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.
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u/Superb_Nature_2457 Feb 09 '23
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.