New study finds microplastics infiltrate all systems of body, alter behaviour | Hacker News Reader

New study finds microplastics infiltrate all systems of body, alter behaviour

sustainableplastics.com

292 pointsmyshpa373 comments

There are two macro population health trends that suggest we are somehow poisoning ourselves at a large scale. Most people do not relate the two, but I personally wouldn't be surprised if they have related causes.

The first is the Flynn effect, which was rising IQ levels decade over decade, which halted and then reserved for most Western nations around 1990s/2000s and is now declining: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flynn_effect

The second is the dropping fertility/sperm counts/hormone issues/etc: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Male_infertility_crisis

I think microplastics along with forever chemicals/PFAS are two of the likely culprits and are probably fairly easy to deal with.

I wonder what else could be contributing?

Also the metabolic syndrome/obesity epidemic. 40% of US adults have obesity. By 2030 about half of US adults will, and in 29 states more than half of adults will be obese.

We see obesity becoming increasingly normalized. People feel powerless to stop it and that we should just accept it.

It feels to me like there is something besides diet changes happening to us. That's part of it, but I wonder if microplastics or some kind of gut biome disruption is playing a role as well.

Obesity is caused in part by environmental toxins, probably to different extents in different people:

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/may/19/environm...

https://www.webmd.com/obesity/what-to-know-obesogens

These so called "obesogens" just increase the propensity towards obesity and depending on exposure and your sensitivity to then, you can overcome them or not via exercise and dieting and other means.

>These so called "obesogens" just increase the propensity towards obesity and depending on exposure and your sensitivity to then, you can overcome them or not via exercise and dieting and other means.

If it's environmental pollutants, shouldn't lab or wild animals be getting fatter as well? Yet they're not: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/NRrbJJWnaSorrqvtZ/on-not-get...

The prevalence of sugar in so many foods can't help.

Personally I avoid "sugary" food and drinks like the plague. I also don't snack and do regular exercise and sometimes don't eat dinner. I'm at a healthy weight in my 40s. How many adults that are obese have a healthy relationship with food and do regular exercise / fast? Obese children I have sympathy for, I'm uncertain how I feel about obese adults. I don't know if their metabolism is ultra slow, or they are just not taking care of themselves. Its complicated...

What about obese adults that used to be obese children?

Regardless of the cause of the obesity epidemic, it should be addressed compassionately and efficaciously. What makes that difficult (at least in the US) is that the most efficacious treatments aren't aligned with how the healthcare system works. Maybe you won't blame being fat on diet and exercise, but there's almost certainly a diet and excercise plan that will make you lose weight.

First-line treatment should be, - Walk/jog 30 min, 3x per week. Pace for a mildly elevated heart rate. - Eliminate super sweet foods from regular diet. No more than 3x per week. This could be VERY hard for sugar-addicted folks, so start small and work up. - Fast occasionally. Intermittent is great, but longer is even better. - Take a multivitamin.

The end goal is to replace your sweet craving with a fat craving and be ok feeling hungry for periods of time.

> Obese children I have sympathy for, I'm uncertain how I feel about obese adults

Why would you not have sympathy for someone suffering? Even if it's theoretically their own doing most people don't want to be obese.

Sugar was common in foods for many generations.

High fructose corn syrup is relatively new.

So are many sugar substitutes.

Obesity is caused by eating too much. If you don’t eat then you won’t gain weight, there is no subverting the laws of thermodynamics.

It sounds callous but if you go to Africa or visit a prisoner of war camp you won’t find many fat people and so blaming chemicals in America for so many fat people doesn’t make much sense to me.

The tunnel-vision on this subject is truly astounding. I can't think of any subject that is treated in the same way.

Say that someone was failing at university because they have no motivation. And they have no motivation because they have depression. Then a vocal minority would always butt in with the following truism:

- Failing university courses is caused by not studying enough. There is no subverting the fact that you need to study the material in order to not fail the course.

This is of course a completely useless advice/truism.

Now say that someone overeats because they have depression. Or because of some pathology caused by microplastics. Or let's just say that there is a possibility that a different environment (no microplastics) would lead to them not overeating. Do you still want to derail this conversation with irrelevant “thermodynamics” truisms?

Your argument is that forcing people to go without food causes them to lose weight, which is impossible to deny. You argument says nothing about what causes people to gain weight, however.

Just look up 'hormonal weight gain' to see that it isn't just about eating less. Then look at research into the influence of chemicals/micro plastics on those hormones.

Yes, all calories have to go in through the mouth. How those calories are processed, however, is influenced by a great many factors.

In an environment awash with cheap calories, some people get obese and some don't. That's something worth investigating. (I personally think it's more about natural mental variation than subtle chemical poisoning, but that's probably just my bias talking).

True in the technical sense, but it doesn’t address the mystery that in the 40s, 50s, 60s people in rich countries had access to plenty of food, ate lots of calories, and yet obesity was very rare.

But not eating slows down your metabolism, and then you will eventually find yourself at a point where you are tired all the time because you are not consuming enough calories to have a high enough metabolism and energy level, and yet you are still slowly gaining weight because you are too tired to do anything to burn it off.

Obesity is caused by eating too much of the wrong thing.

Which happens to be the cheap thing in industrialized mass produced Western food chains. Cheap in terms of dollars and personal time.

So obesity is really an economic problem.

We should come down like a ton of bricks on fast food and require they offer healthier options at low prices, subsidized by taxes on their unhealthier options.

I'll just leave this here, it's a fascinating bit of citizen science:

http://achemicalhunger.com/

> It feels to me like there is something besides diet changes happening to us. That's part of it, but I wonder if microplastics or some kind of gut biome disruption is playing a role as well.

Based on what many people have in their shopping carts and the sugar water many people are constantly chugging, I see no reason to think anything other than excess calories is the cause. And lack of exercise as an exacerbating factor.

Excess calories are the proximate causes. The factor that causes excess calories are likely multifactorial such as car dependency, toxic advertising, and environmental toxins such as obesogens, and more, including unidentified factors.

Maybe fat as well ? Not the one in walnuts and linen seeds but the pork, diaries and coconut. Not an expert at all, just wondering in what extend we should avoid them comparing to sugar.

I was in the metabolic syndrome and obese group, and I have some thyroid problems (likely due to growing up near a uranium enrichment facility). I could diet and exercise and still gain weight that was largely visceral fat, and especially fat in my liver. I was in the beginning stages of non-alcoholic fatty liver disease.

Under my doctor's supervision, I went on the keto diet. I eat high fat foods and meats, and I lost about 50 lbs in 2 months. My weight stabilized over the following months within a healthy range. Additionally, chronic pain, concentration, and energy levels all improved. Most of this is due to the weight loss, but not all of it. Sugar can cause inflammation in high quantities, and it can also cause an increase in blood pressure. Sugars are also metabolized by cancer cells while ketones are not, which would explain the rise in cancer rates as sugar consumption has increased across the planet. My liver function improved, cholesterol levels improved, blood sugar stabilized, and insulin resistance went down.

I personally believe that there is some kind of difference among humans in how we digest things that goes beyond the microbiome. Some people can eat high amounts of carbohydrates and sugars without negative consequences beyond tooth decay. Other people cannot eat any sugar without incurring weight gain and cognitive problems.

Fat by itself is very satiating, you'd struggle to rack up the calories eating purely fat unless you were really trying. However too much sugar without fibre will spike your blood sugar levels which triggers an insulin response, causing your body to effectively store any glucose in your bloodstream into muscle and fat cells[0]. The end result is you're hungry again and able to eat more calories. Combine that with a high fat diet and you have a recipe for obesity.

When I used to weight train, during my cuts (weight loss phases), I had much more success with a high fat/low carb diet than I ever did calorie counting (which naturally makes you avoid fat since they have a higher calorie density).

[0] Not an expert but this is my layman's understanding after reading lots of books on the subject.

These folks suspect lithium in our water causes obesity. They also support several citizen-science diet experiments:

https://slimemoldtimemold.com/

Big thing you would expect if it’s due to general plastic/pollution prevalence is obesity in pets/wild animals.

We see that. Pets and wild animals that live around humans are also increasingly obese.

From a quick search: https://www.livescience.com/10277-obesity-rise-animals.html

here is a study on the negative effects on aquatic life:

"In aquatic invertebrates, microplastics cause a decline in feeding behavior and fertility, slow down larval growth and development, increase oxygen consumption, and stimulate the production of reactive oxygen species. In fish, the microplastics may cause structural damage to the intestine, liver, gills, and brain, while affecting metabolic balance, behavior, and fertility; the degree of these harmful effects depends on the particle sizes and doses, as well as the exposure parameters"

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9205308/

> It feels to me like there is something besides diet changes happening to us.

Well sure, obesity is a result of a lot of factors, some genetic, but a lot of it is the food environment surrounding people. The lack of easy access to healthy foods or education on how to buy and prepare them, plus economic pressures all play into this.

>The lack of easy access to healthy foods or education on how to buy and prepare them, plus economic pressures all play into this.

This doesn't exist anywhere in the world. You either have easy access to healthy food or no access to food at all.

Healthy food is so much cheaper, more abundant and easier to source in all situations than processed junk.

The idea that people don't know how to eat healthy or can't afford to is a convenient lie.

> a lot of it is the food environment surrounding people

Yup. It is hard to pull all the factors apart because they contribute to each other. If you are obese, I understand it screws up your hormones which makes it easier to stay obese. Also if you have exposure to chemicals which cause you to have a tendency towards being obese you are more likely to seek out a bad food environment - e.g. crave McDonald's fries, etc.

So you sort of just need to work on each factor and over time, it will change. For many, we already have significantly accumulations of forever chemicals or microplastics so it may take a generation to truly fix.

This the one area the administration should go after instead of alcohol or whatever else they think they’re doing. By addressing obesity, making it uncool, taxing the living daylights out of sugary additives, etc they would save more lives than the lives combined in all their other feel-good, virtue signaling efforts[1]they sound nice and all but in thd end this effort would actually save a many more lives.

[1]gas stoves and ranges, overhead fans, etc. and of course when they released a trial balloon they accused people of conspiracy theory thinking -but here we are. Meanwhile sweeteners and fillers are everywhere.

Do you see an administration going after obesity the way they did tobacco? (negative ads, advertising bans, etc)

Unlike smoking, half the class is already fat. NGOs and media would frame it as a psychological harm to those children, fat-shaming, or who knows what else. It would be a political landmine.

Unfortunately, I don't. They seem to baby obesity, including the media where obese people like Lizzo and others are celebrated for being unapologetically fat. I understand bulimia is an issue too and we don't want kids especially to think they need to be waifs, but now this sentiment pendulum has swung way too far to the other side and they accommodate obesity in every which way. The only fat people the media seem okay to chastise are Trump and I think maybe Chris Christie & very few others?

No, this should be confronted as _the_ health threat of the next 20 - 30 years. It's more consequential than anything else, Health-wise, productivity-wise, medical costs, quality of life --All these shoppers in their electric 4-wheeled scooters. It's insane that this is not a declared crisis.

>It feels to me like there is something besides diet changes happening to us.

Cars?

The switch from leaded to unleaded gas would roughly coincide. Interesting!

Also the move from labor jobs to most everything ycombinator seeds.

the rise in obesity correlates to the rise of HFCS in food and also the "war on fats" in diets around the 80s

That's because of sugar. Watch the Sugar: The Bitter Truth video on youtube.

Alternative explanation (call me crazy) :-)

A US comedian once commented that when he went to Europe 20 years ago, he noticed that people only ate three meals a day.

What a concept!

I don't know about you, but loads of people around me eat only 2 meals a day and still struggle with being overweight. (Not obese tho).

The number of meals is a very small part of the entire diet and lifestyle matrix.

They may only eat 2 meals a day but they likely snack too. If you only eat 2 meals a day and do not eat between meals you are most likely going to be a normal weight.

You really shouldn't listen to comedians. They're only trying to make you laugh, not inform you. Yes even George Carlin.

I'm gonna need some more hard evidence before I believe that microplastics in the human body play a strong causative role in both infertility and changing IQ scores (and first you have to convince me of the import of IQ scores).

It's a classic "jacking off butterflies" response. That's a reference to the TV show Childrens Hospital, in which one of the doctors finds a cure for cancer and it's butterfly semen. One of the other characters says something along the lines of "We both know cancer is an amalgam of unique conditions, it should be impossible to find a single cure" but they brush it off and starting jacking off butterflies. That's how I feel whenever people try to reduce complex social phenomena to a single simplistic cause. "We both know it can't be just this one thing, but let's pretend it is because that's easier to solve."

Microplastics may be a significant cause of Male Infertility:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9134445/

The plastic brain: neurotoxicity of micro- and nanoplastics:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7282048/

Phalates in plastics reduce IQ significantly:

https://time.com/3625352/phthalates-iq-toxins/

I don't deny that there is more and more research every day about the negative impacts of microplastics on the human body. From my place of relative ignorance, it still seems that more sweeping claims like "Microplastics are responsible for the Flynn Effect and the male infertility crisis" are awfully bold. You throw obesity in there too, and doesn't it seem like folks are trying to pin all of society's ills on a single issue? It's like when people try to pathologize black people by arguing that all their social ills are actually just due to lead exposure. That has proven to be a very shaky argument, and one that has to plow through a lot of nuance and complex social phenomena to land on a materialist claim so simplistic that it's kind of infantilizing.

Plus, the obsessive focus on IQ reeks of bad social science.

> it still seems that more sweeping claims like "Microplastics are responsible for the Flynn Effect and the male infertility crisis" are awfully bold

You are making my original statements into a straw man argument. I didn't say they are fully responsible, but rather I think they are contributors.

I even asked in my original post what else could be contributing:

> I think microplastics along with forever chemicals/PFAS are two of the likely culprits and are probably fairly easy to deal with. > > I wonder what else could be contributing?

Lead does reduce IQ and increase crime. Here is a meta-analysis that tries to tease out how much lead was responsible for crime and homicide:

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S016604622...

Banning lead gasoline was the right thing regardless. It was causing harm. It is hard at the time to know exactly how much.

You then wrote:

> You throw obesity in there too, and doesn't it seem like folks are trying to pin all of society's ills on a single issue?

I do think we are poisoning ourselves in probably a few different ways -- we have made so many novel chemicals without significant safety testing that a good chunk of them are probably harmful and can also likely build up over time. If we can continue to deal with these harmful chemicals that have clear links to negative health outcomes, we will be better off as a society.

The trick is to keep studying them and then act on those studies to mitigate the harms of those chemicals.

The world is complex and there is usually not a singular cause of everything. But that doesn't mean we should just throw our arms up and say, oh no, I can not do anything it is all just too complex or overwhelming. No, instead you just have to do, as Anna says in Frozen II, "the next right thing:"

https://youtu.be/kFkClV2gM-s?t=118

Your default position should actually be caution considering how the introduction of foreign elements to the human body, especially one that enters the bloodstream, generally causes some kind of illness. See steroids, chemotherapy, heck even the antibiotics that we are prescribed to take sometimes. Why should microplastics get a pass by default in your worldview?

And don’t you think there’s disproportion in your asking for a total and convincing argument to believe otherwise, while also claiming that the basis of your doubt is some scene from a TV series that performs bathroom humor?

And how do you feel about leaded gasoline?

I don't go a day where I don't drink at least two glasses.

> The first is the Flynn effect, which was rising IQ levels decade over decade, which halted and then reserved for most Western nations around 1990s/2000s and then started to reverse a bit:

Same point in time where people started to get cell phones and be always connected to the internet.

Underrated comment. When I was growing up I would often read books and do math problems for fun because there was not much else to do. Now I am constantly on the internet watching things and using my brain very little.

I'd like to offer a single datapoint(mine) on this too, I'm going to university soon and in the last few years, the fact that the internet exists has allowed me to solve interesting math problems that I would've never learnt in school

I was solving crosswords.

    probably fairly easy to deal with.

[citation needed]

My suggestion, which isn't rocket science:

Ban plastic food containers for any type of long-term storage or anything that gets heated up (and different plastics have different microplastic shedding profiles, so ban the worst first) and also ban PFAS in anything that gets close to food. It will increase costs, but the alternative is we poison ourselves, so it is sort of needed. Phase it in so that industries have time to adapt.

Plastic food containers aren't even close to being the largest source of microplastics.

Synthetic fibres in clothing (like that cotton-poly blend shirt you're most likely wearing) and motor vehicle tyres are some of the bigger sources. These both also release particles directly into the atmosphere allowing them to get absolutely everywhere, unlike plastic in landfills that probably has a harder time escaping into the wider environment.

> Plastic food containers aren't even close to being the largest source of microplastics.

Can you give me some citations? I know that microwaving plastic containers is about the worst thing you can do with regards to microplastics, because it releases tons of them right into your food:

https://www.wired.com/story/for-the-love-of-god-stop-microwa...

i would love a citation related to the polyblend tshirt. I absolutely love them but if its poisoning me more significantly than microwaving food in plastic containers, i will gladly return to hemp

I think bhouston is talking more about poisoniing one’s own body with microplastics, whereas you’re talking about polluting the environment.

It's almost as if it was the adoption of the microwave oven that signaled the roller coaster was beginning to race downhill.

God, I wish I could go back to non-plastic packaging. Natural peanut butter I can still find in glass, as I can for my jelly. But mayonnaise, ketchup and countless other items are in plastic-only containers.

Things like the microwave lowered the friction point for making food and snacks so I'm sure it is part of it. I honestly think people forget how much more friction was involved to have a bite to eat even just 20 years ago, and even more so 40 years ago.

Plastic food packaging is crazy to me, but also lowers the cost of food because of transportation. I would love to see a situation where you buy food in glass bottles and take thise cleaned glass bottles back to the store for resuse, for example. On plastic, on strategy for healthy eating is to be as strict as you can about buying food packaged in plastic. This is getting harder, but it forces you to get the majority of your food from the produce and butcher. Of course, one lived in places (like DC) where such a strategy might seem less possible.

I don't know about ketchup, but mayonnaise turned out to be far easier to make at home than I anticipated.

What's wrong with microwave ovens? I find mine very handy and I never ever put plastic in it.

> But mayonnaise, ketchup and countless other items are in plastic-only containers.

One idea is to stop consuming these, given they are not food and are not nutritious in the first place.

Your body (and mind) will thank you.

That’s hardly the only source. And the plastics are already in the ecosystem and circulating for a very long time even if we banned all plastics today - which we won’t and instead every year we produce and use more

> That’s hardly the only source.

Sure, everything is multi factor. Saying things are complex is a way to ensure there is no action taken ever.

> And the plastics are already in the ecosystem and circulating for a very long time even if we banned all plastics today - which we won’t and instead every year we produce and use more

Sure, but the sooner we act, once we know for sure this is a significant contributor, the sooner we stop making the problem worse.

I want my children to be able to have children, don't you?

Does it matter though? By banning plastics, we would increase awareness and move one step closer to solve this.

I think that with the advances in refrigeration, materials, logistics, we can safely go back to having bulk food for a lot of our needs. Also reusable glass containers instead of plastic bottles (e.g. for milk, oil, etc.)

> It will increase costs, but the alternative is we poison ourselves, so it is sort of needed

I hate to be that guy, but it's easy to say costs increase is a lesser problem when you are not in the lower end of the economic spectrum. What would happen to people who barely survive today? Corporations won't decrease their profit, gained by using cheap plastic, for the greater good.

Considering the alternatives are metal and glass, I'd assume that the cost difference would be exponential, especially if the most common alternative is banned and transport will be much heavier.

Banning DDT was also incredibly inconvenient for farmers as DDT worked amazingly: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silent_Spring

Human ingenuity knows no bounds and it will be a market opportunity for new entrants and innovators.

You can add wax-coated cardstock (milk containers) and wax-coated bags (breakfast cereals) and just plain cardboard (quick oats).

Well then there are two straightforward questions:

- are the overall costs of plastics (namely pollution and its environmental and health effects) higher than the costs of banning plastics? Seems like a clear yes.

- what are the redistributive effects? Seems like: consumers are net winners (lower health effects, some or all financial costs of switching away from plastics are passed down to consumers through higher prices); some firms are losers (mainly those who produced plastics or used a lot of them) and some are winners (newcomers, producers of no plastics solutions, transporters).

Glass isn't really that expensive. It was cheap enough to be commonly used 100 years and it is only cheaper and easier to produce and transport today than it was then.

If the Flynn Effect is caused by more complex environments, it's possible we've just maxed out the improvements to be had from turning up the gain on that. Maybe this is just as smart as we get because of hard biological limits.

Is there no existing population that has been minimally affected by these 2 factors ?

A controlled study is impossible to do, but the correlations and trend lines should show up when comparing across different population wide exposures to PFAs and microplastics.

That's another reason I think it is important to keep granular data of localized IQ, fertility, and trends in reproductive choice. People are worried about what it will reveal. We should instead be worried about what we're missing.

Sure, there are plenty of such populations. The first one that comes to mind is the Kogi, who live in a sky island 4000 meters above northern Colombia:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kogi_people

But none of those populations can actually be used for testing, because you would need to collect relevant data on them starting 50 years ago, and we don't have any time machines.

Obesity itself is oestrogenic. It's the calories, stupid!

I used to think this, that the obesity thing was just a function of an increase in calorie consumption and a drop off in physical activity. I just can't take this view seriously anymore. When you look around today, there are body types that never existed prior to the 1970s - at least at any kind of scale. Comparing pictures of family gatherings from the 1950s through the 1970s, and then to the 1990s and beyond and there's such a stark, shocking difference. Two of my cousins had gastric bypass surgery (before they passed away), and there was never a real change in their diet or exercise (one was a cop, so it's not like he didn't get exercise). Something is poisoning us in America, and if there was one issue presidential candidates should be talking about that should be an easy bipartisan win it's health and fitness.

Whenever I tried "eating healthy" without calorie counting, I didn't lose weight. 6 weeks on keto to lose 200g was demoralizing.

Then I did calorie counting with MyFitnessPal and ate at a 500 cal deficit, and I lost weight. It works. But I pretty much had to stop eating out because I couldn't know the numbers on restaurant meals. I was basically eating raw food half the time, just to make it easier to calculate.

I'm surprised there's no government initiative to help people do calorie counting. Open up-to-date database, force restaurants to feed it nutritional info, etc.

It is the calories. We are simply eating many more calories than in the 1970s. Cheap, high calorie, highly processed food were not ubiquitous like they are today.

Being a cop is a very sedentary position in most of America. Unless you are a city cop out walking around you are probably in your car most of the day.

I'm not being clear, because there's some confusion in the replies to my comment here and elsewhere in the larger thread. I'm not denying that calorie counting helps most people lose weight. I did it to cut after a gain phase when I was training for certain events. Of course it works (for most people), and I agree with you that I wish more people did it.

What I am saying is that, for many and an increasing number of people, something is wrong - calorie surplus or not - with that they're ingesting. Even the physiology of being "fat" in the 1950s looked absolutely nothing like obesity does today. The "processed" part is the difference, though, so we certainly agree on that point.

> there was never a real change in their diet or exercise

Don’t you think that could have been the reason their health continued to fail?

At least it's not ostrogothgenic

it could always be worse

I wonder if the Flynn effect could be more about our cultural environment then our chemical environment.

In 1900 lots of people lived with low access to information or highly sensory stimulating environments. By 1950 there was a lot more stimulus and info. TV, comic books, color movies, rock & roll, fear of nuclear armageddon. By 2000 we're overloaded. Cable TV, computers, cheap and rapid long distance communication, fear of climate armageddon. Maybe the cognitive load has just become too much. Two beers might make you better at darts, but 20 won't.

>I wonder what else could be contributing?

The Wikipedia article on the Flynn effect mentions air pollution. Though this is a little surprising because in some parts of the West, air pollution has decreased since the introduction of acid rain controls in the 1980s, while the decline shows up generally after the 90s.

Solvent-extracted hydrogenated seed oils for one thing.

Canola is an industry term, not Latin plant name, but why would culture repressed by toxic ersatz foodstuffs and microplastics care to know about brassica seeds?

I was pretty disappointed to learn that hexane is still commonly used for solvent extraction of vegetable oil. Residual levels are generally < 50 ppb, but hexane metabolites can covalently bond to biomolecules [1] and take years to be removed [2]. There are tons of safer solvents to choose from.

1: https://chemistry-europe.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdfdire...

2: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1111/jns.12261

You need to add obesity to that.

Perhaps related to microplastics interfering with the endocrine system. https://www.niehs.nih.gov/research/programs/geh/geh_newslett...

Which is ironic as to the fact that fatty products are normally encased in toxic plastics.

Alongside fruits and vegetables

I suspect those trends are more political rather than environmental.

EMFs.

The Flynn effect reversal has a pretty simple (but unpopular) explanation that has nothing to do with microplastics.

Could you please share this simple explanation for those of us who aren’t as smart as you?

I assume dysgenics (which you’d assume is happening if family size is inversely correlated with education and or income).

AFAIK there are some studies that show that dysgenics are at least not the only effect in play (e.g. this study https://www.pnas.org/doi/full/10.1073/pnas.1718793115). But I am far from an expert on the topic.

I'm pretty sure he is going to either say either immigrants or something related to Chad vs Incel.

But more concretely, there is evidence that conservatives out reproduce liberals in the US and in part it is related to the urban - country divide and that could also be related to both pollution, but also likely cost of living: https://ifstudies.org/blog/the-conservative-fertility-advant...

I'm still shocked that there hasn't been more of a regulatory push to eliminate single-use plastics. In the US the closest we've gotten is banning plastic straws and charging for plastic carry bags.

Everything I've read about plastic recycling points to it being ineffective and requiring massive amounts of fossil fuel to move the waste around the globe, often with much of it just getting burned or dumped into the environment anyway. Despite that, the aisles of grocery stores are still packed full of single-use plastic bottles, containers, wrappers, etc.

Are any countries making a legitimate effort to drastically reduce the use of plastics? It seems like we had a pretty good system years ago in requiring people to leave a deposit for bottles when purchasing beer or pop to incentivize return + reuse.

The problem is plastic particles getting into food. And that comes from things like heating up in plastic, storing things in plastic. Non single use plastics are a major problem.

That's the thing. Plastic is modern lead. It's easily moldable, but causes subtle health problems.

Citation needed.

These comments read like Reddit/TikTok. Lots of frantic fearful hand waving, not a lot of evidence presented.

I don't understand this perspective, the need to wait for mountains of published evidence that something is "bad", or "bad enough" to do something about it. Plastic is toxic, we all know this. It's everywhere, it's in the food and in the water. In reality it's the "Citation needed" reflex that's the reddit-tier reaction to stuff like this, because it pretends that humans can't or shouldn't make decisions unless we all sit around in a peer-review committee to review the "data". Perhaps in some contexts that perspective makes sense, but again, in this one, we all know plastic is bad (for us and the environment).

I don't understand the perspective of criticizing a request for a citation? This is exactly how misinformation spreads.

The parent hand-waved away the substantial differences between various plastics and made bold blanket statements on plastics as a whole that may or may not be true.

There's plenty of material out there to cite with and providing a cite that supported your understanding would help the discussion. Here's a random one:

https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acs.est.1c01103

> Plastic is toxic, we all know this.

There are thousands of plastics, and a blanket statement like this is simply false. We should be working to figure out which plastics are toxic, and why. You're essentially looking at lead and coming to the conclusion that "Metal is toxic, we all know this."

Heating up plastics is thought to release microplastics but I've not seen much solid research on it either.

According to the European Parliament, ~63% of microplastics come from laundering synthetic clothes and car tires [1].

1. https://www.europarl.europa.eu/news/en/headlines/society/201...

A recent study found that microwaving food in plastic packaging releases a lot of microplastic into the food:

https://news.unl.edu/newsrooms/today/article/nebraska-study-...

> Non single use plastics are a major problem.

And they're everywhere. I bought a sweater a couple of years ago. It's made from recycled PET bottles. It felt like a nice thing a couple of years ago. Now I realize that every time I wash it I'm releasing micro plastics into the sewer that might not get filtered out.

Kyrgyzstan passed a law banning many single-use plastics from January 1st, 2027. I hope the ban sticks. It will be challenging to make the economics work.

https://24.kg/english/272281__Production_and_sale_of_plastic...

https://24.kg/english/272323__Kyrgyzstan_to_fine_for_sale_an...

> It seems like we had a pretty good system years ago in requiring people to leave a deposit for bottles when purchasing beer or pop to incentivize return + reuse.

On the other hand, this system incentivised using plastic bottles instead of glass, because of less hassle with returning.

> Everything I've read about plastic recycling points to it being ineffective...

There is one effective way to recycle plastic into energy called "waste incineration".

Japan incinerates trash for energy, and yet they typically require residents to separate plastics from "burnables". Maybe it'd be better (and easier) for everyone if we just started putting everything into the burnable pile.

Another reason for the sorting at least here is that the companies using plastic packaging are the ones responsible for and paying the disposal system. I think the theory is that this will cause them to reduce plastics use and develop improved re-use.

Recyclable packaging tends to make for pretty good fuel.

During last winter's energy crisis, Finnish cities were heated with plastics collected in Italy.

The thing I'm most shocked about is the amount of microplastics used in toothpaste, and cosmetics, and such.

Is there a list of brands that are independently confirmed to not have micro plastics?

You have to have a good alternative first. Paper items sprayed with harmful chemicals is not a good replacement.

https://fortune.com/well/2023/08/24/paper-straws-harmful-for...

No you don't. A ban forces industries to create alternatives. Otherwise they won't bother. You just schedule a phased elimination over time so those alternatives can get developed. That's precisely how the Montreal Protocol banned CFCs and protected the ozone layer:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Montreal_Protocol

If it was that easy to get an alternative introduced it would have been suggested already and all of these radical "green" governments would have hopped on the train immediately. This idea that we're just killing people with microplastics because we like it is insane.

CFC's coming out of your hairspray is WAY different than removing the plastic keeping your food fresh.

Stop with the black and white thinking. There is NO alternative that is free of some negative consequence. You're already seeing this with EV's. Every single "green" replacement introduces new problems that are often worse than what they've replaced.

Good PBS Frontline show, Plastic Wars, about the recycling industry: https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/documentary/plastic-wars/

Germany and several other EU countries have deposits on plastic bottles. I’m not sure how much that helps with the microplastics issue, though.

It doesn't help with ocean pollution at all, because plastic rubbish from Germany and other EU countries wouldn't end up in the ocean either.

That is unless they sell it to Philippines who promptly dump it into rivers, which is exactly what happens. https://www.dw.com/en/german-plastic-floods-southeast-asia/a...

Don't you think the payment incentivises people to return their bottles for reuse versus leaving them lying at parks etc.?

They have for the PET bottles, yes, but there are still thousands of other packaging types which just get dumped in garbage with unknown destinations. I cannot really imagine a deposit on those (do you want stinky meat packages returned to the shop?) but still we need to find a solution.

Bottle in glass, aluminum or paper. Beers, various soda and juice already use that

The salad head comes in a plastic bag. The pork chop is sealed in plastic. Sausages are coming with plastic labels, single use bags are still everywhere, and let's not forget the hard wrappings of tools or toys. Can we put all all those in waxed paper? And what exactly will that "wax" be?

Most of it ends up in landfills which are relatively safe IIRC from other microplastic articles?

> I'm still shocked that there hasn't been more of a regulatory push to eliminate single-use plastics. In the US the closest we've gotten is banning plastic straws and charging for plastic carry bags.

I think it's because those two things can be used to scold consumers and thus inculcate the belief that the final link in the production-consumption chain bears all the blame.

I mean I have seen signs encouraging people to use reusable bags at the checkout line. But is it a problem that literally everything in the store (except mushrooms I guess) is wrapped in plastic? Apparently it is not.

Even most of the mushrooms are wrapped in plastic at the stores I visit :(

Apparently most paper straws just have a thin plastic coating of PFOAs

We should replace both with cookie straws.

I like the way you think.

It's exactly the same as fossil fuels and climate change, plastic is far too convenient for any government to even consider doing anything extremely significant regarding it

> It's exactly the same as fossil fuels and climate change, plastic

Moreover, the main ingredient in making plastics is derived from fossil fuels (specifically crude oil and natural gas).

If we replace plastic packaging with metal or glass containers which weigh more then more fossil fuels will be required for transport.

It’s all about depending the scale you look at. One might expect that where governing is concerned, anticipation of long term down side will be given some weight in the balance.

It appears to be that paper straws have more PFAS than plastic. Seems no matter what we do we are boned.

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2023/08/28/paper-...

I agree there’s far too much single use plastic. For example, it baffles me why non perishable products are still sold in transparent plastic bags. If they go to the store they generally get taken out of the plastic bag and put on display. If they’re sold online I have to waste time opening and discarding of a random plastic bag. Why? What purpose does it serve? If you’re that desperate to wrap it in something why not branded paper or even one of the decomposable clear bags that look like plastic but aren’t. Why is the cable in the box also in a small plastic bag? It’s ridiculous.

> Why is the cable in the box also in a small plastic bag?

The charger I bought this weekend was in a cardboard box. Inside that cardboard box was a plastic shimmy bracket, keeping things in place. The charger had a plastic film adhered to it, but not the whole thing, just like the on the sides kind of. The cable was tied together with a velcro band (plastic from the futor!). On the plugs of the cable were little plastic protector caps. The box itself was wrapped in plastic of course. There was a booklet, not plastic.

The material world we've surrounded ourselves with really is made of plastic, disposable trash.

Mostly to prevent dust and other dirt accumulating before evrything goes into the final packaging.

I believe you. Or, plastic is essentially worthless, so it just gets applied willy-nilly. As if, plastic, _because_ it is cheap and easy to produce, therefore it must be everywhere. Go shopping, here's your free plastic bag, well, hell no, double bagged, because plastic is flimsy and crap quality (you didn't even ask, but force of habit, shrug). Package a thing, wrap it in plastic on the outside and the inside! And maybe, if you put in in a box, put more plastic inside that box. so the thingie is snugly ensconced in russian dolls of plastic. Plastic straws, free, a bunch of them, of course in a little plastic sleeve.

This proliferation of plastic is not rational, certainly not wholesome. It is purely the downstream effect of plastic being cheap to produce, it is primarily a technological phenomenon.

The problem of replacing plastic in food is the cost. If you use glass or steel or aluminum, you need new logistics to reuse them.

Also, glass is heavier, and requires a lot of energy to be made, so it would require a production chain that ships back empty containers.

The best silver bullet solution would be to have local canteen, a bit like in the army or at school, where you just get a subscription with a calendar (not on demand, you plan the meals you'll get), so it reduces waste and costs.

We should just stop eating at home, with individual fridges, ovens, kitchens etc, this is highly inefficient.

Yes, this is collectivization, but it's the best solution for an economy of scale. Individualism was never a good solution, individualism is often very wasteful.

Call me a communist or a socialist, I don't really care.

So you want people to eat only when and where and what the state says you can eat???

The vast majority of people don’t want to choose your wet dream when they have the choice between their own private house versus a local canteen on a schedule. Nobody likes other people so much that they’d choose to be stuck in a school cafeteria environment for their food or their children’s food forever. Life is not perpetual kindergarten where everyone’s together all the time. Life is competition and mutually-beneficial cooperation in some things, and friends are made on the basis of mutual desire. Not forced socialization and collectives. What you are proposing results in mass starvation when the systems of incentives and motivations collapse.

More local farms and more vertical farms and more greenhouses and more victory gardens are the best path. I leave it to families and individuals to choose what options they want and to buy food whenever they want. With more production, all the options will get cheaper as we flood the world with more fresh produce from better and more localized supply chains owing to incoming innovations in vertical and greenhouse farming. Not interested in going back to top-down control structures from the 1900s.

What’s next? Restricting the caloric intake of political pariahs? Restricting the options available at the local canteen to give the best options to the friends of the party and everyone in charge? Lol

> Life is competition and mutually-beneficial cooperation in some things, and friends are made on the basis of mutual desire.

This is a really sad, myopic view of life. Thankfully, it is wrong

It is ironic that you are peddling such fearful narratives given your name

This is how they do it in Germany. Most working Germans I know of eat at the work canteen and have a small bread meal at home in the evening

Weird that you're getting downvoted for this. HN is on a weird one recently

Because the united states valued individualism for a very long time, before and during the cold war, and even now. It's a cultural aspect.

Blame people like Reagan and Milton Friedman for this. It's a highly political problem.

Inequality is already somewhat caused by individualism, but climate change is also caused by climate change. For example, if China wants to reduce its co2 emissions, you only have to convince Chinese leaders, and it's done just by snapping fingers.

In the US, you have to make it profitable, which is doable, but it's more complicated and lobbyists will also be a big barrier to change.

I loathe the chinese leadership, but being a democratic modern industrialized nation doesn't mean you will see decisions that make sense.

Is a canteen the same thing as a cafeteria? Lots of Americans have their lunch at a work cafeteria as well.

A big lunch and a small dinner would probably be a good change for lots of us.

Source that this is the norm in Germany? How many Germans do you know who do this and how did you conclude that the sample is indicative of the broader population? How expensive is food in Germany that people have no independence to buy and prepare food?

Parent is getting downvoted because the vast majority of people won’t agree with that nonsense. Leave it in the 1900s.

Without resorting to abolishing the family kitchen altogether (many years of church morning teas give me the heebie jeebies about foodborne illnesses around community food prep) - there are ways to avoid some plastic packaging. Depending where you are, wholefoods places probably exist and will happily sell you a scoop (metal) of the ingredient you need in a pickle jar (glass). Also a good way to avoid storing bulk amounts of rarely-used ingredients, saves some waste.

This was an idea of the infamous Romanian communist dictator Ceausescu: he wanted to feed the whole of Bucharest in a single giant canteen. Unfortunately he was toppled and killed in 1989 before this idea could come to fruition.

It’s unfortunate that a communist dictator was toppled and killed? Did you ever bother to look into why that happened and all the evils he did?

We shouldn’t be borrowing from a dead communist dictator’s playbook. Clearly it didn’t work out for him and the vast majority of people didn’t want that.

Collectivism need not invoke communism and socialism. I've long lamented how we've lost the local community at the village or even family level.

I.e. we can still follow your idea but at a village or family level. So why buy butter in a plastic tub when your neighbour next door has a cow and butter churning machine? Heck have a big enough multi-generational household compound and you can keep it all in-family!

Doing it at the family level or between neighbors who like each other and agree to share from victory gardens and greenhouses and personal farms is much different than what the parent proposed. Multi-generational family compounds are an awesome idea. This also solves retirement issues for the elderly.

I call you someone who doesn't like to eat good food :D

A good canteen can combine more ingredients in a more sophisticated way than I have time for at home. I'm not making Beef Bourguignon at home, but it's easy for them to make up a big batch. Economies of scale!

Personally, while being exceedingly libertarian leaning, I would advocate a gradual ban of plastics generally. All plastics are ephemeral and they're not easily recyclable. Humans used glass, wax, paper, wood, and other products before plastics were widely available and our materials sciences have improved dramatically over time. To me, the main problem here is that plastics are just so cheap due to having been in production for so long. With a strong tax incentive, it should be possible to promote other materials. The biggest hurdle in my mind would be an unbelievable increase in the cost of wood...

> I'm still shocked that there hasn't been more of a regulatory push to eliminate single-use plastics.

I'm not- show me the direct harm it is causing on an individual level. We can all agree they are a nuisance but it is hard to show how they are outright harming people. Studies like this are a step towards that proof.

Ideally, governments armed with scientists are capable of making key judgments like this one without “my child’s arm fell off” levels of apparent, individual harm.

Scientists are wrong... a lot.

The harm should be obvious to the layman IMHO in order to be legislated away. Otherwise, it should be left up to personal choice.

From the article:

> The mice in the study began to move peculiarly, and to exhibit behaviours reminiscent of dementia in humans

I know this is only _in mice_ but the policy we have of "let industry do what they want and if we find out it's harming humans in 30 years we'll do something about it" has not proven to work out so well in the past (lead, DDT, CFCs, cigarettes).

This is the third time this week I've seen a study related to microplastics.

Should I be alarmed? If so, what can I even do? If I'm understanding these studies correctly, these microplastics are everywhere. In our bodies, in our water supplies, in our food. And we can't even get rid of them.

My $0.02: no.

A) The research is still very much in its infancy. We don't know how big of a deal microplastics are to human health yet. In a couple years we'll have a better idea.

B) There's not much you can do about them. This is compounded by A). Maybe certain types, sizes, forms of exposure etc. are more significant? We don't know any of this yet.

C) You have a limited capacity for anxiety without going crazy, allocate it wisely. If we want to be anxious about our health, for most people being anxious about diet and exercise habits will yield better returns than just about anything else...!

You already kind of know that it would be better if our bodies weren't infiltrated with microplastics though don't you?

Yes, so offer an alternative.

How will you keep everyone from dying from food-borne illnesses? What about all the items we manufacture that REQUIRE plastics?

We're not using them just because it's fun and we like loading people with plastic bits.

It would be better if disease magically didn't exist too but that's a useless thing to say.

C is so important.

I’m personally exhausted from hearing about all the terrible stuff that’s happening that I have very little to no control over. I have seen countless articles about micro plastics, forever chemicals, fresh water supplies decreasing at alarming levels, Gulf Stream collapse, etc.

It’s enough to make you feel nihilistic. A big part of me feels like these are government problems, as the average person is preoccupied with paying the bills, feeding their kids, and all the other trivialities that we deal with on a daily basis.

That said, most governments are mired in bureaucracy at best, or downright dysfunctional (or anti environmental) at the worst.

So… what’s a guy to do besides “chop wood, carry water” while trying to enjoy life as best I can?

There is a spectrum in between chop wood, carry water that looks like: - use natural cleaning products - use reusable bags - volunteer in green space preservation - vote in local elections

etc. Establish your principles and live as closely to that as you can, and tune out what is outside of your control. Seriously. Block it. No one needs to see this shit every day.

>A big part of me feels like these are government problems, as the average person is preoccupied with paying the bills, feeding their kids, and all the other trivialities that we deal with on a daily basis.

And what about when those people vote for their immediate rather than their long term needs? The man who just wants to pay his bills and feed his kids wants cheap food and cheap gas, and for prices not to go up. His politicians can't affect the sort of change you're suggesting because their opponents who promise more cheap garbage win too many votes.

It's also somewhat of a boogeyman. I mean they are real problems, widespread even, but the "everywhere-ness" of them is the boogeyman. You dont necessarily have to be as afraid of it as it may seem.

Sure its a real problem and we shouldn't be complacent. But is your faucet suddenly killing you or not? Maybe it's actually not. And maybe you should confirm that it is before being afraid of it after reading articles online.

Keep in mind that there are dozens if not hundreds of different problems, each being presented as catastrophic. If it was all true to the degree claimed, we'd be in far worse shape. It's logically impossible for everything to be as bad as claimed.

In truth, we're doing pretty ok. There's just still lots of room for improvement.

Try to affect the political decisions? Donate to Greenpeace or similar organizations?

No need for question marks. I think we really need to square off with the idea that, while we will personally not cause or contribute highly to major shifts in how the world operates, there are ways to contribute - even a simple e-mail to your representatives - that should be undertaken in earnest by each and every one of us, even if we don't feel that they will make an impact. Most people don't - and that's why the impact is negligible. We really should assertively encourage each other to participate, even to the smallest degree.

I think I and a lot of people around me got used to the relative comfort in life. To the sceptics this may sounds like just more scaremongering, but let's face it, it _has_ been getting worse in many more ways than we wanted or expected over the last decade. The least we can do to try to revert this trend is to attend a march, send an e-mail or try to spare some time to vote. Nobody can ignore the fact, that it will not reverse itself on its own.

Donating to organizations that are anti-nuclear power seems counter productive to me.

Chopping wood is no solution - imagine if all the people in a city burned wood for their heating and cooking, it'd be a smoggy nightmare.

See here for some notes on ranking possible concerns plus notes on what I've done about them:

1) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36226432

2) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34642916

3) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31549343

Stop buying single use plastics. Stop using them. Spread the word and lobby you representatives. Find a group, make a friend, and work, work, work.

You can't do anything about it. Personally, I think it's probably being a bit overblown. It's definitely not good but some of these articles make it sound like you'll drop dead in a few days.

Plastics have enabled us to keep food fresh and have done a lot of things to keep humans living longer and healthier than they ever could in the past. Our modern food preservation couldn't exist without them.

So, yeah we need to be better but I think people should be looking at the overall picture. I don't see an alternative for plastic right now.

These are great questions. I think it's impossible to say for sure. It is at once a real problem (because they exist and cause problems) and a boogeyman because you never really know where they are and how much is going to be a problem for you. So be completely apathetic. Or always be afraid of everything and perform some purity rituals that give you some peace of mind despite not really knowing anything. Like drinking bottled water only despite that maybe having more, or installing expensive filtration systems without testing before or after for the existence of microplastics or effectiveness of the filter. Or telling your kid not to drink certain water because its not safe, despite having no actual knowledge of any risk.

Obviously we should continue to gather more information and remediate what we can but I think there is also a problem with fear-based behavior that just spreads anxiety baselessly.

I agree with the perspective that it's impossible to tell exactly, with confidence, how harmful they are and what each of us should do. The topic may not be fresh, but the awareness of the dangers is. If you aren't willing to go with the intuition that having non-degradable artificial compounds in your body sounds 'bad', then I'd personally go for what seems to be a reasonable middle ground, likely what most of us are already doing, which is - stay on the look out. Assimilate trustworthy data (on the question of what constitutes trustworthy data - that which comes from sources striving for integrity and rigor and not from anecdotes), be ready to adjust, steel yourself for possibly drastic changes in the future.

Personally, I find the argument that the data we currently have is not enough to force us to make such changes absolutely understandable - but at the same time, I find this kind of inertia unwarranted in the age where the world looked almost unrecognisable just a decade ago.

I mean, some things will reduce your plastic exposure without requiring measurements. Glass containers, metal bowls, no non-stick pans. That still leaves open if that results in different health outcomes, but it’s still something you can do without having high-tech measurement devices.

Well I'm talking about water specifically. In theory I agree that we can avoid things we know are harming us. But there is a balance to be struck between avoiding things out of an abundance of precaution and paranoia. Let's not forget that mental health issues including anxiety have skyrocketed the past few decades. At some point it has to be measured or else we wouldn't know its harmful. With microplastics and water, you need to know what comes out of your faucet (or whatever you are drinking). You can't just rely on some study analogous to those finding issues with eating teflon or using it on very high heat. And not drinking out of plastic cups seems firmly in baseless anxiety territory.

I'm not sure that helps. I suspect -- but I would really like to know -- that the sources of microplastics are non-obvious. I've heard of cosmetics, textiles, tea bags, foams as the most likely culprits, rather than plastic containers at room temperature, which I think are pretty stable.

> This is the third time this week I've seen a study related to microplastics

Most of Science is utter junk, driven by the willingness or desperate effort to publish anything to make a career in academia or funded by special interests.

What matters is what can be consistently replicated, observed and explained.

what special interest benefits from showing negative impacts to mps? you've got to think who has the most to lose our gain. This is a more trustworthy study because usually showing negatives about huge entrenched products is fought by the special interests like plastic/oil companies, or DuPont in the case of Teflon aka forever chemicals.

Though I think worrying about it is fruitless as we're more likely to solve global warming than get all the Chemicals and plastic out of our blood globally, and that's worth the worry because there are at least things we can do to mitigate things(assuming political will ever signs)

It’s not trustworthy until dozens of independent labs across several countries can validate it.

One thing you can do personally to reduce the amount in your body is to donate blood

Don't you just make someone else more poisoned then ? Seems shit...

Presumably, alive and full of microplastics is still better than just being dead, which is usually what happens when you don't get blood transfusions when you need them.

Not all transfusions are used in emergency situations.

The recipient could donate blood themselves later and produce 'clean' blood on their own. It is not zero-sum.

I think you mean PFAS, not microplastics

You’re right I was thinking of PFAS chemicals, I wouldn’t be surprised if there are micro plastics in blood now however

Seems to me you can either:

- Pick a "Big Cause" and go find a job supporting it

- Accept the things you cannot change, kick back, relax, and live the life you got, whatever happens

You don't really want to be in the middle, where you stress about all the bad things, but don't actually do anything about it.

Someone hired a PR firm and launched a campaign. That is all -- continue living your life.

I've started donating blood and eating cabbage regularly on the story that those things are good at getting crap out of the system and good for me otherwise anyway.

We can reduce the ingested quantity. That's about all.

Does most of the microplastic we ingest come from household plastics or from the environment?

I am surprised there's no mention of male fertility. It's a very viable hypothesis in my opinion.

There's an article in American Journal of Men's Health:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9134445/

> In summary, semen quality in men has declined significantly over the last 80 years, with sperm concentration dropping to approximately one seventh of its original value. This timing coincides with the development of plastics.

Not a bad hypothesis.

To be fair, “the last 80 years” coincides with a lot of stuff. The world has changed a lot since the 1940s. Isolating plastics as a cause and accounting for all other variables is next to impossible.

We have really great studies showing plastics disrupting fertility systems in other mammals though.

This hypothesis is not formed merely from “sperm quality has declined since 1940” and “plastic use has gone up since 1940.”

Also coincides with a rise in obesity, which is a known endocrine distruptor.

And correlated with decreased sperm quality and count. Considering the sheer amount of bad health outcomes that are also associated with obesity in general, it's not surprising that it also affects fertility.

Question then becomes, if you adjust for obesity, how much has male fertility changed since 80 years ago?

Tbf, it also coincides with the development of many other things.

Woah. At that rate, how long until everyone is literally infertile? 15 more years? (Yeah, I know, it might not be a linear decline. It's still shocking.)

Many things have changed in the past 80 years...

There's no mention of reproductive health at all. It's a neurological study with some extra data attached. "Thus, we proposed to investigate the effect that exposure to MPs has on young and old C57BL/6J mice, focusing on neurobehavioral effects, inflammatory response, as well as translocation and accumulation of MPs in tissues, including the brain".

> no mention of male fertility.

Divorce rates and video games are already helping to decline that

Also the rising prevalence of trans. Feeling like the other sex might be related to disruption of one's normal sex hormone profile.

Trans people make up a pretty small proportion of the population and are easily controlled for in medical studies.

I looked for microplastic test services and it seems like they're all $500+. Wish it was something you could do at home. The local results are all that really matters. Would be interesting to compare bottled water vs. tap water/well water. I've heard bottled water tends to contain more.

> compare bottled water vs. tap water/well water.

Most modern buildings use PEX (cross-Linked Polyethylene) tubing for water in homes no more copper pipes like years ago. Basically plastic so it may not be very good.

Microplastic detection is a large focus in sensing right now. Its expensive and hard for the very same reason microplastics are so difficult to stop: they're chemically inert and small. Most detection methods rely purification and microscopy, which is for now mostly manual labor.

Would you expect that in glass bottles too? Is it just in the water supply?

I'm not sure but maybe to some degree? I have seen that recommended but I find it hard to believe the contamination source is the bottle itself. I figured it was from water source that was more concentrated with microplastic pollution. Which I assume happens more from plastics degrading in the environment over a long time, not simply water touching it in a controlled environment for a few months.

Why do find it hard to believe that plastic in contact with water could result in microplastics contaminating the water?

I would be interested in this too. Also from my laymen understanding it should be not that hard to develop filters for at least larger particles. Or is that too simple thought out?

It's the smaller particles that get into cells and cause the most harm unfortunately.

Well this is something you don't really need a high tech test kit for. Take a sample of any fluid you can find anywhere, are microplastics in it? The answer is yes.

You don't think its possible to remove microplastics from water?

Not in any mass practical sense.

Buy a water distiller. I've heard that the destillation coil must be from copper.

The issue is that all commercial ones have steel, which can possible leach into the distilled water + it's not antibacterial.

This will make you end up missing crucial trace elements if not replaced somehow

This is untrue, do the math on tap water compared to food. It's such a small contribution.

>Using an average calcium concentration in public water supplies of 26 mg/liter and a maximum of 145 mg/liter (Durfor and Becker, 1964) and assuming that the average adult drinks 2 liters of this water daily, then the drinking water could contribute an average of 52 mg/day and a maximum of 290 mg/day. On an average basis this would represent 5% to 10% of the usual daily intake or approximately 6.5% of the adult RDA.

>Therefore, typical drinking water in the United States, Canada, or Europe provides approximately 3% to 7% of the RDA for magnesium intake by a healthy human.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK216589/

I don't think 5% of the RDA really moves the needle either way and those are the major minerals in tap water.

But how do I know I need one if I dont test? Do I even have a microplastics problem? The best case scenario is I test and see there is none and I don't have to worry about it.

But if there is a concerning amount and I took steps to remediate I would want to test afterwards to ensure its working. I'm not just looking for peace of mind, I want to know if I have microplastics and how much.

Microplastics are, quite literally, everywhere. Are you on Earth? Congrats, you are eating, breathing, and drinking microplastics.

They've been leeching into the environment for so long that you are no longer just concerned about primary sources contaminating your air, food, and water.

It's homogenized, from the deepest parts of the ocean to the tops of the highest mountains, there are microplastics. It's completely penetrated the food cycle.

If you want to avoid drinking microplastics, you'll have to explicitly remove it from your water.

If you want to avoid eating microplastics... I guess grow your own food in a hermetically sealed bubble and water it with your filtered water.

We are talking about boiling and distilling water- does the metal need to be antibacterial?

No, get a reverse osmosis system with remineralization filter.

Please, do not drink distilled water. You’re not going to die because you also get ions from food but it certainly doesn’t help.

From the actual paper: "With this in mind, an in vivo study was designed to determine the effects of these MPs [microplastics] in a rodent model (Figure 2A). Following a 3-week exposure to PS-MPs, C57BL/6J mice were tested in a series of behavioral assays including the open-field and light–dark preference tests. Both assays showed significant changes in parameters such as distance traveled, rearing activity, and duration in the center between the control and the exposed groups for both old and young mice (Figure 3 and Figure 4). Overall, these changes seemed to be more pronounced in older animals, which may be due to age-related dysfunction exasperating the effects of the PS-MPs on behavioral performance (Figure 3D,H,L and Figure 4D,F). The behavioral changes exhibited by the young mice, however, suggest that even without increased age as a co-variable, PS-MPs can induce altered behavior in rodents after just 3 weeks of exposure (Figure 3B,F,J and Figure 4C,E)."

Rather scary if you ask me...slight behaviour changes in a massive global population such as humans can cause us to make societal level mistakes that could be fatal.

Good thing you’re not a mouse.

true, but this does make it seem more probable that microplastics could alter human behavior as well :)

Microplastics is the lead paint exposure of the current and past 2 generations.

This article cites synthetic rubber from tires as a potential source of micro plastics. Are there any studies that show how much people are exposed to?

Comparisons between rubber from bikes, motorcycles, and different classes of motor vehicles (sedans/cars, trucks, heavy duty trucks or machinery, and even the subclass of EVs).

Even more of a reason to get away from car centric transportation if the levels are several orders of magnitude difference.

I think that the main source is motor vehicles, both cars, trucks and heavy duty trucks and maybe motorcycles if you have enough of them (which we do not in North America.)

https://www.plasticstoday.com/medical/tire-wear-major-source...

One of the biggest reason plastics are used is because they're inert.

in this case, fluorescent polystyrene particles

Did they neglect any effects of the fluorescent dye instead?

The fact that plastics are everywhere, and we have been exposed to them for several generations, should be seen as evidence of their harmlessness; we would've seen many obvious effects if they weren't. I see this as very similar to the sometimes argued link between cellphone radiation (or RF in general) and cancer.

This is simply more fearmongering from those who stand the most to profit from it...

Sure, but what about the more slight effects? A 2-point general decline in IQ is a huge problem, but not obvious. I am wary of any “bogeyman” that we are told to be worried about, in this case, the pervasiveness of plastic does actually worry me. Hopefully i’m wrong

Correlation does not equate causation. Maybe IQ has gone down because a lot of people literally do not give themselves time to think at all. Every free moment the phone is open dumping junk food tier information into their head. The mind didn’t evolve to be inundated by tick tocks while you pee. Its supposed to wander and be bored.

Or maybe people are dumping junk food tier information into their heads because their IQs are lower.

There's way more to it than at first glance. It seems that the figures thrown about in term of sperm counts are not at all conclusive -

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/are-sperm-counts-...

> ‘water, seafood, consumer products (clothes, toothpaste, salt, sugar, honey, beer, anything stored in plastic bottles, plastic wrap, or cans/cartons lined with plastic), and via inhalation from textiles, synthetic rubber tires, and plastic covers’

How true is this? How do microplastics end up in honey, for example? And I thought plastic bottles/wrap etc were stable in the lifespan that they're used for food storage (BPA aside) - is this really claiming that plastic starts to fall apart from the get-go?

> is this really claiming that plastic starts to fall apart from the get-go

Yes.

Microplastics are everywhere. Everywhere on the planet we look, we find microplastics. Just ... everywhere.

Beekeepers are using plastic worker brood foundations, for example. Honey is often stored in plastic buckets and bottles, somewhere in the production process/transport.

And it's not just the honey.

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/jul/08/micropla...

Microplastics detected in meat, milk and blood of farm animals

https://www.awi.de/en/about-us/service/press/single-view/ark...

Arctic ice algae heavily contaminated with microplastics

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/mar/24/micropla...

Microplastics found in human blood for first time

https://www.nationalgeographic.com/environment/article/micro...

Microplastics found in 90 percent of table salt

https://phys.org/news/2020-03-plastic-bags-bottles-microplas...

Opening plastic bags and bottles may generate microplastics

https://www.nationalgeographic.com/environment/article/micro...

Microplastics are raining down from the sky

https://www.sciencenews.org/article/plastics-remote-places-m...

Plastics are showing up in the world’s most remote places, including Mount Everest

> Microplastics are everywhere. Everywhere on the planet we look, we find microplastics. Just ... everywhere.

I appreciate the links, but that's not what I asked. I know microplastics are everywhere. Do you have studies showing that plastic begins to distintegrate immediately? What's the working lifetime for a plastic container before it begins to distintegrate and leach microplastics into what's stored in it?

> Do you have studies showing that plastic begins to distintegrate immediately

It's an area of active research, so ... I don't. If you find something, let me know.

https://www.nist.gov/news-events/news/2022/04/nist-study-sho...

NIST Study Shows Everyday Plastic Products Release Trillions of Microscopic Particles Into Water

... when plastic products were exposed to hot water, they released trillions of nanoparticles per liter into the water ...

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/37343248/

Assessing the Release of Microplastics and Nanoplastics from Plastic Containers and Reusable Food Pouches: Implications for Human Health

... microwave heating caused the highest release of microplastics and nanoplastics into food compared to other usage scenarios such as refrigeration or room-temperature storage. Some containers could release as many as 4.22 million microplastic and 2.11 billion nanoplastic particles from only one square centimeter of plastic area within 3 min of microwave heating.

https://www.nature.com/articles/s43016-020-00171-y

Microplastic release from the degradation of polypropylene feeding bottles during infant formula preparation

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/mar/15/micropla...

WHO launches health review after microplastics found in 90% of bottled water

Researchers find levels of plastic fibres in popular bottled water brands could be twice as high as those found in tap water

The microplastics in a product don’t have to originate in a product’s final packaging. Things like airborne particles on the production line, filaments from filters and cleaning equipment, manufacturing swarf, and cleaning processes that are oriented to killing small things with heat / UV / chemistry rather than filtering tbem out is probably more of the answer than leaching and degradation.

I live in a country where, despite 70% water (I know, seawater) and lots of rainforests, most urban people drink bottled water (single-use and refills). Talk about selling ice to Eskimos. Probably because the ice outside is polluted, and it's easier to buy instead of fixing the root cause.

Anyway, ignoring the effect on nature since we clearly don't care about it, how damaging would the effect be to people who consume water that way, daily?

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9103198/

bottled water actually has more microplastics than tap water (although both have some).

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2023/08/230816114128.h...

Oceans release microplastics into the atmosphere

Let's get to the point. Plastics are toxic waste.

I can't help but feel that a website named sustainable plastics might have an ulterior motive for criticizing current plastic usage. This isn't to say that current plastics are somehow good, but rather that, perhaps the people talking about the best ways to fight fires ought not be the fellows with a vested interest in fire extinguisher sales.

I bought a tub of BCAA powder from Ghost and was horrified after finding a large spidery plastic blob buried in there. I went to Burger King and looked inside the burger randomly which I never do and found plastic. Theres a microplastic issue but theres also a large plastic issue in food. Often times you do even notice when you eat it.

There was plastic in the burger?

Yep, it looked like it was from an ingredients bag that was cut open. Thats my best guess.

Why would you look inside a burger? And how do you know it was "plastic"?

It was disgusting with too much sauce so I looked. How do I know it was plastic...because I have eyes and it was plastic.

Don’t eat that rubbish. Buy whole foods that you can trust

yup

Some plastics are sold as food (gum).

We got the gayest frogs that you ever did meet

I’ve been saying it for a while now and am unfortunately feeling more confident.

Microplastics are the next lead emissions style issue that’ll end up being linked to widespread socio-behavioral decline and health issues.

Except it’ll be worse due to the far more prevalent and widespread use of plastics. It’ll be as if we used lead to make _everything_ and then found out lead is bad.

pfas are banned except for food products (water resistant packaging and nonstick coatings) wtffff

where is the chorus of people saying “…in mice?” it goes to show that this comment is used to beat down ideas that they decided they dont like long before reading anything. but for microplastics, which is exactly the kind of politically charged junk food they love, there is no chorus of “in mice.”

anyway, how is it crossing the blood brain barrier? dubious.

lots of things can cause change in behaviour through inflammation. cows milk for example. the solution to this and microplastics and a huge number of diseases will be gaining control of inflammation and metabolism. at the moment we dont even understand how they work.

Why do you think necessarily that this is junk food? Fair that there is no chorus, but what is the problem using mice in an experiment? I mean, it’s done for a reason, right?

I know it's probably bad for me and that I need to stop, but I love sous vide meat. Especially steak—it's perfect every time.

Get reusable silicone bags. Most sources say they don't release microplastics. I'm not sure how well studied that is but my hunch is they probably aren't as bad as using a ziplock bag.

There are several options for consumer priced steam injection ovens, I have one from Anova but there are other options too, and they can do sous vide to a degree without using a plastic bag.

I think micro-plastics and "forever" chemicals will be our generation's asbestos/cigarettes controversy.

And Long COVID is shaping up to be our generation’s HIV/AIDS.

History rhymes because people don’t ever learn. We deal with one problem or crisis at a time, instead of generalizing what was learned in order to help future generations avoid the same mistakes.

I don't think you quite appreciate how fucking bad HIV/AIDS was, and is to this day.

Why do you think I said Long COVID is shaping up to be like HIV/AIDS?

The parallels between the two are stark: How the CDC and NIH bungled public health advice and research funding, how clinicians are ill-equipped to treat it, how the public is clueless about the long-term harms of post-viral immune dysregulation [0].

[0] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9608044/

Are you seriously comparing AIDS to “long COVID”?

Both AIDS and Long COVID are post-viral, multi-organ, chronic conditions that dysregulate the immune system, through many of the same mechanisms [0].

They are also conditions that severely affects the quality of life of those who are afflicted, increasing the risk of severe life-threatening illnesses [1].

Similar to the early years of the AIDS pandemic (which, I might add, is still ongoing), the harms of Long COVID are not widely understood or acknowledged in clinical practice or among the general population.

[0] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9608044/

[1] https://www.nature.com/articles/s41579-022-00846-2

Long COVID isn't even legitimate and if it was it's not anywhere near the fatality rate of HIV/AIDS.

It is legitimate.

See:

[0] https://covid19.nih.gov/covid-19-topics/long-covid

[1] Davis, H.E., McCorkell, L., Vogel, J.M. et al. Long COVID: major findings, mechanisms and recommendations. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41579-022-00846-2#citeas

Are there any lifestyle changes someone could make to limit or remove the intake of microplastics?

At this point citizens owe the government nothing for allowing this to happen. Not even taxes! Every social problem from mass shootings to homelessness might as well be attributed to Microplastics or some form of other pollutant.

I think we really need a big and aggressive government response to this issue, possibly more important than climate change.

Climate change is just one symptom of the overshoot.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planetary_boundaries#Nine_boun...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ecological_overshoot

Biodiversity loss is the worst of them all.

Microplastics - Yet another narrative to milk money from middle class Americans. Refer to the top comments for the prove

how do you determine the difference between a "narrative" that is a true reflection of reality and a "narrative" that is to "milk money from middle class Americans"?

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