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.
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...!
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
In truth, we're doing pretty ok. There's just still lots of room for improvement.
1) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36226432
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.
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.
Part of the issue, though. They often take food that’s above room temperature, bowls might get scratched by utensils, containers might be used in the microwave.
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.
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.
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)
- 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.