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Glass is the best food container. Leaves no residue or chemicals, easily recyclable, and even in a landfill it just turns into sand.
Fun fact: the darker the glass is, the less energy it takes to produce and recycle because the additives that make it darker reduce the glass’s melting point significantly. Dark coloured glass is also preferred for beverage storage and preservation as they block sunlight, which is why the more expensive wines almost always come in dark glass bottles. Only issue is dark bottles don’t let you see inside, which consumers don’t tend to like, and a clear glass bottle is more likely to draw attention on the shelf.
Isn’t most red wine commonly sold in tinted glass bottles? White also seems to be sold in more transparent bottles.
Breaks more easily, being the downside
Glass is glass and glass breaks.
Melt it.
Make more glass.
Fuck you, BP
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Also requires 100x thicker walls for the same integrity as plastic, meaning the same volume container weighs much more and requires more fossil fuel to transport. Glass makes sense for reusable containers in local economies, but in the case of global distribution, glass puts much more CO2 in the atmosphere than plastic.
Skill issue. Just don’t drop it noob.
True dat
Put a foam cover around it to make it drop proof
How do aluminium cans compare?
Aluminum cans are actually coated in plastic to avoid corrosion.
Which is actually critical because aluminium compounds are also neurotoxic similar to lead. There are advisories against especially cooking acidic foods in aluminium cookware because the acid, especially if heated, can easily break through the oxide layer and react with the aluminium, forming soluble compounds that are easily absorbed when eaten. And soda is quite acidic so I imagine without the plastic film they’ll all turn into poison within a few weeks (I mean, more poisonous I guess).
Honestly we’re starting to realize that aluminium is the lead of the modern age. Not to nearly the same extent as lead obviously, but the mechanisms for how they harm people are similar. Not saying we go as far as to ban aluminium, but we need to be smart about how and where it’s used (i.e. should ideally be avoided for food packaging or preparation) and seek out better alternatives when aluminium doesn’t work well for an application.
Need some sources on these claims. My dive on Wikipedia didn’t reveal anything akin.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0308814603003789
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0308814600000686
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0048969796053478
You can bypass paywalls by copying the DOI and pasting it into SciHub–uh I mean, you should definitely buy these papers and give the publishing company the exorbitant royalties it so rightfully deserves after they’ve already taken the researchers’ money to publish it in the first place.
All three of these studies are related to Aluminium leaching into food from cookware or take up from soil. Sorry, I should have been more specific.
Wikipedia cites that there has been no conclusion on Aluminium causing Alzheimer’s, just that it’s more prevalent as deposits in patients’ brains affected by Alzheimer’s. So it’s an effect there.
One of your linked papers establishes the following in the Introduction: The toxicity of Aluminium is well known among patients with renal failure. Now I didn’t follow the cited papers to establish the “well known” claim of this, however someone with renal failure will likely have other worries besides just Aluminium toxicity.
I’m just trying to be thorough because I’ve heard claims pro and contra Aluminium toxicity and dementia. Around mid 2010s I got into a scare of replacing every Aluminium and fluoropolymer coated cookware with iron, ceramic and glass, especially since my grandpa died from some form of degenerative dementia just five years prior. Now it looks like my concerns regarding Teflon and it’s little family were justified, however evidence against Aluminium seems to be sparse.
Admittedly I am not familiar with the specific health effects of aluminum compounds beyond the basic fact that they are neurotoxic and not good for us, but plenty of things are neurotoxic and bad for us and I admittedly don’t really know the extent that aluminum is a problem (nor am I claiming it causes any specific health effects, to be clear). I’ve personally researched more into the leaching aspect than the neurotoxicity aspect, if for nothing else than I find those interactions between materials interesting, and personally it’s more than enough to put me off using them, considering our track record of massively underestimating harm from things similar to this, but that’s entirely just my own opinion for what kind of cookware I’m willing to use. I do appreciate you trying to be thorough and I wish I had more relevant links at hand.
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/24779346/ potentially?
That’s bad.
Are tin/steel cans (for food rather than drink) also tainted?
Steel cans sometimes are. Depends on the food. Tomatoes are usually in copper-coated cans(orange), pineapple in tin-coated cans(matte grey), but there are chrome coatings(yellow) white enamel, and plastic. Look at the inside of the can. Heating the can will reveal if it’s a metal coating or plastic.
deleted by creator
Fun fact: the Romans knew that lead was toxic from their own observations, but still chose to use it because it was just so useful, and because the health effects are chronic so do not manifest for a long time, meaning it could be much more easily ignored until it was too late.
Sound familiar?
It’s not as uf they could easily solder copper pipes either.
Lead was immensely convenient. It’s no wonder it’s still called plumbing (plumbum is lead, in case you missed that bit).
Fun fact, lead is delicious and counts itself among the most historically accepted forbidden snacks. Wine, in veggies absorbed through fertilizer, dissolved in solution, lead can be, and has been, enjoyed many ways.
See also: sugar of lead.
It is believed that Ludwig van Beethoven died of lead poisoning as the port he used to drink was supposedly adulterated.
The US still has a lot of lead pipes and I think that kind of explains a lot.
Many parts of Europe also do. What’s your point?
Europe actually has about 3x more households with lead pipes (per capita) than the US
Everything and anything for the corporations to profit and squeeze every ounce of economic power out of the people.
because they’re safe.
running water covers them with a layer of stuff
not just plastic bottles / containers,
we literally have teflon cookwareTeflon cookware is mostly a non-issue during cooking because PTFE starts melting only at temperatures largely higher than cooking temperatures.
The problem is when it gets discarded and incinerated and it emits residues, and during its fabrication.
The problem is when the surface gets damaged, which is always. Just throw away all of your Teflon and use cast iron pans. They’re almost as easy to clean, and they don’t have the same health risks. Sure, DuPont claims their new Teflon is safe, but they’re the same company that knowingly lied about their first Teflon, fought in court about it for 30 years, and even bribed health authorities.
I feel like people that recommend cast iron as an alternative are misunderstanding the entire reason Teflon became popular in the first place. I ain’t got time to learn a secret ritual dance of how to season My Pan. That being said, I just use stainless steel and I’ve learned how to use it properly so that it doesn’t just stick to everything.
As long as you properly preheat your stainless steel you will have little issue with sticking, there’s a neat little trick someone taught me splash some water on your pan if it stays in place and Bubbles it’s not ready yet but if it starts dancing around the pan you can use it and it won’t stick
LOL. It can seem daunting at first, but it’s really quite simple. Once a pan is seasoned then just using it with oil, cleaning it with water, and drying it properly keeps it going strong for years. We clean ours with water and a scrub brush, dry it, put it on the burner on medium heat to evaporate any remaining water, and then spread a little oil around the pan with a napkin. Then I turn the burner off and let it sit there until it cools. The oil continues curing while the pan stays hot and maintains the seasoning layer. The whole process only takes a couple of minutes. We do have stainless pans too, but we usually reach for the cast iron or carbon steel pans, unless we’re boiling water, or making tomato based sauces.
There’s no actual need to season a cast iron if you don’t want to. Regular use of it will cause it to become seasoned over time. It just means everything will stick to it until such a time as the season takes.
Or at first just use more oil
Cast iron isn’t completely without risk. The iron from the pan can leach into food which can be a problem for people with high iron issues. On the flip side people with anemia could see some benefit. My personal favorite as someone with hemachromatosis is enameled cast iron.
A properly seasoned cast iron pan has a layer in-between the food and iron. But those layers do get damaged & worn, and you can definitely end up with your food in contact with the iron like you said. I have an enameled dutch oven, and it’s pretty great, but not as easy to clean as the regular cast iron, and definitely not non-stick.
The seasoning layer prevents massive amounts of iron from leeching but seasoned pans still add iron.
Medical journals all say you get significant iron from seasoned cast iron.
The only source that doesn’t agree is America’s test kitchen. They say “only a few mg” which would still be a significant percentage of dietary requirements.
Unless you have a medical problem, this is a good thing.
Yeah, we’ve been using cast iron pans since we saw the movie Deep Waters about the DuPont conspiracy several years ago. I just donated blood a couple of weeks ago and they test your iron before you can donate. My iron levels were perfectly normal. So whatever it does, it’s totally fine.
Or try carbon steel pans. Very similar to cast iron, but much lighter.
We have a 13" carbon steel pan. It is usually my go-to pan. They’re a lot pricier though, which is why I usually just recommend cast iron. People usually need to be pretty invested in their kitchen to consider carbon steel pans. My cast iron pans were like $10 each. My carbon steel pan was $75. They were half that price a couple of years ago, but they really bumped up the price after America’s Test Kitchen released a review about them.
I just have regular stainless steel.
Pour water and soap in it when you’re done cooking and it’s easy to clean by the time you’re done eating.
You also don’t have to worry about messing up a coating.
The problem is when the surface gets damaged
What do you mean?
When the Teflon gets scratched then it starts leeching toxins into your food.
Where did you read this? What I’ve read has said the opposite. Here’s one result for “teflon flakes”
When cooking, flakes of Teflon can break off into food. If these flakes are ingested, it is considered non-toxic.
If metal utensils are used with Teflon coated cookware, small pieces of Teflon can break off and get into the food. This is considered non-toxic. When swallowed, these pieces will travel through the intestines and come out in the stool intact without causing harm to the body.
I highly suggest watching the movie Dark Waters starring Mark Ruffalo. It covers the true story about a 30 year legal battle to hold DuPont liable for knowingly poisoning their factory workers and 99% of all life on planet earth with PFAS. After losing that court battle they stopped selling their original Teflon pans and started selling a new formulation which they claim is safe. But this is the same company that knowingly sold poison for half a century, bribed government regulatory officers to lie, bought politicians, and buried massive amounts of evidence against them. It’s your choice if you believe them or not.
I just really wanted to a source for your claim that scratching the surface causes it to “leech toxins into your body”.
No way it doesn’t degrade and emit PFAS occasionally during normal use. There’s a reason nobody who keeps birds will keep that shit in their house.
The risk:reward ratio is so skewed it’s stupid.
Risk: if you heat it slightly too much a class of chemicals literally called “forever chemicals” because of how long they stay in the body will enter your lungs and your food
Reward: food no sticky
There’s a reason nobody who keeps birds will keep that shit in their house
For those of us that have no clue what this quote it about, what is the reason that nobody with a bird will have teflon in their house at the same time?
Sorry, I forget not everyone else is a bird person. Teflon is notorious for making pet birds drop dead without warning during normal use. It’s very ‘canary in the coal mine.’
Wow, that’s nuts. I did not know that. It really makes it sound like teflon is terrible for us.
Sad fact: During the 2003 Invasion of Iraq, the the US command at the front lines had a pigeon in a cage with them at all times. If the pigeon were to die, that would mean that there was a gas attack and troops needed to don their gas masks.
Why is it that birds in particular are so sensitive to aerial pollutants (is that the right term)?
Why is it that birds in particular are so sensitive to aerial pollutants (is that the right term)?
They have a higher rate of respiratory exchange than large mammals like humans, which means any harmful stuff in the air gets into their system faster.
Interesting! Thanks for letting me know.
the “teflon fumes” for lack of a better term are extremely toxic to birds
to pick a nit and to highlight the other-than-poisoning-you aspect: they’re forever chemicals because they don’t break down naturally anywhere, not just your body. Wait…an idea: throw those pans into a volcano!
Ever seen a well used Teflon pan that wasn’t scratched or chipped? All of that goes into your food.
OK but PTFE itself is not carcinogenic or harmful from what I remember. Only when it starts deteriorating at high temperatures does it release harmful components. So eating your Teflon pan isn’t supposed to be that bad.
https://www.cancercenter.com/community/blog/2021/09/does-teflon-cause-cancer
It’s not known to be harmful or carcinogenic. Doesn’t mean it isn’t. It’s hard to identify correlation between exposure and harm for something that we’re nearly all exposed to especially if the level of harm is low.
Companies have also been known to harass and silence researchers who show their products are harmful. I don’t see a reason to trust that PTFE is safe to eat when I have the option to just not eat it.
Sure but you can apply this logic to anything: copper, cast iron, enamel, nickel used for stainless steel… Where do you stop?
Copper and iron are essential elements in human biology. Enamel coatings need to be thrown out once they start chipping. Nickel isn’t great but in my experience stainless steel pans barely shed any material after years of use.
I stop at manufactured polymers. Particularly when they’re used in applications where they fall apart into our food and the environment where they’re going to last millions of years.
Fair enough!
deleted by creator
327°C
Teflon-coated pans start giving off harmful gasses at around 400°F, temperatures you’re going to exceed on the stovetop if you’re doing pretty much anything other than boiling water.
If you had a source for that, I’d be glad to read it and take it into account next time this topic is raised!
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polytetrafluoroethylene#Safety
I misread, it’s around 500°F where it poses health risks. Even still, 500°F is still a very achievable temperature in most kitchens.
How hot is 400 slavery units?
It’s just above 200°C, so It’s easily reachable with a regular cooktop.
~200 Deutschitzeinheit
My current research is about pfas and how bad it is. You wanna know yhe most fun part? It probably is in your drinking water. Current testing methods are only for specific compounds and many manufacturers just use a slightly different chemical structure, whose effects can be the same in a biological system…
Can you share the negative health effects of ptfe consumption? I would have assumed that it would be inert in humans considering it’s extraordinarily inert properties. Obviously it breaks down at temperatures over 315c, but that’s not really relevant with ptfe in the water.
It doesn’t seem to be the PTFE themselves, it’s the molecules released when it eventually degrades due to fire, time or mechanical force; particularly PFOAs, which were at one point so widely used you can now find them everywhere. As well, they are still used to manufacture non-stick pans, just at an earlier step in the process so they are still present, but at ‘safe’ levels; however, if a non-stick pan is overheated, the coating almost instantly breaks down and releases unsafe levels of PFOA after that event.
Purchasing non-stick cookware is supporting companies that create, ship, and use PFOA which further degrades the environment and contaminates water.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perfluoroalkyl_carboxylic_acids
Schlummer, M., Sölch, C., Meisel, T., Still, M., Gruber, L., & Wolz, G. (2015). Emission of perfluoroalkyl carboxylic acids (PFCA) from heated surfaces made of polytetrafluoroethylene (PTFE) applied in food contact materials and consumer products. Chemosphere, 129, 46-53. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chemosphere.2014.11.036
My research is currently with pfoa and its ability to interfere with ttr proteins ability to transport t4 and t3. If you need a source just google pfoa calux.
Thanks for your work. (☞ ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)☞
Would you crosspost this (or give me permission to crosspost) to RoughRomanMemes and HistoryMemes? This is perfect!
For some extra context for those not in the know - the Romans boiled down wine in lead pots to make sweetener, because the lead made it even sweeter. Not because they didn’t know that lead was bad - they understood it full well, and even associated certain forms of lead poisoning with lead cosmetics.
But sweetener? Just a little tasty sweetener on your bread and in your wine? What could go wrong!
Be my guest!
I keep finding memes like this and was wondering if we had a fediverse equivalent for it yet.
Subbed to the historymemes one just now, but roughromanmemes doesn’t seem to be visible to me for whatever reason.
You may be the first RoughRomanMemes visitor from your instance.
Lol, read that as RoughRoManMemes and thought it was a scooby-doo meme spot. It was not.
If RoughRo memes ever become a thing, I’ll be the first subscriber.
That would boil the alcohol right off though… Alcohol-free wine??? Proof that they were their own biggest consumers.
Well, that’s kind of the point. It was to reduce the wine to a kind of jelly which wasn’t meant to be alcoholic, just sweetener.
Yeah, I get it. Partially said in jest. Just amazing that we’re doing the same thing again, sort of.
That lead pipes are still around is even funnier: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-67585011
Even funnier(?), the Romans knew that lead pipes could leech lead into the water, but also knew how to counteract it (allowing calcium buildup in the pipes and ensuring a certain distance the water traveled to ensure that buildup); but this method doesn’t work with modern pipe systems because the water remains in the pipes for longer, allowing the lead to seep into the water even when there is buildup. Huzzah for worse lead piping problems than the Ancient Romans?
Same with cars. But don’t worry, they’ll be electric soon!
i love electric cars bc i can feel like im helping the environment, without riding public transport with the poors
/s
I mean in most cases it’s someone who doesn’t live in a place with adequate public transport to even be riding with the poors to begin with
true, but buying electric isnt gonna fix that. it just encouraged new chargers to be built instead
Yes, but what is someone supposed to do, forego being able to afford food in the name of making town hall charter a bus service?
I’m going to sound like an asshole but as someone that has been making efforts to live without a car in Canada for more than 20 years… there are other options than motorized vehicles.
Bicycles exist and you can cover a good deal of distance with them. That could help reduce the number of car trips. No need to get rid of them completely but at least try to reduce its use.
There is also the option to move.
But in the end the argument of rural people needing cars is kind of moot because the vast vast majority of people live in cities or in suburbs that were founded on railroads. So it would be relatively easy to help a good chunk of people to get rid, or use less of their cars while rural people can still drive or pedal to a nearest bus stop, tram stop, or train station.
I know that from experience of living in both a rural environment, and in a city. I did move a few times for my work in order to avoid needing a car.
Again, not possible for everybody but options have to be considered because, we’re running out of time and excuses anyway.
If you live in a rural setting and can’t use a bus or cycle, fine. But don’t sabotage the efforts and options for the vast majority of people that should, or do have options, by stating that if you need a car then everybody surely does! Please!
As the meme says: BuT iT’s sO CoNvEnIeNt!1!
Do we know microplastics to be toxic?
Not as bad as lead but definitely not good.
Maybe not in small enough quantities, but what happens when your body accumulates enough of it? Maybe its completely inert but it will build up inside us like dust builds up on devices and eventually it might start clogging something critical, like extremely small bloodvessels or maybe some badly understood cleaning mechanism on brains.
Yes, we know the chemicals in plastics are toxic.
Most of USA still use lead pipes for tap water
Not most. Some parts.
Regardless, I still cannot wrap my head around that.
Money, it’s expensive to replace with a safer solution so we don’t spend money on it. You can’t make them spend less on war and surveillance of us though
Supposedly Biden announced they are going to be replacing out all the lead pipes over the next years, guess we’ll see if/how that pans out.
Republicans are already strongly against it. Understandably, after all if it weren’t for lead poisoning giving people brain damage, who would vote for them?
Sounds like a pipe dream honestly… Hope a younger Democrat or independent wins the next election
At least the lead pipes are coated on the inside with calcium from the water.
The issue is, when the water becomes acidic this calcium coating dissolves as well as some lead beneath it.
That’s not even remotely accurate. Only ~7% of US households have lead service lines.
In Europe that number is ~25%
Yummy, I love eating garbage
i know im gonna get hated for this, but: fluoride tap water
God forbid we… checks notes… prevent tooth decay!
if only there were something we do twice a day to prevent that… oh well.
if you wanna protect your teeth that much then use fluoride mouthwash after you brush your teeth. you can even swallow it if you like.
It’s an interesting discussion to have about consent/medical choices, but the fact is that many people don’t have the knowledge/resources to go out and do that, and for them it’s a benefit without proven drawbacks
Science says no
Fluoride is literal poison that everyone knew about until the chemical industry infiltrated the government to install politicians and university leaders to add it into drinking water to certain municipal water supplies without public knowledge
Ethanol is literal poison that everyone knew about. We still know ethanol and fluoride are poison, but we knew it too. /Hedberg>
To be consistent, we better stop drinking beer and using mouthwash!
Alcohol mouth wash is associated with oral cancer
During the last thirty years, there has been an attempt to find a possible association between the use of mouthwash with alcohol and its relationship with oral cancer. However, epidemiologically, there has been no conclusive evidence. Few epidemiological studies are found in the literature and they have contradictory results.
– Alcohol-based mouthwash as a risk factor of oral cancer: A systematic review
Oral application of ethanol is correlated with cancer, but statistically significant results are associated with heavy alcohol consumption, re-enforcing my point that dosage determines effect. If you already start the day with a whiskey breakfast, mouthwash isn’t doing you any favors health-wise.
we dont drink mouthwash, genius. theres a difference between voluntarily drinking alcohol once in a while and having basically no option (depending on where you live) than drinking fluoride water everyday.
by all means, you can use mouthwash. i dont believe its poisonous to rinse your mouth, unlike drinking EVERY DAY
You don’t need to drink it to have an effect. Ethanol is absorbed through the roof of your mouth.
The point I’m making is that dosage determines effect, and not all poison bio-accumulates in harmful ways. Lead does accumulate and no level of exposure is safe, but fluoride and ethanol are metabolized and harmless in small amounts, even in chronic exposure conditions like drinking water from non-naturally fluoridated sources.
There are natural sources of water that are geologically fluoridated and are toxic, but if it is being added intentionally under regulated conditions, then it is not toxic. Therefore, fluoride is poison but publicly fluoridated drinking water is not poisonous.
this doesnt address the point that alcohol and mouthwash is your own choice to drink/use. but tap water is the only option for a lot of people (except expensive and polluting bottled water). why should cities spend taxes on fluoridating water, just so people dont need to use mouthwash? should they do the same with essential vitamins as well? iron?
Because it’s an example of good government, like cities spending money on public transportation. Sure, auto makers and dentists would benefit if they spent it on other things, but the health outcomes for treated water are worth +100x the amount paid for fluoridation.
The only benefit i see is probably fluoride possibly mineralizing any cracks in the lead pipes and preventing even more lead leeching into tap water. Lead pipes with lack of minerals in the water supply leech way more lead than lead pipes with minerals in the water. But using fluoride is not as good as calcium which we actually take supplements for. But no corporation wants to dump calcium for cheap, they want to dump fluoride which is toxic, win win for corporations at the cost of out drinking water which most poor people can’t afford to filter out
I’m surprised that I think there’s a small chance this isn’t satire
I think you sound stop watching Dr Strangelove
No idea what that is but Doctor Strange is a great Marvel movie series
It’s a super old movie about ww2 and nukes, but there’s a crazy ass general who goes on a rant about how fluoride in the water is a communist plot to taint our precious bodily fluids.
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
https://piped.video/J67wKhddWu4?si=vgR0adst7sJFiSWK
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I’m open-source; check me out at GitHub.
We don’t have enough data to know whether plastic is actually harmful to humans long-term. A better comparison would be lead paint or leaded gasoline.
This is absolutely untrue.
We absolutely have enough data to know that microplastocs are effecting us
Really? BPA is an issue for sure but I’ve not seen anything about Microplastics specifically. It has to do something…
We know for a fact that they cause fertility issues, and are pretty certain that they’re pretty disastrous for hormonal regulation in general
I always thought it was getting lodged in the lungs that made it concerning.
To be fair, most anything being lodged in your lungs would be concerning
Nope, the problem is we’re starting to detect it in things like blood and muscle tissue, and the amounts have only been increasing.
This is just the beginning of the issue too. Plastic hasn’t been around a super long time, but it does take it a while for plastic to break down to that point.
Our plastic production isn’t going to decrease any time soon, so levels are basically going to keep going up.
I firmly believe that plastic will be what ultimately dooms mankind, not climate change.
It’s also an issue in the marine environment, where zooplankton will starve to death trying to eat it. These are a keystone species for life on earth. Fucking with them isn’t good at all.
I was more thinking about immediate effects on people (analogous to the meme) but this is … terrifying. Great. This is fine. It’s all fine.
Ah, indeed. Here a few excerpts from a literature review:
A major issue when determining the risks of microplastics to human health is the lack of information on human exposure. Adequate analytical tools to sample, isolate, detect, quantify, and characterize small microplastics (<10 µm), especially nanosized plastic particles, are urgently needed.
Increased exposure through indoor air, direct swallowing of house dust or dust settling on food (10), and direct exposure to particles released from plastic food containers or bottles, such as polypropylene infant feeding bottles (11), are of special concern. Larger microplastics are likely excreted through faeces, or after deposition in the respiratory tract or lungs through mucociliary clearance into the gut (1, 2). Given the methodological limitations and measurement bias toward larger particles, existing analyses probably underestimate human external exposure and generally do not include the fraction of smaller-sized particles <10 µm, which are likely more relevant to toxicity (1, 12). Notably, internal exposure measurements of plastic particles in human body fluids and tissues are still in their infancy.
Reported concentrations of microplastics in tap and bottled water vary between 0 and 104 particles/litre, with generally greater particle counts for small-sized microplastics (8). The first atmospheric measurements of larger-sized, predominantly fibrous microplastics indicate that plastic particles are a relevant component of fine dust, with, for example, deposition rates in central London ranging between 575 and 1008 microplastics per square meter per day (9).
Limited in vitro and in vivo data suggest that only small fractions of administered microplastics are capable of crossing epithelial barriers of lungs and intestines, with specific uptake profiles and generally increasing uptake efficiency with decreasing particle size (2).
Studies with human cells in culture, and in rodents and aquatic species indicate translocation of microplastics <10 µm from the gut cavity to the lymph and circulatory systems, causing systemic exposure and accumulation in tissues including liver, kidney, and brain (12). Al though the smallest particles (<0.1 µm) may be capable of accessing all organs, crossing cell membranes (12), the placenta (13), and also the brain (14), major knowledge gaps regarding absorption, distribution, metabolism, and excretion (ADME) still exist. Whether there are dose-dependent effects of microplastics in humans also remains unknown.
An additional intriguing, yet understudied, but potentially hazardous property of microplastics is the presence of an eco- or biocorona, i.e., biomolecules and other substances on the surface of the plastic particle, which may influence particle uptake, fate, and effects (6, 13). [Microplastics could act as vehicle for toxic substances]
Vethaak, A. D., & Legler, J. (2021). Microplastics and human health. Science, 371(6530), 672-674. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.abe5041 [but of course it’s fucking paywalled]
We have studies showing that sperm count is lowered by microplastics. We might actually have a reproductive crisis on our hands in the future. But, hey, its cheap, so why not right?
Fortunately reproduction is going to be the smallest of our concerns when the planet starts boiling.
Indeed. If anything, this side effect will be a benefit for humanity in the medium term
Humanity can definitely last a very long time if the temperature starts rising. It might require us to move underground, but we’ll survive. But, humanity can’t survive without creating more humans.
Could you link those studies then?
Ah yes, BPA, which I had already addressed.
For example, bisphenol A (BPA), a plasticizer used for the synthesis of phenol resins, polyacrylates, polyesters, epoxy resins, and polycarbonate plastics, is used for the production of drink and food packaging, and in case of high temperature exposure or pH variation (e.g., washing in washing machines, food heating into the microwave, contact with acid foods) leaches into wastewater, contaminates foods and beverages, thus representing both ecotoxicological and health risks
Other than BPA, there is still not much evidence regarding negative health effects. BPA is in the process of being banned even in many US states, and many companies have already moved away from it because of these health effects. Other plastics seem not to have the same effect.
Go fuck yourself
I don’t dare to click it because I have seen gore twice the last few weeks due to Lemmy, but I kind of want to know what it is.
rofl it’s not gore. It’s a LetMeGoogleThatForYou link
It’s not gore or anything. It’s just extremely snarky.
Well, looking up something on Google is very easy. I know when I want to know something, I don’t expect a stranger to spoon feed me information that takes a few seconds to pull up.
If you disagree with a person’s point, you’re more than welcome to refute it with your own evidence.
I think it has been shown that certain plastic softeners (e.g. phatalates) cause fertility issues, some of that might be included in microplastics but plastic itself I have not seen anything (And these specific softeners can be banned and are already mostly banned in the EU).
I see this as an absolute win.
You know that science gets further the more evidence we can observe right? Please look up your sources and date them for me, will you? Then do another search and pay attention to recent studies on the effects of plastics on the human body.
You’re asking me to prove a negative. Why don’t you post your sources?
? I’m asking you to look at your sources, not to prove anything to anyone. I don’t even want to hear your conclusion, you can do that all by yourself or continue to look like a fool that didn’t read a single study on the subject.
I don’t think you understand that you’re asking me to prove that something does not exist. You can’t prove that. There has not yet been enough study to prove that it does have a negative effect, aside from BPA which is already being regulated.
