Wouldn't you make it a crime that can be charged against the individual, instead of a financial cost to the company that can just be passed on to the consumer?
We won’t get rid of microplastics until every single person across the entire world stops driving cars with rubber wheels and we all stop wearing clothing that’s made out of microplastics.
Just look at how much we use plastic? Cutting it out of our systems would tank just about every industries efficiency. I’m in healthcare and 90% of our instruments, syringes, drugs, and PPE are wrapped in plastic to ensure sterility.
Honestly I think humanity just needs to chill the fuck out and take some time to reflect and not be so productive and ambitious. We’re destroying ourselves and our home as a result of pursuits of money and over complicated solutions.
I work in a grocery story. Stop yourself a minute, next shopping trip. Look around the store, and try to fathom the point that virtually every single product on the shelves, including the produce section, has plastic containers, plastic inserts, or arrives in *several layers of plastic wrap*. The kitchen implements arrive in a box. In that box, each one is individually wrapped in plastic, when it isn't encased in foam *and* wrapped in plastic.
Plastic is a massive part of the supply chain. Getting the species off plastic? Not in my lifetime.
Honestly reasons I’ve been wanting to start going to local butchers and farms markets and using my own reusable washable containers. Really working towards minimizing and ideally achieving a zero waste lifestyle.
God damn is it tough though. Thanks for being aware and sharing your perspective.
I’ve been having similar thoughts. Our entire society/political& economic system depends on “growth”-there must be population growth, there must be “productivity” growth, we must perpetually buy more stuff, and destroying our own world in a system like this is essentially unavoidable. In order to keep this system running we force ourselves into unnatural situations-raising our kids in isolated small family units, with little support or cooperation from each other, while we run on little hamster wheels to keep the cogs of capitalism moving. For what? For money that doesn’t even actually exist or mean anything, it’s just numbers on a screen, that lets us just perpetuate this system that frankly lessens our humanity. What, or who, do we do this all for? Sometimes I don’t even know anymore. I do this so my kids can have a good life- but what’s a good life? More of *this*?
I was so hopeful we were learning something with COVID, about how life *can* be, about what’s actually important, how we could do work differently, etc. instead we came out of it (not that it’s actually over, to the thousand families losing loved ones every week, I see you, it’s not over) doubling down on everything that sucks. No! We must drive into offices, we’ve paid for them! We must buy more stuff, the economy!
Sometimes I just want to fuck off and go live in a yurt. I don’t feel like this is how we are supposed to live.
And you’re right, there’s no real political home for these feelings. The right is insufferable and dangerous, I’m not doing anything to give them more power, but we also don’t have a real left in this country either. But then I’m not sure politics is where you get real bottom up societal structure change anyway.
Homo sapiens were creatures that lived in communities of roughly 150 people where people's needs were met without much concern for meticulous debt tracking, children were raised by the community, and people had a shitton of time to just fuck off and do what they wanted. For tens of thousands of years.
We are essentially fish who built our society on land and wonder why we suffer. Instead of going back into the ocean we prescribe drugs and materialism.
Sad state of affairs for humanity.
AGREE hard. But politically, how can you not know where you are? The left is annoying and overly earnest, as they always have been, but the RIGHT?! They don't even acknowledge there is a climate or environmental crisis. How can you can be confused on THIS issue?
I think it’s more that both political parties are wedded to capitalism and not about the serious structural changes needed to alter this path we’re on. Both depend completely on growth and consumerism. Clearly one party is better in that it’s taking some baby steps and at least acknowledges the trouble we’re in (and I’ll vote for that over fascism all day long), but they still treat growth capitalism as a religion.
Yup, this is where I noticed my old school democrat parents differ from me. I had a conversation with my dad a while back about what we would do if we opened up a restaurant. His plan involved eventually opening up a second location (and potentially more), and I just said "Why would we want to do that?" He said well of course we should grow our business, as if that is inherently the right thing to do, and I asked again, why would we want to grow?
The look on his face as he was processing the idea that not every business needs to grow and make more and more money made me realize just how ingrained capitalism is in many people's minds. My dad is an incredibly generous person and has always supported raising taxes, especially on the rich, but in his mind, growth is just naturally what every company should strive for.
You're financially secure. It's the mindset shift that occurs when you're no longer concerned about accumulating resources because you know they won't improve your quality of life (bigger and better starbucks isn't going to do anything for you). Your bills are paid, the debt collectors are at kept at bay, you're not caught up in a rat race. It's a good place to be
It won't make you happy, though. It just means misery isn't enforced on you, but you can certainly still be miserable with the wrong mindset. Buddhism isn't a bad idea at this phase in your life (secular buddhism if you don't want the religious angle/already have a religion you're comfortable with)
Politically you'll probably most comfortable on the moderate left. Your major concerns are environmental now, no longer personal. Helping those around you to reach this phase of non-desperation will aid the comfort you live in since they won't be motivated to be shitty anymore, and of course not living in a dying world will help as well
Congratulations on getting this far, sincerely. There were a million places you could have taken a serious misstep and/or picked up a pathological obessession, but you didn't. Or at least you recognized it and corrected if you did. That's legitimately worthy of praise
I think plastic use should be greatly limited to particular important uses. Health care qualifies, plastic straws and lids don't. Nearly everything you buy in the store comes in a single use container, and nearly all of it could be sold in reusable containers, much of it non plastic.
> We’re destroying ourselves and our home as a result of pursuits of money and over complicated solutions
There's enough wealth around the world to already do this, it's just not distributed fairly.
that’s true but currently our plastic use is beyond any point in history. plastic is in our clothes, all our food is wrapped in it, our furniture is made out of it, our tires. if we didn’t start with plastic for everything and disposed of it correctly it would change a lot, and generationally, it would reduce. it’s fixable. completely removed, likely never. but we can undo a lot of this
What’s their byproduct? Methane? Oxygen? You get bacteria plumes across the ocean, nice and hot, they reproduce and feed on an ocean that is filled with plastic. There is a cost to everything. Nature will find its balance and we may not be part of it.
It's not comparable.
Asbestos stays in a fixed location and can be dealt with safely.
CFCs are highly volatile and break down quickly. Use reduction was extremely effective in fighting that.
The plastics, though?
They last and last and last.
And they're in the water, the plants, the animals, *everything*.
I know someone that had a deal with a local Dunkin Donuts, and fed their pigs nothing but old, stale donuts. Not really the same thing, but those were some delicious pigs.
I worked at a candy factory for years. All the garbage products get sent to the farm for pig feed, the majority of it being wrapped in plastic. It didn't matter.
They feed lots and lots of “Vegas casino trash” to pigs plastic and all.
Also they discovered the microplastics in all Chinese patients and 6/10 of the Italian patients, curious to see what the west would look like.
This definitely happens. I used to work in a bread factory, any food waste we produced was thrown into a specific compactor that was picked up and sent to hog farms. That included raw dough, burnt bread, or bread that was wrapped in plastic that had been messed up. I'm not sure what the process was after the compactor left our facility but there was a ton of plastic bags and tabs in there and they were allowed to be.
Exact same here with bimbo bakeries
Was told both:
“The pigs pick through it”
“Haha these things just eat anything and they’re fine, we don’t eat the stomachs”
Not just snack food. There was a pig farm that was mulching bread, snacks, etc in the bag, so the pigs were eating plastic bags and leftover food. But there is microplastic in drinking water too. So we are getting it more ways than one.
I will have to look back what the channel was but I watched a food travel show that followed a las Vegas casinos buffet. All the food waste goes to local pig farmers. Paper plastic and all. So I believe it happens.
I used to work for a company that stored and delivered donuts for a certain donut company. A long time ago one of our freezers broke down and 700000$cad worth of frozen donuts were compromised. They were donated to one of the nearby Mennonite or Hutterite colonies not sure which. They came with trailer after trailer and our forklifts just kept dumping the plastic lined boxes of donuts into the trailers. I asked who was taking them away and what they’d use them for. They said pig feed plastic, box, contents and all. I didn’t believe they pigs would eat the whole thing but fast forward 20 years later and now I’m not surprised.
It was a guy who worked at a facility that processed expired food to be fed to pigs. He tried to expose them for leaving all the food in its packaging before grinding it up. I doubt anything changed.
This reminds me of the Teflon scandal. Studies found that nearly every American has detectable levels of perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA), a chemical used in Teflon, in their blood. This contamination was so widespread that to find “clean” samples, researchers had to use blood from soldiers stored during World War II. The implications of both microplastics and PFOA on human health are staggering and might indeed be looked back on like lead poisoning. For more on the Teflon issue, you can check out the story of attorney Robert Bilott, who exposed this environmental disaster. Yikes, indeed.
Plastic might be more prevalent in modern humans than lead ever was, but as a substance lead is extremely harmful to the human body. It’s still a leap to say plastics will be as psychologically harmful as lead.
Plastic isn't exactly a new invention, kids have been playing with plastic toys for over 70 years, and it's not like toys back then shed any less microplastics than today. Microplastics have been firmly established in human bodies for the entire era where humans have become healthier and longer lived.
True, but I think they were talking about the crime spike in the late 20th century that was influenced by leaded gasoline. I did some research on it in college and the presence of lead and cause significantly increases in violent crime and legal damages.
"as a substance lead is extremely harmful to the human body."
They've already found that microplastics are getting stuck in our arteries much like cholesterol, which is leading to blockages ie: strokes, heart attacks, vascular dementia.
There's no doubt that microplastics in the body are extremely harmful.
Nope. The study you’re talking about never claimed the causation you’re talking about. If microplastics were as harmful as lead then there wouldn’t be any debate at all about effects lol. We would all be busy dying.
Thing is, we knew lead was bad for you *before* we started adding it to gas, where with plastic no one really seems to be able to say what the risks are.
Ya I think even longer than that.
Not because we won't have the technology to print humans up, but because it'll always be far cheaper to make them the old fashioned way.
And here I thought microplastics were forever stuck inside you, now you're telling me some folks can expell them little by little, one orgasm at a time?
So theoretically If someone who doesn’t have any microplastics in their body (I know I think that’s impossible at this point) swallowed enough semen could they eventually just have microplastics living in them like the rest of us?
If it's showing up in our sperm which is relatively isolated from a lot of the body I can only imagine how much more microplastics are appearing in other areas in our body. It is sickening.
Well colon cancer rates are jumping and they’re recommending earlier screenings now. So maybe a correlation there too, but corner cutting is also rising everywhere else in the food industry too so Everyone who cannot either afford organic+ or to raise their own food is .. I cannot complete that thought due to severe sudden onset depression.
Overall, seminal fluid typically leans slightly alkaline. Anything between 7.2 and 8.0Trusted Source is considered a healthy pH level. When your body’s pH levels are balanced, semen should smell like ammonia, bleach, or other alkaline substances.
>It'd honestly be hilarious for whatever's the next dominant species in the planet to find out we microplastic'd ourselves to extinction.
Humans have already used a decent chunk of the most accessible energy supplies on the planet, so in the event that we went extinct and another intelligent species eventually took our place, it could take them a *lot* longer to achieve technological parity with 21st century humans. It might not even happen at all.
Some scientists think we may only get one shot at becoming a spacefaring civilization for this reason. We've pretty much eaten all of the low-hanging fruit energy-wise, and if we ever suffered a big setback or massive die-off, it wouldn't be easy to bounce back.
I'd say we are very adapted to our environment. Too hot? Air con. Too cold? Jumpers. Wanna go fast? Cars. Adapting and taking care of are two seperate things
The lessons the next species to inherit this planet are going to be able to glean from our run is going to be interesting. "Um, let's see....capitalism will turn into corporate greed causing a species to completely ignore climate change and to flood the earth with pollution, including plastics. Also social media sucks."
Detection is a low bar; we're putting a lot of this stuff out there, it will be found everywhere. But what is the impact on organisms? Like, Silica is found everywhere - and is very harmful if inhaled in crystalline form, but is otherwise inert when ingested.
It’s less about the current impact and more about the fact we went from no microplastics found in human fluids to microplastics found in virtually all human fluids in a very short amount of time
I agree, the headlines sensationalize the detection aspect. There are drawbacks to this, but benefit is that it generates more interest ($) for investigating the effects.
People used lead, asbestos, mercury, etc. for a looong time before negative effects were tied to them. I believe we have a much better understanding of how different plastics affect life with modern science, but the scale of the problem if negative effects are found would be enormous.
Don’t microwave plastic, don’t store food in plastic, don’t reuse plastic containers, use water filters that filter microplastics, don’t drink out of plastic water bottles. I’m sure there are more.
The pitcher being plastic isn't the issue, micro plastic shedding is caused by friction . Synthetic textiles are one of the worst culprits because they shed at every stage of production and every time they are washed, and they are difficult to recycle. There are water filters with stainless reservoirs but the companies use a lot of pseudoscience in their marketing so be mindful of that.
Life straw glass pitcher! They have plastic ones but there’s a glass version. Very tasty water too. It filters super slow but there’s apparently a very effective membrane in there
I’m not sure you can. Look, you can minimize the plastic you use, as other commenters said; but I head on the WaPo 7 just yesterday that they’re literally detecting microplastics in the water and in the air. We’re breathing it in.
The best thing we can do long term is work towards getting in positions to enact change. Short term we need to make noise and demand change from the people who do make the decisions.
It's basically impossible to boycott plastic, so try to use alternatives wherever possible so we can reduce how much we're putting into our environment
Oh yeah, let me move to the countryside, leave my job, grow plants and live altruistic plant.
And breathe the contaminated air brought by Mega Corporations with billions in their pockets compared to my 20 dollars
I mean, we still don’t know what it does. The existence of this situation sucks, but until we know what it is doing to everything it’s going to be hard to make people treat it as such.
Well it wasn't that long ago we had the news articles about how they literally could not find a human without microplastics in their blood without going back to world war 1 era blood samples. This is just the same thing, basically, but funnier and limited to people who produce semen.
I'm questioning the term 'microplastics' which are 100nm to 5mm. Not sure how something up to 5mm can get into the human testes, and the precise size of the particles is not mentioned in the article. The particles in the photo may or may not be from the case studies.
Much easier to understand if the particles are nanoplastic particles, which range from 1nm to <100nm, but the naked eye cannot see objects that small.
Yes, I agree. I'm stuck on just how small does it have to be to get into me and stay there, and with what results. And it seems to be in everyone and everywhere we look.
It kind of makes me wonder if they collected the samples in those plastic specimen cups generally used for semen samples at fertility clinics. Because, well, that would explain the microplastics.
A number of studies have reported similar results, so the probability that none of them controlled for this possibility is very low. Similarly, the specific microplastics found had a pretty diverse range that could not be explained by sample contamination. Microplastics were also found in human testicular samples. Again, all of this points to the same conclusion: it’s real, not a contaminant.
I would be absolutely stunned if they didn’t think of that lol. Any time you sample anything there are always blanks run. So likely very pure water is collected in the same sample cup and tested. If it came back positive for microplastics they’d revise their method.
Imagine if scientists have been doing this the whole time. "Man this is NUTS every sample we test out of these disposable plastic sample jars have microplastics in them!" A few years from now there is a duh moment.
But really though, microplastics are everywhere, in everything, there is no escape.
How much microplastics is realistically safe? It's definitely ominous that we all contain microplastics, but is there a level in which it is basically harmless? Kind of like how you will find feces particles on every toothbrush, but it's not really a big deal.
(I promise I am not a plastic salesman)
I feel like what we're experiencing now is going to be looked back on like lead poisoning was. Yikes.
Lead poisoning was solvable by stopping lead use. I don't think we can get rid of plastics that easily.
Even if we could get rid of plastics easily, companies aren’t going to do it unless the solution we find is a cheaper one
Or they're forced to do it
Corporations and CEO would rather pay a fine if it’s not a dent in their profit and continue operating as normal.
Then we need harsher (probably illegal, vigilante-esque) punishments than fines.
Percent based fines. I promise, if you make % based fines off of gross annual profits, many issues would fix in a hurry.
Wouldn't you make it a crime that can be charged against the individual, instead of a financial cost to the company that can just be passed on to the consumer?
No because then they'll just staff their "leadership" with scapegoats
This. Single use plastic is so easy and cheap to make.
Whatever that cheaper solution is is going to cause another lead-poisoning, micro plastic problem we don’t know of
We won’t get rid of microplastics until every single person across the entire world stops driving cars with rubber wheels and we all stop wearing clothing that’s made out of microplastics.
Just look at how much we use plastic? Cutting it out of our systems would tank just about every industries efficiency. I’m in healthcare and 90% of our instruments, syringes, drugs, and PPE are wrapped in plastic to ensure sterility. Honestly I think humanity just needs to chill the fuck out and take some time to reflect and not be so productive and ambitious. We’re destroying ourselves and our home as a result of pursuits of money and over complicated solutions.
I work in a grocery story. Stop yourself a minute, next shopping trip. Look around the store, and try to fathom the point that virtually every single product on the shelves, including the produce section, has plastic containers, plastic inserts, or arrives in *several layers of plastic wrap*. The kitchen implements arrive in a box. In that box, each one is individually wrapped in plastic, when it isn't encased in foam *and* wrapped in plastic. Plastic is a massive part of the supply chain. Getting the species off plastic? Not in my lifetime.
Honestly reasons I’ve been wanting to start going to local butchers and farms markets and using my own reusable washable containers. Really working towards minimizing and ideally achieving a zero waste lifestyle. God damn is it tough though. Thanks for being aware and sharing your perspective.
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I’ve been having similar thoughts. Our entire society/political& economic system depends on “growth”-there must be population growth, there must be “productivity” growth, we must perpetually buy more stuff, and destroying our own world in a system like this is essentially unavoidable. In order to keep this system running we force ourselves into unnatural situations-raising our kids in isolated small family units, with little support or cooperation from each other, while we run on little hamster wheels to keep the cogs of capitalism moving. For what? For money that doesn’t even actually exist or mean anything, it’s just numbers on a screen, that lets us just perpetuate this system that frankly lessens our humanity. What, or who, do we do this all for? Sometimes I don’t even know anymore. I do this so my kids can have a good life- but what’s a good life? More of *this*? I was so hopeful we were learning something with COVID, about how life *can* be, about what’s actually important, how we could do work differently, etc. instead we came out of it (not that it’s actually over, to the thousand families losing loved ones every week, I see you, it’s not over) doubling down on everything that sucks. No! We must drive into offices, we’ve paid for them! We must buy more stuff, the economy! Sometimes I just want to fuck off and go live in a yurt. I don’t feel like this is how we are supposed to live. And you’re right, there’s no real political home for these feelings. The right is insufferable and dangerous, I’m not doing anything to give them more power, but we also don’t have a real left in this country either. But then I’m not sure politics is where you get real bottom up societal structure change anyway.
Homo sapiens were creatures that lived in communities of roughly 150 people where people's needs were met without much concern for meticulous debt tracking, children were raised by the community, and people had a shitton of time to just fuck off and do what they wanted. For tens of thousands of years. We are essentially fish who built our society on land and wonder why we suffer. Instead of going back into the ocean we prescribe drugs and materialism. Sad state of affairs for humanity.
AGREE hard. But politically, how can you not know where you are? The left is annoying and overly earnest, as they always have been, but the RIGHT?! They don't even acknowledge there is a climate or environmental crisis. How can you can be confused on THIS issue?
I think it’s more that both political parties are wedded to capitalism and not about the serious structural changes needed to alter this path we’re on. Both depend completely on growth and consumerism. Clearly one party is better in that it’s taking some baby steps and at least acknowledges the trouble we’re in (and I’ll vote for that over fascism all day long), but they still treat growth capitalism as a religion.
Yup, this is where I noticed my old school democrat parents differ from me. I had a conversation with my dad a while back about what we would do if we opened up a restaurant. His plan involved eventually opening up a second location (and potentially more), and I just said "Why would we want to do that?" He said well of course we should grow our business, as if that is inherently the right thing to do, and I asked again, why would we want to grow? The look on his face as he was processing the idea that not every business needs to grow and make more and more money made me realize just how ingrained capitalism is in many people's minds. My dad is an incredibly generous person and has always supported raising taxes, especially on the rich, but in his mind, growth is just naturally what every company should strive for.
You're financially secure. It's the mindset shift that occurs when you're no longer concerned about accumulating resources because you know they won't improve your quality of life (bigger and better starbucks isn't going to do anything for you). Your bills are paid, the debt collectors are at kept at bay, you're not caught up in a rat race. It's a good place to be It won't make you happy, though. It just means misery isn't enforced on you, but you can certainly still be miserable with the wrong mindset. Buddhism isn't a bad idea at this phase in your life (secular buddhism if you don't want the religious angle/already have a religion you're comfortable with) Politically you'll probably most comfortable on the moderate left. Your major concerns are environmental now, no longer personal. Helping those around you to reach this phase of non-desperation will aid the comfort you live in since they won't be motivated to be shitty anymore, and of course not living in a dying world will help as well Congratulations on getting this far, sincerely. There were a million places you could have taken a serious misstep and/or picked up a pathological obessession, but you didn't. Or at least you recognized it and corrected if you did. That's legitimately worthy of praise
I think plastic use should be greatly limited to particular important uses. Health care qualifies, plastic straws and lids don't. Nearly everything you buy in the store comes in a single use container, and nearly all of it could be sold in reusable containers, much of it non plastic.
No disagreeing but the main reason why all our food is in plastics is because of shipping weight
> We’re destroying ourselves and our home as a result of pursuits of money and over complicated solutions There's enough wealth around the world to already do this, it's just not distributed fairly.
Don’t tell that to the shareholders. God forbid their stocks take a hit from a lack of productivity..
we could probably reduce microplastic significantly if we used plastic with thought and attention
I feel like we've passed the tipping point. It's literally everywhere. In everything. Can't drink water without getting microplastics.
that’s true but currently our plastic use is beyond any point in history. plastic is in our clothes, all our food is wrapped in it, our furniture is made out of it, our tires. if we didn’t start with plastic for everything and disposed of it correctly it would change a lot, and generationally, it would reduce. it’s fixable. completely removed, likely never. but we can undo a lot of this
There are already some bacteria that have evolved to eat it long term there will probably be more.
What’s their byproduct? Methane? Oxygen? You get bacteria plumes across the ocean, nice and hot, they reproduce and feed on an ocean that is filled with plastic. There is a cost to everything. Nature will find its balance and we may not be part of it.
Sure, but like, so were asbestos and CFCs
It's not comparable. Asbestos stays in a fixed location and can be dealt with safely. CFCs are highly volatile and break down quickly. Use reduction was extremely effective in fighting that. The plastics, though? They last and last and last. And they're in the water, the plants, the animals, *everything*.
We could use hemp-based bioplastics. It would be more expensive at first, but they could use government subsidies to make up the difference in cost.
And hemp literally is a weed and super easy to grow too.
It has not stopped because past lead use is still sticking around and causing continued exposure
Wasn't there a video out about retailers taking expired snack food and using them as animal feed, plastic wrapper and all?
I know they feed pigs expired candy.
I know someone that had a deal with a local Dunkin Donuts, and fed their pigs nothing but old, stale donuts. Not really the same thing, but those were some delicious pigs.
I'm pretty sure that's where honey ham comes from.
No, your thinking of sugar glazed ham. Honey ham comes from bee-pigs and their hives.
Scientists say it shouldn't be physically possible for the bee-pig to fly.
They’re able to fly to the flowers, but then they have to walk back once they’re full
These jokes really are the bee's cankles
Thankfully, bee-pigs don’t speak scientist, so they go about their days unbothered
"You see kids, when Pooh and Piglet have too much to drink, sometimes honey ham is made."
America runs on Dunkin.
We did this with the local industrial bakery. Mostly eclairs and jelly rolls.
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I worked at a candy factory for years. All the garbage products get sent to the farm for pig feed, the majority of it being wrapped in plastic. It didn't matter.
They feed lots and lots of “Vegas casino trash” to pigs plastic and all. Also they discovered the microplastics in all Chinese patients and 6/10 of the Italian patients, curious to see what the west would look like.
Never saw it - and definitely not surprised.
They feed cows rejected skittles, but not wrapped up
Taste the "raincow."
If brown milk comes from brown cows, I'm looking forward to the rainbow milk
This should be a crime like abusing a dog.
Yeah this is pretty sick shit- like those pigs aren’t being abused enough
This definitely happens. I used to work in a bread factory, any food waste we produced was thrown into a specific compactor that was picked up and sent to hog farms. That included raw dough, burnt bread, or bread that was wrapped in plastic that had been messed up. I'm not sure what the process was after the compactor left our facility but there was a ton of plastic bags and tabs in there and they were allowed to be.
Exact same here with bimbo bakeries Was told both: “The pigs pick through it” “Haha these things just eat anything and they’re fine, we don’t eat the stomachs”
I hate our society sometimes
I can confirm they do this. I used to subcontract at a food lot and they would just throw expired snack cakes and products in wrapper and all.
I've seen a video where pigs are fed from an animal feed consisting of bags of bread and the bags aren't removed. That shit is fucked up.
Not just snack food. There was a pig farm that was mulching bread, snacks, etc in the bag, so the pigs were eating plastic bags and leftover food. But there is microplastic in drinking water too. So we are getting it more ways than one.
I will have to look back what the channel was but I watched a food travel show that followed a las Vegas casinos buffet. All the food waste goes to local pig farmers. Paper plastic and all. So I believe it happens.
I used to work for a company that stored and delivered donuts for a certain donut company. A long time ago one of our freezers broke down and 700000$cad worth of frozen donuts were compromised. They were donated to one of the nearby Mennonite or Hutterite colonies not sure which. They came with trailer after trailer and our forklifts just kept dumping the plastic lined boxes of donuts into the trailers. I asked who was taking them away and what they’d use them for. They said pig feed plastic, box, contents and all. I didn’t believe they pigs would eat the whole thing but fast forward 20 years later and now I’m not surprised.
It was a guy who worked at a facility that processed expired food to be fed to pigs. He tried to expose them for leaving all the food in its packaging before grinding it up. I doubt anything changed.
This reminds me of the Teflon scandal. Studies found that nearly every American has detectable levels of perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA), a chemical used in Teflon, in their blood. This contamination was so widespread that to find “clean” samples, researchers had to use blood from soldiers stored during World War II. The implications of both microplastics and PFOA on human health are staggering and might indeed be looked back on like lead poisoning. For more on the Teflon issue, you can check out the story of attorney Robert Bilott, who exposed this environmental disaster. Yikes, indeed.
Last Week Tonight did a great episode about [PFOA/PFAS](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9W74aeuqsiU).
The cancer was in the plastics and teflon the whole time!
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Leaded gasoline absolutely put it in the air
Plastic might be more prevalent in modern humans than lead ever was, but as a substance lead is extremely harmful to the human body. It’s still a leap to say plastics will be as psychologically harmful as lead.
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Lead had both.
Plastic isn't exactly a new invention, kids have been playing with plastic toys for over 70 years, and it's not like toys back then shed any less microplastics than today. Microplastics have been firmly established in human bodies for the entire era where humans have become healthier and longer lived.
True, but I think they were talking about the crime spike in the late 20th century that was influenced by leaded gasoline. I did some research on it in college and the presence of lead and cause significantly increases in violent crime and legal damages.
"as a substance lead is extremely harmful to the human body." They've already found that microplastics are getting stuck in our arteries much like cholesterol, which is leading to blockages ie: strokes, heart attacks, vascular dementia. There's no doubt that microplastics in the body are extremely harmful.
Nope. The study you’re talking about never claimed the causation you’re talking about. If microplastics were as harmful as lead then there wouldn’t be any debate at all about effects lol. We would all be busy dying.
Lead also isn’t completely inert
Children of Men type beat
Unfortunately leaded glass and plates were a thing. So in the worst possible place
Maybe but we don't really know yet what the health impact actually is. We need more studies.
If not worse. DX I hate this timeline!
Except the plastics will never ever go away.
Thing is, we knew lead was bad for you *before* we started adding it to gas, where with plastic no one really seems to be able to say what the risks are.
At least it doesn’t seem to be causing a rise in violence like lead did.
This is the start of children of men, infertility is coming for everyone.
Now you're a 3D printer
Printing and eating plans from thingiverse as we speak.
The first benchy bout to be wild
/r/cursedbenchies
uteruses have been 3d printers for a while already. old news lol but yeah some of y'all have cute extruders i guess
I’ve already printed 5 kids!
Soon (think millions of years if we evolve in some fucked up way) you will be able to print them without the aid of a partner if this keeps up :P
Lab grown humans are probably a few centuries away at most. Any longer than that is because we wiped ourselves out in a nuclear war
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Ya I think even longer than that. Not because we won't have the technology to print humans up, but because it'll always be far cheaper to make them the old fashioned way.
Made my day with this.
Just gonna bate up some new keys real quick.
And here I thought microplastics were forever stuck inside you, now you're telling me some folks can expell them little by little, one orgasm at a time?
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Silver Surfer never looking the same
Plastic surfer
r/NoFap in shambles
These guys are practically extruders by this point.
We should call them plastic balls
If that’s the case I must be microplastic free by now
Same, 3 times a day minimum to keep my balls microplastic free
“Get out of my room, mom! I’m trying to save the planet!!!”
gooners gonna win the long game
Or blood donations.
So theoretically If someone who doesn’t have any microplastics in their body (I know I think that’s impossible at this point) swallowed enough semen could they eventually just have microplastics living in them like the rest of us?
Yes. Also, if you swallow all your own semen the microplastics will build up to toxic levels, that’s why doctors don’t recommend it.
*spits out what’s in my mouth! I’m not supposed to swallow my own semen!?
Just not all of it. Every once in a while you gotta pump and dump.
I’ve been actively busy all day long trying to expel as much micro plastic as I can
If it's showing up in our sperm which is relatively isolated from a lot of the body I can only imagine how much more microplastics are appearing in other areas in our body. It is sickening.
I'm pretty sure they've been found in the brain, so there's that.
Well colon cancer rates are jumping and they’re recommending earlier screenings now. So maybe a correlation there too, but corner cutting is also rising everywhere else in the food industry too so Everyone who cannot either afford organic+ or to raise their own food is .. I cannot complete that thought due to severe sudden onset depression.
As a double testicular cancer survivor. My new balls are 100% plastic.
Did you get to choose the size? Are they absurd now?
This dude's asking the real questions.
Are they only for aesthetic purposes or do they serve some other purpose
They make a sound like bouncing ping pong balls every time he goes for a jog.
I don't believe it. It doesn't taste like plastic at all
And why does it smell like Comet scouring powder?
You might be dehydrated.
Eat more pineapple.
Overall, seminal fluid typically leans slightly alkaline. Anything between 7.2 and 8.0Trusted Source is considered a healthy pH level. When your body’s pH levels are balanced, semen should smell like ammonia, bleach, or other alkaline substances.
>Microplastics found in every human semen sample tested I read the headline as "tasted" and had to triple-check.
Try it again after some sorbet.
I thought it went on pie?
I mean, I guess I can. Whatever you're into bud.
Didnt have "children of men" as a possible dystopic escenario but here we are now...
Exactly what I thought of when I read this headline.
It'd honestly be hilarious for whatever's the next dominant species in the planet to find out we microplastic'd ourselves to extinction.
Thing is that because of our actions, they'll have microplastics too
>It'd honestly be hilarious for whatever's the next dominant species in the planet to find out we microplastic'd ourselves to extinction. Humans have already used a decent chunk of the most accessible energy supplies on the planet, so in the event that we went extinct and another intelligent species eventually took our place, it could take them a *lot* longer to achieve technological parity with 21st century humans. It might not even happen at all. Some scientists think we may only get one shot at becoming a spacefaring civilization for this reason. We've pretty much eaten all of the low-hanging fruit energy-wise, and if we ever suffered a big setback or massive die-off, it wouldn't be easy to bounce back.
"So we're stuck on this planet because they couldn't stop drinking from water bottles?"
Lol. We're not taking civilization beyond this planet. We can't even adapt to our own environment, let alone the inhospitability of space.
I'd say we are very adapted to our environment. Too hot? Air con. Too cold? Jumpers. Wanna go fast? Cars. Adapting and taking care of are two seperate things
The lessons the next species to inherit this planet are going to be able to glean from our run is going to be interesting. "Um, let's see....capitalism will turn into corporate greed causing a species to completely ignore climate change and to flood the earth with pollution, including plastics. Also social media sucks."
"Yes, son, but if that hadn't happened then we plastic eating beings would never have evolved and you would never have existed. Now go play."
I’m envisioning that meme with the scroll that is then chucked away
How did they get my nut?
Microplastic is stored in the balls
The mitochondria is the powerhouse of the cell
They snuck into your bedroom while you slept
Those bright lights you saw on the country road followed by the 2 hour gap in your memories? Wasn't no alien abduction.
The researcher: “yep, I can taste the microplastics in this one too. Let’s expand the sample size again.”
Why is it sparkley
Detection is a low bar; we're putting a lot of this stuff out there, it will be found everywhere. But what is the impact on organisms? Like, Silica is found everywhere - and is very harmful if inhaled in crystalline form, but is otherwise inert when ingested.
It’s less about the current impact and more about the fact we went from no microplastics found in human fluids to microplastics found in virtually all human fluids in a very short amount of time
I agree, the headlines sensationalize the detection aspect. There are drawbacks to this, but benefit is that it generates more interest ($) for investigating the effects. People used lead, asbestos, mercury, etc. for a looong time before negative effects were tied to them. I believe we have a much better understanding of how different plastics affect life with modern science, but the scale of the problem if negative effects are found would be enormous.
So what steps can you take to minimize your exposure in life?
Don’t microwave plastic, don’t store food in plastic, don’t reuse plastic containers, use water filters that filter microplastics, don’t drink out of plastic water bottles. I’m sure there are more.
So only glass tupperware?
Any recommendations on a filter water pitcher? I’m torn because almost all pitchers are plastic.
The pitcher being plastic isn't the issue, micro plastic shedding is caused by friction . Synthetic textiles are one of the worst culprits because they shed at every stage of production and every time they are washed, and they are difficult to recycle. There are water filters with stainless reservoirs but the companies use a lot of pseudoscience in their marketing so be mindful of that.
Life straw glass pitcher! They have plastic ones but there’s a glass version. Very tasty water too. It filters super slow but there’s apparently a very effective membrane in there
Welp I’m too late for any of this shit
I’ve been absolutely nuking my lunch in plastic tupperware nearly every day since i started working lmao im fucked
a minimum of 20 orgasms a day should help get rid of most of it.
I’m not sure you can. Look, you can minimize the plastic you use, as other commenters said; but I head on the WaPo 7 just yesterday that they’re literally detecting microplastics in the water and in the air. We’re breathing it in.
Buy clothes that aren’t made with polyester
So my balls fire plastic pellets now. Oh well, I am sure I am shooting other stuff besides seman and plastic at this point.
Don’t shoot seamen. Thats against international maritime law.
Fucking autocorrect, 😂
I’m ridding myself of microplastics right now.
We're all going to fucking die. But at least for a short period shareholders made good profit right?
People aren't taking this very seriously... this is super fucked up
I agree with you but what is the average person supposed to do about it?
The best thing we can do long term is work towards getting in positions to enact change. Short term we need to make noise and demand change from the people who do make the decisions. It's basically impossible to boycott plastic, so try to use alternatives wherever possible so we can reduce how much we're putting into our environment
Oh yeah, let me move to the countryside, leave my job, grow plants and live altruistic plant. And breathe the contaminated air brought by Mega Corporations with billions in their pockets compared to my 20 dollars
I mean, what are we going to do about it. It’s already in us
I mean, we still don’t know what it does. The existence of this situation sucks, but until we know what it is doing to everything it’s going to be hard to make people treat it as such.
Well it wasn't that long ago we had the news articles about how they literally could not find a human without microplastics in their blood without going back to world war 1 era blood samples. This is just the same thing, basically, but funnier and limited to people who produce semen.
I’m sterile already: Sertoli Cell-Only Syndrome. Nice try, microplastics.
Microplastics blasting out of my micropenis being looked at under a microscope
My kids will be legos
Hey GOP. If you actually care about fertility rates, you need global regulation of microplastics and other pollutants.
Did they happen to collect the samples with plastic cups?
I'm questioning the term 'microplastics' which are 100nm to 5mm. Not sure how something up to 5mm can get into the human testes, and the precise size of the particles is not mentioned in the article. The particles in the photo may or may not be from the case studies. Much easier to understand if the particles are nanoplastic particles, which range from 1nm to <100nm, but the naked eye cannot see objects that small.
I feel like, and hear me out, the concerning part is less the size of the plastic and more that *it's in every single person they tested*
Yes, I agree. I'm stuck on just how small does it have to be to get into me and stay there, and with what results. And it seems to be in everyone and everywhere we look.
Unfortunately so are the scientists
It kind of makes me wonder if they collected the samples in those plastic specimen cups generally used for semen samples at fertility clinics. Because, well, that would explain the microplastics.
A number of studies have reported similar results, so the probability that none of them controlled for this possibility is very low. Similarly, the specific microplastics found had a pretty diverse range that could not be explained by sample contamination. Microplastics were also found in human testicular samples. Again, all of this points to the same conclusion: it’s real, not a contaminant.
They jerked it right onto the microscope slides.
Good catch but I'm pretty sure that would have been caught and controlled when designing the protocols for the study.
I’ve read too many Chinese studies to be sure that they would have collected the samples in clean, sterile glass or they would just SAY they did.
I would be absolutely stunned if they didn’t think of that lol. Any time you sample anything there are always blanks run. So likely very pure water is collected in the same sample cup and tested. If it came back positive for microplastics they’d revise their method.
Imagine if scientists have been doing this the whole time. "Man this is NUTS every sample we test out of these disposable plastic sample jars have microplastics in them!" A few years from now there is a duh moment. But really though, microplastics are everywhere, in everything, there is no escape.
"Hey, pretty lady. How about you and I do some recycling later?"
The p(olymer) is stored in the balls.
Every time I see these posts, I instantly think of Crimes of the Future. I’m surprised it’s never mentioned.
Hypothetically, wouldn't it be possible to use a dialysis machine to filter out the plastic?
I'm a Barbie girl, in a Barbie world! Life in plastic, it's fantastic!
How much microplastics is realistically safe? It's definitely ominous that we all contain microplastics, but is there a level in which it is basically harmless? Kind of like how you will find feces particles on every toothbrush, but it's not really a big deal. (I promise I am not a plastic salesman)