Tiny Plastic Is Everywhere (npr.org) 210
An anonymous reader shares a report from NPR about ecologist Chelsea Rochman, who has dedicated her career to studying how microplastics are getting into the food chain and affecting everything from beer to fish: Since modern plastic was first mass-produced, 8 billion tons have been manufactured. And when it's thrown away, it doesn't just disappear. Much of it crumbles into small pieces. Scientists call the tiny pieces "microplastics" and define them as objects smaller than 5 millimeters -- about the size of one of the letters on a computer keyboard. Researchers started to pay serious attention to microplastics in the environment about 15 years ago. They're in oceans, rivers and lakes. They're also in soil. Recent research in Germany found that fertilizer made from composted household waste contains microplastics. And, even more concerning, microplastics are in drinking water. In beer. In sea salt. In fish and shellfish. How microplastics get into animals is something of a mystery, and Chelsea Rochman is trying to solve it.
Since she started studying microplastics, Rochman has found them in the outflow from sewage treatment plants. And they've shown up in insects, worms, clams, fish and birds. To study how that happens, [researcher Kennedy Bucci] makes her own microplastics from the morning's collection. She takes a postage stamp-size piece of black plastic from the jar, and grinds it into particles using a coffee grinder. "So this is the plastic that I feed to the fish," she says. The plastic particles go into beakers of water containing fish larvae from fathead minnows, the test-animals of choice in marine toxicology. Tanks full of them line the walls of the lab. Bucci uses a pipette to draw out a bunch of larvae that have already been exposed to these ground-up plastic particles. The larva's gut is translucent. We can see right into it. "You can see kind of a line of black, weirdly shaped black things," she points out. "Those are the microplastics." The larva has ingested them. Rochman says microplastic particles can sicken or even kill larvae and fish in their experiments.
Since she started studying microplastics, Rochman has found them in the outflow from sewage treatment plants. And they've shown up in insects, worms, clams, fish and birds. To study how that happens, [researcher Kennedy Bucci] makes her own microplastics from the morning's collection. She takes a postage stamp-size piece of black plastic from the jar, and grinds it into particles using a coffee grinder. "So this is the plastic that I feed to the fish," she says. The plastic particles go into beakers of water containing fish larvae from fathead minnows, the test-animals of choice in marine toxicology. Tanks full of them line the walls of the lab. Bucci uses a pipette to draw out a bunch of larvae that have already been exposed to these ground-up plastic particles. The larva's gut is translucent. We can see right into it. "You can see kind of a line of black, weirdly shaped black things," she points out. "Those are the microplastics." The larva has ingested them. Rochman says microplastic particles can sicken or even kill larvae and fish in their experiments.
We knew this will happen 50 years ago already (Score:5, Insightful)
Actually, we knew this will happen over a hundred years ago already.
A certain Mr. Malthus explained how the world will drown in its own manure. He is still "ridiculed" by the unsophisticated liberal arts bunch who call themselves "economists" and don't understand basic physics, although we see more and more evidence that our "growth" is unsustainable.
The world is drowning in the excess heat the human shit is trapping, drowning in the garbage people are producing and the biosphere is being literally converted to shit at an increasing pace.
And due to the well-known market failure of underinvestment in science and technology, coupled to the slow erosion of democracy by the rich elites, it is increasingly unlikely we'll get a "technological solution".
It is all thoughts and prayers from now on.
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Believers in Malthusianism [wikipedia.org] are ridiculed because the concept has already proven to be wrong. The rate of population growth not only peaked long ago, it is actually in strong decline. As nations become prosperous, population growth tends toward the replacement rate, or even below it. Please see the excellent talk Nuclear Australia - Energy Freedom by Dr. Ben Heard [youtube.com], which covers this in the first few minutes. There is much reason to be positive about the future, and the sooner we pull the rest of the world ou
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the concept has already proven to be wrong.
The concept of resource depletion has never be "proven" wrong, because it is true. Its origin is in basic physics - exponential growth in a constrained environment is unsustainable, and physics laws as of yet have not been successfully modified by politicians or economists, and not for lack of trying. There are fools, though, whose perception has been modified to ignore them.
The bunch of strawmen that appear to address the issue do so only because they don't recog
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In every case where we think we are seeing an exponential rise in some statistic about humanity, such as population growth, it turns out to be an S-curve as the rising value approaches some natural constraint. As we approach that constraint the economic cost of our activity rises, leading us back into balance again.
Apocalypse has a long history of never occurring.
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A certain Mr Malthus was not only wrong, but his prognostications have been the justification for some truly heinous policies.
https://www.scientificamerican... [scientificamerican.com]
https://www.forbes.com/sites/l... [forbes.com]
"Peak oil" has been predicted at least a dozen times - still not true.
World population has gone from the 800 million of Malthus' time to 7 BILLION today, and even now the problem isn't starvation from a lack of food, it's starvation because of political barriers to food distribution. The main medical problem of the de
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Malthus thought our sheer numbers would doom us, but it's not about the numbers at all. We have technology that can let the planet carry many more people than are currently destroying the biosphere. The problem, ironically, is our technology. Although we have clean, green, and sustainable technologies for producing both energy and goods, we're instead using cheap, fast, and dirty technology to maximize profit.
The ultimate irony is that we don't even need plastics to feed and house a larger population. Good
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how, do you propose we change peoples hearts and minds. The greatest problem is the growing number of people who have faith in nothing, except whatever they happen to feel is right or wrong. It is impossible to make a rational argument for self sacrifice to someone who a) Doesn't believe the future is relevant to them after they die.
b) Is only convinced something is right or wrong by their feelings.
On the other hand , if half the Christians and Buddhist in the world actually practiced what they preach th
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how, do you propose we change peoples hearts and minds. The greatest problem is the growing number of people who have faith in nothing, except whatever they happen to feel is right or wrong. [...] On the other hand , if half the Christians and Buddhist in the world actually practiced what they preach the whole world would be much better off. At least with them you can point out they are wrong and make an argument about why they should change.
Yeah, people have been trying that all along, but it doesn't work because they can argue that they know better than you what their god wants because of their upbringing, and/or that god communicates directly with them. And of course, there's all the people who don't really believe in that shit anyway, but hide behind the parts they like deliberately and willfully. You know, like every Catholic. Their church has been raping children in every conceivable scenario for centuries, and they're still willing to be
Re: We knew this will happen 50 years ago already (Score:2)
The level of rape in the Catholic Church is about the same or less than in the public schools. The recent report from pensilvania found 300 accused perpetrators out of more than 5000 priest, which puts them about in line with the rest of the country. The difference is people can and should expect them to be better.
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Whoa there! 300 out of 5000? So 1 in 16? Of ALL priests in PA? And you are like, "no big deal, about the same as in public schools".
If I thought that 1 out of 16 teachers in public schools was raping children I'd be out there with my torch, pitchfork, and noose egging on the mob (or leading them).
Re: We knew this will happen 50 years ago already (Score:2)
People, especially the rich, do exceptionally well when their way of life is threatened.
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
First result that comes up on the old Anagram Generator [wordsmith.org] for "Mr Dollar Ton" is "Random Troll". No joke.
Terribly sorry to out you Mr Ton but I thought that was just too funny and you deserve recognition for your cleverness. People will forget and you may post again, I'll not reveal your secret twice. :-)
Re: We knew this will happen 50 years ago already (Score:1)
He didn't really make an argument; he just ranted about the world drowning or some shit. There's nothing of any substance there, ergo nothing to rebut.
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Uhm, Hello McFly! Aren't you paying ANY attention to how we are fucking up the planet? Oh wait, that's right, you would rather ignore the message and shoot the messenger with insecure humor:
* Plastic found at the bottom of the Mariana Trench [slashdot.org]
* Only 40% of recycles are recycled [slashdot.org]
* 73% of fish in Atlantic have microplastic in their guts [slashdot.org]
* Artic full of mercury [slashdot.org]
* Mercury levels in fish [wikipedia.org]
* 1/3 of coral in Great Barrier Reef is dead [slashdot.org]
* 50% of coral in Great Barrier Reed dead [slashdot.org]
* Monsanto 'Terminator' Seeds are contaminatin [slashdot.org]
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Plastic is inert.
So is cyanide. So is arsenic. So is mercury.
What's your point?
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Mon plaisir. Merci bien! 8-)
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These are two energy-intensive isotopes that we have large stockpiles of as a byproduct of exploiting other, more immediately useful materials. Breeder reactors can convert these into new fission fuels. It all depends on how serious we want to get about this carbon problem.
Conflation of plastic and microplastic (Score:2, Insightful)
This is honestly getting a bit tiring. The problem we have that is being discussed here is not microplastics. It's plastics. The plastic packaging etc, which gets small enough from being grinded by water to be swallowed by various animals, while remaining large enough to get stuck.
"Microplastics" are the nanometer grade particulates, which mainly come from washing and drying clothing. They are small enough to pass freely through cellular walls, and as far as we know are completely metabolically inert. As in
Re:Conflation of plastic and microplastic (Score:5, Informative)
The plastic polymer may be inert, but that does not apply to the additives that are mixed in with it.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/... [sciencedirect.com]
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Microplastics do not have such additives to my knowledge. They shed those long before they become small enough. It's why this conflation is so annoying. Something that exists in one gets projected onto another.
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The first story linked in the OP quotes a specialist saying that even the plastic garbage in the ocean sheds those additives as it gets into millimetre range.
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The first story linked in the OP quotes a specialist saying that even the plastic garbage in the ocean sheds those additives as it gets into millimetre range.
It doesn't get to a certain size and then all that stuff immediately jumps out and disappears. For one thing, it goes into the oceans, where it can be concentrated by various processes. For another, it doesn't dissipate all at once. And millimeter range is precisely where it can be consumed by marine life, and shed those additives into whoever eats it.
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No, as it gets to certain size, the amount of grinding apparently gets it off. By the time its in the millimetre range, it's gone.
You're also consistently missing the point. I am in completely agreement, as you can see in my opening post, that plastic garbage swallowed by marine life is a problem. I can actually talk in length on the subject, likely beyond overwhelming majority of the posters here, ranging from how the chain actually works to the source of the said plastic and the economic realities as to w
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No, as it gets to certain size, the amount of grinding apparently gets it off. By the time its in the millimetre range, it's gone.
That's not how it works. It doesn't get ground off. It gets separated by chemical attack, or by UV. By the time it's in the millimeter range, probably most of it has been detached by UV bombardment. But UV penetrates water poorly, rapidly being absorbed by water molecules. The heavier plastics, which don't ride on the surface of the water, can still contain additives.
And we don't really have any way of reducing the problem where it matters without exposing billions of people to risk of infection, disease, poisoning and death that they had a few decades ago, when death toll was in millions yearly by most optimistic numbers. Problems that have been largely negated in last few decades specifically because of proliferation of plastic packaging.
Of course we do. For example, we could actually recycle, even when it's not profitable. And we could pass laws requiring marking all plastic p
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Your first part appears to be an agreement masked as disagreement, as you essentially agree with my premise, and merely disagree on technical detail (grinding vs chemical/UV separation). And I continue to insist, as I have from the first post (seriously, why are you all pretending this part of the post is not there) that there's a genuine problem with sea life swallowing plastic garbage. You're appear to be fighting against imaginary enemy here. I am in full agreement that this is a problem, and have been f
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The plastic polymer may be inert, but that does not apply to the additives that are mixed in with it.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/... [sciencedirect.com]
Quite apart from the fact that filter feeders of all kinds ingest these small plastic fragments in large quantities along with plankton and it clogs up their intestines. The problem is not jut limited to filter feeders, all kinds of fish and other marine animals swallow bits of plastic after mistaking them for prey items. Nanoplastics have been found to cause brain damage in fish and what's more they have been found in fish eaten by humans. This means that as humans eat organism whose flesh contains plastic
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This is a lot of conflation of things, followed by claims that concern one, and not the other.
Microplastics are the micrometre/nanometre particulates. They are small enough to freely pass through cellular walls. By definition (which is being desperately conflated in this story to sell the outrage of the year), they cannot "clog the intestines". Their source is also not the plastic garbage swallowed by fish as it keeps getting ground into smaller size. It's the washing and drying of clothing, which keeps dis
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I can't even seem to find the study in question any more because of all the outrage garbage journalism reducing signal to noise ratio to the extreme
There you go again.
It is actually not hard to find solid research by scientists about plastics in the environment. But you would rather blame journalists.
Perhaps you should refine your searches and try to use some judgement instead of having a knee jerk reaction.
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Really now. Tell me then, how is it that in spoken language, the most basic scientific concept of "theory" has the exact opposite meaning that it does in science? How did that ever get to happen?
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I see a lot of claims with no sources or evaluations of magnitude or probability
Yeah but but pulling the claim that micro and nano plastics are completely harmless in every way out of your ass without a shred of evidence to back it up is just fine?
https://www.lunduniversity.lu.... [lunduniversity.lu.se]
https://www.nature.com/article... [nature.com]
https://www.iflscience.com/env... [iflscience.com]
https://phys.org/news/2018-02-... [phys.org]
https://www.sciencedirect.com/... [sciencedirect.com]
https://www.iflscience.com/pla... [iflscience.com]
Re: Conflation of plastic and microplastic (Score:1)
"Microplastics" are the nanometer grade particulates
No, they are not. "Nanometer grade" is orders of magnitude smaller. Read the TFA first, stupid.
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Read the story and you'll find that the smallest they're talking about is millimetre sized. TFA conflates even more things than the story.
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You know, it really isn't that hard to find many other scientists sounding the alarm about plastics in the environment.
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And we're back to desperate attempt to conflate the microplastics with plastic garbage in the oceans.
This is why I really hate this being done. After the conflation is well established in public mind, it's all but impossible to explain to them that these are two completely separate issues.
It's how problems like anti-vaccine movements get popularized.
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"Microplastics" are the nanometer grade particulates
No. Microplastics are sub-5mm pieces. The ones you're talking about are called "nanoplastics"
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This is the result of said conflation. Microplastics start in micrometre range and go down to nanometers. They're overwhelmingly measured in nanometers, because most of them would need a decimal if measures in micrometers. Their main source is washing and drying of clothing.
The conflation of the original study on the topic resulted in people like you thinking that microplastics are actually the same thing as small particulates that come from plastic garbage in the oceans. They're not. The source is differen
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But you must realize that is incorrect. Plastics in the environment, whether micro bead, micro fiber, micro plastics, plastic bags used by retailers for consumers, etc are all part of the problem and need to addressed.
Really what you have attempted with your posts is to drive the debate away from that reality and to put the blam
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And now, you're just plain projecting. I haven't even mentioned the plastics industry once. I have mentioned consumers several times, and made specific distinctions which are quite harmful to the relevant industry.
>Plastics in the environment, whether micro bead, micro fiber, micro plastics, plastic bags used by retailers for consumers, etc are all part of the problem and need to addressed.
"Radiation in the environment, whether it's background radiation or emitted by specific emitter, alpha, beta or gamm
Wow, it's like (Score:5, Informative)
You wrote an expert-sounding essay on a topic like this without doing your homework on pthalates? Really??
https://www.theguardian.com/li... [theguardian.com]
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Phtalates are not plastics, and are only relevant to large plastic garbage. As the story linked in TFA itself says, they come off the plastic once it gets ground to the millimetre-level size.
After that, they're diluted in ocean to irrelevant levels.
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Thats interesting, to blame journalists. I know someone else who likes to scapegoat them.
Another example of how micro plastics are detrimental to marine life: Microbeads float on the water’s surface, and fish mistake them for food. The plastic alone is bad for fish health, but so are the microbes that
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ACs actually debunked this one better than I did.
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And this is a good example of a person who's threat evaluation systems went haywire from aforementioned conflation. He suggests that "I should eat plastic trash", which he understands would be harmful.
Without understanding that if his conflation of "microplastics are the same thing as plastics" was correct, every single one of us has been eating "plastic trash" their entire lives. Because microplastics have been here for at least a century. But it isn't. Which is why we are not suffering problems that much
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Actually that is the tolerance of environmentalist movement. These are the people who were attacking relevant scientists for decades at this point for daring to investigate the issues being raised by them instead of just buying their doomsaying as is.
I suspect that much of the modern far left that has problems with the issues you mentioned would still have problems with how these people act.
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I suspect that much of the modern far left that has problems with the issues you mentioned would still have problems with how these people act.
And your politicizing of this issue is why you fail to see the problem right in front of you. It matters not whether you voted for Trump of Clinton. The problem of plastics in the environment is not going away anytime soon, unless science finds a quick and easy way to correct our mistakes.
Munch (Score:4, Insightful)
For a good while, dead wood was not digest-able by anything. It piled up, producing much of the coal we use today. Then one day via either God or natural selection, take your pick, some bacterium learned to digest it. Aided by termite guts, they've been munching wood ever since.
One humid day you may find that bugs ate your PC. (No, not those kind of bugs.)
There's already known slow digesters of plastic.
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some bacterium learned to digest it
Not really. Dead wood that fell (and falls today) in peat bogs and similar environments aren't consumed by bacteria. That is where coal comes from.
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Less coal is produced today compared to the early years.
Patagonia is run by a bunch of hypocrites..... (Score:4, Interesting)
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Everywhere (Score:2, Insightful)
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indeed, plastics are biodegradable and are what some bacteria crave. Just like with crude oil, there really are creatures that go om nom nom.
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5mm (Score:2)
Those of us living in first-world countries know how long 5mm is, thank you very much.
Let's fix two problems at once (Score:2)
Identify a species of open-ocean alga known to form floating mats, Sargassum for example, that flourishes in the presence of a nutrient like iron. Seed the Pacific gyre with large amounts of the plant and the nutrient. Because this part of the ocean is a gyre, currents sweeping floating material into one area. the nutrient should stay in one place long enough for the alga to form large mats that after they run out of nutrient will die, decay and sink to abyssal depths, taking atmospheric carbon and floating
Artificial Rock. (Score:2)
Plastic is made from oil. Oil is something between a rock and an organic. Plastic makes the oil harder to break down. We are basically making artificial and very flexible rocks.
The plastic doesn't deteriorate like normal organic matter , it breaks down more like rocks because that is what it is. So is it harmful? no on can say. Not enough data.
MBR Sewage treatment solves this problem (Score:2)
Membrane BioReactor sewage treatment plants do not allow these micro plastics to get through. Fixed.
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Interesting. So that brings up some questions: Are the plastics getting into the environment through sewage? What will we do with the filtered plastics?
biodegrade (Score:2)
Chemists worked out how to make plastics.
Now their job is working out how to fully biodegrade plastics.
If they could be degraded into something safe and useful, all the better.
Wait a second... (Score:5, Funny)
The key to the caterpillarâ(TM)s talents could lie in its taste for honeycomb
Hey, wait a second, *I* like honeycomb! Maybe I can digest plastic too! It would explain why I like to chew on the ends of straws long after the drink has been depleted. And also how I am able to eat (and enjoy) that cheese sauce from Arby's.
Re:Who cares (Score:5, Informative)
Not quite, Sparky:
"Plastic particles may highly concentrate and transport synthetic organic compounds (e.g. persistent organic pollutants, POPs), commonly present in the environment and ambient sea water, on their surface through adsorption.[43] Microplastics can act as carriers for the transfer of POPs from the environment to organisms.[23]
Additives added to plastics during manufacture may leach out upon ingestion, potentially causing serious harm to the organism. Endocrine disruption by plastic additives may affect the reproductive health of humans and wildlife alike"
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wik... [wikipedia.org]
Re: (Score:2)
Doesn't the fact that age is going up in countries have more to do with infectious disease and food supply?
I don't think the health benefits or detractions of plastics have much to do with the arc of increasing lifespans as much as better sanitation and medical care.
However, perhaps dumping lots of plastics into the food chain could have increasing and longer term effects now and in the future on not just humans but all life on our planet.
Re:Who cares (Score:5, Informative)
I suggest a STFW if you care to know about such things as BPA, DEHP, et al. Plastics are not biologically inert.
Re:Who cares (Score:5, Informative)
Compounds used to give plastics useful properties are not themselves plastics, true, but they enter the environment because they are used for that purpose and become components of the end product.
I was, until now, genuinely so ignorant that I had believed the above explanation superfluous.
Re: (Score:1, Flamebait)
And this remains the point. If you read even the story linked, you'll note that it clearly states that these compounds get ground off the plastic in the oceans.
From the story:
>But, over time, plastic can break down and shed the chemicals that make it useful, such as phthalates and bisphenol A. These substances are common in the environment and their effects on human health are of concern to public health scientists and advocates, but few large-scale, definitive studies have been done.
Translation: they ar
Re:Who cares (Score:5, Informative)
Re: (Score:1)
From the story:
>But, over time, plastic can break down and shed the chemicals that make it useful, such as phthalates and bisphenol A. These substances are common in the environment and their effects on human health are of concern to public health scientists and advocates, but few large-scale, definitive studies have been done.
So I'm afraid you have to pick one. You can't have it both ways. Either they're harmful because they're on the product, and then they're no longer harmful on plastic because they g
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Pretty much every article I've read on this topic so far has been poorly written, because they all focus on scaring people, rather than conveying the facts which are generally far less scary.
So the obvious question becomes, what kind of concentrations of it do we need to observe meaningful negative impact on humans?
My understanding is that whatever traces remain (and there obviously will remain some traces of it) are likely harmless. To my understanding, the actual damage to sea life is done mechanically, n
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So I'm afraid you have to pick one. You can't have it both ways.
So when I read your post, with ultimatum style rhetoric like that, in the context of micro plastics in the environment, I couldn't help but come to the conclusion that you sir are a micro plastics apologist. And no, I'm not being facetious.
I can see from your posts that you see it differently, but in my opinion, and in the opinion of scientists of all fields, plastics in the environment, whether micro or not, are not a good thing. Ac
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So in your view, if someone takes two separate problems, who have two completely different causes and two completely different effects, and points out that those are in fact not the same problem... they an apologist for one or both of the problems.
Do you realise just how absurd you sound?
Re:Who cares (Score:5, Insightful)
People have the right to know how their choices are affecting the environment. Clear headed thinking is needed to correct the wrong choices we have made in the past as consumers.
Perhaps that is absurd to you, but that is your choice.
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>Science has shown that micro plastics, micro fibers and micro beads are detrimental to marine life
Science has shown no such thing. Science has shown however that plastic garbage, once it gets small enough, is.
The current environmental activist journalistic project is conflating the problem of microplastics with the problem of plastic garbage. Which is why the signal to noise ratio on searches for "microplastics" has gone from what they used to mean just a few years ago to the current mishmash of micropl
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war will solve all our problems. yay you.
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This is your brain once modern environmentalist movement gets to it. You become a religious fanatic, demanding death to those who so much as dare question your dogmatic beliefs.
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This is your brain once modern environmentalist movement gets to it. You become a religious fanatic, demanding death to those who so much as dare question your dogmatic beliefs.
Yet you yourself display dogmatic beliefs in other posts in this thread.
I agree that dogmatism is a non-starter, especially when it comes to correcting the course towards environmental responsibility.
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"I display dogmatic beliefs" such as?
Pretty much the only belief you could even remotely suggest to be dogmaic I have demonstrated in this thread is the belief that scientific inquiry should supercede journalistic malpractice. Are you saying that this is a wrong view to hold?
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A simple google search can bring up a lot about the downsides to plastics in the environment that are well researched and well written. However you would pan all such as "dogma", because you would rather explain away the negative affects of plastics in the environment, especially towards marine life.
So the dogma I see is your blame of journalism for things you don't agree with.
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That's interesting, considering that journalism even in this story tries to spin statements of the scientist into something they're not, and I'm debunking it literally using the quotes from the scientist.
I'm going to guess you're one of those dogmaic people, who think that when scientist disagrees with you in the story and journalist agrees, journalist actually knows the science and scientist can be safely ignored. Good luck with that.
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No, unlike the idiots who can't even read the story linked in the OP, which clearly confirms my point even as reporter desperately tries to conflate plastic trash with microplastics, it clearly states that the additives, which are the substances that might potentially have some metabolic effect, get shed by plastic once it gets small enough.
And plastic is metabolically intert. I stand by my views, unlike all the ACs spamming garbage that keeps conflating things to make this environmentalist false outrage of
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I understand your method of trying to drill down to to "metabolically inert", which is actually a red herring argument. As per the article, they also mention this:
"Plastic also attracts other chemicals in the water that latch onto it, including toxic industrial compounds like polychlorinated
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So I just found three posts made by you answering different posts by me in this thread. This is the third I'm going through. I answered first two I went through assuming honest misunderstanding on your part. However at this point, all of them, 3/3 have contained a lie about my views, dressed up to look as if you're a reasonable poster.
I'll give you a chance to prove yourself as something other than a malicious actor in those messages. Here, I'll simply dismiss you with "three separate lies in three differen
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Here, I'll simply dismiss you with "three separate lies in three different answers is enough for me to stop assuming anything but malice on your part and stop taking you seriously".
If you wanted to dismiss me you wouldn't have gone to such lengths. And why the quotes?
Anyway, perhaps you can stay on target, which is the effects of plastics on marine life.
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If that was the target, I wouldn't care at all, because I agree, and so does the scientific consensus at the time.
The moment however you attempt to peddle a lie of "microplastics" being relevant to this problem is the moment both myself and scientific consensus will have a serious problem. Unfortunately due to activist meddling in this issue, and constant conflation of the issue of microplastics, the "all penetrating, metabolically inert and mechanically harmless particulates that come primarily off clothin
Re:Not a Big Deal (Score:5, Interesting)
This is true that the descriptions of the "great garbage patch" make it sound like you can walk across it in rubber galoshes.
With that said, the magnitude of plastic being everywhere is well-documented.
Forget the big documentaries or other "propaganda" out there. Just walk around outside in your own neighborhood with a plastic bag for a while. Go to a nearby park or subdivision's "common area" - and pick up every piece of plastic you find. You'll be surprised just how quickly the bag fills up with everything from bottlecaps, car fender chips, McDonald's happy meal toy parts, straws, and all manner of unidentifiable plastic shards.
If those plastic pieces are in the oceans, in the ground, etc. in the same magnitude (or worse), then the scale of the problem isn't being overstated by environmentalists.
Re: Not a Big Deal (Score:1)
If those plastic pieces are in the oceans, in the ground, etc. in the same magnitude (or worse), then the scale of the problem isn't being overstated by environmentalists.
I don't see why. I can also find a whole bunch of rocks out there, all over the place, in even greater numbers. I can even find "micro rocks" which are rocks smaller than 5 mm. Sometimes people and fish even eat these micro rocks by accident, and none of us can process them! Scary right?
Re: (Score:1, Flamebait)
Re: (Score:2)
Well...
8 billion tons of plastic, worst case (assuming all plastics ever made are now microplastic pieces in the oceans).
1.33 billion cubic kilometers of oceans.
So, absolute worst case is 6 tons of plastic per billion tons of ocean.
Alas, 0.006 ppm isn't nearly as scary as 8 billion tons made!!!
And that 0.006 ppm ignores that a signifi
Re: (Score:1)
Just walk around outside in your own neighborhood with a plastic bag for a while.
I can vouch for this activity. I've walked numerous beaches on the east coast of the US/Mid-Atlantic with a bag and after travelling maybe 1000 ft, it was FULL with all manner of plastics. The great plastic garbage patch is no hoax.
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I used extremely cheap (IIRC they were under $20 for ~5 meter panels) wire & brushwood fencing to cover my cyclone-wire back fence. This is not the high-quality stuff used by professional fence builders, it was the cheap crap available at discount hardware stores. Just tie it onto the cyclone fence with some fencing wire.
Dunno if they have this in the US but it's not uncommon in AU - here it's made from Ti Tree varieties (Melaleuca sp.), the same species that Ti Tree oil comes from. an extremely fas
Re: (Score:3)
There has been some controversy surrounding the use of the term "garbage patch" and photos taken off the coast of Manila in the Philippines in attempts to portray the patch in the media often misrepresenting the true scope of the problem and what could be done to solve it. Angelicque White, Associate Professor at Oregon State University, who has studied the "garbage patch" in depth, warns that "the use of the phrase 'garbage patch' is misleading. ... It is not visible from space; there are no islands of trash; it is more akin to a diffuse soup of plastic floating in our oceans." In the article Dr. White and Professor Tamara Galloway, from the University of Exeter, call for regulation and cleanup and state that the focus should be on stemming the flow of plastic into the ocean from coastal sources.[49]
The US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) agrees, saying:
While "Great Pacific Garbage Patch" is a term often used by the media, it does not paint an accurate picture of the marine debris problem in the North Pacific Ocean. The name "Pacific Garbage Patch" has led many to believe that this area is a large and continuous patch of easily visible marine debris items such as bottles and other litter—akin to a literal island of trash that should be visible with satellite or aerial photographs. This is not the case.
—Ocean Facts, National Ocean Service[50]
from Wikipedia. [wikipedia.org]
Also, when you say "pacific plastic mire", I think you mean North Pacific Gyre.
Re:Not a Big Deal (Score:5, Informative)
As a real actual scuba diver, rather than someone who clearly pretends to be like yourself, I've seen the impact of plastic on our oceans and it is frankly tragic.
If a local public park had even a fraction of the litter that turns up on almost every reef in the world then the local residents would be in uproar about the littering of their park.
There are also plenty of pictures of the problem that trivially disprove your lies. Most beaches have local residents or local governments cleaning them regularly, this is what things look like when they don't:
https://www.theguardian.com/en... [theguardian.com]
And this is just one example of a real actual scuba diver diving in a real actual plastic island that you're downplaying as not existing:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/new... [dailymail.co.uk]
In terms of micro-plastics though specifically, I'm not sure I understand why the summary is pretending the reasons for plastics moving up the food chain are unknown. They're well known and well understood, there's even a common word for the effect, it's called bioamplification, where smaller creatures consume something (in this case, micro-plastics) and then larger predators eat many of these smaller things, and in turn ingest the microplastics in the smaller prey they've consumed, carry on ad-nauseum until you reach the top of the food chain. At this point there is a significant amount of evidence suggesting this is a leading cause of infertility and still births in, for example, a number of whale populations.
So kindly fuck off with your anti-science bullshit, this is a tech site and you're in the wrong place if you think this is somewhere where people want to be fed that crap.
Re: Not a Big Deal (Score:2)
Way to completely miss several key points from my original post anonymous coward. What your posting is the effects of 3rd world locals dumping their trash in the ocean. This has NOTHING to do with the plastic talked about in the main article or my post.
Thankfully science has never been wrong, over stated, and all of those who keep voting you up can't see it either!
Here's what you'll actually see in the middle of the pacific https://aquariumworks.org/2017... [aquariumworks.org]
Wow! A single patch of scum for 1000 nautical miles
well this one.. (Score:2)
I find particularly non interesting.
Woman feeds plastic to fish unable to break it down. Then finds plastic inside fish.
like come on. what was there supposed to happen in this experiment? and if you force feed them enough, they die? SULPLIZE MUCHH?
what we would really care is .. say we converted all of the fossile oil into plastics, how much would there be? enough for a problem or not?
It's not a big deal, just plastic in everything (Score:3, Interesting)
Wow, you are stupid. Lets just consider the motivations of scientists in general. These are generally pretty smart people, who have chosen careers that they know will not make them money the same way that they would were they to go into, say investment banking. A vast majority are going to be motivated by things like curiosity, a passion for the natural environment, discovering truth (regardless of what that truth reveals). None of t
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scientists say it's microscopic which they always conveniently fail to mention when talking about the magnitude of this problem.
I think you'll find scientists saying it's microscopic IS the magnitdue of the problem.
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Do you also believe the earth is flat because you can put a ruler to the ground and not see an obvious curve?
Re:Not a Big Deal (Score:5, Insightful)
I've sailed through this so called pacific plastic mire and have seen absolutely nothing. I've even swam and scuba dived through it and didn't see anything. Those scientists say it's microscopic which they always conveniently fail to mention when talking about the magnitude of this problem.
It's not a big deal. Just scientists peddling fear for more grant money.
Yeah, because there are so many scientist who became billionaires by scamming people for grant money.
Re: 3d printers (Score:1)
Who is this liberal orange genius?