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Comment by sheepscreek | Hacker News Reader

Okay - newsflash. Microplastics are everywhere already. In the water you drink from tap. In the wild caught (or farmed) fish you eat. Soon we’ll be told they are also present in the fruits and vegetables we eat, maybe even in milk and eggs! Pretty sure meat and chicken already contain them to varying degrees.

So yeah, sure, there are microplastics in drinks in glass bottles. But to say they contain “more” microplastics than plastic containers sounds like the BS concocted by packaging lobby.

Here’s a fun fact: did you know that a good RO system can filter out most microplastics from the tap water, but it also releases some (of its own) into the filtered water! We really dug ourselves into a big hole by using plastics for just about everything.

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> Soon we’ll be told they are also present in the fruits and vegetables

Old news https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S001393512...

> maybe even in milk

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-021-03458-7

https://journals.lww.com/kleu/fulltext/2024/17020/qualitativ...

> eggs

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/35930965/

The comforts of modern life will take a very significant hit if we really want to undo our polluting way of life. It can be done, but many people will vote with their wallets to keep those comforts as long as possible, and companies will fight to earn that profit as long as they can.

I think nothing short of a global catastrophe will change people's minds.

> I think nothing short of a global catastrophe will change people's minds.

You mean like global warming and how the climate change catastrophe we are experiencing has changed human behavior to stop polluting? <sarcastic mode>

I can't imagine that anything will change the minds of the majority of people to the point where they drastically change their lifestyles.

This is why we make governments, to solve coordination problems.

It's not usually an option, whether to have a government or not. And when it's deliberate, the motivation is invariably protection from somebody else's government.

Well, it's not a catastrophe until it affects you. It needs to severely hit a critical mass of the population in developed countries; and by that time it may be too late.

Anything less than critical mass can be swept under the rug by governments until your term is over.

The nice things about micro plastic is that it'll be slow and steady. So there's not a good chance of a catastrophe! Pretty sweet!

Im sure the concentration of microplastics is going to go up. Right now we’re talking just about microplastics but soon we’ll see stats showing how steady it’s accumulating everywhere.

Or a really solid better-in-every-way yet ecologically sound alternative. Then again, the battle is not on one turf - we need alternatives for a whole host of plastics and synthetic plastic like compounds (nylon, rayon, Teflon and friends…). Think PVC pipes, the rubbery insulation on wires, tires (which can have nylon and other synthetic materials other than rubber), high quality ropes/harnesses, nets, clothing of-course - the list is endless and each use case is unique.

So what we might see is - an early adoption in some industries and use-cases and a slower adoption in others while better materials are invented/discovered.

On a brighter note, with all the kick-ass compute we’ll have in triple digit billion dollar AI facilities, that opens up scope for new discoveries in science. Hopefully, accelerating its pace.

We can buy ourselves a huge amount of time if we just stopped letting countries dump metric millions of tonnes of plastic into bodies of water for them to be endlessly ground-down into micro-sizes. As it is now, we're watching like deer in headlights, as the third-world pollutes the entire world with plastic.

Micro-plastics and forever chemicals will be this century's Lead.

Do you have any reference for this?

My understanding is that the bigger consumer of plastic are first world countries, by far. And since decades.

https://www.weforum.org/stories/2018/06/90-of-plastic-pollut...

And the paper: https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acs.est.7b02368

I understand where the plastic ends, I am saying that is the not who where it is bought and thrown away.

Developed countries consume (buy and throw away) most of the plastic.

Then, on top of it, they ship their trash to third world countries.

I wouldn’t specifically criticize the third world for this issue. It’s a problem we’re all contributing to in different ways. Also, let’s not forget that a lot of first world waste gets shipped off to the third world for “recycling”, some of which inevitably ends up in the waterways and into the ocean.

For instance, one of my favorite pens is from a Japanese company that has consistently resisted making it reusable. Therefore, Japan, known for its cleanliness, indirectly contributes to a significant portion of avoidable waste. Of course, North America has its own equivalent, such as Bic pens. Not to mention the vast amount of wasteful toys. The third world, on the other hand, faces a slightly different challenge, primarily centered around plastic bags, bottles and containers.

On a slight tangent, maybe the real problem is consumption. But good luck taking that up with pro-capitalists!

Japan is huge on plastic. It's shocking for many people when they arrive here. It's absolutely wild the amount of plastic that is used and how little effort there is to reduce its use.

I've seen blocks of land covered in weed mat after a demolition was performed and before the next build or sale of the land...it's then just disposed of...

In the countryside in Japan, plastic burning is still fairly common. Civil engineers just bury those 1 ton bags in roadside and riverside embankments full of soil...if that embankment is ever ripped up again, the soil is going to be full of fragments of those bags, either way they’re shedding into waterways starting from now.

Yes Japan incinerates a lot of plastic but there is only one incinerator which does C02 capture at the moment. I honestly think the average person in Japan sees it like it's just organic material. Interestingly, it’s a lot of work as a consumer to constantly sort it, clean it and dispose of it to code.

>We really dug ourselves into a big hole by using plastics for just about everything.

We should be moving to ban plastics in consumer goods but because they have become so ubiquitous there is basically zero chance of that ever happening

A long as we continue to prioritize industry over general well-being, then yes.

Yeah, reverse osmosis systems adding microplastics themselves is a scary fact I also learned on hacker news a few months ago.

Does anyone here know if they are RO systems that don't have that problem?

Microplastics are just unavoidable at this point, they all use plastic tanks and tubing. But RO will still remove heavy metals and PFAS.

TIL from the parent comment, even I am curious now about RO systems which do not have this problem.

> a good RO system can filter out most microplastics from the tap water, but it also releases some (of its own) into the filtered water

Home distillation is cheaper than RO (esp. if you have solar) and doesn't release microplastics. Just remineralize with a high-quality salt

You bet - I’m sure it’s the only fool proof way to get rid of all microplastics. Cumbersome though. But realistically, I no longer think they can be avoided. Probably already lodged all the way up in my brain waiting to cause some nuisance as I get older :-/

Our best hope is nanotechnology and bots or maybe even bioengineered cells or microorganisms that can get in there and eat them or at least reroute them out of the human body through natural pathways.

Home distillation probably only works if you have all copper plumbing instead of the PVC or PEX plumbing that a lot of homes have. But copper plumbing is probanly going to leach various metals into the water.

No? Your plumbing shouldn’t matter if you’re distilling the water.

Some volatiles are going to come through (which can be mostly mitigated with an activated charcoal filter at some point in the process), but you’re vaporizing the water and condensing it back into a liquid, leaving behind stuff like metal and microplastics.

Sure, but unless you're distilling the water at point of use, you'll have plumbing to distribute it. The typical setup is to have a distillation plant, some storage for the water and then plumbing to distribute it. Anything else quickly becomes infeasible.

Which salt could you buy that’s free of Microplastics ?

Do you have any concrete products you can recommend for home tap water distillation? Searching for such a solution mostly yields DIY results for me.

> BS concocted by packaging lobby

It's not BS. This is a government lab. The scientists clearly identified the source of the extra microplastics, the paint on the bottle caps.

Just like radio waves, which had (and somewhat still has) the same fearmongering for a while.

And yet we survived -- or rather, significantly improved our living standards.

Pretty sure meat and chicken already contain them to varying degrees.

Ironically, biological structures are made of the same or very similar polymers as synthetic plastics.

How much do you know about bioaccumulation and endocrine disruption as it pertains to microplastics?

A century of improved living conditions.... which is going to start regressing thanks to this idiotic paranoia.

Ah, sorry, I was excited to hear this opinion from someone who has any clue what they're talking about. The search continues!

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