breakdown. This includes electrical insulation, medical equipment, food containers, and so forth. A world where plastics start to rot at the pace of wood is a world in which we have big problems.

Unfortunately, the way we've gone about things it seems like an inevitability that a successful plastic-eating microbe would evolve. Plastics are goddamn everywhere, and they're chock full of yummy hydrocarbons. Any organism that specializes in this food source has very good prospects for thriving.

> Unfortunately, the way we've gone about things it seems like an inevitability that a successful plastic-eating microbe would evolve. Plastics are goddamn everywhere, and they're chock full of yummy hydrocarbons. Any organism that specializes in this food source has very good prospects for thriving.

Plastics are a terrible food source for microbes. The two most common plastics polyethylene and polypropylene are just chains of C2H4 and C3H6 respectively. No nitrogen, phosphorus, sulfur, potassium, or any other elements necessary for life.

In a world full of carbon dioxide in the air and photosynthetic life forms, having access to yet another carbon and energy source isn’t much of an advantage except in extreme environments like hydrothermal vents.

There are plenty of nutrients in soil, though. Buried utilities would be most susceptible.

EDIT: Also seawater: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plastic_degradation_by_marine_...

Plastic eating microbes have been identified pretty much everywhere including soil and fresh and salt water. However, most everything has access to the nutrients in those environments and the plastic eating microbes just aren’t competitive with autotrophs and their predators.

not quite that, but Andromeda Strain is a plastic-eating microbe story

There was a Judge Dredd comic about a bacteria that breaks down "plasteel" which they used to build skyscrapers.

As some other posters have said changing some of your habits might not make a meaningful change, but it is a change non the less.

Nature is also stepping up and bacteria is evolving in several places which eats plastic.

I agree that it is incredibly depressing once you realise how wide spread and poisonous to our environment the pollution is. As a society we need to find a way to bake the externalities into the price of every day items, else we will always suffer from the tragedy of the commons.

No need to be defeatist. If there's microplastics found somewhere it shouldn't make you want to deal with the problem less, right?

Until a few years back I was also unaware about microplastics in things like tires and clothes. Started buying clothes that are strictly cotton/linen/wool. I don't drive so that part is irrelevant.

TBF it probably does not matter what you do as an individual. All the news indicates it could be a civilization-scale problem. Collectively, the human race would need to deal with it together. I believe this has never happened before.

The human race has collectively dealt with global issues before. CFCs vs the ozone layer is the classic example.

It's a much smaller problem of course, but we did solve it. We need to step up.

That is true, thanks for reminding me. I am a bit discouraged by the response to climate change, which I think will end disastrously. I would be overjoyed to be proved wrong on all counts.

One individual's actions won't solve the entire problem, sure, but you will be at least limiting the more acute exposure to yourself, and your family, by avoiding clothing made of plastic, for example. Cotton, linen, wool are better for you than plastic anyhow, putting to one side microplastics.

"Never happened before" is funny because the example is literally in front of you. Want an example of many humans together making global change happen? See how we got here.

Individuals is how it started, individuals is how it's gonna improve.

Tell that to Gavrilo Princip.

Daring individuals can change the world.

It's not like he single-handedly causes the war. The countries involved were already itching for a war, and he merely provided the excuse.

> Every time I see an article about a new place where microplastics have been found (blood, brains, babies), I feel like this is a battle we already lost before we even knew it was a battle.

Now imagine all the other battles we started or lost already and aren't aware of at all

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