7,000 Microplastics Studies Show We Have One Really Big Problem
2 years ago by just_another_person to c/science
Found the crab ๐ฆ
- plastic film used as mulch in agriculture
Wtf. Where and why?!
Like, everywhere?
Yup passing on the responsibility from the manufacturer to the consumer
Yep
Other great source of plastics are synthetic fabrics. It releases a lot of micro particles in the water during washing and drying cycles.
Have you seen the process used in plastic recycling? The plastic is literally triturated into tiny bits before being heated up for the next stages.
Edit: why the downvotes? I'm just trying to give some context on why plastic recycling is a great source of microplastics
I'm kinda surprised that more comes from paint than tires.
I think it depends on measure, if im not mistaken, by weight arohnd 50% of microplastics are tire dust.
Also depends on where youโre measuring. They make up a ton of the plastics in stormwater runoff for example. Sometimes up to 95% from what I found. And that stormwater often ends up in our drinking water.
You only think that way because the material for a tire is all in one place and easy to see.
Paint on the other hand is effectively invisible when we 'inventory' a space mentally.
So a tire in the middle of your living room seems like a lot of rubber but all the paint over every inch of the wall in the same room doesnt, even if the room is big enough for the paint to fill the volume of the tire.
Over 80% of microolastic production coming from macro plastic breakdown feels pretty bleak.
Plastics industry: "See?! We told you plastic decomposes and doesn't just stay in landfills forever. Happy now?"
I am not happy now.
The UN's Global Plastics Treaty is certainly a step in the right direction. I'm not sure what can actually be done about the problem, especially with how pervasive synthetic materials are throughout the world. And what is medicine supposed to do? Plastics revolutionized sanitation, particularly in the medical field. Very complicated issue to resolve.
There are certain industries, like medical, that would probably be one of the last, if ever, to do away with plastic, simply due to the upsides. The only option we have as a species is to create a truly biodegradable, non-toxic, easily obtainable and cheap to produce alternative.
Haha who am I kidding, we are fucked, plastic manufacturers go brrrrrrrrr.
The problem in using biodegradeable materials to build things is that it degrades. Do you really want your wiring insulation decaying?
Steel decays via rusting as its outer coating is sacrificed to corrosion. Civil features decay as erosion degrades it over time. Wooden power poles decay as their treatment degrades and fungi/insects attack them. Outdoor wiring decays if in direct sunlight due to any sunlight resistive coating degrading over time to UV radiation. Oil used as lubricant in motor vehicles and as insulating fluid in electrical equipment degrades over time due to thermal cycling, oxidation, and moisture.
The point I'm making is that things degrade naturally. Plastic is no exception, although engineers have been able to make certain decisions with it such that constructions can last for decades.
If we can make plastic by default biodegrade naturally, and at a much faster time scale than today's oxo-degradable and biodegradable alternatives, then it still allows for scientists and engineers to select for plastics that have been specifically engineered for the application via coatings and whatnot, comparable to steel and wood.
It's possible to do so. We just need to flip the script and make biodegradation the norm and not the exception
Plastics are also used extensively in the electricity sector as insulation for conductors, support structures, etc.
We need our vendors of these products to start addressing this issue, and unfortunately I don't think this is going to come from the consumer end. Maybe for alternative insulating liquids for transformers and whatnot like with Cargill FR3 or Shell MIDEL products, but clearly more needs to be done. Schneider Electric is a good example of a company leading the way
A race to see what will kill the most of us first. The plastic or anthropogenic climate change.
Don't forget Nuclear War!
Not much is going to get better in 12 seconds.
take your time with it. make that shit special.
And if you use your imagination, it's more eco-friendly.
Come to think of it, unless you're doing something that requires fewer calories, other activities would likely have a bigger carbon footprint.
brb, taking a break from the internet to help the environment.
Rather than take a defeatist veiw from this line if thinking, it will do well for your mental health to first spend more time, energy and thoughts on things you can control. Not just things related to environmentalism, but broadly reduce energy, engagement and focus from the things you don't have significant control over and direct them to those things you do have control. It's good to get a broad picture and observe the world around you outside of your control in small doses, but it's easy to over indulge in an unfocused survey of problems in the world, especially on social media. (I include Lemmy communities in the social media category).
Furthermore, when you do engage with these problems, do so with more narrow focus and in more depth with an eye towards understanding the level of impact the problem has and what organizations or policy positions you can support to amplify your limited influence over the issues that causee the problem. In this way you can mitigate the feelings of helplessness and sense of there being many existential and imminent problems you need to contend with but cannot remedy. You can turn seemingly untouchable solutions into real possibilities without overwhelming your emotional capacity by working with others.
I appreciate this, it's really good advice and what I try to do, but I can always be better.
At the moment I volunteer for a food bank that focuses on redistributing surplus food stocks from businesses instead of having them go to the bin. This is because I abhor waste.
I also volunteer for the Scouts because it upsets me to see young people glued to screens all the time, never leaving their home, and not knowing what the real world and real social situations are. Also, I missed out on a lot of these things as a child because I shied away from them and nobody encouraged me. I enjoyed hiking with my older brother and my uncle, but the premise of joining the Scouts was never even given to me as an option.
It's amazing to see kids say "what's this plant, what's that tree, what is that mushroom, can I eat that berry?" and sometimes being able to answer them, or at least tell them how they can find themselves an answer. "Take a picture of it, do some research, tell me what you find out next week"
I want to thank you for your reply. Hearing about someone like you and your attempt to improve your community and the world I the ways you can is so uplifting!
People are social (even the introverts) and the return on in person, deep social interaction is another reason it's important to fight the allure of convenience of online media being ones primary and most influencial social interaction. I love that you're doing it!
We just need to turn up the UV lights voltage and melt the plastic out. Is that something we could look into?
If we knew of bacteria that cleanly ate plastic, we probably wouldn't be riddled with micro plastics ๐
We know of them and are working on making them more efficient
Those are Ideonella, and the byproducts are still toxic tu humans. Wouldn't work.
Mostly guess though I think remember reading some of it. Here are the links if your interested.
4.1 Fertility effects in adult males
Microplastics Linked to Heart Attack, Stroke and Death
Detrimental effects of microplastic exposure on normal and asthmatic pulmonary physiology
Could Microplastics Be a Driver for Early Onset Colorectal Cancer?
Disclaimer not a doctor, just some random guy in the internet.
And yet doctors insist I'm not getting enough fiber!
Yummm, fruity pebbles
Out of curiosotiy where would something like 3D printing be placed?
While a problem yes, miniscule compared to industrial waste
I think they meant personally, not global.
well, dont huff your prints or put them in your mouth or other body orifices. Pretty simple
It only breaks down under industrial environments. It's not as "biodegradable" as claimed. I use PETG because I can recycle it with normal plastics recycling.
It breaks down in high heat, high water environments, aka thermophilic composting. This makes it ideal for agricultural and food waste. You're right though it doesn't recycle well.
Pretty bad, especially with people sanding down productions and stuff.
Obligatory: The Planet is Fine - George Carlin
Peertube - https://kolektiva.media/...
googletube - Kmo8sh77G6Y
I like how we've gone from looking at the huge garbage patches in our oceans to the amount of microplastic in a drop of water. I don't see it as a material issue, you pick a material and with enough quantity it will pollute. It is a consumer society issue. But maybe it will be easier to change consumer society by dangling the microplastic threat effect so the actual cause can be treated - wait, the psychopaths in CEO positions would lose money then, never mind.
for anyone working with acrylic paint, this stuff is plastic so itโs best not to just chuck it down your sink.
There is a way to filter the plastics https://www.jacksonsart.com/...
Trying out the golden crash system (though you can just buy buckets and elements yourself to do it cheaper) and it got some very good results.
I fucking hate lemmy now, you are just reddit with a sense of undeserved elitism.
This is a serious as fuck problem and all that anyone replies with are jokes and shitposts.
This is fucking /c/science, not /c/sciencememes
But none of you care especially the mods, so I'm just blocking every one of you.
edit: There's an entire subthread here that is nothing but masturbation jokes, which of course the mods ignore.
Fuck lemmy and its shitstain mod team same as the reddit mods but with worse hygiene. At least on reddit they keep /r/science clean
People having a laugh isnโt the problem.
There is a real problem with the thread format of social media however.
My proof is I canโt find the โin this discussion relevantโ thread of masturbation jokes because time has moved on and so did the discussion. [Edit: your comment is only 1h old, so not sure whats up]
We need a much better way to organize our speech and discussions because a single scroll page sorted by time, or contextless votes ainโt doing it.
I actually noticed that some of my comments are reacted very different towards depending on the time of day, what side of planet earth is awake at the time.
There is an argument to be had that certain troll farms love to drown discussions in shitposts and maybe we should be more mindful of the patterns.
But to say we should crack down on any form of jokes, which are an important part of our human expression that goes too far, thats what i disliked about r/science
I'm so glad blocks are free.
scrolling in the comment section of this news article, i've only seen people either being concerner/shocked, and some sarcastically talking about recycling or something. Nothing about masturbation.
And if your criticism of lemmy is that it's being reddit with elitism, then why try to gatekeep the way people are going to react to an article on c/science? Are we all supposed to have degrees in chemistry or biology before making a comment?
Believe it or not people take heavy news a million different ways and react differently. People ending up making a masturbation joke after discussing microplastics in testicles (i assume this is what happened) harm nothing and no one.
I've already blocked them so I can't link though I reported it too so maybe some mod woke their lazy ass up and deleted it as they should have.
That lazy ass is a volunteer spending their free time filtering our crap.
That mods (need to) exist is also a symptom of bigger issues, ideally we don't need mods and are capable to self organized in a respectful way.
This is not reddit, you have the abilities to make a better science place on the fediverse, be the example of how you think it should be done. (Get off you lazy ass or understand that life for most is more then social media.
Its not perfect but its that freedom to disagree and build your own that sets us apart.
Doors over there. Feel free to leave.
Forbidden fruity pebbles
@lemmy.world
A community to post scientific articles, news, and civil discussion.
dart board;; science bs
rule #1: be kind
go to feed...
@lemmy.world
A community to post scientific articles, news, and civil discussion.
dart board;; science bs
rule #1: be kind
go to feed...
Or several trillion very small problems.
save