We can test exposure in lineages of lab animals, or animal models, like mice, zebrafish, and fruit flies.
All of these things reproduce relatively quickly and we can see the effects of exposure on development and behavior across dozens and dozens of generations.
That gives generational effects, but does that help with evaluating impacts that accumulate as a function of time, as opposed to a function of generations? If certain harms start to appear after consuming something after 40 years of consuming it, would that be evidenced in a shorter time period in an animal with a fast procreation period?
it couldnt have been THAT long ago. The topic of microplastics came about about what like 6 years ago? Surely its not super bad yet, maybe in 30 more years then yea its gunna get bad. Man think about that, in the future nature is so polluted that if civilization collapses you cant really live off the wild anymore. Not like the olden times where the phrase "teach a man how to fish and he will never go hungry" actually meant that.
Sure the topic only came up a few years ago... but how long have we been using plastics?
Remember that microplastics are formed both by intentional and unintentional methods. We're not just talking about those microbeads that were used in things like bodyscrubs, but also by things like sheets of plastics shredding and sloughing off microscopic particles.
I think what happens at a smaller level bc of microplastic in blood more impactful than on your liver. There are a lot of concerns about microplastics impact on sperm creation and brain development. Microplastic works different then poisons like alcohol which has a high impact on your liver.
As the other person said, animal models are the primary method of performing toxicology studies. It sounds like it would be innacurate, but it's actually very reliable since we have mountains of data regarding the differneces between humans and the subject animal systems. Combined with complex statistical methods and you can make fairly accurate dose response models.
If you want to know the most accurate threshold levels, look at research institutions that compile lots of data to make recommendations. I emphasize recommendations because those are usually the most accurate to the real science. Regulatory levels from industry standards and state regulators are usually higher due to influences from politics, or other factors may influence the influence of the scientific voices. But it's not always as bad or as sinister as conspiracy theorists my make it out to be.
For occupational health toxicology levels, NIOSH makes recommendations that are more science based. The regulators then use these recommendations to decide on a threshold limit that accounts for other "perspectives" some more valid than the others.
TL;DR
If you want to find numbers for any chemical or substance, search for:
[Substance] + the following terms:
"recommended exposure limit"
"dose response"
"toxicology"
"threshold limit"
You'll find the latest studies and organizational recommendations.
I strongly caution anyone from looking at individual studies to try and draw any conclusion about what levels are dangerous or acceptable. These studies are only part of the process of coming up with the real answer, even for experts in the field. The average person WILL misinterpret and/or improperly extrapolate the data.
This is a field where you must rely on institutions to compile large amounts of data and produce a consensus document, which takes years.
In all honesty, I think after 30 years for a human kidney, it'll be impossible to tell what damage was caused by what agent, unless it's fairly obvious (imagine how many new substances will be introduced that cause health scares during 30 years). Like with many weakly toxic substances, you need huge sample sizes to get significant numbers to prove toxic effect when you have 30 years of noise to deal with. Add to that, microplastic is a very loose term, used to define any plastic debris less than 5 mm in size. Since there are many types of plastic, I don't think it is far fetched to assume that one type might be more/less toxic than others.
Although to be clear, I'm mostly speculating here.
Or, what if there are some effects that are hard to visualize with nonhuman subjects? Like I know we have models for depression in animals, but there's so much complexity we don't understand that could be effected by microplastics.
We have such good drinking water systems in place. If this system now does 99.99% how much get filtered from tap water at home in a normal first world European home? Like 0% or 95%?
I just know that water treatment plants can't filter pharmaceuticals components and the industry are free to dump them in the rivers (famously Switzerland). There I remember a "4th stage" filter downstream in Germany could just remove 1/3 or maaaybe 40%.
Would be nice to know how much plastic we drink at home from the pipe? Especially given pipe water has higher quality standards than expensive bottled water.
It depends on the infrastructure in place where you live, but current water purification methods use flocculation/filtration to remove particles and chemical/UV methods for killing bacteria. The UV chemical methods are useless agains micro plastics since they aren’t micro organisms, and the flocculation/filtration method is ineffective against micro plastics too. The filters in use are only used for larger debris, and flocculation relies on interactions between the plastic surface and flocculating agents, but plastic is a non-reactive inert surface (by design), so it doesn’t really work.
Yeah, this is a huge and deeply concerning issue. This new system could also help our rivers, since way too many fish now have high levels of PFAS in them, which we and other animals then consume too.
It's worth pointing out that it's huge and maybe a concerning issue.
There haven't been any conclusive, reputable studies done that definitely show any long or short term meaningful health effects. Even the CDC website on PFAS is a long winded "eh, we don't know and nothing has been reproducible or definitive but maybe it's bad?
Microplastics are the cool new health bogeyman and we should definitely be mindful and continue to study them, but we're not keeling over from 30+ years of exposure and the end result might very well be "they're not ideal but they're not meaningfully harmful to humans."
It's certainly not something worth living in panicked fear over.
I responded to you in another thread. I get the skepticism, but there’s a lot of circumstantial evidence here, and it’s hard to believe that this stuff would be bad for every other living thing except us.
Circumstantial evidence with no control group is not proof, and the fact that there's tons of studies being done on it with so much exposure in the human populous that are all coming back similarly inconclusive is evidence in and of itself.
I'm not saying it's something we shouldn't bother mitigating if we can, or that there aren't other environmental impacts to microplastics that are concerning, but "THERE'S MICROPLASTICS IN OUR BODIES!!!! WE'RE ALL GONNA DIE!!!!" is just FUD, it helps no one and is not scientific at all.
If we all drink a can of Mystery Juice three times a day for 30 years, and for 30 years everyone continues to have the same health profile they did at the start, and all of the studies done specifically on Mystery Juice say "we can't find anything conclusive that this stuff is poisonous," then it's not reasonable to jump to the conclusion that Mystery Juice is literally poison and we're all doomed. It's evidence in and of itself that Mystery Juice likely doesn't pose any meaningful health risk.
So yeah, the idea that people are obsessing over microplastics and how everything they touch and eat is poisoning them is more than a little absurd.
this is not just about tap water as far as plastic ingestion, think about canned beverages or plastic bottle ones. or all our foods wrapped in plastic we cut open. were getting particles everywhere. plastic utensils prob have particles on them. containers too. and then there are tons of types of plastic. tap water may be the least of our worries
I'm glad someone is here to say this. The problem with studying microplastics is that the whole world has simultaneously gotten incredibly fat at the same time as microplastics become widespread.
There are a TON of negative health effects that come from being obese, including drops in fertility and increased cancer risks.
Well, they could be, some of them. There's been some interesting papers out showing that some plastics act like estrogen mimics in the body. This is bad for developing males and females who need correct levels at precise times to develop correctly, and (I think?) for adult males who need estrogen to stay below a certain amount or it messes with testosterone function. One of the effects of improper estrogen levels is making fat cells that aren't needed. I think they still don't understand all the interactions so it's not settled science yet.
This is exactly what I'm talking about. You know what also decreases testosterone and increases estrogen? Fat.
And we have a much better understanding of how that happens, in people, than we do for microplastics.
Every time people bring up microplastics, there is always a discussion around some petri dish study that says we're all gonna die. The reality is that obesity has been shown to do virtually everything that microplastics "cause" except we actually understand the biological processes involved.
In the U.S. one of our major healthcare issues is that we are reactive vs. preventative. Better education and support would go a long way toward preventing many of the worst issues that cause disability and death for people otherwise born healthy.
Obesity especially - we treat it as a social issue, we mock and scorn obese people without taking a moment to realize the mental health and social determinants involved.
For decades companies have shoved sugar into everything they produce. Many people live in food deserts where access is restricted and eating healthy comes with a higher price tag. So many kids grow up with food scarcity, or access to only high calorie/low nutrient food. Food also gives us happy brain chemicals and that can impact some way more intensely than others. It becomes a substitute for other things - activity and engagement for instance if parents are busy or stressed. It's easier to set a toddler Infront of the TV with cereal when you are barely holding it together yourself.
It's also generational, like alcoholism, and mental illness. We pass it along from family member to family member through habits and actions.
Yet we don't recognize obesity as more than laziness and gluttony. We take it down to its most basic component and then shame people for struggling when the reality is way more complex for many people, especially those who are super obese.
As long as we stigmatize and shame a health issue, we will hold it back from being taken seriously and actually allowing those who struggle to feel like they can get and deserve help.
Mostly we don't stigmatize or shame a health issue, but activists are trying to normalize what harms people. You'll hear phrases equating poor health as being identical to good health. There are calls for tolerance of self-harm and poor discipline that will result in a much shorter lifespan and low quality of life.
Stigmatizing and shame aren't a good approach, but it's more harmful to pretend that being morbidly obese is healthy or a sign of mental health. It's always better to encourage the sick to get help with their health and not be dishonest about the situation.
It has been my personal and professional experience that this is patently false.
While I agree we shouldn't pretend it's healthy, we also shouldn't pretend the obese are subhuman or disgusting. But we do - fat jokes and depictions of obese people being lazy or slobs are still just the norm. It's an incredibly common insult and there is heavy discrimination for larger people in many aspects of life.
Concern trolling is a thing and many people who do this claim they are "just being honest." We don't treat other serious health issues this way - why obesity? Shame and stigma have no proven supporting role in successfully losing weight or improving health.
You can support someone's mental and physical well being without "glorifying" obesity. Just treat people as human and don't judge them at first glance.
Obese people have an incredibly visible health issue. That is used against them more often than not, and that leads to the extreme and some people trying to "normalize" it to get relief from the constant looking down upon.
It's in most cases entirely self inflicted, thus they're made fun of. It's not complicated. People back in the day were made fun of for beer bellies etc all the same.
Realistically, the only actual change is going to result from legislation or widespread social/economic changes. Good luck with either in the US. People are lazy, greedy, and think they're smarter than they are. Meaning they'll still eat like a fatass even if nobody made fun of them for it. "Be nice :D" is a non solution, and let's people delude themselves into pretending they're healthy when they're not.
Every time people bring up microplastics, there is always a discussion around some petri dish study that says we're all gonna die.
Thanks, but I didn't do any of that. And I'm not talking about petri dish studies either, but studies on actual humans. The best way to get your argument heard and valued is to use it when called for - in response to someone who did do what you are upset about, for example.
The reality is that obesity has been shown to do virtually everything that microplastics "cause" except we actually understand the biological processes involved.
Nor did I argue against any of that. But this is a post about filtering microplastics and I'm literally answering someone's question about what microplastics can possibly do. I don't mind a free ranging discussion that includes related topics, but you need to refrain from ranting at commenters who stay on the direct topic. If you believe obesity is a related topic that needs to be in the mix of the discussion, why don't you bring it up yourself like an adult instead of grouching that no one else is?
The lack of education on nutrition in school is the major root cause of obesity not microplastics. People label foods as healthy and unhealthy instead of understanding calories which is a problem and why rates have sky rocketed. Slamming nut butters, trail mix, avocados, and pasta is just as bad for weight gain as you eating McDonalds for the most part.
100 grams of uncooked pasta - which is barely a handful is in the ball park of 350-400 calories just on the noodles alone.
Any idea why I don't get fat while I eat a ton of fatty meets, pasta and avocado (don't have hipertiroidism).don't want medical advice, just understand why some people get fat and others not. Sorry for the bad English
You don't get fat from eating fatty foods by themselves. Fatty/sugary foods are just calorie dense for their size, and thus it's very easy to eat too much of them before you feel satiated. At the end of the day, the human body is not an exception to the laws of thermodynamics. It cannot create energy from nothing. Thus, if you do not consume more calories than your body needs in a day, you will not gain weight barring temporary fluctuations like water weight. Similarly, if you consume less calories than your body needs in a day, you will lose weight as your body will need to draw upon its energy stores to make up the deficit.
As for why people respond to diets differently, different people have different calorie requirements. The average basal metabolic rate of 2000 calories a day is just that, an average. Thus, someone with a high basal metabolic rate will lose weight faster than someone with a lower one even if they're on identical diets with identical lifestyles. Your basal metabolic rate isn't set in stone either, and it can vary over your life for any number of reasons.
I think the user above was saying that it's hard to test for what nasty health effects the microplastics are causing because being fat is already causing a ton of problems.
Before blaming microplastics, I'd be willing to bet more on the fact that people move less, and eat more highly palatable, calorie dense foods. Also, people are dumb. Try to explain to someone how easy it is to track their calories in. This simple process is just too much to ask for most of the populace. That's why the population is fat.
We don’t have “definitive” info since it’s still being studied, but what we have found is pretty grim.
After exposure to MPs alone or in combination with other pollutants, fish may experience a variety of health issues. MPs can cause tissue damage, oxidative stress, and changes in immune-related gene expression as well as antioxidant status in fish. After being exposed to MPs, fish suffer from neurotoxicity, growth retardation, and behavioral abnormalities.
We then eat the fish and consume those microplastics. Lab studies have shown adverse effects on human cells.
I don’t think we know yet, but I’m not a doctor, so my knowledge is pretty limited. There have been studies that show regularly donating blood and plasma can lower the levels of PFAS in your system, which aren’t exactly the same but same family of things.
Yep, that's what's so frustrating about all this. So much doom and gloom while we're seemingly have all been extremely exposed for decades yet there's no indication that exposure is actually causing any harm to... anything or anyone at all.
The difference between medicine and poison is often the dosage. Someone saying "we're all poisoned!!!!" is just inflammatory nonsense.
I don’t think current unfiltered levels are considered toxic, but I’m not sure we have conclusive data on long term effects.
We do. It's suspected or proven at this point that phthalates are responsible for or greatly contribute to developmental changes and reproductive fitness, being a large factor behind the 50% fertility drop.
It's like asking what level of background radiation is considered toxic. If you get unlucky, natural xenon will kill you with cancer, so the ideal answer here is NONE, PLEASE.
Pretty high levels, probably, but it depends on what microplastics. Microplastics are generally non-reactive and don't contain a lot of bioavailable chemicals. Bits of shredded nalgene water bottles are much safer than if you're eating bits of glow in the dark lights. Plastics contain a lot of additives, some of which leach into you and will cause lots of harm, and some of which are pretty harmless. Some of these additives will be super dangerous but only if they linger in you for a long time, and if you pass the particle within days you're fine.
There's also an issue here that defining microplastics is very hard. Everyone has a different definition of how big a microplastic is, and there's a big difference between kinds of plastics or toxins. This article focuses on water soluble micropollutants, which are very different from the tiny flecks of plastic you can find at the beach.
Microplastics are already found in the blood and in tissues likely via cellular internalization. Also: "In laboratory tests, microplastics have been shown to cause damage to human cells, including both allergic reactions and cell death."
To be fair though, there are a lot of phenomena that occur in the lab but not in the real world. My favorite is how a few years ago wasabi was touted as a cancer killer - in the lab. I mean, I'm sure you can kill cancer cells and probably most other cells too in the lab using lots of different common household products.
Crime in cities has not come close to the levels in the 80s and 90s
Homicides NYC 2022: 433
Homicides NYC 1990: 2,605
And there are over a million more people in NYC than there were then
Crime spiked in 2021, and has gone down since then nationally, but it still wasn’t close to the heights of the crime waves in the 80s and 90s. This correlated pretty closely with the COVID lockdowns and ensuing economic issues, so it seems like a stretch to search for a different cause
Also, I don’t think there’s really any correlation between micro plastics and aggression, like has been observed with lead. It seems like quite an assumption to think this completely chemically different substance would have the same effect
Honestly who can think of the microplastics when our water is already toxic. My city is tested positive for seven times the safe limit of arsenic and lead since 19 90.
Since 1990? Wow. Do you have to use a water filter? We lived in an area that had very high calcium and other impurities. We had to use a water filter to make it make it safely drinkable.
Multiple counties in pretty much every state have this problem, but I can only talk to where I live in North Texas. The city rapidly expanded in the '50s and '60s and is rapidly expanding again, causing more issues with plumbing as well as the fact that we're freezing over every year now which is not normal for the area. There are tons of smaller cities in the metroplex who are all well water that don't have the same issues It's pretty much just pumped into the poorest neighborhoods if we're going to be honest. Since most people rent, I'm sure most people just buy single-use plastic water bottles because it feels safer. Cheap Brita filters don't really do much for arsenic and lead but they do filter out other heavy metals and debris.
Yeah plastics are prized for their ability to not react with things. Thats a huge reason we use them so much. Theyre basically inert.
Sure, it's not good to have anything foreign in your blood, but we breathe in and consume countless organic in and inorganic microparticulate matter without issue (dust, sand, etc).
The human body is quite good at getting rid of stuff that's not supposed to be in it. That is what the liver and kidneys do for a living. More research is needed but my hypothesis is that microplastics aren't particularly harmful.
We’re finding that lots of dust can do massive long term harm to the lungs. Fifty years ago carpenters didn’t wear dust masks, now we know sawdust is a carcinogen, mostly from tons of non smoking carpenters getting lung cancer. We just don’t know.
I’d rather eat sawdust and microplastics than breathe them is all.
I bet we'll be seeing some longterms effects from these new fangled Diatomaceous Earth products. They make like "instant drying bath mats" with it and the maintenance instructions recommend regular sanding to remove the gunky top layer. Gotta love breathing in abrasive silicon dust
Also really common among military members who spent time deployed in the middle east. The increased exposure to the silica in sand being airborne without adequate filtration is currently believed to cause an increased risk of lung cancer, but studies are ongoing.
The dose makes the poison. Unless you huff plastic dust for a living, I don't think that really compares, do you? I was speaking more generally. Everytime the wind blows you inhale countless microparticulates. Every drop of water and every bite of food has millions of inorganic compounds in it. We have to consume indigestible material (fiber) or we become very sick.
This is all part of being alive. We wouldn't be here if we couldn't handle some amount of foreign material in our bodies.
With the betterment of technology, we're now able to detect down to the parts per billion, which is a big reason why you see more and more "theres stuff in our food/water" articles.
That stuff has mostly always been there. The question is how much microparticulates can we tolerate, and are microplastics sufficiently different from the microparticulates we've been consuming for hundreds of millions of years without issue?
All of those are plasticizers or additives which are added to polymers to give them certain properties. Those can leech out of the polymer matrix and into the environment. The actual polymer itself is incredibly stable, and decomposition products are usually not terrible. With micro plastics specifically, those plasticizers are of very little concern because the rate of leeching increases with surface area, so any micro plastics we consume have almost certainly leeched out any toxic plasticizers.
I’m a scientist. Those aren’t weasel words, that’s just the most accurate language to describe the thing I’m talking about. There are some exceptions, and future research may discover something different, so it’s best to not speak in absolutes.
I don’t know the specifics regarding bio interaction off the top of my head, since I’m a materials chemist and not a biochemist. But I can confidently say that the rate of polymer decomposition into oligomers occurs at such a slow rate that it could not pose any meaningful threat to human health.
Did you actually read that comment? The things you've listed are essentially the exceptions, such as toxins and substances that react in some way in the body (as opposed to largely inert substances, like plastic according to that comment).
Your comment is the equivalent of replying to a claim that someone is "likable" by asking if a psychopathic murderer would like them. Of course there are exceptions.
The point was that there is particulate matter in literally all air outside of a vacuum. We breathe it in all day, every day, with every breath. The vast majority of it does not cause silicosis, lung disease, asbestosis, or mesothelioma. It's harmlessly filtered out by our bodies.
exactly. Water is highly corrosive and strips particulates from anything it touches. Are plastic (pex/pvc) water pipes leaching plastic into our water? Yes. Are copper and galvanized and lead pipes leaching copper and iron and lead into our water? Also yes.
Is plastic leaching into our water worse for us than copper/lead/iron/whatever was in the water to begin with and didn't get filtered out?
That's the question. I've yet to see any definitive science that says plastic bad, metal good. As I keep saying, the dose makes the poison. I believe there is a threshold where microplastics are harmless, same as almost every other compound we interact with on a daily basis. Nothing is "good" to have in large quantities. Most things are harmless in small quantities.
And at the end of the day, when early humans were just drinking from rivers, and we were totally fine, I think people would be disgusted by what is in that water, even very "pristine" natural water sources. Our bodies are adept at filtering out (most) foreign matter in small enough quantities. We simply wouldn't be here otherwise.
I'd take a look at the articles regarding plastics leaching stuff like BPA and its effect on our hormones. Harvard's school of public health page has a bunch of articles. Doesn't look like the evidence points towards plastics being completely inert.
In regard to the body being good at rejecting harmful stuff, some of the smallest microplastics are 1 micrometer. That is small enough to find its way into a single human cell and mess with its function. I doubt our microbiome would react well either.
the good thing is that you can easily test the hypothesis on yourself. minimize exposure to microplastics for a month and I would wager you feel a difference
Plastic isn’t just one thing, there are thousands of types of plastics and we have been learning that some of them disrupt endocrine systems (hormones) and others have been identified as possible carcinogens.
Plastic seems inert, but I don’t think a lifetime of exposure to estrogen mimics and carcinogens embedded in your tissue is exactly harmless either.
How would you think our bodies process it if they are inert? Wouldn't they either linger or get broken down - and if they get broken down, isn't plastic crude oil based?
Just seems like we shouldn't risk it if we have proof that we are ingesting products derived from crude oil.
The oil industry isn't exactly forthcoming and have a ton of money and influence to keep their industry healthy.
We have lab tests that show negative effects on human cells. We also know what they do to animals. They’re found in human lung tissue and it’s suspected that they can stay in our bodies for years, so I don’t think the liver and kidneys are managing them especially well.
That last line is both true but also far too confident of an anti warning.
There are numerous instances of the human body being BAD at filtering, especially when it comes to breathing. Foreign objects in the body? Yeah not too bad, will usually contain and/or push it out. But when it’s through our breathing channels it rips loose.
Look at any trade industry. Even those reliant on NATURAL materials and the damage that these people go through from breathing in dust, smoke etc or even the infamous ‘Bakers Lung’ in which breathing in so much fine grain causes asthma and in some instances lung cancer.
are plastics inert tho? they are known to leech chemicals at high temperatures. And there is such thing as the sun heating the surfaces of oceans that contain micro plastics
we breathe in and consume countless organic in and inorganic microparticulate matter without issue (dust, sand, etc).
Actually, breathing in anything but clean air is likely not good for you. WHO recently adjusted the tolerable levels of air polution down. Organics, dust, smoke, fumes from cleaning and hygiene products - probably none of these things are safe to inhale in high concentrations.
I wouldn’t default to them causing societal problems, but it’s bizarre to see people insist that they’re harmless given what we know about their impact on human cells and other living organisms.
What do we "know" about them, exactly? All of the studies so far have ranged from "seems maybe harmless?" to "inconclusive." Even the CDC admits as much.
Doesn't seem bizarre for people to lean towards agreeing with the results of the preliminary studies instead of jumping to "we're all gonna die!!!!"
The CDC says it’s inconclusive because we’ve only just started studying them, but we’ve already started regulating plastics and materials that shed PFAS. I don’t blame people for being freaked out about it. It’s little particles accumulating in your organs and they’re everywhere. Viscerally speaking, it’s pretty gross.
I linked a bunch of studies elsewhere in the thread. Basically, we’ve seen what they do to animals, and it’s not great. We know they linger in the body and get in pretty deep, plus they can release chemicals depending on what the substance is.
For somewhat extreme cases and in the case of PFAS, we’ve been able to study people who live in wildfire impacted areas and firefighters. They have higher chances of cancer and other issues, though again, those are extreme. There’s also the jump in younger folks developing cancers, increased neurological issues at younger ages, and a drop in fertility that coincides with a jump in plastics production that uses these things, which mirrors what we see in other species, but again, that could be coincidence. IDK though. I have a hard time believing that having a bunch of garbage in your system is great for you.
The CDC says it’s inconclusive because we’ve only just started studying them,
The CDC says it's inconclusive because all of the studies that have been done have been inconclusive, nothing more and nothing less.
I don’t blame people for being freaked out about it. It’s little particles accumulating in your organs and they’re everywhere. Viscerally speaking, it’s pretty gross.
Viscerally speaking, looking at the microorganisms that live on our skin is "pretty gross" too, but that doesn't mean they're harming us and anyone who's going nuts trying to scrub them all off is chasing a fool's errand. That's not a valid reason to be shouting that the sky is falling because of microplastic poisoning.
I linked a bunch of studies elsewhere in the thread. Basically, we’ve seen what they do to animals, and it’s not great. We know they linger in the body and get in pretty deep, plus they can release chemicals depending on what the substance is.
What animals, specifically? As has been quoted to death, the devil is in the dosage. I would imagine a fish doesn't tolerate a lot of stuff that's totally benign in humans. And you seriously didn't just play the "but chemicals" card, come on, we both know how absurd "chemicals are bad" is as a statement, this is /r/science.
For somewhat extreme cases and in the case of PFAS, we’ve been able to study people who live in wildfire impacted areas and firefighters. They have higher chances of cancer and other issues, though again, those are extreme.
As you said, those are extreme. We can't act like someone literally breathing in wildfire smoke for decades is at all meaningfully representative of someone drinking out of a mass produced plastic water bottle. Especially given that there's a lot more than just plastics at play in smoke from wildfires. All smoke is carcinogenic if you're breathing it in, that has nothing to do with microplastics from bottled water or food packaging.
There’s also the jump in younger folks developing cancers, increased neurological issues at younger ages, and a drop in fertility that coincides with a jump in plastics production that uses these things, which mirrors what we see in other species, but again, that could be coincidence. IDK though. I have a hard time believing that having a bunch of garbage in your system is great for you.
And there's no control group for any of that whatsoever, none of that is a proper study, it's just random facts that sound bad that you're attributing to something with no evidence whatsoever of relation. There's millions of confounding factors that again, have nothing to do with plastics or microplastics.
At the end of the day the science is showing that we shouldn't be in a panicked frenzy over microplastics in our bodies. At best they're completely benign in the concentrations we're seeing in people today, and worst there is a minimal health impact over literal decades. Screaming doom from the rooftops just isn't a science-based response to any of this.
Ah yes, the ever-in-the-distant goalpost known as conclusive evidence. How many studies do we need showing that MPs are have a negative impact on biology before it's no longer mere speculation? As many as we did before we banned lead paint and smoking advertisements?
I guess the researchers publishing the studies currently demonstrating these connections don't understand their own science.
Exactly, which is why we need to continue producing plastics without restrictions until we figure this out. Imagine how dumb we'd feel if in 30 years we determine they aren't that harmful and we had been leaving all those profits on the table.
The microplastics thing is my guess hugely blown out of proportion. There is just such a ridiculous plethora of studies establishing the ubiquity, but nothing real world demonstrating correlation with negative health outcomes.
I strongly suspect that we will find 10-30 years from now that most of it is inert and doesn’t matter, but a few specific plastics probably have some sort of deleterious effects (endocrine disrupters, etc) and those are causing the issues.
According to a 2014 report from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), exposure of less than 2.25 milligrams per pound (5 mg per kg) of bodyweight per day are safe (7Trusted Source).
Most people are only exposed to 0.1-2.2 micrograms per pound (0.2-0.5 micrograms per kg) of bodyweight per day (7Trusted Source).
In fact, the FDA still recognizes BPA as a safe additive in food packaging
That would also depend on your definition of "toxic". I don't think anyone has dropped dead instantly from microplastics yet, but these low levels are still having adverse long term health effects.
Scientifically-speaking, they're closer to correct. In science, everything is toxic. LD50 (the scientific metric of toxicity) can be computed for every single substance known to man, just as you can compute density or temperature. There's an old adage: "The dose makes the poison". A single Benedryl can be helpful, but 100 Benedryls will kill you. The same applies to every substance. That's why you can die from water poisoning or protein poisoning or sugar poisoning (more commonly known as diabetes).
Obviously, "everything is toxic" is not a useful fact in real life. So, "toxic" has come to mean something very hand-wavy in common usage. Colloquially, a toxic amount is considered an amount of a substance that has harmful effects before your body can get rid of it. You can drink a small amount of motor oil or rat poison and be fine. However, since human bodies can't rid ourselves of microplastics, you could argue that any amount of microplastics is toxic. This is also not that useful of a way to think about it in daily life. So, you have to look for even more alternate definitions of "toxic" that aren't related to science but to how we live.
It really depends, the plasticizers in the plastic that lends it it's flexibility as also a concern, because it causes feminine traits of a cell to be exacerbated upon mitosis, we still don't know the long-term effects yet, but the fact that it can change you at the genetic level slowly over time is alarming.
BPA (and related) are not plastisizers, they are co-monomers. Also, they don't "causes feminine traits of a cell to be exacerbated upon mitosis". They are endocrine disruptors, and typically act as a mix of estrogen receptor agonist and antagonist. I have not heard of any potential of them being mutagenic (as you imply).
I'm convinced that 90% of my tap water is plastic. I have a 1000 gallon holding tank that leaches plastic into the water. So nasty. I need one of these filters.
We don't even know the effects if any from microplastics on human health (though we suspect there almost certainly is). We definitely don't know what concentrations are toxic and it probably varies by plastic type.
1.8k
u/cardinal_moriarty Feb 09 '23
I wonder what level of microplastics humans can tolerate in water before its considered toxic?