Millennials? More like GenX. We’ve been eating out of microwaved tupperware since the sixties.
So have the millennials who were breast fed.
And formula fed
Mmmm, tasty math.
The worst part: postpartum women have lower levels of microplastics than other adults.
I was reading somewhere you can lower the level of PFAS in your blood by donating it.
So you’re saying the baby took some of the plastic out of them, that’s horribly depressing at least they got 10 to 15 point IQ boost in return
Might be that. Although your body goes into absolute overdrive during pregnancy, and it’s not beyond the realms of possibility that some of the immune system reactions that kick in manage to eject some level of plastic microparticulates
Seems Like something people should be definitely looking into to find out why, with the state of science in America It’s probably not going to be here
Most likely its the same reason blood donation lowers microplastic levels in blood. Production of new cells that aren’t tainted with it. A woman’s blood volume increases by 40% during pregnancy. Of course ill freely admit thats just a hypothesis and you’re probably right, there would be benefit into studying it.
I’ve thought more about it. I bet there’s fucking loads in the placenta.
That was my question too, I wonder if there is a reliable way to measure where it all went, or if it’s just diluted in the increased blood volume.
There’s also the possibility that with are more careful with their intake during pregnancy, but that could be controlled for in survey data.
It looks like the cumulative total of plastics produced by the 80’s was around 2-3
trillionbillion tons, whereas now it’s probably more like 20-30B.
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/exports/global-plastics-production.png
Pffft! … at least microplastics take decades or a lifetime of accumulation to affect your body, mind and health
Social media rots your brain and mental capacity in a matter of years or months
Every generation alive has microplastics in them
and probably will for at least a few generations unless we can do some major filtering of all mediums
And literally nothing came of it, this whole thing is fear mongering and political theater.
Everyone has microplastics, even newborn babies, and we have no sign of decrease in its use.
We must become one with the plastic. It’s the only way.
Boomers had/have microplastics and lead poisoning. This is not a conspiracy, it is just a fact.
Did someone say it was a conspiracy?
Except that microplastics have been a major problematic thing since basically plastic become a popular thing, we just didn’t know it yet back then. It’s not like millenials invented plastic or popularized its use.
The amount of it in our environment has been ever increasing though. There’s more of it in the oceans, the soil, the rivers, the plants. The whole food chain and ecosystems are contaminated more than ever before.
At what point does it become macroplastic? kiloplastic for the Europeans.
My dad’s car ran on 4 star right up until the mid 90s. I was exposed to plenty lead in my formative years as well as micro plastics.
The ol twofer
Don’t forget about PFAS!
Luckily, for the younger generations, we’ll probably just get cancer instead of becoming massive malleable assholes
What’s replacing plastic. Good luck.
What kind of generational hazard would you like to have growing up, kids? :D
Hopefully renewable, compostable/biodegradable plastics.
It’s the getting the old shit out of everything that will be the issue
What did plastic replace? Good chance we can go back, if we can convince some people the line doesn’t need to go up. Good joke, everybody laughs…
Do you mean what ubiquitous toxin will be next?
Or do you mean how can we get by without plastic?
If it’s the second one, the answer is easy, fucking aluminum. We’ve had the answer forever and it still works great. Glass too, good for many applications.
Now the actual problem isn’t plastic bags or beverage containers though, it’s clothing and tires. Most clothing is plastic these days and tiny plastic fibers break up into micro plastics and take to the air or end up in the sea. Car tires are also just plastic these days, not rubber (which is arguably better for the environment than leveling rainforests for rubber tree plantations, sigh…), the tires rub off on the road like a pencil eraser on sandpaper. This also ends up in the air and sea.
So anyway, replacing plastic beverage containers is a great step, a no brainer, but it also doesn’t address the real problem at all. I hope that some day soon tires and clothes can start to be made with biodegradable “eco plastics”, but if that doesn’t turn out to be feasible, we’ll be in some serious trouble. And once we have some real, feasible, affordable replacements, then we need to actually outlaw the use of older plastic tires, in every country on the planet, despite heavy lobbying against any new measures from vested interests… I can’t even imagine how to make that happen. How did we do it with lead? Has every country outlawed lead in gas?
Isn’t aluminum neurotoxic?
Just don’t grind it up into a powder and snort it and you should be fine.
Come to think of it, I would actually suggest the same for glass and plastic.
Even though leaded gasoline and leaded paint have been outlawed for decades in the US, it’s still a big problem in poor communities. Lots of old houses still have lead paint. Lead abatement is expensive and many people may not even know it’s something you need to do.
This one’s gonna last a few (the final few?) generations.
Microplastics cause neurological damage and anti social violent behavior?
I don’t think the impacts of microplastics are quite as catastrophic, they can’t be or we would already know.
Which isn’t to say they aren’t bad just damn lead is realllly bad.
The concentration of them is rising exponentially, that’s the part that terrifies me.
It’s possible we just haven’t crossed a threshold yet.
We don’t know about the longer term consequences yet, just like we didn’t about lead.
Not saying it’s a definite but I wouldn’t be surprised.
No, people knew lead was poisonous even back near Roman days. Though just like how humans constantly do stupid things for some benefit, they kept using it as a sweetener for ages.
Also mercury in relation to, “as mad as a hatter”. It’s just mercury was very good for the job.
To play devil’s advocate, we always knew lead was toxic, but we didn’t know the only healthy dose was 0
Yes, but plastic is a very new invention and a lot less studied than something like Pb or Hg, which are natural elements.
Natural in no way what so ever should imply more healthy. Especially in the context of lead and mercury.
In a similar vein, asbestos is “all natural”, especially compared to fiber glass and foam, but it’s still unhealthy as fuck.
Not sure where I said natural = better. All I said was natural things are generally more studied because they existed for lot longer.
It’s existed long enough that serious effects would’ve been obvious by now. Multiple generations have already passed. Multiple. It is already clearly not as serious as lead or mercury regardless of what effects are found.
But we know plastic is inert and we knew about lead.
plastic is inert
wat? In no way is it inert.
Plastic has been around for 80 years. Shouldn’t we know something by now
If it was going to be as bad as fearmongers want it to be, absolutely.
We are just beginning to understand how much the chemical Imbalances that lead to depression, anxiety, and other mental health disorders originate in the digestive tract and how microplastics from food may disrupt the processing of these chemicals.
My non-professional guess is that microplastics will eventually sterilize us by disrupting our sperm’s ability to function properly. Only the wealthy can afford the medical procedures to bypass this.
Maybe kids will need to be carefully sheltered from plastics until they are old enough to freeze their sperm.
this reads like the next step is to force them to freeze theirs
No, this will likely just be for the rich.
'Twould be sweet irony and a blessing for the earth.
Although the best method for removing it I’ve found is donating plasma (PFAs down 30% in 6 months of regular donation, the hope is nanoplastics are also removed…) so it might be the poors (in USA) and generous that get to have kids, so that’s nice…
It’ll end up blocking vital neurotransmitters leaving us zombified and giving us an insatiable craving for brains
Nah, because every future generation will have it too.
I’m crazy. Mark My Words. In 20 years, we’ll have so many microbes capable of consuming plastic people will be bitching about their packages not being able to effectively protect their goods from spoiling. The goldfish has spoken.
I’ve run across at least three separate articles now of researchers from across the world discovering plastic eating bacteria in the wild. Short plastic. Its days are numbered.
Based solely on your comment, I’m looking forward to watching a scene where Christian Bale goes around Wall Street collecting mugs in The Big Short 2: Polymer Boogaloo.
I wonder what our neurosises will be.
Depression, I would say. Same as how boomers are labeled as uncaring and sociopathic because of lead.
The sociopath part, I think, is likely because they grew up in the easiest time in history.
As an Elder Millenial/Xennial I was lucky enough to make it to adulthood just before it got complicated. Unfortunately we’re talking months.
Samesies.
The depression is a natural byproduct of civilization. We’re not supposed to sit in concrete boxes and do meaningless tasks for survival. It makes us sad.
I think it’s more physiological. Since microplastics are ingested maybe it’s related to the rise in oral and rectal cancers.
Yeah, but the nanoplastics get past the BBB (Blood Brain Barrier), what’s it, a plastic spoon in every human brain? Enough for some psych effects I guess. Oh, there’s 27 million tonnes of nanoplastics spread across just the top layer of the temperate to subtropical North Atlantic
Shit’s pervasive and in your brain.
