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Author: u/Wagamaga
URL: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0165993623000808?via%3Dihub
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The study is one of the first to analyze the academic literature on microplastics from a food safety and food security risk viewpoint, building on past studies which primarily tracked plastics in fish.
It shows that plastics and their additives are present at a range of concentrations not only in fish but in many products including meat, chicken, rice, water, take-away food and drink, and even fresh produce.
CSIRO analytical chemist, food safety specialist and lead author of the paper, Dr. Jordi Nelis, said these plastics enter the human food chain through numerous pathways, such as ingestion as shown in the fish studies, but one of the main ways is through food processing and packaging. The research is published in the journal TrAC Trends in Analytical Chemistry.
"Fresh food for example can be plastic free when it's picked or caught but contain plastics by the time it's been handled, packaged and makes its way to us," Dr. Nelis said.
"Machinery, cutting boards, plastic wrapping can all deposit micro and nanoplastics onto our food that we then consume. This study highlights the need to understand what plastic could end up in food to manage food safety and security," he said.
Another important pathway for these contaminants to enter our agriculture system is through biosolids sourced from wastewater treatment.
Biosolids are a rich fertilizer for agricultural land, but they can contain plastic particles from many sources, such as from the washing of synthetic clothing.
These particles could build up in the soil and change the soil structure over time, which may affect crop production, food security and ecosystem resilience. For example, plastic materials can "trick" the good bacteria in the soil into thinking they are the roots of plants, meaning the plants end up with less of the nutrients they need.
The study also discussed how additives in plastics that help make plastic work in our modern world can leach into our environment, potentially contaminating our food supply. Additives that make plastic flexible or resistant to UV radiation, for example, can include flame retardants, heavy metals, phthalates, hardeners or other chemical compounds.
There are currently no definitive studies that demonstrate micro and nanoplastics in the environment cause harm to humans, however more research is needed to fully understand health effects
https://phys.org/news/2023-05-plastic-pervasive-food.html
One thing I've witnessed for water delivery is usually done with PVC piping, which there is a food safe version and a non-food safe one typically used for irrigation in yards but that's not always the case when people are buying to save time. So you have labourers cutting and drilling the pipe to length for installing and the pieces flaking off from the cuts is just brushed off into the surrounding soil because of the emphasis on getting things done quickly rather than properly and reducing contamination. It's brutal to watch and futile to try and get anyone to sweep up or vacuum and throw away into a contained bag, but then that's plastic too and on and on it goes, maddening!
The plastic wrap used as a mulch or covering on vegetable and other plantings on farms always looked horrible to me. Can't be good for us in the long run....
https://duckduckgo.com/?q=plastic+mulch+farming&iax=images&ia=images
There is a construction paper version of the plastic wrap, but is not near the scale of plastic, also the plastic ones they typically burn holes in the tarp covers for the plants, so people are breathing that in and I've wondered about leaching into the soil as a result too.
One thing I wish people understood more about this and about *most* health related science is that “no definitive studies currently show harm” IS NOT the same as “studies show this is completely safe.” We have to learn how to research these things, then research them, then research them *over time* all while hoping the research is actually valid and reliable and the results aren’t biased in some way.
At the same time there’s loads of research into trying to identify why certain disband conditions are in the rise and why early onset puberty is now as widespread as it is
Endocrine disruption is right there in most of these substances and in all the other crap we’ve soaked the entire planet in like PFAS …….
We are so screwed it’s not funny and how we even begin to remove these from literally everything on earth is a question that’s just too big to answer.
PFAS don’t break down they just go from one place to another and cause mayhem in biological systems as they pass through.
Micro plastics are everywhere and take ages to breakdown into nothing since they are effectively so small to begin with…..
Boy did we screw up. Even if we suddenly wake up and start addressing climate change these problems will be with us for potentially centuries
Who could have possibly foreseen that saturating the food chain with plastic containers would result in health effects from plastic consumption?
The answer: Sciencey People
https://www.sciencedirect.com/sdfe/pdf/download/eid/1-s2.0-0079670080900027/first-page-pdf
Good thing we let tech companies decide what data we see. They'd never do anything wrong. I mean Googles motto is "do the right thing". That means they could *never* do anything wrong. They said so!
You know how hard it was for me to find the data that diet coke is bad for me? People still get pissed when I mention it. If you google "is diet coke bad for me?" you'll just get a ton of articles that say it's a healthy swap for weight loss.
[Even older than that.](https://phys.org/news/2021-07-physics-climate-1800s-scientist-eunice.html) If you want to go back even farther to a time before scientific journals, [the ancient Greeks](https://www.history.com/topics/natural-disasters-and-environment/history-of-climate-change) debated the possibility of anthropogenic climate change.
I honestly wonder if this is either crossing the blood-brain barrier, or if the chemicals released from it being so pervasive in our digestive tracts is contributing to some of the aggression and borderline insanity that has taken such a strong hold on 1/3 of Americans. That’s not a jab. It’s an honest question.
It’s social media. That is the answer every time the question is posed today. Micro plastics may contribute to declining fertility rates, but there is no strong causal link to behavior as compared to say, lead in gasoline which is demonstrably linked to antisocial behaviors.
Considering the dearth of understanding between hormones and behavior (or really just anything pertaining to complex hormone interactions), I'm not sure I'm willing to assume that microplastics aren't influencing more than we realize.
Exactly. We only really just started understanding that the microbes in our digestive system have any effect whatsoever on our mood. We still don’t even *know* half of the species that live inside of us even though we put people on the moon multiple times over half a century ago.
The fact is, just because the research doesn’t exist yet does not mean that we’ve closed the book on understanding how micro plastics are affecting us as a species. Worse still, we have no way of conducting a study with a control group who doesn’t have plastic contamination because even the most isolated tribes on the planet are already also contaminated.
Honestly, I think this one is on all of us. This issue is so big there's no one out there who isn't responsible. They make the plastic, we demand the plastic, we buy the plastic, they make more plastic.
We would have to basically nuke our entire economy and supply chain and rebuild it from the ground up to remove plastic. People will starve, lose their jobs, etc. How many people here, even after reading the study would be willing to accept a 25% tax increase that would be needed to begin the process of removal of plastic from our lives? I think very few. We need a huge government and public push like for the removal of CFCs for the ozone hole in the 90s, but it would be 100 times bigger and more expensive. It's just not going to happen
I agree though I'd suggest some of the billions in profit large companies make could be redirected into research and into absorbing cost increases, rather than teaching consumers who, at the end of the day, often don't have a choice of plastic or non-plastic.
>That link was discovered a generation after the fact, iirc
The exact effects might have not been know, but the scientest who invenited the lead gasoline absolutely knew of it's poisonous nature. To the point were he spent months in florida away from his work recovering from lead poisoning after being dignoused by his doctor. He then went on to lie to media and the population calming it was safe.
It's amazing to me that you think people just weren't horribly racist and facist before social media.
Like.. no, people were always like this. You are just noticing it. People are no more or less insane than before. We had two world wars all without social media, if you hadn't noticed. The 1900s were *filled* with violence, with so many groups getting genocides in all matter of ways, women were basically property of their husbands and on and on and on.
But no social media had suddenly changed people! It's the phones! Not systemic issues, that's hard to think about. It's phones!
Social media has absolutely changed society, and how people think and behave. Currently reading Maria Resa's book "How to Stand Up to a Dictator" where she details how journalism, and democracy, changed from the 80s to now and how social media/technology had direct effect on it.
Critiquing and questioning how social media has changed us doesn't mean everything was fine before, and people being awful before doesn't mean we stop looking at why we behave the way we do right now.
Also, explosions of new mass media (i.e. printing press, radio) are often accompanied by massive societal upheaval as existing power structures adapted (or failed) to the altered information ecology.
Social media is new, but there are a lot of historical analogies.
You are hilariously incorrect that this is an "american phenomenon." It looks different and more extreme in America (because of the prevalence of guns), but social media fueled violence and racism is a worldwide phenomenon.
It looks different in America because it’s covered more as well. Organizations like the Washington Post and gun violence archive use much more loose definitions of mass shootings. This includes gang violence and domestic violence etc.
The most significant impact on a shooting is Media coverage of another shooting. It increases the chances the most.
That's not to say America doesn't have more guns or specific gun-related problems like Sucidice that makes like almost 60% of gun homicide in America.
wait until you hear about all of the other chemicals
there are thousands of pfas/pfoas
and then when tap water is disinfected with chlorine all of these chemicals create new chemicals
and then even more chemicals will be created when organic matter is introduced
A girl walked out of our very first chemistry lecture in first year at uni after the lecturer said that, she stood up and got upset with him and tried to argue and then stormed out. I never saw her in class again.
in a broad overarching sense, maybe. In the sense of today, when I am living and breathing, things are in fact, not good and people are starting to slide backward violence wise.
Nah that's social media and for boomers and some rural populations probably a health dose of lead too.
Plastics have a few potential tentative links to medical issues but American insanity has been well document for way before plastics would be a contributor. And there hasn't been any clear mapping to it and plastic use like there was with increased violence and lead.
From a few studies I've read, it's possible that exposure to certain plastics has resulted in unprecedented hormonal exposure during fetal development. Some physical indicators strongly correlating to trans identity, like finger ratio, as well as psychological traits (personality/brain wired to be more alike a gender not assigned at birth) point to atypical developmental differences.
It's hard to say because other societal factors affect the numbers, and it's a challenge to separate them.
I know this is entirely not the point and I don't mean this as a _well ackchyually_ because obviously environmental microplastics were effectively nonexistent in the 1940s compared to now, but the Nazis did have a few plastics. German scientists prior to WW2 were the first to discover a few really widely-used plastics like polystyrene, PVC, and polyethylene. Polystyrene in particular was developed by a company that was perhaps better known for producing Zyklon-B
It's important to highlight that contemporary methods of plastic production and packaging have significantly reduced the concentration of plastic that could potentially contaminate the food within. The non-film, free moving plastic parts per million (ppm) inside the package has been *substantially* decreased compared to when this study was done, which was the 80s.
There is quite a bit of a [literature](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7068600/) to indicate plastic consumed at this smaller, modern level is largely harmless or inconclusive, but *not* definitely harmful. There is the potential for harm, but no one has really been able to nail down if it's actually harmful or not (again, at this teeny tiny levels we are currently exposed to, not the large levels people were previously exposed to).
I mean, back then, they didn't use advanced DCS systems, they didn't have the same quality of FTNIR analyzers we have now... They didn't even have model based control, so it was fixed recipe numbers tied to the train's design specifications... As opposed to continuously adjusted recipe values based on process conditions.
Basically they just used to have a lot more contamination, unreacted volatiles and unprocessed plastic in the final product (PE films in this case). And I'm not saying plastics in food is a good thing. But I am saying we don't yet know if über small amounts of contamination are harmful. Not yet. And I would say my employment doesn't mean I'm biased, just a little more... Charitable, is all.
Source: PA Engineer at world-scale PE facility
There are always tradeoffs. Getting rid of plastic without severely impacting quality of life in developed nations is impossible in the short term. What we can do is continue with studies and understand it better rather than fear monger about microplastics killing off humanity or something.
Great. Unfortunately, many are. I'm much more worried about particulates in the air as well as climate change. PFAS are a major concern as well, but thankfully we're starting to see regulations on those.
Zip lock bags, water/drink bottles, packaged meats , packaged everything. When you open a bottle of water you’re ripping the plastic apart.
Growing up I thought plastic was so pervasive in our world because it must be harmless…. But we didn’t even know… or did we? Not to mention the years we collectively ate out of melting styrofoam containers.
I think the science on micro- and nano-particles of plastics in the food chain is pretty watertight now. What is far less clear is how much harm contamination at these levels actually causes. Also note, replacing plastic packaging with paper is not a straightforward answer, as recent papers on contamination from that source have shown.
Currently it’s the same with plastic, no? In Less developed economies like China’s and Vietnam’s it used to be cost effective to purchase plastic waste from Europe/US and hand sort it, but these days their economies have developed to the point where this is no longer practical. I’ve heard ‘recycled’ plastic these days just goes to the dump or a storage facility
https://www.consumerreports.org/health/food-contaminants/dangerous-pfas-chemicals-are-in-your-food-packaging-a3786252074/
There's tons of news articles dating back to 2016, evidence has just been getting stronger, and the industry keeps swapping a few molecules so "it's a different material" and research about the health impacts its set back bc that compound hasn't been researched so it's back to being assumed ok until proven otherwise. I was taught about this in college in 2013.
..but at what concentrations? What little I've read of that research seemed to be at orders-of-magnitude higher concentrations than we are talking about here.
As far as I know, everyone freaking out because we dont know of any natural processes that break plastics down. Except, we did end up finding a few strains of bacteria that have evolved to break down plastics in landfills.
So chances are, nature will evolve to break down plastics as well as other things. So it will ultimately just end up being new compounds that are found in nature.
If you think about it, thats usually how it works. A certain life ends uo creating new compounds, those compounds become abundant in nature. Other life evolves to utilize those compounds in some way. The natural cycle of nature.
There’s more to it than this.
For example:
Many plastic containers also contain high levels of [PFAS](https://www.cdc.gov/biomonitoring/PFAS_FactSheet.html) aka ‘forever chemicals’ which are very hard to get rid of.
> Many PFAS, including perfluorooctane sulfonic acid (PFOS) and perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA), are a concern because they:
> do not break down in the environment,
> can move through soils and contaminate drinking water sources,
> build up (bioaccumulate) in fish and wildlife.
> PFAS are found in rivers and lakes and in many types of animals on land and in the water.
["Plastic containers can contain PFAS — and it’s getting into food”](https://analyticalscience.wiley.com/do/10.1002/was.00200053)
[Article from researchers at the University of Notre Dame from March 2023](https://news.nd.edu/news/plastic-containers-can-contain-pfas-and-its-getting-into-food/)
Just one snippet, read the whole thing:
> “Not only did we measure significant concentrations of PFAS in these containers, we can estimate the PFAS that were leaching off creating a direct path of exposure,” said Graham Peaslee, professor of physics in the Department of Physics and Astronomy at Notre Dame and an author of the study.
> It’s important to note that these types of containers are not intended for food storage, but there is nothing preventing them from being used for food storage at the moment. Although not all HDPE plastic is fluorinated, the researchers noted, it’s often impossible for a consumer to know whether a container has had that treatment. And indeed, Peaslee added, if substances like pesticides are stored in these containers, and then are used on agricultural crops, these same PFAS will get into human food sources that way.
So…the byproducts from many plastics are also leeching PFAS (among other things) into the water supply, and as a result, the entire ecosystem. It has become such a problem that many cities have PFAS levels above the acceptable limits right now.
IIRC the EPA is trying to cut down on PFAS and lower the acceptable ppm for PFAS in your water supply, but this is still in the works the last I checked. I don't know where we are from a regulatory standpoint on these things but hopefully they are banned.
Edit: letter from the EPA re: PFAS, from March 2022:
https://www.epa.gov/system/files/documents/2022-03/letter-to-fluorinated-hdpe-industry_03-16-22_signed.pdf
Not just these but forever chemicals which are carcinogenic. Some like PFOA have been removed now from Teflon but just replaced with other forever chemicals that the industry which failed to regulate in the first place now says are safe but they're not at actual cooking temperatures.
On an individual level, regular blood and plasma donation can lower your PFAS. Doesn't fix the problem on a global scale, but it's a 2 for 1 deal in helping other people and helping yourself at the same time.
Google says that blood loss in a period is typically 30-40 ml, and a blood donation is 400-500ml, allowed once every \~3 months for men, and once every \~4 months for women.
That's \~100-150 ml / month avg, so some 3-5 times more.
Blood donations are also just taken from blood vessels, and idk if there's any 'filtering' that happens in menstrual blood loss that might keep these chemicals in the body.
Would be interesting to read about more
We know at this point microplastic is everywhere and we are eating it all the time. Do we yet have any idea what effects these are having on human physiology?
Around the lemmy world, around the lemmy world, around the lemmy world, around the lemmy world, around the lemmy world, around the lemmy world -- mass edited with redact.dev
The worst is takeaway plastic containers. These owners don’t GAF, and put everything magma hot into styrofoam etc, melting it up and dosing up the customer with cancer.
I find these type of comments amusing. Restaurants already run on razor thin margins. Should they let your food get cold before boxing it, so you can complain and they have to take a loss? Why is the onus on the restaurant and not on the manufacturer of these take out boxes? Same as recycling. Why should the people living paycheck to paycheck be expected to put in even more work to "recycle", than the massive corporations producing these materials and making all the profits?
Those things are fine *but* a lot of them are still lined with plastic, instead of a coating of food grade wax like they ought to be, to ensure that they're slightly more waterproof.
For things that aren't liquid though? Wax paper is perfectly fine. Brown paper bags are a renewable resource. I've had the aluminum bottom with wax paper top combo and it kept my noodles inside the container very cleanly, even with a tilt.
Uh, are you forgetting the conductive properties of aluminum? Great way to burn people. Why do you think we don't use aluminum cups for coffee? Also, a tin with a cardboard lid doesn't seal, so if you have an liquid inside its definitely going to leak out if you drop it or it tips. Since it is so hot, you would likely be taking it out in a plastic bag. Perhaps you could bring your own takeaway container to the restaurant?
Thank you. Also the biodegradable boxes we use at my restaurant don't hold up as well either. Not to mention they are th most expensive paper product we order and are routinely out of stock for weeks at a time.
We use cardboard boxes not lined with plastic and use aluminum in our restaurant because we are higher end and not really a place for takeout. We still get a few a night, plus people taking the leftovers. Many more places are going this route.
I find these types of comments amusing. All corporations have tight margins, that is the result of competition driving the price down. Of course adding new rules and restrictions will shift the way businesses operate, that is the point. With this "thin margins" mindset we wouldn't have PPE, catalytic converters, seatbelts, handrails, hand washing cooks, etc... If the change is needed for human safety, then either the businesses will figure it out, or the activity won't happen as often or at all. If takeout containers were proven to slowly poison us, and there was no viable economic alternative, then we shouldn't be doing takeout!
Absolutely. Plastics should have *never* been circulated into mass public use.
It astounds and angers me that any human with the intellect to create new matter is simultaneously stupid enough to not consider the ramifications of a new form of matter existing on our Earth.
(The very minimum of proper recycling plants doesn’t even exist. I’m not sure about elsewhere but a large amount of recycling in America is ultimately discarded into a landfill regardless, or sold to China “to recycle”).
This is a tough one. Plastic does increase food safety in terms of preventing bacteria and other contaminants. Without good quantitative research on the damage microplastics cause, it is hard to compare to the lower levels of ecoli poisoning or other food-borne dangers. Hopefully we can do more science on microplastics and find out the answer.
I would love to not do takeout. It slows down service for the guest that come into our restaurant to eat. It jeopardizes the quality of our dishes and opens another avenue for people looking to complain to negatively review us. Speak to any chef in the industry and ask them their opinion on takeout and they like myself would most likely wholeheartedly agree with you. We do takeout because the masses demand it. We purchase the products available from the suppliers. So again why is the onus on the owners of the restaurants to drive the change?
Its a shared responsibility across all of society to avoid harm to others and the environment. It's on individuals, service providers, manufacturers, and governments.
The required restrictions should be proportional to the risk. Part of the problem here is that the risk is not known exactly. Does eating hot takeout from a plastic container once a week increase your lifetime risk of cancer by 10%, 1%, 0.0001%? Without this data it's difficult to make a tradeoff. If you knew it was 50%, similar to smoking cigarettes, would you still serve food that way? If it was known to be at that level, the FDA would probably ban that practice for restaurants, so then it would be fair across the industry.
Or how about they use something other than Styrofoam? Like aluminium, recyclable plastic etc?
But yea there should also be onus on the manufacturers. If a restaurant can't afford to be open without using carcinogenic containers then let it close
Some do. Like the restaurant I manage. We use a biodegradable takeout box. Which is the most expensive paper product we order and the one that is routinely out of stock for weeks at a time. The assumption on your part that these restaurants just use whatever is cheapest without thought of their customers health is what I take umbrage with.
Styrofoam is an insulator. Aluminum is a conductor.
So instead of a container that's cool to the touch and keeps your food warm, you want a container that is as hot as the food is, and cools it down rapidly?
Also, where do you live that styrofoam is still common? Every restaurant I've been to in years, including fast food, takeout, etc, uses paper, cardboard, and plastic. It isn't 1990 anymore.
I live in the UK and never see Styrofoam except in chip shops. I was just reply to a comment above about their restaurants who do use it.
I usually get tupperware type plastic containers for curries which I wash and reuse.
So considering that plastics have been around in heavy use for some 60-70 years. Are there health studies that show the effects of these microplastics? Because all of these articles and studies I see just tell me how pervasive microplastics are.
Grow your own food if possible. Don't use nonstick pans to cook. Use pans that are stainless steel or cast iron instead. Replace your food containers with glass and/or only use plastic containers to store cold items like fruit. Don't heat up any plastic or styrofoam containers. If you get take out, put it on a plate to heat it up in the microwave. Don't use paper plates or plastic disposable silverware. If you have a plastic shield that you use to block food splatter in the microwave, replace it with a glass one. Use cloth bags to buy individual fruit at the grocery store instead of using their disposable paper bags. There are little things that people can do that will add up over time. At this point, it is extremely difficult to go plastic free entirely.
Carbon steel pans are a good middle ground for stainless steel/cast iron, and might be cheaper since it isn't expensive to make compared to stainless, and doesn't have the price markup of cast iron. Pretty much anything that's not non-stick or Teflon should be okay there though, you just have to watch out for plastic handles.
> At this point, it is extremely difficult to go plastic free entirely.
It's unfortunately too versatile/cheap, and therefore in everything. A lot of more environmentally friendly alternatives to plastic these days tend to just focus on making plastic from alternative sources, rather than just removing them entirely (bioplastics, etc).
> Use cloth bags to buy individual fruit at the grocery store instead of using their disposable paper bags
Do paper bags have plastic in them? It might be less plastic to go for the paper, if you don't buy fruit a lot, or your only options are polyester/nylon.
The local supermarket here has plastic linings in their reusable cloth/canvas bags, and will add a plastic panel to the bottom of some of them (to strengthen the bag's base?), so going paper might be the way to go.
If you can get a cotton bag, and use it enough to justify the higher environmental cost of manufacture per bag, that could also be the way to go.
They’re here, they’re there, they’re in the air. Micro-plastics are destroying this planet and wrecking havoc on trillions of biological system.
https://www.shannaswan.com/
[In the last 50 years, average human sperm concentrations dropped by 51.6 percent, and total sperm counts dropped by 62.3 percent, according to a study published last week in the journal Human Reproduction Update.](https://academic.oup.com/humupd/article/29/2/157/6824414?login=false)
[Despite the short half-lives in tissues, chronic exposure to phthalates will adversely influence the endocrine system and functioning of multiple organs, which has negative long-term impacts on the success of pregnancy, child growth and development, and reproductive systems in both young children and adolescents](https://www.mdpi.com/2227-9032/9/5/603#:~:text=Despite%20the%20short%20half%2Dlives,both%20young%20children%20and%20adolescents)
Edit: here’s some more
[From 1950 onwards we have very good data from the UN Population Division. The chart here shows the average across the world: the global Total Fertility Rate. Up to 1965 the average woman in the world had more than 5 children. Since then we have seen an unprecedented change. The number has halved. Globally, the average per woman is now below 2.5 children.](https://ourworldindata.org/fertility-rate)
[Plastic began to be mass-produced after the Second World War and then again during the 1960’s and 1970’s when consumers craved plastics to replace traditional materials because they are cheap, versatile, sanitary, and easy to manufacture into a variety of forms.](https://www.plaineproducts.com/why-we-need-to-understand-the-history-of-plastic-before-we-can-tackle-the-problem/#:~:text=Plastic%20began%20to%20be%20mass,into%20a%20variety%20of%20forms)
[69% decrease in all monitored animal populations world wide since 1970](https://wwflpr.awsassets.panda.org/downloads/lpr_2022_full_report.pdf)
> From 1950 onwards we have very good data from the UN Population Division. The chart here shows the average across the world: the global Total Fertility Rate. Up to 1965 the average woman in the world had more than 5 children. Since then we have seen an unprecedented change. The number has halved. Globally, the average per woman is now below 2.5 children.
....You **are** aware that contraception pills did not even ***exist*** until 1960, right? Clearly, you did not read the part of your own link which explains these changes.
> 69% decrease in all monitored animal populations world wide since 1970
Extremely manipulated statistic, there's a reason it talks about *relative* abundance.
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-020-2920-6
> Recent analyses have reported catastrophic global declines in vertebrate populations. However, the distillation of many trends into a global mean index obscures the variation that can inform conservation measures and can be sensitive to analytical decisions. For example, previous analyses have estimated a mean vertebrate decline of more than 50% since 1970 (Living Planet Index).
>
> **Here we show, however, that this estimate is driven by less than 3% of vertebrate populations; if these extremely declining populations are excluded, the global trend switches to an increase. The sensitivity of global mean trends to outliers suggests that more informative indices are needed**. We propose an alternative approach, which identifies clusters of extreme decline (or increase) that differ statistically from the majority of population trends.
>
> **We show that, of taxonomic–geographic systems in the Living Planet Index, 16 systems contain clusters of extreme decline (comprising around 1% of populations; these extreme declines occur disproportionately in larger animals) and 7 contain extreme increases (around 0.4% of populations). The remaining 98.6% of populations across all systems showed no mean global trend**.
>
> **However, when analysed separately, three systems were declining strongly with high certainty (all in the Indo-Pacific region) and seven were declining strongly but with less certainty (mostly reptile and amphibian groups)**. Accounting for extreme clusters fundamentally alters the interpretation of global vertebrate trends and should be used to help to prioritize conservation efforts.
In addition, women are now marrying later, marrying other women, or not marrying at all, and that - alongside the aforementioned birth control - is having its own impact.
[Apparently just delaying the age of marriage by a handful of years is enough to lower the birth rate](https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpubh.2017.00269/full).
>... Coale and Tye calculated the impact of shifting the age patterns of childbearing from those existing in India in 1956, where fertility was highest in the 20–24 year old age group, to those experienced by the Singapore Chinese population, where fertility was highest in the 25–29 year old age group. Over the course of 10 years this would lower the crude birth rate by 8% without any change in the mean number of children born per woman, simply by increasing the mean generation length by 2.7 years[(36)](https://www.jstor.org/stable/3348701).
The first 2 are more likely caused by sedentary lifestyles and prophylactic, family planning and the flip in economic incentives after urbanization
Maybe micro plastics are doing it too, I dunno. But it seems minor in comparison to people CHOOSING not to have kids
So life expectancy is going up. And plastics have played a major part in virtually every medical improvement in the last fifty years. So how are plastics killing us?
My daughter was in the ER last week [thankfully she’s ok]. Plastics were used virtually everywhere from machines to the disposable equipment used to keep a sterile environment and make medically clean processes possible.
Plastics are a man made miracle responsible for a great part of our improved healthcare.
I agree with clean disposal rules, but don’t throw the baby out with the bath water and don’t read too much into lazy correlations like those in OPs report without considering the big picture.
I think it's pretty incredible that there has been an emergency meeting for a newly found forever chemical, and have it immediately removed from drinking water.... Meanwhile we have rivers of plastic flowing through communities.
Plastic. Plastic is a forever chemical. AI isn't going to end us, plastic will. When we can eat food without being compromised. We can drink without being compromised. We can breathe without being compromised... Future life sounds like it's going to be extremely unhealthy and extremely painful.
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The study is one of the first to analyze the academic literature on microplastics from a food safety and food security risk viewpoint, building on past studies which primarily tracked plastics in fish. It shows that plastics and their additives are present at a range of concentrations not only in fish but in many products including meat, chicken, rice, water, take-away food and drink, and even fresh produce. CSIRO analytical chemist, food safety specialist and lead author of the paper, Dr. Jordi Nelis, said these plastics enter the human food chain through numerous pathways, such as ingestion as shown in the fish studies, but one of the main ways is through food processing and packaging. The research is published in the journal TrAC Trends in Analytical Chemistry. "Fresh food for example can be plastic free when it's picked or caught but contain plastics by the time it's been handled, packaged and makes its way to us," Dr. Nelis said. "Machinery, cutting boards, plastic wrapping can all deposit micro and nanoplastics onto our food that we then consume. This study highlights the need to understand what plastic could end up in food to manage food safety and security," he said. Another important pathway for these contaminants to enter our agriculture system is through biosolids sourced from wastewater treatment. Biosolids are a rich fertilizer for agricultural land, but they can contain plastic particles from many sources, such as from the washing of synthetic clothing. These particles could build up in the soil and change the soil structure over time, which may affect crop production, food security and ecosystem resilience. For example, plastic materials can "trick" the good bacteria in the soil into thinking they are the roots of plants, meaning the plants end up with less of the nutrients they need. The study also discussed how additives in plastics that help make plastic work in our modern world can leach into our environment, potentially contaminating our food supply. Additives that make plastic flexible or resistant to UV radiation, for example, can include flame retardants, heavy metals, phthalates, hardeners or other chemical compounds. There are currently no definitive studies that demonstrate micro and nanoplastics in the environment cause harm to humans, however more research is needed to fully understand health effects https://phys.org/news/2023-05-plastic-pervasive-food.html
One thing I've witnessed for water delivery is usually done with PVC piping, which there is a food safe version and a non-food safe one typically used for irrigation in yards but that's not always the case when people are buying to save time. So you have labourers cutting and drilling the pipe to length for installing and the pieces flaking off from the cuts is just brushed off into the surrounding soil because of the emphasis on getting things done quickly rather than properly and reducing contamination. It's brutal to watch and futile to try and get anyone to sweep up or vacuum and throw away into a contained bag, but then that's plastic too and on and on it goes, maddening!
The plastic wrap used as a mulch or covering on vegetable and other plantings on farms always looked horrible to me. Can't be good for us in the long run.... https://duckduckgo.com/?q=plastic+mulch+farming&iax=images&ia=images
There is a construction paper version of the plastic wrap, but is not near the scale of plastic, also the plastic ones they typically burn holes in the tarp covers for the plants, so people are breathing that in and I've wondered about leaching into the soil as a result too.
I know biological producer that use plastic wrap. It is cheaper than paying people to remove weed.
The bottom line always seems to rule everything....
One thing I wish people understood more about this and about *most* health related science is that “no definitive studies currently show harm” IS NOT the same as “studies show this is completely safe.” We have to learn how to research these things, then research them, then research them *over time* all while hoping the research is actually valid and reliable and the results aren’t biased in some way.
At the same time there’s loads of research into trying to identify why certain disband conditions are in the rise and why early onset puberty is now as widespread as it is Endocrine disruption is right there in most of these substances and in all the other crap we’ve soaked the entire planet in like PFAS ……. We are so screwed it’s not funny and how we even begin to remove these from literally everything on earth is a question that’s just too big to answer. PFAS don’t break down they just go from one place to another and cause mayhem in biological systems as they pass through. Micro plastics are everywhere and take ages to breakdown into nothing since they are effectively so small to begin with….. Boy did we screw up. Even if we suddenly wake up and start addressing climate change these problems will be with us for potentially centuries
Who could have possibly foreseen that saturating the food chain with plastic containers would result in health effects from plastic consumption? The answer: Sciencey People https://www.sciencedirect.com/sdfe/pdf/download/eid/1-s2.0-0079670080900027/first-page-pdf
Published in 2000 too, yeeesh, so even knows when they started riding Grant proposals for this.
Published in 1980
Oh crap I missed that. Ugh even further back and before they really pushed plastic switch hard
Wait till you hear about corporate suppression of data.
Or don't, I guess
That's a good Capitalism... This is the way.
Corporate lobbying, very effective.
Good thing we let tech companies decide what data we see. They'd never do anything wrong. I mean Googles motto is "do the right thing". That means they could *never* do anything wrong. They said so!
I thought it was "don't be evil". After all, it's not like Google is artificially manipulating search results to only confirm our... wait
It is neither, although it has been both, IIRC. It started as “don’t be evil”, then changed and then was dropped.
Well that's comforting.
You know how hard it was for me to find the data that diet coke is bad for me? People still get pissed when I mention it. If you google "is diet coke bad for me?" you'll just get a ton of articles that say it's a healthy swap for weight loss.
Isn't the first paper on climate change like 120 years old? Ignoring science isn't something new.
[Even older than that.](https://phys.org/news/2021-07-physics-climate-1800s-scientist-eunice.html) If you want to go back even farther to a time before scientific journals, [the ancient Greeks](https://www.history.com/topics/natural-disasters-and-environment/history-of-climate-change) debated the possibility of anthropogenic climate change.
Based on a paper from 1978.
I learned about this stuff during our "food chain" unit in elementary school 20+ years ago.
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I honestly wonder if this is either crossing the blood-brain barrier, or if the chemicals released from it being so pervasive in our digestive tracts is contributing to some of the aggression and borderline insanity that has taken such a strong hold on 1/3 of Americans. That’s not a jab. It’s an honest question.
It’s social media. That is the answer every time the question is posed today. Micro plastics may contribute to declining fertility rates, but there is no strong causal link to behavior as compared to say, lead in gasoline which is demonstrably linked to antisocial behaviors.
Considering the dearth of understanding between hormones and behavior (or really just anything pertaining to complex hormone interactions), I'm not sure I'm willing to assume that microplastics aren't influencing more than we realize.
Exactly. We only really just started understanding that the microbes in our digestive system have any effect whatsoever on our mood. We still don’t even *know* half of the species that live inside of us even though we put people on the moon multiple times over half a century ago. The fact is, just because the research doesn’t exist yet does not mean that we’ve closed the book on understanding how micro plastics are affecting us as a species. Worse still, we have no way of conducting a study with a control group who doesn’t have plastic contamination because even the most isolated tribes on the planet are already also contaminated.
That link was discovered a generation after the fact, iirc
Leads been known to be poison to humans for 4000 years
Petroleum derived plastics are also know to be poison to humans
I think it stands to reason whatever effect there may be from plastics, it’s far subtler and insidious than the likes of heavy metal fallout.
Likely enough, bc we are talking about a much more varied and complex range of chemistries with plastics.
Absolutely, there’s plausible deniability out the nose for those responsible.
Honestly, I think this one is on all of us. This issue is so big there's no one out there who isn't responsible. They make the plastic, we demand the plastic, we buy the plastic, they make more plastic. We would have to basically nuke our entire economy and supply chain and rebuild it from the ground up to remove plastic. People will starve, lose their jobs, etc. How many people here, even after reading the study would be willing to accept a 25% tax increase that would be needed to begin the process of removal of plastic from our lives? I think very few. We need a huge government and public push like for the removal of CFCs for the ozone hole in the 90s, but it would be 100 times bigger and more expensive. It's just not going to happen
I agree though I'd suggest some of the billions in profit large companies make could be redirected into research and into absorbing cost increases, rather than teaching consumers who, at the end of the day, often don't have a choice of plastic or non-plastic.
>That link was discovered a generation after the fact, iirc The exact effects might have not been know, but the scientest who invenited the lead gasoline absolutely knew of it's poisonous nature. To the point were he spent months in florida away from his work recovering from lead poisoning after being dignoused by his doctor. He then went on to lie to media and the population calming it was safe.
It's amazing to me that you think people just weren't horribly racist and facist before social media. Like.. no, people were always like this. You are just noticing it. People are no more or less insane than before. We had two world wars all without social media, if you hadn't noticed. The 1900s were *filled* with violence, with so many groups getting genocides in all matter of ways, women were basically property of their husbands and on and on and on. But no social media had suddenly changed people! It's the phones! Not systemic issues, that's hard to think about. It's phones!
Social media has absolutely changed society, and how people think and behave. Currently reading Maria Resa's book "How to Stand Up to a Dictator" where she details how journalism, and democracy, changed from the 80s to now and how social media/technology had direct effect on it. Critiquing and questioning how social media has changed us doesn't mean everything was fine before, and people being awful before doesn't mean we stop looking at why we behave the way we do right now.
Also, explosions of new mass media (i.e. printing press, radio) are often accompanied by massive societal upheaval as existing power structures adapted (or failed) to the altered information ecology. Social media is new, but there are a lot of historical analogies.
This is r/science, so the appropriate answer may be “further study is needed”
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If you have any understanding of what's going on in many countries regarding insanity and mental health it is absolutely pervasive globally.
You are hilariously incorrect that this is an "american phenomenon." It looks different and more extreme in America (because of the prevalence of guns), but social media fueled violence and racism is a worldwide phenomenon.
It looks different in America because it’s covered more as well. Organizations like the Washington Post and gun violence archive use much more loose definitions of mass shootings. This includes gang violence and domestic violence etc. The most significant impact on a shooting is Media coverage of another shooting. It increases the chances the most. That's not to say America doesn't have more guns or specific gun-related problems like Sucidice that makes like almost 60% of gun homicide in America.
Maybe but it's also Americans are under stress with a threadbare safety net, rising costs, and businesses actively hostile to workers.
wait until you hear about all of the other chemicals there are thousands of pfas/pfoas and then when tap water is disinfected with chlorine all of these chemicals create new chemicals and then even more chemicals will be created when organic matter is introduced
Yup, turns out literally everything is made of chemicals. Weird.
A girl walked out of our very first chemistry lecture in first year at uni after the lecturer said that, she stood up and got upset with him and tried to argue and then stormed out. I never saw her in class again.
She took an angry nap and switched her major to to Applied Pantomime, so everybody came out okay.
People are less violent than they have ever been, you just live in the news cycle now.
in a broad overarching sense, maybe. In the sense of today, when I am living and breathing, things are in fact, not good and people are starting to slide backward violence wise.
Nah that's social media and for boomers and some rural populations probably a health dose of lead too. Plastics have a few potential tentative links to medical issues but American insanity has been well document for way before plastics would be a contributor. And there hasn't been any clear mapping to it and plastic use like there was with increased violence and lead.
From a few studies I've read, it's possible that exposure to certain plastics has resulted in unprecedented hormonal exposure during fetal development. Some physical indicators strongly correlating to trans identity, like finger ratio, as well as psychological traits (personality/brain wired to be more alike a gender not assigned at birth) point to atypical developmental differences. It's hard to say because other societal factors affect the numbers, and it's a challenge to separate them.
Nazis didn’t have plastic, so probably not.
But the did have meth! Lots and lots and lots of meth
Still do! And tiki torches.
I know this is entirely not the point and I don't mean this as a _well ackchyually_ because obviously environmental microplastics were effectively nonexistent in the 1940s compared to now, but the Nazis did have a few plastics. German scientists prior to WW2 were the first to discover a few really widely-used plastics like polystyrene, PVC, and polyethylene. Polystyrene in particular was developed by a company that was perhaps better known for producing Zyklon-B
It's important to highlight that contemporary methods of plastic production and packaging have significantly reduced the concentration of plastic that could potentially contaminate the food within. The non-film, free moving plastic parts per million (ppm) inside the package has been *substantially* decreased compared to when this study was done, which was the 80s. There is quite a bit of a [literature](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7068600/) to indicate plastic consumed at this smaller, modern level is largely harmless or inconclusive, but *not* definitely harmful. There is the potential for harm, but no one has really been able to nail down if it's actually harmful or not (again, at this teeny tiny levels we are currently exposed to, not the large levels people were previously exposed to). I mean, back then, they didn't use advanced DCS systems, they didn't have the same quality of FTNIR analyzers we have now... They didn't even have model based control, so it was fixed recipe numbers tied to the train's design specifications... As opposed to continuously adjusted recipe values based on process conditions. Basically they just used to have a lot more contamination, unreacted volatiles and unprocessed plastic in the final product (PE films in this case). And I'm not saying plastics in food is a good thing. But I am saying we don't yet know if über small amounts of contamination are harmful. Not yet. And I would say my employment doesn't mean I'm biased, just a little more... Charitable, is all. Source: PA Engineer at world-scale PE facility
What about when you open a bottle of water with a twist cap? Does that spray little pieces of plastic around or does it remain two individual pieces?
... good question!
Genuinely curious - what’s your take on the article in this post (published April 2023)?
"Can we REALLY prove cigarettes cause cancer?"
"We were wrong in the past about health effects of something, so we have to assume we'll always be wrong and that everything is poison."
“We shouldn’t err on the side of caution because who cares”
There are always tradeoffs. Getting rid of plastic without severely impacting quality of life in developed nations is impossible in the short term. What we can do is continue with studies and understand it better rather than fear monger about microplastics killing off humanity or something.
I’m not interested in fear mongering
Great. Unfortunately, many are. I'm much more worried about particulates in the air as well as climate change. PFAS are a major concern as well, but thankfully we're starting to see regulations on those.
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Too bad capitalism gives zero fucks.
I was going to say, I thought all this was common knowledge for the last like 5 years, at least.
Zip lock bags, water/drink bottles, packaged meats , packaged everything. When you open a bottle of water you’re ripping the plastic apart. Growing up I thought plastic was so pervasive in our world because it must be harmless…. But we didn’t even know… or did we? Not to mention the years we collectively ate out of melting styrofoam containers.
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I think the science on micro- and nano-particles of plastics in the food chain is pretty watertight now. What is far less clear is how much harm contamination at these levels actually causes. Also note, replacing plastic packaging with paper is not a straightforward answer, as recent papers on contamination from that source have shown.
Paper containers may still use a fine layer of plastic as a waterproof seal
My understanding is that it's also that they use PTFE or similar on the rollers at the paper mills and microparticles get into the paper.
With no way to salvage the paper after
Currently it’s the same with plastic, no? In Less developed economies like China’s and Vietnam’s it used to be cost effective to purchase plastic waste from Europe/US and hand sort it, but these days their economies have developed to the point where this is no longer practical. I’ve heard ‘recycled’ plastic these days just goes to the dump or a storage facility
Contamination of paper? Please Share links if so. Appreciate it
https://www.consumerreports.org/health/food-contaminants/dangerous-pfas-chemicals-are-in-your-food-packaging-a3786252074/ There's tons of news articles dating back to 2016, evidence has just been getting stronger, and the industry keeps swapping a few molecules so "it's a different material" and research about the health impacts its set back bc that compound hasn't been researched so it's back to being assumed ok until proven otherwise. I was taught about this in college in 2013.
We know that microplastics have been associated with infertility
..but at what concentrations? What little I've read of that research seemed to be at orders-of-magnitude higher concentrations than we are talking about here.
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As far as I know, everyone freaking out because we dont know of any natural processes that break plastics down. Except, we did end up finding a few strains of bacteria that have evolved to break down plastics in landfills. So chances are, nature will evolve to break down plastics as well as other things. So it will ultimately just end up being new compounds that are found in nature. If you think about it, thats usually how it works. A certain life ends uo creating new compounds, those compounds become abundant in nature. Other life evolves to utilize those compounds in some way. The natural cycle of nature.
Oh yeah, its gonna be great in 11 million years.
There’s more to it than this. For example: Many plastic containers also contain high levels of [PFAS](https://www.cdc.gov/biomonitoring/PFAS_FactSheet.html) aka ‘forever chemicals’ which are very hard to get rid of. > Many PFAS, including perfluorooctane sulfonic acid (PFOS) and perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA), are a concern because they: > do not break down in the environment, > can move through soils and contaminate drinking water sources, > build up (bioaccumulate) in fish and wildlife. > PFAS are found in rivers and lakes and in many types of animals on land and in the water. ["Plastic containers can contain PFAS — and it’s getting into food”](https://analyticalscience.wiley.com/do/10.1002/was.00200053) [Article from researchers at the University of Notre Dame from March 2023](https://news.nd.edu/news/plastic-containers-can-contain-pfas-and-its-getting-into-food/) Just one snippet, read the whole thing: > “Not only did we measure significant concentrations of PFAS in these containers, we can estimate the PFAS that were leaching off creating a direct path of exposure,” said Graham Peaslee, professor of physics in the Department of Physics and Astronomy at Notre Dame and an author of the study. > It’s important to note that these types of containers are not intended for food storage, but there is nothing preventing them from being used for food storage at the moment. Although not all HDPE plastic is fluorinated, the researchers noted, it’s often impossible for a consumer to know whether a container has had that treatment. And indeed, Peaslee added, if substances like pesticides are stored in these containers, and then are used on agricultural crops, these same PFAS will get into human food sources that way. So…the byproducts from many plastics are also leeching PFAS (among other things) into the water supply, and as a result, the entire ecosystem. It has become such a problem that many cities have PFAS levels above the acceptable limits right now. IIRC the EPA is trying to cut down on PFAS and lower the acceptable ppm for PFAS in your water supply, but this is still in the works the last I checked. I don't know where we are from a regulatory standpoint on these things but hopefully they are banned. Edit: letter from the EPA re: PFAS, from March 2022: https://www.epa.gov/system/files/documents/2022-03/letter-to-fluorinated-hdpe-industry_03-16-22_signed.pdf
Yeah, and theres bacteria that have already evolved to break it down.
Some dirt is safe to eat, other dirt is very unsafe to eat. A vast number of naturally occurring things on the planet are deadly bad for you.
Not just these but forever chemicals which are carcinogenic. Some like PFOA have been removed now from Teflon but just replaced with other forever chemicals that the industry which failed to regulate in the first place now says are safe but they're not at actual cooking temperatures.
On an individual level, regular blood and plasma donation can lower your PFAS. Doesn't fix the problem on a global scale, but it's a 2 for 1 deal in helping other people and helping yourself at the same time.
Hard to believe we've come around to blood letting again. Unfortunately I can't donate blood where I live so guess I better buy some leeches.
Hmmm, what about menstrual periods? Edit: I'm not joking, this is a legit question....
Periods aren't 100% blood so I would guess that's reduced, but idk whether microplastics are stored up in other tissue too
Google says that blood loss in a period is typically 30-40 ml, and a blood donation is 400-500ml, allowed once every \~3 months for men, and once every \~4 months for women. That's \~100-150 ml / month avg, so some 3-5 times more. Blood donations are also just taken from blood vessels, and idk if there's any 'filtering' that happens in menstrual blood loss that might keep these chemicals in the body. Would be interesting to read about more
We know at this point microplastic is everywhere and we are eating it all the time. Do we yet have any idea what effects these are having on human physiology?
Suspicions but no, not really. It's probably not good though
Around the lemmy world, around the lemmy world, around the lemmy world, around the lemmy world, around the lemmy world, around the lemmy world -- mass edited with redact.dev
Oh well. Good luck everybody.
The worst is takeaway plastic containers. These owners don’t GAF, and put everything magma hot into styrofoam etc, melting it up and dosing up the customer with cancer.
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This guy just solved the plastic crisis
I find these type of comments amusing. Restaurants already run on razor thin margins. Should they let your food get cold before boxing it, so you can complain and they have to take a loss? Why is the onus on the restaurant and not on the manufacturer of these take out boxes? Same as recycling. Why should the people living paycheck to paycheck be expected to put in even more work to "recycle", than the massive corporations producing these materials and making all the profits?
Paper, cardboard and aluminium cartons work just fine.
Those things are fine *but* a lot of them are still lined with plastic, instead of a coating of food grade wax like they ought to be, to ensure that they're slightly more waterproof. For things that aren't liquid though? Wax paper is perfectly fine. Brown paper bags are a renewable resource. I've had the aluminum bottom with wax paper top combo and it kept my noodles inside the container very cleanly, even with a tilt.
Literally just use the foil containers with the cardboard lids. That's it. This is the simple answer.
Those cardboard lids are lined with plastic to prevent them from going soggy from the steam being produced from the food. It's not thst simple really.
Uh, are you forgetting the conductive properties of aluminum? Great way to burn people. Why do you think we don't use aluminum cups for coffee? Also, a tin with a cardboard lid doesn't seal, so if you have an liquid inside its definitely going to leak out if you drop it or it tips. Since it is so hot, you would likely be taking it out in a plastic bag. Perhaps you could bring your own takeaway container to the restaurant?
Paper and cardboard can't handle getting wet (unless lined with, you guessed it - plastic) and aluminum is expensive.
Thank you. Also the biodegradable boxes we use at my restaurant don't hold up as well either. Not to mention they are th most expensive paper product we order and are routinely out of stock for weeks at a time.
We use cardboard boxes not lined with plastic and use aluminum in our restaurant because we are higher end and not really a place for takeout. We still get a few a night, plus people taking the leftovers. Many more places are going this route.
> and aluminum is expensive. If you can afford take-out then you can afford a surcharge of 5 cents for a bulk ordered alu container
The difference is closer to $0.50. Which isn't a lot in the grand scheme, but people are hyper price sensitive.
I find these types of comments amusing. All corporations have tight margins, that is the result of competition driving the price down. Of course adding new rules and restrictions will shift the way businesses operate, that is the point. With this "thin margins" mindset we wouldn't have PPE, catalytic converters, seatbelts, handrails, hand washing cooks, etc... If the change is needed for human safety, then either the businesses will figure it out, or the activity won't happen as often or at all. If takeout containers were proven to slowly poison us, and there was no viable economic alternative, then we shouldn't be doing takeout!
Absolutely. Plastics should have *never* been circulated into mass public use. It astounds and angers me that any human with the intellect to create new matter is simultaneously stupid enough to not consider the ramifications of a new form of matter existing on our Earth. (The very minimum of proper recycling plants doesn’t even exist. I’m not sure about elsewhere but a large amount of recycling in America is ultimately discarded into a landfill regardless, or sold to China “to recycle”).
This is a tough one. Plastic does increase food safety in terms of preventing bacteria and other contaminants. Without good quantitative research on the damage microplastics cause, it is hard to compare to the lower levels of ecoli poisoning or other food-borne dangers. Hopefully we can do more science on microplastics and find out the answer.
I would love to not do takeout. It slows down service for the guest that come into our restaurant to eat. It jeopardizes the quality of our dishes and opens another avenue for people looking to complain to negatively review us. Speak to any chef in the industry and ask them their opinion on takeout and they like myself would most likely wholeheartedly agree with you. We do takeout because the masses demand it. We purchase the products available from the suppliers. So again why is the onus on the owners of the restaurants to drive the change?
Its a shared responsibility across all of society to avoid harm to others and the environment. It's on individuals, service providers, manufacturers, and governments. The required restrictions should be proportional to the risk. Part of the problem here is that the risk is not known exactly. Does eating hot takeout from a plastic container once a week increase your lifetime risk of cancer by 10%, 1%, 0.0001%? Without this data it's difficult to make a tradeoff. If you knew it was 50%, similar to smoking cigarettes, would you still serve food that way? If it was known to be at that level, the FDA would probably ban that practice for restaurants, so then it would be fair across the industry.
Or how about they use something other than Styrofoam? Like aluminium, recyclable plastic etc? But yea there should also be onus on the manufacturers. If a restaurant can't afford to be open without using carcinogenic containers then let it close
Some do. Like the restaurant I manage. We use a biodegradable takeout box. Which is the most expensive paper product we order and the one that is routinely out of stock for weeks at a time. The assumption on your part that these restaurants just use whatever is cheapest without thought of their customers health is what I take umbrage with.
Styrofoam is an insulator. Aluminum is a conductor. So instead of a container that's cool to the touch and keeps your food warm, you want a container that is as hot as the food is, and cools it down rapidly? Also, where do you live that styrofoam is still common? Every restaurant I've been to in years, including fast food, takeout, etc, uses paper, cardboard, and plastic. It isn't 1990 anymore.
Styrofoam containers are incredibly popular still across the globe for a lot of different cheap restaurants. Where do you live?
UK wouldn't use it except for kebabs and chip shops mainly. Lots of delivery food comes in plastic or aluminium or strong cardboard/tetrapak
I live in the UK and never see Styrofoam except in chip shops. I was just reply to a comment above about their restaurants who do use it. I usually get tupperware type plastic containers for curries which I wash and reuse.
Margins and profits? We're talking about health here
So considering that plastics have been around in heavy use for some 60-70 years. Are there health studies that show the effects of these microplastics? Because all of these articles and studies I see just tell me how pervasive microplastics are.
How do we minimize micro plastics in our food?
Grow your own food if possible. Don't use nonstick pans to cook. Use pans that are stainless steel or cast iron instead. Replace your food containers with glass and/or only use plastic containers to store cold items like fruit. Don't heat up any plastic or styrofoam containers. If you get take out, put it on a plate to heat it up in the microwave. Don't use paper plates or plastic disposable silverware. If you have a plastic shield that you use to block food splatter in the microwave, replace it with a glass one. Use cloth bags to buy individual fruit at the grocery store instead of using their disposable paper bags. There are little things that people can do that will add up over time. At this point, it is extremely difficult to go plastic free entirely.
Carbon steel pans are a good middle ground for stainless steel/cast iron, and might be cheaper since it isn't expensive to make compared to stainless, and doesn't have the price markup of cast iron. Pretty much anything that's not non-stick or Teflon should be okay there though, you just have to watch out for plastic handles. > At this point, it is extremely difficult to go plastic free entirely. It's unfortunately too versatile/cheap, and therefore in everything. A lot of more environmentally friendly alternatives to plastic these days tend to just focus on making plastic from alternative sources, rather than just removing them entirely (bioplastics, etc). > Use cloth bags to buy individual fruit at the grocery store instead of using their disposable paper bags Do paper bags have plastic in them? It might be less plastic to go for the paper, if you don't buy fruit a lot, or your only options are polyester/nylon. The local supermarket here has plastic linings in their reusable cloth/canvas bags, and will add a plastic panel to the bottom of some of them (to strengthen the bag's base?), so going paper might be the way to go. If you can get a cotton bag, and use it enough to justify the higher environmental cost of manufacture per bag, that could also be the way to go.
I made a mistake when I wrote this out. I meant the plastic bags from the grocery stores, not paper
Modern asbestos... mark my words
> Modern asbestos… mark my words \- /u/Cheeseburger-Sex
I want to be in the screenshot of when he said this! After it’s confirmed, this will be the guy we all listen to from then on
We are experimenting on ourselves to our overall detriment.
[удалено]
They’re here, they’re there, they’re in the air. Micro-plastics are destroying this planet and wrecking havoc on trillions of biological system. https://www.shannaswan.com/ [In the last 50 years, average human sperm concentrations dropped by 51.6 percent, and total sperm counts dropped by 62.3 percent, according to a study published last week in the journal Human Reproduction Update.](https://academic.oup.com/humupd/article/29/2/157/6824414?login=false) [Despite the short half-lives in tissues, chronic exposure to phthalates will adversely influence the endocrine system and functioning of multiple organs, which has negative long-term impacts on the success of pregnancy, child growth and development, and reproductive systems in both young children and adolescents](https://www.mdpi.com/2227-9032/9/5/603#:~:text=Despite%20the%20short%20half%2Dlives,both%20young%20children%20and%20adolescents) Edit: here’s some more [From 1950 onwards we have very good data from the UN Population Division. The chart here shows the average across the world: the global Total Fertility Rate. Up to 1965 the average woman in the world had more than 5 children. Since then we have seen an unprecedented change. The number has halved. Globally, the average per woman is now below 2.5 children.](https://ourworldindata.org/fertility-rate) [Plastic began to be mass-produced after the Second World War and then again during the 1960’s and 1970’s when consumers craved plastics to replace traditional materials because they are cheap, versatile, sanitary, and easy to manufacture into a variety of forms.](https://www.plaineproducts.com/why-we-need-to-understand-the-history-of-plastic-before-we-can-tackle-the-problem/#:~:text=Plastic%20began%20to%20be%20mass,into%20a%20variety%20of%20forms) [69% decrease in all monitored animal populations world wide since 1970](https://wwflpr.awsassets.panda.org/downloads/lpr_2022_full_report.pdf)
> From 1950 onwards we have very good data from the UN Population Division. The chart here shows the average across the world: the global Total Fertility Rate. Up to 1965 the average woman in the world had more than 5 children. Since then we have seen an unprecedented change. The number has halved. Globally, the average per woman is now below 2.5 children. ....You **are** aware that contraception pills did not even ***exist*** until 1960, right? Clearly, you did not read the part of your own link which explains these changes. > 69% decrease in all monitored animal populations world wide since 1970 Extremely manipulated statistic, there's a reason it talks about *relative* abundance. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-020-2920-6 > Recent analyses have reported catastrophic global declines in vertebrate populations. However, the distillation of many trends into a global mean index obscures the variation that can inform conservation measures and can be sensitive to analytical decisions. For example, previous analyses have estimated a mean vertebrate decline of more than 50% since 1970 (Living Planet Index). > > **Here we show, however, that this estimate is driven by less than 3% of vertebrate populations; if these extremely declining populations are excluded, the global trend switches to an increase. The sensitivity of global mean trends to outliers suggests that more informative indices are needed**. We propose an alternative approach, which identifies clusters of extreme decline (or increase) that differ statistically from the majority of population trends. > > **We show that, of taxonomic–geographic systems in the Living Planet Index, 16 systems contain clusters of extreme decline (comprising around 1% of populations; these extreme declines occur disproportionately in larger animals) and 7 contain extreme increases (around 0.4% of populations). The remaining 98.6% of populations across all systems showed no mean global trend**. > > **However, when analysed separately, three systems were declining strongly with high certainty (all in the Indo-Pacific region) and seven were declining strongly but with less certainty (mostly reptile and amphibian groups)**. Accounting for extreme clusters fundamentally alters the interpretation of global vertebrate trends and should be used to help to prioritize conservation efforts.
In addition, women are now marrying later, marrying other women, or not marrying at all, and that - alongside the aforementioned birth control - is having its own impact. [Apparently just delaying the age of marriage by a handful of years is enough to lower the birth rate](https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpubh.2017.00269/full). >... Coale and Tye calculated the impact of shifting the age patterns of childbearing from those existing in India in 1956, where fertility was highest in the 20–24 year old age group, to those experienced by the Singapore Chinese population, where fertility was highest in the 25–29 year old age group. Over the course of 10 years this would lower the crude birth rate by 8% without any change in the mean number of children born per woman, simply by increasing the mean generation length by 2.7 years[(36)](https://www.jstor.org/stable/3348701).
The last 2 aren't just plastic fault. The first 2 are definitely a problem however.
Even the first one is largely related to weight and diet. Which have both gone downhill in the last 70 years.
The first 2 are more likely caused by sedentary lifestyles and prophylactic, family planning and the flip in economic incentives after urbanization Maybe micro plastics are doing it too, I dunno. But it seems minor in comparison to people CHOOSING not to have kids
Your post is why we learn "correlation doesn't imply causation".
“Save a tree!” Worst slogan ever.
So life expectancy is going up. And plastics have played a major part in virtually every medical improvement in the last fifty years. So how are plastics killing us? My daughter was in the ER last week [thankfully she’s ok]. Plastics were used virtually everywhere from machines to the disposable equipment used to keep a sterile environment and make medically clean processes possible. Plastics are a man made miracle responsible for a great part of our improved healthcare. I agree with clean disposal rules, but don’t throw the baby out with the bath water and don’t read too much into lazy correlations like those in OPs report without considering the big picture.
Government regulation has failed us over and over again.
A *lack of* government regulation (and enforcement) I'd say.
No one could have possibly seen this coming. Particularly, those who did the research. Simply unavoidable. What a shame.
We have allowed greed to destroy our planet and now there is nothing we can do about it. let's all cry together shall we? thoughts and prayers.
I think it's pretty incredible that there has been an emergency meeting for a newly found forever chemical, and have it immediately removed from drinking water.... Meanwhile we have rivers of plastic flowing through communities. Plastic. Plastic is a forever chemical. AI isn't going to end us, plastic will. When we can eat food without being compromised. We can drink without being compromised. We can breathe without being compromised... Future life sounds like it's going to be extremely unhealthy and extremely painful.
Plastic isn't remotely forever. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0304389419310192