Ehh. I don’t think we’ve really seen the bottom of the microplastics global problem. For all we know, the global reproduction rate dropping in developed countries is due to side effects of plastics in our brains and reproductive organs. Lead might be more obvious and immediate, relatively speaking, but we’ve not studied enough the effects of our plastic world on our bodies.
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Diplomjodler3@lemmy.world 3 weeks agoIt definitely is. Today’s environmental problems are certainly bad, but it’s nothing compared to 30 or 40 years ago.
okwhateverdude@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
GoodLuckToFriends@lemmy.today 3 weeks ago
I wonder if we are going to be able to truly study the effects of plastic. We’ll surely be able to point at certain effects, but like porn, you just won’t be able to find people who can be the control group.
Diplomjodler3@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Sure. But still better than lead. Just look at the current state of US politics. A lot of it is due to lead poisoning.
UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
What we lack in degree, we make up for in volume. “Carbon emissions aren’t nearly so bad as sulfur emissions” is technically true, right up until you’re living in a village that’s crushed by a glacier.
The global scale of industry is so much larger than it was 30 or 40 years ago. Even if you want to talk about microplastics, we’re creating such an enormous waste disposal crisis that it’s having cumulative effects at scale.