What is the problem with these "plastics"?
I try to stay up to date with scholarly research regarding microplastic dangers to humans, and so far there is no conclusive evidence that they do anything harmful to us.
Just know that you are exposed to many hundreds of actually harmful chemicals in your daily life -- but remember that it is the dose, not the presence of a toxin that causes harm. Even water will kill you if you drink too much of it.
Until there is a smoking gun regarding these particles and human health, it would do good to focus on things you can control that are known to be harmful, rather than something you can't that is only scary sounding.
That said, it is a good opportunity to use this to advocate for far less single-use plastics in society. We should not be using nearly as much plastic for nearly as many things as we do, and it needs to be drastically reduced.
Are you (or someone else) aware of any indices of how harmful various substances are and how pervasive they are? It'd be nice to know, for instance, how damaging one substance is versus another so that I can prioritize my concerns better.
- I imagine that the quantity that someone consumes or is exposed to plays a role. It'd be interesting to see an index of how easily the toxic threshold can generally be hit via conventional sources.
A list of harmful chemicals people could be exposed to in daily life shouldn't be difficult to compile if there isn't one already, but is relatively useless because as I noted exposure itself is not the problem in almost all cases.
However taking that list and trying to compare the harm on some sort quantitative level is going to be difficult.
I wouldn't worry about it -- I was speaking more about 'stay mindful of things around you that you can control, like wearing PPE when necessary or staying away from off-gassing plastics which have a characteristic smell' rather than 'make a list of everything you are exposed to and plan your life around it'.
I actually tracked down the original which has charts of how much was found, and is what should have been linked to in this post. https://www.consumerreports.org/health/food-contaminants/the...
Frankly it's frightening to consider the implications.
AFAIK this makes sense. Asbestos is really dangerous only in the lungs, so you need to inhale a "friable" form of it somehow. Putting it in your stomach won't do anything.
Death finds a way.
Well, that's never actually been proven so you can make a name for yourself by investigating this topic, if you feel so inclined.
Plastic straws
Plastic Lilly sticks
Plastic tie-wraps
Basically anything that someone might chew on!
Although, licorice roots are okay to chew on... I guess. :-)
Licorice can be toxic: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8962506/
If these things break down in unknown/unpublished ways we're all fcked.
From the article.
I’d prefer it if my food didn’t contain these substances, wouldn’t you ?