Microplastics in the human brain

I may be misunderstanding you, but it sounds like you're claiming that they had e.g. 10 tiny samples of tissue, that their measurements had an average 25% variation across those 10 samples, and that therefore the whole brain estimate (mass 10,000x that of a single sample) therefore has a much greater uncertainty. But doesn't the standard error of the mean get reduced by the square root of the number of samples? i.e. if you had 10 samples with 25% variation across samples, and you're taking their mean, the error of that mean should be 25% / sqrt(10) = 8%. And that should be the relative error for the scaled up whole-brain microplastic concentration as well. Or is there some other source of variation that I'm missing?

...so you are saying that the probability distribution indicates that there is a 50% probability that there more than a spoon's worth of plastic in our brain?

Why yes, i think i will believe the random internet commenter.

Thankyou. I think I will quote your last two lines frequently.

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I did address their point. The tendency with climate change, micro plastics, etc. is to deny, deny, deny, until it is too late. Perhaps we should err on the side of caution. In this situation its much better to err on the side of being overly cautious.

Experts wrote the research paper. Until otherwise demonstrated I will give them, the experts, the most generous interpretation per site guidelines. The experts addressed the concern by OP but OP calls it “brushing off”.

People can nitpick anything. The question remains, just how much microplastics are OK? If the answer is small then the study has merits despites its alleged issues.

Los Angeles would be very difficult to transition at this point, it’s just too low density. It was better 100 years ago than it is now.

You’re right, but the thing that leads us to lighter EVs is solid state batteries.

The solution to tragedies of the commons is to internalize externalities. Tax should scale with carbon use, congestion contribution, and microplastic emission.

> Paradoxically most of the 'small government' types are often the biggest road users.

I think it's "limited government". I'm pretty sure they would prefer roads get more spending.

I think the root observation here comes from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fourth_power_law which really talks about the inferred stress to the road for given weight on the axle, not tire wear based on vehicle weight. The above seems to be using a simplification based on passenger cars staying with 4 tires across 2 axles but how this relates to tire wear is going to be a bit more complicated when you start talking about vehicles which can have more axles, more tires per axle, and significantly larger tires.

I'd believe buses have a lot of tire wear compared to an individual car but I wouldn't use that relation as proof of just how many times so.

trams were popular in tons of places before, I understand they improved traffic significantly compared even to today, and they'd still have a positive effect now, I think. But most places shifted towards a car centric focus and we lost those.

The fourth power law is usually applied to deformation of asphalt roadways (here's a citation for that: https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Maxwell-Lay/publication...); I haven't heard it applied to tires before. If I had to guess I'd agree with you - I would expect a smaller exponent, particularly if the tires are designed for the given load.

This Engineering Explained video seems pretty thorough. The short of it is that your intuition is in the right direction, its definitely not to the fourth power of weight. Vehicle weight does contribute to wear but according to Continental its less important than driving style and road curviness.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hvIcVmSzSEg

Most studies I've seen on this topic agree that the amount of pollution created is not linear, and this also makes intuitive sense. The heavier your vehicle, the wider and/or larger diameter your tires need to be to give it the required amount of grip. If those bigger tires wear out in the same time as your smaller vehicle tires, you've already created considerably more pollution.

I know this figure comes from road wear. I don't know if it applies to tire wear, and indeed I suspect it doesn't, if only because tires tend to scale with vehicle weight as you mentioned. I think road wear may be associated with structural cracking of the road which may not change significantly with tire area.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fourth_power_law

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Solid/particulate pollution from tires is definitely a problem, but in terms of carbon specifically isn't it many orders of magnitude less than the carbon from gas engines or electric power plants?

EV/hybrids also have regenerative brakes so emit less brake dust. Between emissions, tires, and brakes I'd be curious to see how it balances out.

But really cycling and transit are the way to go to make cities more liveable. Personal cars take too much space in a city and ruin the built environment for everyone not in one.

These zones are generally densely populated areas, and in Europe they usually have low speed limits, and roads design to encourage driving at low speeds.

To think that the minuscule difference in tire dust is significant at all, compared to the pollutants that EVs completely eliminates, is absolutely ridiculous.

The devil is in the details, yes. Have you considered that the policy makers have actually looked into the details? Have you looked into the details? Have you read any detailed reports about tire wear or did you just make up a problem based on your own intuition? Because I’ve seen reports from EV fleet operators that indicate that they see no difference in tire wear. Most likely the added weight (which isn’t all that much for modern, smaller EVs.. you know, the ones that people actually drive in urban/suburban areas in Europe) as a factor is drowned by other larger factors.

And we’re not that far away from EVs with the same or lower weight than their ICE counterparts, so getting these kinds of policies in place has some forward-looking aspects to them as well.

Excessive NO2 emissions spewed by diesel engines not meeting regulations very literally removed years from our collective life spans in city centres across the world.

Despite their own health hazards no amount of tire particulate from EV's can achieve that level of widespread public health impact.

You can probably reduce microplastic consumption, but it is quite a pain and more expensive. Try buying everything at the store not wrapped/bottled in plastic. This does not even work as well as you might think as many things are wrapped in plastic and then presented as if they were not. For example, breakfast sausages in the meat display at my local Whole Foods are wrapped in paper when they give it to you, but come to the store in ~1lb plastic wrapped packages.

The hope is that the subjects in both samples have about the same age distribution. If they didn't, then the statistics are dubious.

Does osmosis remove? Is it in all groundwater?

Because I have a well. A deep one. And an osmosis system.

Imagine a grocery store that is within a short walking distance, such that you don't need to haul a weeks worth of groceries but can get fresh food every single day.

US supermarkets are massive, take forever to buy small amounts of groceries, and even the walk to and from the car is long.

A better world is possible! (If better grocery stores constitute a "better world")

Not only that, but if you're close to a road at all, you'll intake the micro-plastics and nano-plastics.

So you really need to move away from roads. That's possible, but it's really hard to do in most developed nations. Just moving away from a city won't get you to where you need to be. Even when you get there, you have other issues. Like, food, energy, water/sewage treatment, etc.

I don't think people realize how difficult it would be to get away from this particular pollutant in our environment. I mean most of us don't own 500 acres in the Brazilian, Namibian, or Ghanaian countryside that we can retreat to. Even Brazil may be too far gone at this point to be honest. And Brazil is enormous. A lot of space. The number of tolerable nations that would have unaffected areas is decreasing fast. This really is a global problem.

ETA: Some remote parts of Canada and Alaska might fit the bill? Assuming you're not big on quality of life.

15 minute cities is the answer.

My grocery store is literally in another town 20 miles away. I have an EV but apparently those are even worse for microplastic generation. Am I screwed?

I don't think you understand where I'm living.

"Microplastic Free", no, there is no such thing right now. But I'm very far from any major roads/interstates and hundreds of miles to any big city. I didn't move out here to avoid microplastics though, it just (maybe) turned out that way.

I'm actually not terribly afraid of microplastics at all, I just don't like urban environments.

Hope you never have to haul a family of 4 worth of groceries on a bus.

Seems like a more important problem, then, the part where people inevitably die. I mean compared to having some plastic in their heads.

I mean, what are we really going to do about it? So much chaos in the world, I don't think many are focusing on keeping plastics out of our body. No one's championing it.

I barely think the risks have been stated at all. They found a correlation between high levels of microplastics in the brain and dementia. There is a correlation between a bunch of things and dementia. I expect there is a correlation between good health and dementia, unhealthy people would tend to die off young without the time to fall apart mentally.

Like the ship-produced aerosols that seeded clouds, increased albedo, and cooled the planet, in what James Hansen has called a "Faustian bargain". We successfully stopped that with regulations.

That may be true, but you don’t have to rely on biking for “everything.” Some biking is better than no biking.

I live in a small college town a couple of miles from the college. I walk, run, or bike to work nearly every day. But I am not a purist about it. We have a snowstorm forecast for tomorrow so I am going to drive (my EV). Would it be better for the environment if I walked? Probably? Does one trip really make that much of a difference though? Probably not.

I think there are likely many many places where people can walk or bike to some of the things if not all of the things. People really should do that more (not the least reason because biking is wonderful). Biking to the grocery store is mostly impractical for me as it is many miles away. But that’s ok! I am doing other things.

Since the pandemic passenger car miles, airline miles are back at pre-pandemic levels.

Transit use is at 80% of pre-pandemic levels.

https://ti.org/antiplanner/?p=22722

Farebox recovery ratios have consequently become even worse.

The new US government is also presumably not going to fund much transit expansion.

It'd be interesting to see if more people work from home on a given day than use mass transit to get to work.

It's also pretty similar in Australia at least and probably in more places around the world.

There is a positive spin on this: the majority of Americans already live in or near dense urban centers. If we had solid public transportation only within these centers and to adjacent suburbs we would eliminate most car trips. That's bot much physical area to cover.

Less!

blood bank CEO thanks you too because the make millions selling your blood