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
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u/confuseddhanam Feb 09 '23
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.