Comment on oops
ekky@sopuli.xyz 3 months ago
Plastic gotta be this age’s lead/quicksilver.
AHorseWithNoNeigh@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 months ago
interdimensionalmeme@lemmy.ml 3 months ago
Except plastic doesn’t really seem to do anything. It just “is there”. Unless you swallow enough of it to clog something, it doesn’t seem to do anything.
We’ve seens lots of “it might interefere with hormones”, but that part is always to be confirmed in the next research grant request and then we never hear about it again.
exasperation@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 months ago
Plastics are a broad category. But specific plasticizers, like BPA, have been demonstrated to cause specific endocrine issues, up to and including a causal link to certain cancers, miscarriages, and other reproductive/immune issues. And it’s not just correlations being found, as the research is showing the mechanism of action by actually inducing the effects in vitro.
And so when a particular plasticizer has been shown to be harmful, the research goes into other chemically similar plasticizers to see whether they have biological effects, as well. BPS is another plasticizer that is being studied, as it is chemically similar to BPA.
So we haven’t shown that all microplastics are bad. I’m skeptical that these effects would extend to all plastics. But some common compounds that are present in many plastics are a cause for concern, and the difficulty in treating water or waste for microplastics in general means that some of those harmful compounds are present in lots of places where we’d rather not.
We moved from leaded gasoline to unleaded gasoline based on the specific dangers attributable to lead itself. We can do the same for the specific compounds in our plastics shown to be harmful. Maybe the end result is that we have a lot of safer plastics remaining. But your comment seems to suggest that we not even try.
interdimensionalmeme@lemmy.ml 3 months ago
I’m more concerned about useless and damaging, performative actions against plastic.
Of course what we need is plastic monomers that are neither carcinogenic nor hormone disrupters. We should stop dumping the stuff into the river. Poisonned blastic with bromine should be labelled in a was that makes it easy to identity. We should breed yeast that can east plastic and keep them in giesters.
brachiosaurus@mander.xyz 3 months ago
I’m more concerned about useless and damaging, performative actions against plastic.
such as?
MentalEdge@sopuli.xyz 3 months ago
It is. Along with PFAS.
interdimensionalmeme@lemmy.ml 3 months ago
The PFAS/PFOA controversy, is mostly about banning these commodity products so that the proprietary, non-commodity alternatives by western companies can become the only high temperature dry lubricant on sale.
Maybe in another 60 years we’ll have the same controversy about them !
Hansae@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 months ago
No it isnt, its about the production precursors being literal poison for anything they get into with no chance of breaking down. Its a unusually harmful and persistive compound.
interdimensionalmeme@lemmy.ml 3 months ago
And the current goal is to ban them all wcl.org.uk/transitioning-to-a-pfas-free-economy.a… Leaving us only able to buy the proprietary alternative of an oligopoly, instead of regulating the production of this commodity. End result, we pay for it all and get a degradation in quality.
MentalEdge@sopuli.xyz 3 months ago
Did you at some point read about how some of them, such as the ones used in frying pans, are unlikely to cause problems in the human body, and then completely stopped looking into it further?
It’s a massive group of compounds, some of which currently look to be quite safe, but a significant number of which also have fully verified dangers (especially some compounds required for production).
interdimensionalmeme@lemmy.ml 3 months ago
Yes, I read about it and the teflon on frying pan is explicitely NOT the problem. I understand that pointing to frying pans and saying “PTFE !!” is the attention grabbing thing to do. But there is no danger here.
The problem is the manufacturing plants leaking PFOA/PFAS into their surrounding environment !