Scientists issue dire warning: Microplastic accumulation in human brains escalating
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Not very well. Those long molecules break down into shorter segments every time they're recycled, which makes for an inferior and eventually useless product. Some plastics are also thermoset and can't ever be melted again, and some are just hard to recycle for other reasons and get picked out and landfilled. The whole idea of plastics recycling is basically greenwashing on a massive scale; the industry put a lot of money into promoting it to avoid scrutiny.
That being said, they're also permanent in the good way. Plastics don't biodegrade or erode. If you bury a plastic pipe in the ground, it may well still be there and intact in a million years. Anything natural will rot long before that, common metals will corrode, and concrete usually has metal rebar inside that pulls it apart as it corrodes. Plastic is also lightweight, which ceramics (stone-like materials) and metals are not, while still being strong under tension like metals.
Sunlight does slowly break down many plastics, but only into ever-smaller particles, which is where the microplastics in OP come from.
oh wow, i didn't realize that, i thought it was infinitely reusable just by melting and re-forming it. thank you really much for the explanation.
what you wrote reminded me of silly putty, it's really stretchy and elastic to start with, but if you play with it for a while, it starts to be less elastic and breaks apart.
does metal also break down? i'm thinking about like aluminium cans that are used for soda and stuff like that
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oh wow, i didn't realize that, i thought it was infinitely reusable just by melting and re-forming it. thank you really much for the explanation.
what you wrote reminded me of silly putty, it's really stretchy and elastic to start with, but if you play with it for a while, it starts to be less elastic and breaks apart.
does metal also break down? i'm thinking about like aluminium cans that are used for soda and stuff like that
Nope, metals are elements as opposed to molecule compounds and literally can be melted and cast forever. They say most of the gold ever mined is still in use today, so your modern ring might have bits of a ring melted down in ancient Egypt in it. Glass is like this too. Paper is more like plastic, albeit somewhat biodegradable when it eventually has to be thrown out.
In practice, there's still a limit for many metals because they will get contaminated. Copper building up in scrap steel is a problem IIRC. It's not a big issue with aluminum, though, unless you're doing something like building an airplane where you need super high purity. Cans are almost all recycled into more cans.
There are ways to purify a metal melt, but they can be expensive and usually produce waste slag. I've never heard of glass being purified; it's probably too cheap to not just make more of, since it's derived from really common minerals.
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oh wow, i didn't realize that, i thought it was infinitely reusable just by melting and re-forming it. thank you really much for the explanation.
what you wrote reminded me of silly putty, it's really stretchy and elastic to start with, but if you play with it for a while, it starts to be less elastic and breaks apart.
does metal also break down? i'm thinking about like aluminium cans that are used for soda and stuff like that
A lot of metals are fairly easy to recycle. For others, being alloys (basically a mix of various metals in varying quantities), it's more tricky as you can't always really get a pure product out of recycling very easily, so it limits the types of things you can do with them. But all in all it's way better than with plastics.
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Nope, metals are elements as opposed to molecule compounds and literally can be melted and cast forever. They say most of the gold ever mined is still in use today, so your modern ring might have bits of a ring melted down in ancient Egypt in it. Glass is like this too. Paper is more like plastic, albeit somewhat biodegradable when it eventually has to be thrown out.
In practice, there's still a limit for many metals because they will get contaminated. Copper building up in scrap steel is a problem IIRC. It's not a big issue with aluminum, though, unless you're doing something like building an airplane where you need super high purity. Cans are almost all recycled into more cans.
There are ways to purify a metal melt, but they can be expensive and usually produce waste slag. I've never heard of glass being purified; it's probably too cheap to not just make more of, since it's derived from really common minerals.
thank you for the explanation, it was really interesting and in-depth! you should be a teacher!
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thank you for the explanation, it was really interesting and in-depth! you should be a teacher!
Thanks! I'm not sure I have the same presence IRL, haha.
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Were the Nazi rumors about them widespread back then?
Not really. I found it quite ominous never the less
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Thanks! I'm not sure I have the same presence IRL, haha.
ah don't worry about that, lots of it is online now :3
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As opposed to the alternative?
implying there are only two possible options that could ever be imagined is not interesting
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The original paper about microplastics in the brain seems to have a serious methodological flaw that undermines the conclusion that our brains are swimming in microplastics.
“False positives of microplastics are common to almost all methods of detecting them,” Jones says. “This is quite a serious issue in microplastics work.”
Brain tissue contains a large amount of lipids, some of which have similar mass spectra as the plastic polyethylene, Wagner says. “Most of the presumed plastic they found is polyethylene, which to me really indicates that they didn’t really clean up their samples properly.” Jones says he shares these concerns.
This is from other microplastics researchers. See this article. So before we panic about this, let’s wait for some independent replication and more agreement in the scientific community.
Microplastics are a serious concern, and we need to deal with plastic pollution. Let’s just stick to high quality science while we do that.
Thank you for the nuance. Bad data and hyperbole doesn't help what I agreed is a serious issue.
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So what? We all have to make a bit of sacrifice to maximize shareholder value. Stop whining about it!
::: spoiler Tap for spoiler
/s
:::lets sacrifice shareholders for value instead
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I can feel it
plastic pilled micro-maxxer -
I am longing for plastic-eating bacteria to be released into the wild. There are other materials we can use.
There are plastic eating microorganisms, both fungi, and bacteria.
But, they take a long time to break down plastic. I've had a fungus that can digest plastic in a mushroom cultivation bag for nine months and only one specimen has made it through so far.
I imagine splicing the gene that allows for the production of this enzyme into an ocean bound microorganism would clean up a lot of it while not affecting most of our terristrial infrastructure.
Of course, folks put plastic tubing and what not in the ocean too, so I guess we'll all have to die instead.
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Let me share with you unique kind of emotions:)
(I mean this in good faith)non-native English speakers. It's actually a distinct source of getting astonished: grow up with some English songs around, love them for their melody and whatnot, then learn some English, then actually listen to or read the lyrics, and... oh, damn. So many things come out in totally different light
Yup it's quite saucy
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AI is actually known to not repeat itself. This is also why it tends to use rare/unusual words since it cannot use the same words repeatedly. Not saying this isn't AI, but repetitiveness is not really an AI trait
Not reusing words isn't the same as not repeating itself. Especially if it's been given a minimum word count, it will often restate the same information in different ways to fill space.
Of course, this can happen with actual writers as well. That's why editors used to exist.
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glass bottled soda > canned soda > plastic contained soda or fountain drinks
... maybe we will end up with a bottlecap psuedo currency after all.
Aluminum cans have a plastic liner in them to protect the metal from the acidic soda, but I'm not sure if it leaches in the same way as plastic bottles.
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The shitty part is it won't just be us. Animals who had nothing to do with our shit will likely die right along with us.
Absolutely. I was just talking about my daily life. I don't give a shit if something gives me cancer or sterilizes me at this point. My body is so irrevocably fucked by pollution already, unless it kills me/debilitates me within the next 10 years, I don't care. A shortening life span is meaningless to me.
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I suppose so. Even though they already melt at typical frying or baking temperatures, they don't evaporate. Even if, the still need to find a way through the food outside and not get trapped inside, where they'll cool down again and therefore return to a solid state.
Take this with a grain of microplastic-free salt, as this is not my field.
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Another type of plastic though than the ones used for typical drinking bottles. I can imagine they are more robust. But it would be really good to know the microplastic intake through such plastic pipes.
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I've definitely seen AI get into loops personally. From what you're saying it sounds like they've added restrictions on reusing words to try and solve that.
https://i.redd.it/9incn595pnvc1.jpeg
This is a fine example of AI not being allowed to commonly re-use words, so it tends to use somewhat less common words
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Scary. Is plastic more or less expensive than cardboard/paper? I'm not sure if it's where I live, but I've noticed that during my childhood, (example) most takeout containers would be either foil or paper. Now, most of them are plastic, even the cups that contain sauces. I don't get why plastic has been embraced so much when the alternatives were far easier to recycle.
I'm not so sure what cardboard/paper you mean? If you mean something like the paper cups that coffee comes in, they also contain plastic. Dirty paper/cardboard can also not be recycled, so your pizza carton ends up in a landfill or burned. And what do you mean by foil? Genuinely curious.
In my area a lot of takeout places now offer reusable options for a deposit. Usually it is a cardboard with plastic lining container if it is one way. Except the Asian takeout places, they are all over the place from classic black plastic to aluminum containers to styropor to - circling back - the plastic carton stuff.
