Researchers discover why plastic sheds dangerous fragments

I too would love to see a follow-up study. Unfortunately the research was done at Columbia University, which has suffered massive arbitrary grant freezes....

The difficult part is that microplastics are so widespread that it's difficult/impossible to even find a control.

There really isn't an animal alive that doesn't have some degree of microplastics in their body.

If I recall correctly from the previous big discussion on the front page about microplastics, the one about a spoonful of the stuff in your brain, the general takeaway was that it's pretty universally agreed upon that it's bad, the medical community is mostly disagreeing over just how bad it is.

We are observing uptick in colon cancers. One of the theories is that microplastics might be contributing to it

If you look at some plastic that has been outside in the sun for a while (a year or five) such as a toy or a plastic bag, it gets very fragile. If it's thin like a plastic bag, just the wind can break it apart. For thicker plastic parts, probably rain is enough to flush off the outer layer or powdered plastic every now and then.

Yeah and all the store of plastics in all the landfills and waters everywhere is shedding as we speak. I mean, its bad, but what can you do.

Glass bottles are ubiquitous as is Public drinking in Germany. They have a pfand program that gives money for recycling bottles where the bottles are literally cleaned and refilled not melted down.

So either, you return the bottles for some pocket money or you leave the bottle by a trashcan for someone (usually a homeless person) to collect all the bottles and make a few bucks for food and a shower.

It's actually a bit taboo to smash a bottle because of this.

Beautiful cyclical economy.

> As I understand it, aluminum cans require a plastic lining. How is that one solved?

You use glass.

The plastic is primarily used for acidic foods like tomatoes. Non-acidic goods will do just fine with no liner.

It depends where you live, but a lot of countries make you pay glass bottles now ; a fee that you get back once you take the empty bottle back to the supermarket.

It does not prevent people from throwing them, but since you get money from them, homeless people usually gather them to make some money.

There is a pretty clever solution to that which is called not throwing your trash on the ground. This is a cultural problem, there are plenty of communities where people are poor but still carry their trash home with them, and even if they don't have any sort of trash pickup service they throw their trash into a designated dump instead of the middle of their walking paths.

Broken glass on the street is an aesthetic issue, assuming one has good shoes. In contrast, with gradual plastic accumulation, life on Earth is headed for extinction.

Also, for poor people, they need the money that they money back when they return a glass bottle, so they have an incentive to not trash it, certainly not on the street.

Glass containers don't require any lining. As for aluminum without a lining, it is okay for certain dry foods only, nothing wet.

You use copper instead

Shoes...

Starting with the packaging is the easiest and most effective place to start.

Clothing is an interesting problem; silk and wool can provide superior alternatives but are costly and so it’d be a shift into quality.

That in turn requires a mindset shift away from changing trends every year to something perhaps more generational.

Are the wealthy trend setters willing to do this?

One interesting thing I've noticed in my life is that everyone that I've known personally preferred their early life and thinks the world is getting worse. From my great grandparents to me today. And each have their reasons, which sound valid, but probably have a bit of rose colored glasses and yearning for youth attached.

So is it that people prefer the world they are born into and hate change, or is life for an average person getting worse in some less tangible respects? Is fondly remembering the family bonding over radio broadcasts worth more than being able to afford every member of the family having their own TV, for example? It seems hard to judge.

We often define 'best it's ever been' by the poor being able to afford iPhones and the marginalized having more rights, which are both valid points.

But is it better for the majority common person? Are there people who are constantly in awe of how great things are, or are we doomed to miss what we had as kids and focus on the negative? Because I find myself falling into that trap often.

One thing that sticks in my head is that as a kid, my dad worked for a soda company and my neighbor worked for Lowes. Neither wife worked, both had 3 kids, and could afford a house and 2 cars. That seems like a fairy tale to young people today.

So you're assuming the person you're replying to is at least 175 years old?

This is a pretty meaningless statement.

Where? To whom? According to what metric?

It was not that long ago, and I would call "not being headed for extinction" better than the alternative.

In the West, plastic use became widespread in homes and with foods in the 1950s. In most other countries it took until the 1980s.

Plastics have gone from niche to absolutely ubiqutous worldwide in ~100 years. Even if it turns out to be totally and completely harmless to humans and every other animal, wouldn't you want to know that for sure?

So have radio waves. There was a lot of paranoia back then, much like with plastics today, and a similar amount of studies showing that exposure to RF radiation causes cancer, but that has mostly died down as people realised the truth.

As time goes on, the harmlessness only proves itself.

> Full article is paywalled

https://archive.ph/XJ7ug

It seems kind of crazy to look at history and believe that exogenous matter accumulating in tissues and cells doesn't have a negative effect, but I guess we have to wait to see.