No Mountain High Enough: Study Finds Plastic in 'Clean' Air (theguardian.com) 53
From Mount Everest to the Mariana Trench, microplastics are everywhere -- even high in the Earth's troposphere where wind speeds allow them to travel vast distances, a new study has found. From a report: Microplastics are tiny fragments -- measuring less than 5mm -- that come from packaging, clothing, vehicles and other sources and have been detected on land, in water and in the air. Scientists from the French national research institute CNRS sampled air 2,877 metres above sea level at the Pic du Midi Observatory in the French Pyrenees, a so-called "clean station" because of the limited influence exerted on it by the local climate and environment. There they tested 10,000 cubic metres of air a week between June and October of 2017 and found all samples contained microplastics.
Using weather data, they calculated the trajectories of different air masses preceding each sample and discovered sources as far away as north Africa and North America. The study's main author, Steve Allen of Dalhousie University in Canada, told AFP that the particles were able to travel such distances because they were able to reach great altitudes. "Once it hits the troposphere, it's like a superfast highway," he said. The research also points to microplastic sources in the Mediterranean Sea and the Atlantic Ocean.
Using weather data, they calculated the trajectories of different air masses preceding each sample and discovered sources as far away as north Africa and North America. The study's main author, Steve Allen of Dalhousie University in Canada, told AFP that the particles were able to travel such distances because they were able to reach great altitudes. "Once it hits the troposphere, it's like a superfast highway," he said. The research also points to microplastic sources in the Mediterranean Sea and the Atlantic Ocean.
There's nothing "micro" about 5 mm. (Score:2)
Re:There's nothing "micro" about 5 mm. (Score:5, Informative)
While the microplastics definition includes particles up to 5mm, that is mostly just a technicality. Most research on microplastics is about particles around 30 um or so.
In the study that this article is about, 51% of particles found were smaller than 10 um, 96 % were smaller than 20 um.
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There's all sorts of crap in "clean" air (Score:3, Interesting)
Wildfire smoke, volcanic ash, yeast and other fungal spores, etc.
The higher things go, the more they are exposed to UV light which eventually will break up most things.
This isn't new.
The question as always behind the panic porn headlines is the same: many plastics are chemically inert which is why they are used in food packaging and medical devices. Do the plastic particles floating in the air actually cause any quantifiable harm to human beings or any other organism of any importance to human beings?
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Do the plastic particles floating in the air actually cause any quantifiable harm to human beings or any other organism of any importance to human beings?
Um, all organisms are important to human beings.
And if any sizeable percentage of the human race is made up of people like you then we're screwed.
Re:There's all sorts of crap in "clean" air (Score:4, Insightful)
Almost no organisms are important to human beings. Most organisms on the planet aren't even relevant to human beings.
I don't think that's true. Most might not be important. But "almost no organisms" is plainly false. The web of life and all the inter-dependencies are pretty complex. From insects that pollinate our crops to the bacteria that break down our shit and return the nutrients to the biosphere. Lots of organisms, we don't think about, are very important to our quality of life. Hell, we've harnessed organisms to make us cheese and wine (and other fermented products).
Flies that spread malaria for example, or rats that live in our buildings.
Malaria is spread by mosquitoes. But flies, that you seem to think are more harm than good, break down dead animals with maggots. They also provide food to plenty of other creatures that do have a direct impact on our lives. Less amphibians in the water means more of those malaria-carrying mosquitoes. I could go on and on.
And if any sizeable percentage of the human race is made up of people like you then we're screwed, because brainlets who think that we should care about a bacterium that infects some deep oceanic creature we'll never interact with, that's a massive drain on our very limited resources.
And if any sizable percentage of the human race is like you, we're equally screwed. Reality is somewhere in the middle. You haven't got the slightest idea what how that deep oceanic creature is tied in to the rest of the biosphere. I'd rather not kill it off, until we know. You think it's gonna be good for humanity if we lose bees (for example)?
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Let's just do the brute math. How many species on the planet are there in total?
Of those, how many are in any meaningful contact with any of the species we interact with?
There's this thing called the "food chain". Maybe you should look it up.
If you want to live in a plastic cell with insect filters, eating synthesized cubes of protein then that's fine. Go ahead and do it.
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Let's just do the brute math. How many species on the planet are there in total?
Of those, how many are in any meaningful contact with any of the species we interact with?
There's this thing called the "food chain". Maybe you should look it up.
If you want to live in a plastic cell with insect filters, eating synthesized cubes of protein then that's fine. Go ahead and do it.
You demonstrate fundamental lack of understanding of how ecosystems work. "Food chain" is not just vertical, but also horizontal, as species that are "food" also compete among one another for each ecological niche. When one species loses the competition permanently and goes extinct, thing that outcompeted it fills the same ecological niche. This may cause some reverberations for a tiny handful of barely viable species above that highly specialised in consuming the thing that went extinct, at which point tho
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Um, all organisms are important to human beings.
No they aren't. What the hell kind of a bullshit statement is that?
You think it's important to humans to have the fungus that causes athletes-foot or jock-itch? Pretty sure those two (maybe it's one in two locations) could go away and humanity would be better off. And those are literally the first two that came to mind in less than 2 seconds of thought.
I'll not even get into the whole "is a virus an organism?".
That statement is so brain-dead stupid, it's not even funny.
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You think it's important to humans to have the fungus that causes athletes-foot or jock-itch?
Yep. It's a great source of humor for those of us who don't hang around dirty locker rooms.
Yes (Score:5, Informative)
https://newatlas.com/environme... [newatlas.com]
The study shows that microplastics, especially microplastics with the size of 2 micrometers or less, start to be deposited in the brain even after short-term ingestion within seven days, resulting in apoptosis, and alterations in immune responses, and inflammatory responses," says study author Dr. Seong-Kyoon Choi." Based on the findings of this research, we plan to conduct additional research that can further reveal the brain accumulation of microplastics and the mechanism of neurotoxicity
Your post is classic whataboutism. Oh there's mold and volcanic ash in the air, man made plastics that don't degrade are just fine...
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What else accumulates in the brain?
Stupidity, apparently.
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https://newatlas.com/environme... [newatlas.com]
The study shows that microplastics, especially microplastics with the size of 2 micrometers or less, start to be deposited in the brain even after short-term ingestion within seven days, resulting in apoptosis, and alterations in immune responses, and inflammatory responses," says study author Dr. Seong-Kyoon Choi."
So we have an epidemic of those things then? What's that, no?
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I actually spend spend a lot of time at 2.5 km. A lot of people do. And they are using more plastics, polluting more. People climb Everest and leave tons of trash a yea
Re: There's all sorts of crap in "clean" air (Score:1)
I grew up 50 miles from Chernobyl...after 1986 and lived less than 50 miles from the Limerick nuclear power plant outside of Philly for most of my childhood and early adulthood. I don't have an irrational phobia of controlled nuclear fission, nor do I have an irrational phobia of the same microplastics that have been there since polyethylene bags became a thing world-wide many many decades before I was born.
Typical green baloney. Focus on one theoretical harm that pales in comparison to the dozen and a half
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Re: There's all sorts of crap in "clean" air (Score:1)
Oh no! Black tar. I've never seen such a thing...oh wait there's the road crew patching a crack on the street.
Re: There's all sorts of crap in "clean" air (Score:3)
There was a time when so called experts swore that lead in gasoline was safe due to a lack of evidence to the contrary. Any pollutant like this should be viewed as harmful until it is studied rigorously and proven to have no biological effect. https://www.smithsonianmag.com... [smithsonianmag.com]
Re: There's all sorts of crap in "clean" air (Score:1)
Yeah sure. Except that lead has been a known toxin for a good long while and plastics of all kinds have been used for food storage long enough to figure out if there is any problem serious enough to notice.
What you're describing is a way to dress up cowardice in legalistic and scientific language to try to take the sting out of the fact that it is cowardice.
Somewhere between foolhardiness and sealing yourself off in a (plastic?) bubble there's a way to live life without being instinctively scared of anythin
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None. There have been several studies on this to this point after the "omg, scary" brouhaha a few years ago. As far as we can tell, they're utterly inert. Even the original fear of "they appear to be biologically inert but maybe something organic can travel on them and therefore hide from our immune system" was proven false very quickly.
So now the definition of "microplastics" has been increasing to maybe, hopefully find something to worry about. Expand the definition until you hit something that is scary.
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The question as always behind the panic porn headlines is the same: many plastics are chemically inert which is why they are used in food packaging and medical devices. Do the plastic particles floating in the air actually cause any quantifiable harm to human beings or any other organism of any importance to human beings?
Really? We need a study so you'll get onboard with the idea that plastics accumulating in humans is probably not a good idea?
300,000 years of evolution? Plastics have been a part of that for? 100 years? We've absolutely flooded our environment with something that was never seen in nature prior to that.
You know what else is inert? Asbestos.
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32513186/
Sigh....
Re: There's all sorts of crap in "clean" air (Score:1)
Asbestos is inert? Then it's a really neat trick how it causes cancer.
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Asbestos is inert? Then it's a really neat trick how it causes cancer.
Yes it's chemically inert. It causes cancer by physically interfering with cell biology at the nano scale (getting tangled up with chromosomes, for example).
Anybody who didn't already know that is obviously unqualified to be making blanket statements about the health effects of microplastics.
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Asbestos is inert? Then it's a really neat trick how it causes cancer.
Well, that's all the proof I needed to know you don't know what the fuck you are talking about.
Yeah, it's inert. Chemically at least. Biologically, not so much. Your body can't break it down. So it accumulates in your tissues and lungs. Does all sorts of nasty shit simply by being there.
You know what else is inert? Helium. Doesn't mix well with biology either. So go breathe some, for a half hour, and then come back and fucking tell us how inert stuff can't ruin your day, your body, and your life.
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Do the plastic particles floating in the air actually cause any quantifiable harm to human beings or any other organism of any importance to human beings?
That's exactly what it would have been wise to ask about 70 years ago, when the plastics industry was just beginning to extrude vast amounts of the stuff.
"One word: plastics".
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
Re: There's all sorts of crap in "clean" air (Score:1)
And 70 years later we're all still here.
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And 70 years later we're all still here.
So far.
I have this feeling.... (Score:3, Interesting)
...that micro plastics will turn out the bigger problem than CO2 in the long run...
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Re: I have this feeling.... (Score:2)
...and conclude that there's shit tons of plastic asteroids out there waiting to be mined. Their greatest rOcto scientists will get to work designing an eight-armed robotic satellite to go out there and harvest it...only to discover that launching to space from the bottom of the sea is not possible.
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Theoretical gobbledygook is still gobbledygook. Maybe lay off the weed for a minute or three and try letting some relatively clean oxygen into your lungs.
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...that micro plastics will turn out the bigger problem than CO2 in the long run...
Someone recently pitched a scary scenario to me: we've recently seen some microbes which can degrade some types of plastics. Eventually one of them will evolve to do it efficiently, and start gobbling up plastic in some biome where it collects... which releases all the trapped carbon. What percentage of petroleum goes into plastics? Will cleaning them up cause a sudden sharp spike in atmospheric CO2?
I have no idea if this is realistic, but I'm suddenly less enthusiastic for the idea of bacteria cleaning
Press release and article (Score:5, Informative)
The summary links to the Guardian.
For those that prefer a bit more in-depth information:
Press release by CNRS [www.cnrs.fr] (the research institute)
Article published in Nature [nature.com]
Odd measuring system "MP/m^3" (Score:3, Informative)
Rather than the standard "parts per million" they are using a measurement system of MP / m^3 or "Microplastics per cubic meter". The study indicated the great majority of "MP"'s are particles of the sub 20um size and they were detecting on average one such particle every 4 cubic meters.
For reference, 20um is a particle smaller than the width of a human hair. A particle this size is no different from the normal dust and debris you will find everywhere on the planet, even before man arrived.
The other thing to note is they aren't measuring mountain tops - they're measuring at just under 9,000ft. Much of Denver and it's surrounding area is at 5500 to 8000ft so it should come as no surprise that everything associated with a sprawling city can be found at slightly higher altitudes. And many towns in the neighboring areas are much much higher than 9,000ft.
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For reference, 20um is a particle smaller than the width of a human hair. A particle this size is no different from the normal dust and debris you will find everywhere on the planet, even before man arrived.
Great, using your logic asbestos is perfectly safe because of the particle size.
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Great, using your logic asbestos is perfectly safe because of the particle size.
By my logic its as safe as any other dust you breath every day. Skin cells, bits of sand or dirt, etc. The air has never been free of contaminates, not even before man arrived.
Also, asbestos is only dangerous because it's a long hard fiber that the lungs cannot expel. It's in no way comparable to these tiny MP's.
The next problem after CO2 then? (Score:2)
Assuming we manage to cut CO2 (and methane) levels enough to stave off complete disaster, are we looking at another disaster hot on its heels?
Or are we already within a similar territory to CO2 with microplastics?
Both problems are ultimately a result of the fossil fuel industry, but our entire modern civilisation is so deeply entwined, I'm not entirely sure how we get out of this hole.
I just need to glance around where I'm sitting to understand that potentially, 40% of everything in my room, is plastic, has
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Like "microaggressions" ... (Score:2)