Comment on PLASTICMAXXING
nebulaone@lemmy.world 1 week ago
Isn’t plastic basically biologically inert? So unless it is physically blocking something shouldn’t we have seen adverse effects if it actually was dangerous? Or maybe health problems just haven’t been associated with it yet. I think with lead it was obvious pretty quickly. I am a dumbass tho, so maybe someone smarter can correct me.
There is different health implications connected to microplastics like infertility and cardiovascular diseases, although the connections are not quite understood yet. The amount of microplastics in the human body is very alarming though. A study with brain samples found 0.5w% of plastics, which corresponds to roughly 6g of plastic in a brain. That’s a credit card’s worth of plastic.
This article should give some overview over different findings and implications:
Interesting. I had only heard about how it “MAY” be harmful before, which means nothing.
Danke für die Korrektur.
The water surrounding DuPont plants manufacturing PFOA-based materials was contaminated with those plastics. A local farmer videotaped his cows develop ulcers, grow tumors, and eventually wither and die. He constantly insisted that something was in the water that was killing his cows. Those same chemicals are now pervasive everywhere, in everyone’s bodies to some extent. It is 100% accurate to say these chemical compounds will kill you longterm.
That’s very different though. Nobody claims that the chemicals used in plastic manufacturing are biologically inert, just that the final result is.
Dupont wasn’t dumping Lego bricks into the pond. They were leaking liquid chemicals.
Another link talking about the case. It was confirmed that the chemical at high concentration in the water was PFOA, which is the percursor to Teflon, and which was leaking from the factory site. It has the same effects as other perfluorinated carbines (PFCs). It is also the exact chemical group that we’ve been testing peoples’ blood for, PFOA and other PFCs. It’s the group of chemicals we’ve found strong links to various types of cancers. Research communicates that it is not inert in the body as a microplastic.
It is 100% the reason those cows withered and died like they did. it directly lines up with everything else we know about PFOA. The concentrations were higher than anywhere else, which explains why the cows died so rapidly. The only reason we don’t have complete confirmation is from DuPont meddling to try and downplay this, the same way the meddled by witholding their research on the health risks of PFCs, and the same way they stayed silent and didn’t act when the alarm was sounded by that Parkersburg farmer.
I’m confused.
Is the issue here you’re using the term “micro-plastic” in a different way to me. My understanding of it is “small particles of solid plastic often reduced in size through mechanical processes to microscopic sizes which we find throughout the environment, often distributed by water”. You seem to be talking more generally about chemical water pollution.
plastic can be oversimplified into “usually biologically inert molecule chains” (polymers) held together by “usually NOT biologically inert accessory molecules” (plasticizers, fillers, etc.)
BPA is a pretty well-known “fucks you up” plasticizer, hence it being banned for some applications and “BPA-free” marketing taking off (fun fact we’re still figuring out how badly BPA replacements, most being very similar molecules, are fucking us up and to what extent)
Yeah, probably just extra weight that interferes with the speed of your cells doing their job.
stiephelando@discuss.tchncs.de 1 week ago
Plastic is mimicking certain hormones and I’m suspecting that the recent rise in cancer rates is linked to plastic intake.
nebulaone@lemmy.world 1 week ago
Ah okay, didn’t know that. Danke.
TimewornTraveler@lemm.ee 1 week ago
why would you listen to a random nobody hypothesize about medicine
nebulaone@lemmy.world 6 days ago
Because I am a random nobody doing the same thing.