Comment by burkaman | Hacker News Reader

Comment by burkaman | Hacker News Reader

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I am open to being convinced otherwise, but I don't agree that there was any widespread skepticism of the health impacts of plastic until very recently, maybe the last 5 years. There has certainly been broad concern about plastic trash and environmental pollution for a long time, but that's a different topic.

I stand by my claim that you and I should not have to research the health impacts of, for example, microwaves. We should have to think about it, but if you have a basic understanding of how they work and how to use them safely, and you listen to people who might tell you if there were an issue (friends, the news, the FDA, etc.), then that is enough. And when I say "how to use them safely", I don't mean doing your own experimentation to find the limits of the device. I mean being told not to put metal in it, maybe watching a video to see what happens if you do, and accepting that it's a bad idea and you won't do it. It is not possible for me to do a medical study on the impacts of eating microwaved food, but I have enough societal trust that I continue to use them anyway.

I guess it depends on what segment of society you exist in. I (born in the early 90s) was raised in a plastic-free lifestyle, and many of the people my family associates with are the same. We are staunch environmentalists though, so I guess my experience is not typical. So, I don’t know about “widespread”, but the current of thought has been present in the zeitgeist for decades.

Was that about health concerns, or pollution and environmental concerns? Obviously health and the environment are very related, but what I mean is that even the term "microplastic" didn't exist when you were born, and I thought the idea that consumption of or close contact with plastic could cause individual health problems was relatively new. Not that literally nobody had thought of it, but my impression is that pushback against plastic for most of its history was driven by giant piles of trash that don't biodegrade, turtles getting stuck in soda packaging, stuff like that.

Plastic is made from oil, you’d have to be pretty ignorant to believe people never were skeptical of plastics and that skepticism wasn’t covered up by lobbying.

Yes of course, and lobbyists can be very effective. They covered up climate change and the harms of smoking too. I'm sure there are things that (almost) nobody knows today because of corporate cover-ups that we'll discover in 10 years. Climate change didn't enter the public consciousness until the late 80s, decades after the basic science was well-established, and it took more decades for it to become something that "everyone" knew about. That's the fault of corporations and lobbyists, not individuals that were too lazy to do their own climate modeling.

It is obvious to me that smoking is bad for you, it feels like an intuitive fact that nobody should have to be taught, but that's because I grew up in a culture absolutely saturated with that idea, and I didn't know anyone that smoked. Somebody who grew up 70 years ago in the complete opposite culture can't be blamed for not knowing at the time that smoking causes lung cancer. How could they know? Nobody can follow cutting-edge research from every field on the planet and adjust their life accordingly. Even if you could it wouldn't help - cutting edge science is often contradictory and it takes time for a consensus and convincing body of evidence to build up. I'm sure both of us hold intuitively obvious beliefs that we'll realize are wrong in 20 years.

What is the solution? It's not helpful to wait until after a coverup is exposed and then blame every individual who didn't somehow figure it out on their own. You also can't just believe the opposite of everything you've ever been told - you'll have the same problem. Some things that corporations produce are actually good for you, lobbyists are occasionally paid to promote something useful and true. Your parents were probably right about a lot of stuff they taught you. You can and should ask questions and learn as much as you can, but life is complicated, nobody can be deeply educated about every single thing they touch.

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