Plastic chemical phthalate causes DNA breakage, chromosome defects, study finds

France passed a law back in 2020 to require new washing machines to have a microplastics filter by 2025:

https://www.europarl.europa.eu/doceo/document/E-9-2020-00137...

It has also begun to subsidize the clothing repair industry:

https://www.cnn.com/2023/07/13/business/france-shoe-clothing...

The problem isn't really "buying new clothes," since most of the microplastics are released in the laundry. Sewage treatment plants aren't designed to remove them, so they get released with the discharge water. It can also clog up septic leachfields.

They do make purpose-built products to filter microplastic lint from laundry[1][2], but a more hacker approach is to just search for "pool filter."

I wish they made comparable products for the dryer.

[1] https://www.filtrol.net/

[2] https://planetcare.org/

There's an entire big and celebrated business sector that spends every working hour taking intact plastic products and grinds then into fine shreds, a process likely to contribute more than a fair share to microplastic dissemination. Maybe worth investigating, a good candidate for more microplastic release than the clothing industry.

Name of that business sector? Plastics recycling.

Nitpick:

All else being equal you're generally safer being exposed to stable things that don't break down than unstable things that happily react with all sorts of things (and tend to meddle with the chemical processes required for life).

If you get to choose between breathing tires and milk jugs pick the milk jugs every time.

The lint is also the residue from your clothes being worn away. If you can, consider not using the dryer at all, especially for synthetic clothing which air dry quickly compared to cotton.

Since getting used to them during Covid, I've continued wearing masks for situations just like this.

Besides containing microplastics, the dryer lint is also radioactive

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35990858

Yep. Specifically, why are 100% cotton socks so ridiculously hard to find now?

It used to be that they were a little more expensive - now you need to go online to find them.

'Fun' fact - the average brain has about 7 grams of microplastic [0] in it now, up 50% from 2016. At that rate...

SEVEN FUCKING GRAMS. Guys this is beyond stupid.

Even if plastic were totally inert, as I've heard people insist with certainty (where are they getting these ideas!), 7 grams of plastic in your brain is terrifying.

0 - https://edition.cnn.com/2024/08/23/health/plastics-in-brain-...

Sadly I found a study at https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3222987/ saying that many polypropylene polyethylene products release estrogenic chemicals (IDK if it's the same as phthalate) likely from additives, including when bent/deformed. And polycarbonates are infamously made of polymerized BPA and similar chemicals (usually endocrine disruptors).

>PVC water pipes

This is the most relevant one IMO. You can buy glass cups and jars, it doesn't matter if the water you put into them comes through PVC pipes! Even if you buy BPA-free phthalate-free bottled water, I think it's safe to assume that at one point that water went through several meters of PVC pipes to get to that bottle!

PVC water pipes must be ubiquitous nowadays, and are certainly better than the older copper alternative, which in turn is better than the older lead alternative!

Maybe the next step is special PVC for water piping. Until then I guess we're better than we have ever been, water piping-wise.

Also quite commonly used as a fragrance enhancer.

PVC is also commonly used in 3D printing, with very pungent fumes.

yes, I would. thick glass is great and cant break easily if it is smaller container. there is also stainless steel and other materials.

plastic was invented 100 years ago. people did just fine in the house without it.

I use bar soaps for everything. Ethique is an amazing brand. https://ethique.com/

You mean like perfume and cosmetics? Sturdy glass with carpets near the bathroom sink and the shower will do the trick. I'll take a few cuts through my life over cancer and chronic diseases.

I mean, you could make a simple and cheap bottle out of aluminum probably? We had shampoo before the widespread usage of plastic bottles, though you are right that they used to come in glass. Perhaps we could use that fancy unbreakable soviet glass.

Sounds like a good business idea actually..

Edit: Actually thinking about it, that really is a good business idea. If anyone wants to build that business with me, email me at the address in my bio.

I try to avoid reheating things in plastic containers. It's about the only thing I can think of I can do as a consumer to reduce the risk of chemicals leeching into the food.

I think furniture and carpet would get it worse than most stuff. The alternatives to plastic (largely glass) in other cases are more like 20-50% more expensive, but furniture? Carpet? Solid wood and wool, leather—god, I dunno what you’d even use for cushion fill that’d last anywhere near as long. Those are closer to 400% the price of synthetic stuff. Or more.

There are "bulk" stores that have no packaging and you fill up what you need into reusable containers that you either buy or bring yourself. They generally have common bulk items like flour but also lots of options for typical grocery store fare. The prices at those stores generally aren't 400% of what they are at a regular grocery store, and if they are higher I'm sure a large part is that this is a niche kind of store rather than how everyone gets their groceries.

That's obviously not the whole supply chain, and I'm sure many goods still arrive at that kind of store in plastic, but these tend to be run by the types that avoid plastic anyway so whatever they can get in reusable packaging I'm sure they are getting wrapped in something other than plastic. Anyway, if plastic is going to be used, the exposure from a single 100lbs bag of something that you refill into a container is probably vastly lower than from 100 individually wrapped 1lbs bags

> would drive prices of basic household goods up 400%

Glass is nominally more expensive and works. Our go-to food storage is mason jars. $12/dozen, probably cheaper by volume than the plastic crap on the shelves at Target or Walmart.

> I'm all for pushing back on chemicals wherever possible, especially in food packaging, but let's be real.

The devil is that food that comes pre-packed under vacuum or inert atmosphere in plastics lasts much, much longer than food that gets stored in anything else - including tin cans by the way, they're all lined with plastics because acidic food would otherwise literally eat away the can.

Jars can be refilled. I think things would actually get cheaper.