Might be that. Although your body goes into absolute overdrive during pregnancy, and it's not beyond the realms of possibility that some of the immune system reactions that kick in manage to eject some level of plastic microparticulates
Most likely its the same reason blood donation lowers microplastic levels in blood. Production of new cells that aren't tainted with it. A woman's blood volume increases by 40% during pregnancy. Of course ill freely admit thats just a hypothesis and you're probably right, there would be benefit into studying it.
They're just place holders until the generation gets a shared experience to refer to. Millennials saw the millennium. Boomers were products of the baby boom but they also saw their economy boom. Gen X are missing, their letter was fitting.
My prediction is one of them will become gen algorithm, as they never knew a time when their media wasn't decided for them. Maybe, gen android, few of them know how to use a file system after Chromebooks became ubiquitous. Or they'll be the second greatest generation due to ww3. This stuff is entirely unpredictable.
What name does GenZ get? Born just in time to be power users, born too late to have any power to stop the enshitification. Same non-existent economic prospects as GenX.
They really aren't power users though. Tech is a) generally more reliable and b) so locked-down that so many young people never learned how to troubleshoot
The earlier half of GenZ typically grew up with mass adoption of computers and phones all over the place so we got to learn how to fix XP every 5 minutes and get cracked games working.
I dunno, the second silent generation? Born into hard times, don't know any better. Defined by their fiscally conservative ways and "none of my business" outlook?
They haven't been too silent though, and more power to 'em. The un-silent generation? Seems a bit disrespectful to riff off of their great/grandparents though.
As someone just old enough to remember, we did have that with CFCs. Might not have been super mainstream, and nobody who would have done it out of spite really had the disposable income to actually do it.
I grew up in a Fundamentalist Christian "cult" and I remember the adults around me "joking" about it all the time. I remember a Missionary to northern Canada visiting our church (in rural America) to try to raise support talking about the temperatures and joking that it's so cold that he wanted to stand outside with an aerosol can in each hand to try to bring on some global warming, and that getting a laugh from the congregation. You might think that maybe it was a "harmless" joke that maybe as a child I didn't pick up on the sarcasm, but there were absolutely adults there who fully believed that there was nothing humans could do to damage the earth, because God takes care of it. "And how dare the government and these evolutionists try to tell us how to live."
There's actually a lot of work going into documenting and replacing lead service lines in the US. EPA required every state to make sure every waterworks submitted an inventory by last October, with grant money through the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law to pay for it.
Is plastic really better? PVC, ABS,polyethylene and the rest get brittle after some time depending on conditions. All the degradation byproducts are in the water
Except that microplastics have been a major problematic thing since basically plastic become a popular thing, we just didn't know it yet back then. It's not like millenials invented plastic or popularized its use.
The amount of it in our environment has been ever increasing though. There's more of it in the oceans, the soil, the rivers, the plants. The whole food chain and ecosystems are contaminated more than ever before.
We are just beginning to understand how much the chemical Imbalances that lead to depression, anxiety, and other mental health disorders originate in the digestive tract and how microplastics from food may disrupt the processing of these chemicals.
My non-professional guess is that microplastics will eventually sterilize us by disrupting our sperm's ability to function properly. Only the wealthy can afford the medical procedures to bypass this.
'Twould be sweet irony and a blessing for the earth.
Although the best method for removing it I've found is donating plasma (PFAs down 30% in 6 months of regular donation, the hope is nanoplastics are also removed...) so it might be the poors (in USA) and generous that get to have kids, so that's nice...
The depression is a natural byproduct of civilization. We're not supposed to sit in concrete boxes and do meaningless tasks for survival. It makes us sad.
I'm crazy. Mark My Words. In 20 years, we'll have so many microbes capable of consuming plastic people will be bitching about their packages not being able to effectively protect their goods from spoiling. The goldfish has spoken.
I've run across at least three separate articles now of researchers from across the world discovering plastic eating bacteria in the wild. Short plastic. Its days are numbered.
Based solely on your comment, I'm looking forward to watching a scene where Christian Bale goes around Wall Street collecting mugs in The Big Short 2: Polymer Boogaloo.
Once at a Phish show, I consumed a rather copious amount of 🍄’s while hanging w/ mah friends beforehand.
For some reason I couldn’t get the image of Plastic Man (Comic cartoon on Saturday mornings in the early 80’s)
Out of my head.
Every fucking song from that show I processed through the Plastic Man perspective.
I was done with that memory before my brain would allow me to forget it.
It was a loooonnnggg show b/c 🍄’s.
I once ate shrooms and went to a club (late 90s in the Netherlands, psytrance). The party experience was complete gone for me, it was just like watching a nature show, where I heard a David Attenborough narator talk about how the female of the species was using various color pigments on her face to attract the male. While the males where using dance moves to show strength and virility.
Eliminating lead products has been a lot more feasible than the impossible task of eliminating microplastics. They are in everything. So unfortunately Gen Z and onward will suffer with us millennials.
If it's the second one, the answer is easy, fucking aluminum. We've had the answer forever and it still works great. Glass too, good for many applications.
Now the actual problem isn't plastic bags or beverage containers though, it's clothing and tires. Most clothing is plastic these days and tiny plastic fibers break up into micro plastics and take to the air or end up in the sea. Car tires are also just plastic these days, not rubber (which is arguably better for the environment than leveling rainforests for rubber tree plantations, sigh...), the tires rub off on the road like a pencil eraser on sandpaper. This also ends up in the air and sea.
So anyway, replacing plastic beverage containers is a great step, a no brainer, but it also doesn't address the real problem at all. I hope that some day soon tires and clothes can start to be made with biodegradable "eco plastics", but if that doesn't turn out to be feasible, we'll be in some serious trouble. And once we have some real, feasible, affordable replacements, then we need to actually outlaw the use of older plastic tires, in every country on the planet, despite heavy lobbying against any new measures from vested interests... I can't even imagine how to make that happen. How did we do it with lead? Has every country outlawed lead in gas?
Even though leaded gasoline and leaded paint have been outlawed for decades in the US, it's still a big problem in poor communities. Lots of old houses still have lead paint. Lead abatement is expensive and many people may not even know it's something you need to do.
That's the neat thing: nobody can. It's incredibly hard to devise a study that can show anything about it. There is no way to get a human without microplastics in them to get a control group, and by this point as far as I know there is no plausible theory to get a specific study.
Everyone kinda suspects that it can't be good for you, simultaneously there is zero actual evidence that something is ever happening. We don't know, and that's very frustrating.
It seems like they'd be fairly inert. Although that's certainly no guarantee that they're not really bad for you. Much like inert gas, the danger could well be them replacing or getting in the way of something else.
If it is a small amount that make the cut (in relative contrast to all current members of humanity)
If a fraction make it, that would be giant W for humankind.
The diversity would be enormous and incredibly resilient & unbelievably healthy.
This is America, you aren't getting a good regulatory regime on anything. Especially not for things you buy from vape stores (stores covered in ugly ass LED rope lights that look like they are run exclusively by and for juggalos).
I still licked lead pain in the craddle, ate too many food preservatives and artificial colorants, ate too much red meat, too much fat, got micro plastics poisoning...
And all I have to tell is bad breath, flatulence that could strip paint off the walls and a stupid sense of humour.
Millennials? More like GenX. We’ve been eating out of microwaved tupperware since the sixties.
So have the millennials who were breast fed.
And formula fed
Mmmm, tasty math.
The worst part: postpartum women have lower levels of microplastics than other adults.
So you’re saying the baby took some of the plastic out of them, that’s horribly depressing at least they got 10 to 15 point IQ boost in return
Might be that. Although your body goes into absolute overdrive during pregnancy, and it's not beyond the realms of possibility that some of the immune system reactions that kick in manage to eject some level of plastic microparticulates
Seems Like something people should be definitely looking into to find out why, with the state of science in America It’s probably not going to be here
I've thought more about it. I bet there's fucking loads in the placenta.
That was my question too, I wonder if there is a reliable way to measure where it all went, or if it’s just diluted in the increased blood volume.
There’s also the possibility that with are more careful with their intake during pregnancy, but that could be controlled for in survey data.
Most likely its the same reason blood donation lowers microplastic levels in blood. Production of new cells that aren't tainted with it. A woman's blood volume increases by 40% during pregnancy. Of course ill freely admit thats just a hypothesis and you're probably right, there would be benefit into studying it.
I was reading somewhere you can lower the level of PFAS in your blood by donating it.
It looks like the cumulative total of plastics produced by the 80's was around 2-3
trillionbillion tons, whereas now it's probably more like 20-30B.https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/exports/global-plastics-production.png
Yeah and also for Gen X, Gen Z, Gen Alpha. We all still alive and everybody gets microplastic in their balls and brains. Its for all ages
Right? Haha 😂 Oh did we suddenly clean up the entire Earth from free roaming microplastics?
why the alpabet suddenly changes after Z? it should either be "omega & alpha" or "z & a"
Same reason we started with X, millennials actually got a name, and then went back to Z. Somebody with a head full of lead came up with it.
Millenials are also called Gen Y. Millenials just happens to have sticked more. And Gen Z is also called Zoomers.
Well zoomer comes from the z. Does it not?
It also comes from 'boomer', some names tend to stick.
brain full of lead and microplastic
They're just place holders until the generation gets a shared experience to refer to. Millennials saw the millennium. Boomers were products of the baby boom but they also saw their economy boom. Gen X are missing, their letter was fitting.
My prediction is one of them will become gen algorithm, as they never knew a time when their media wasn't decided for them. Maybe, gen android, few of them know how to use a file system after Chromebooks became ubiquitous. Or they'll be the second greatest generation due to ww3. This stuff is entirely unpredictable.
What name does GenZ get? Born just in time to be power users, born too late to have any power to stop the enshitification. Same non-existent economic prospects as GenX.
They really aren't power users though. Tech is a) generally more reliable and b) so locked-down that so many young people never learned how to troubleshoot
The earlier half of GenZ typically grew up with mass adoption of computers and phones all over the place so we got to learn how to fix XP every 5 minutes and get cracked games working.
Gen Z is already named "Zoomers", but it's not sticking as much as "Gen Z".
I dunno, the second silent generation? Born into hard times, don't know any better. Defined by their fiscally conservative ways and "none of my business" outlook?
They haven't been too silent though, and more power to 'em. The un-silent generation? Seems a bit disrespectful to riff off of their great/grandparents though.
GenX are also known as the invisible or forgotten generation, for the same reason.
I though boomers were the producers of the baby boom
No, the products. World War 2 ended in 1945, and then EVERYBODY FUCKED and 80 years later we're still cleaning up the mess.
Maybe. Their generation starts 1946 so I thought they were the product. One way or the other they are involved in a baby boom.
You are correct. After WW2 ended there was a "boom" of babies being born.
Generation Omega sounds like some real dystopian plot
Waiting for uprising of the Sigma.
Or a 1970s political thriller.
Honestly I don't think we're socially responsible enough to end something like lead poisoning these days.
As someone just old enough to remember, we did have that with CFCs. Might not have been super mainstream, and nobody who would have done it out of spite really had the disposable income to actually do it.
I grew up in a Fundamentalist Christian "cult" and I remember the adults around me "joking" about it all the time. I remember a Missionary to northern Canada visiting our church (in rural America) to try to raise support talking about the temperatures and joking that it's so cold that he wanted to stand outside with an aerosol can in each hand to try to bring on some global warming, and that getting a laugh from the congregation. You might think that maybe it was a "harmless" joke that maybe as a child I didn't pick up on the sarcasm, but there were absolutely adults there who fully believed that there was nothing humans could do to damage the earth, because God takes care of it. "And how dare the government and these evolutionists try to tell us how to live."
for the past few months ive started to think we're like a couple years away from putting lead back in the gasoline
Trump deregulating gas and paint to put lead back in both would be so unsurprising it won't even garner a reaction from me.
I’m all with you. But it feels like they did already.
Someone will call not wanting lead poisoning woke and that will be that.
There's actually a lot of work going into documenting and replacing lead service lines in the US. EPA required every state to make sure every waterworks submitted an inventory by last October, with grant money through the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law to pay for it.
Is plastic really better? PVC, ABS,polyethylene and the rest get brittle after some time depending on conditions. All the degradation byproducts are in the water
If it was more in the zeitgeist, kids would be huffing it on tiktok.
You'd have people saying they like the lead and deliberately putting more of it in. Pussy-ass liberals trying to take their god given lead away...
Bold of you to think that the microplastic is going to go away after one generation...
Who said that? Lead poisoning is still rampant in some communities.
I think the question is, why are you bringing up millennials when the issue of microplastics did not start with them, nor will it end with them.
I mean most others will skip out on the toothpaste variant, but yeah, it's out there like that kraftwerk song.
The pipes in the US still contain plenty of lead. Also, Covid brain damage. Tons of it.
Most lead intoxication in boomers comes from leaded gasoline, lead in other presentations is less bio-available
Except that microplastics have been a major problematic thing since basically plastic become a popular thing, we just didn't know it yet back then. It's not like millenials invented plastic or popularized its use.
The amount of it in our environment has been ever increasing though. There's more of it in the oceans, the soil, the rivers, the plants. The whole food chain and ecosystems are contaminated more than ever before.
At what point does it become macroplastic? kiloplastic for the Europeans.
Microplastics cause neurological damage and anti social violent behavior?
We don't know about the longer term consequences yet, just like we didn't about lead.
Not saying it's a definite but I wouldn't be surprised.
To play devil's advocate, we always knew lead was toxic, but we didn't know the only healthy dose was 0
Yes, but plastic is a very new invention and a lot less studied than something like Pb or Hg, which are natural elements.
Not sure where I said natural = better. All I said was natural things are generally more studied because they existed for lot longer.
Plastic has been around for 80 years. Shouldn't we know something by now
But we know plastic is inert and we knew about lead.
wat? In no way is it inert.
We are just beginning to understand how much the chemical Imbalances that lead to depression, anxiety, and other mental health disorders originate in the digestive tract and how microplastics from food may disrupt the processing of these chemicals.
I don't think the impacts of microplastics are quite as catastrophic, they can't be or we would already know.
Which isn't to say they aren't bad just damn lead is realllly bad.
The concentration of them is rising exponentially, that's the part that terrifies me.
It's possible we just haven't crossed a threshold yet.
My non-professional guess is that microplastics will eventually sterilize us by disrupting our sperm's ability to function properly. Only the wealthy can afford the medical procedures to bypass this.
Maybe kids will need to be carefully sheltered from plastics until they are old enough to freeze their sperm.
this reads like the next step is to force them to freeze theirs
No, this will likely just be for the rich.
It'll end up blocking vital neurotransmitters leaving us zombified and giving us an insatiable craving for brains
'Twould be sweet irony and a blessing for the earth.
Although the best method for removing it I've found is donating plasma (PFAs down 30% in 6 months of regular donation, the hope is nanoplastics are also removed...) so it might be the poors (in USA) and generous that get to have kids, so that's nice...
I wonder what our neurosises will be.
Depression, I would say. Same as how boomers are labeled as uncaring and sociopathic because of lead.
The depression is a natural byproduct of civilization. We're not supposed to sit in concrete boxes and do meaningless tasks for survival. It makes us sad.
The sociopath part, I think, is likely because they grew up in the easiest time in history.
As an Elder Millenial/Xennial I was lucky enough to make it to adulthood just before it got complicated. Unfortunately we're talking months.
Samesies.
I think it's more physiological. Since microplastics are ingested maybe it's related to the rise in oral and rectal cancers.
Yeah, but the nanoplastics get past the BBB (Blood Brain Barrier), what's it, a plastic spoon in every human brain? Enough for some psych effects I guess. Oh, there's 27 million tonnes of nanoplastics spread across just the top layer of the temperate to subtropical North Atlantic
Shit's pervasive and in your brain.
Everyone has microplastics, even newborn babies, and we have no sign of decrease in its use.
We must become one with the plastic. It's the only way.
I'm crazy. Mark My Words. In 20 years, we'll have so many microbes capable of consuming plastic people will be bitching about their packages not being able to effectively protect their goods from spoiling. The goldfish has spoken.
I've run across at least three separate articles now of researchers from across the world discovering plastic eating bacteria in the wild. Short plastic. Its days are numbered.
Based solely on your comment, I'm looking forward to watching a scene where Christian Bale goes around Wall Street collecting mugs in The Big Short 2: Polymer Boogaloo.
Don't forget about PFAS!
Every generation alive has microplastics in them
and probably will for at least a few generations unless we can do some major filtering of all mediums
And literally nothing came of it, this whole thing is fear mongering and political theater.
Luckily, for the younger generations, we'll probably just get cancer instead of becoming massive malleable assholes
OP, you are in for a seriously rough time if you think containing micro plastics is as simple as removing lead from gasoline and paint.
Nobody said it would be.
And the person responsible for both issues is the same dude Roy J. Plunkett
Freon too?! Some people really want to watch the world burn.
and teflon. don't forget about teflon.
Once at a Phish show, I consumed a rather copious amount of 🍄’s while hanging w/ mah friends beforehand. For some reason I couldn’t get the image of Plastic Man (Comic cartoon on Saturday mornings in the early 80’s) Out of my head. Every fucking song from that show I processed through the Plastic Man perspective. I was done with that memory before my brain would allow me to forget it. It was a loooonnnggg show b/c 🍄’s.
I once ate shrooms and went to a club (late 90s in the Netherlands, psytrance). The party experience was complete gone for me, it was just like watching a nature show, where I heard a David Attenborough narator talk about how the female of the species was using various color pigments on her face to attract the male. While the males where using dance moves to show strength and virility.
This one's gonna last a few (the final few?) generations.
Pffft! .... at least microplastics take decades or a lifetime of accumulation to affect your body, mind and health
Social media rots your brain and mental capacity in a matter of years or months
Boomers had/have microplastics and lead poisoning. This is not a conspiracy, it is just a fact.
Did someone say it was a conspiracy?
Eliminating lead products has been a lot more feasible than the impossible task of eliminating microplastics. They are in everything. So unfortunately Gen Z and onward will suffer with us millennials.
My dad's car ran on 4 star right up until the mid 90s. I was exposed to plenty lead in my formative years as well as micro plastics.
The ol twofer
What's replacing plastic. Good luck.
What kind of generational hazard would you like to have growing up, kids? :D
What did plastic replace? Good chance we can go back, if we can convince some people the line doesn't need to go up. Good joke, everybody laughs...
Hopefully renewable, compostable/biodegradable plastics.
It's the getting the old shit out of everything that will be the issue
Do you mean what ubiquitous toxin will be next?
Or do you mean how can we get by without plastic?
If it's the second one, the answer is easy, fucking aluminum. We've had the answer forever and it still works great. Glass too, good for many applications.
Now the actual problem isn't plastic bags or beverage containers though, it's clothing and tires. Most clothing is plastic these days and tiny plastic fibers break up into micro plastics and take to the air or end up in the sea. Car tires are also just plastic these days, not rubber (which is arguably better for the environment than leveling rainforests for rubber tree plantations, sigh...), the tires rub off on the road like a pencil eraser on sandpaper. This also ends up in the air and sea.
So anyway, replacing plastic beverage containers is a great step, a no brainer, but it also doesn't address the real problem at all. I hope that some day soon tires and clothes can start to be made with biodegradable "eco plastics", but if that doesn't turn out to be feasible, we'll be in some serious trouble. And once we have some real, feasible, affordable replacements, then we need to actually outlaw the use of older plastic tires, in every country on the planet, despite heavy lobbying against any new measures from vested interests... I can't even imagine how to make that happen. How did we do it with lead? Has every country outlawed lead in gas?
Even though leaded gasoline and leaded paint have been outlawed for decades in the US, it's still a big problem in poor communities. Lots of old houses still have lead paint. Lead abatement is expensive and many people may not even know it's something you need to do.
Isn't aluminum neurotoxic?
Just don't grind it up into a powder and snort it and you should be fine.
Come to think of it, I would actually suggest the same for glass and plastic.
Can someone tell me what microplastics do to the body? I’m almost too afraid to ask at this point.
That's the neat thing: nobody can. It's incredibly hard to devise a study that can show anything about it. There is no way to get a human without microplastics in them to get a control group, and by this point as far as I know there is no plausible theory to get a specific study.
Everyone kinda suspects that it can't be good for you, simultaneously there is zero actual evidence that something is ever happening. We don't know, and that's very frustrating.
It seems like they'd be fairly inert. Although that's certainly no guarantee that they're not really bad for you. Much like inert gas, the danger could well be them replacing or getting in the way of something else.
IIRC the one thing we are sure of is that they don't break down, nor do they get out. So you better hope they don't do anything bad on top of that
Veritasium has a video about it on YouTube.
It’s very informative and may just give you the fix you’re looking for
https://youtu.be/SC2eSujzrUY
Probably do the same thing most of the junk humans dump into the environment. Reduce average lifespan, cause diseases and reduced fertility.
but at least people are born now without nuclear explosion isotopes
up until a few years ago every living being had them
so if we can stop lead from being blasted everywhere
and we can stop exploding nukes
maybe we can stop the plastic problem... but probably not for a few generations
We might be going backwards on this one
it's chest beating by the worst and desperate
if a nuke is exploded above ground again, the nation that sent it will be history
it's a bullshit game of chicken but nobody is going to do it.
If it is a small amount that make the cut (in relative contrast to all current members of humanity) If a fraction make it, that would be giant W for humankind. The diversity would be enormous and incredibly resilient & unbelievably healthy.
Don't forget the nanoplastics! These are even more hazardous!
What's next ? Latent radioactive dust ?
Probably volcanic ash lungs from all the volcanoes in the world erupting all at once due to climate change.
Nah, vaping will be the Gen z all have lead poisoning of Gen z.
What makes you say that? I’m not saying vaping is healthy but there’s no source to say that they’re poisoning anyone…unless you mean disposables.
They're starting to get into the science of it, and it ain't looking good. Yes, disposables are a big part of the problem.
I think the laws regarding ingredients matter. I’ve yet to see anything that isn’t made up or embellished.
https://www.ucdavis.edu/news/disposable-e-cigarettes-more-toxic-traditional-cigarettes
This is America, you aren't getting a good regulatory regime on anything. Especially not for things you buy from vape stores (stores covered in ugly ass LED rope lights that look like they are run exclusively by and for juggalos).
Im not American. But I am aware of your regulations around food, water, etc. Good luck.
Cannabis.
It's basically mental health disorders in herbal form.
Public opinion is finally starting to shift from its a panacea to it's a drug, in the face of decriminalization throughout areas of North America.
I smoke weed and I also work in the field of addiction recovery, so pls don't start the anti science denialism in reply to me.
Wouldn't anti science denialism just be science avocation? 😆
Lol hey you're right!
Go yell at the clouds some more old man, but in this case, those would be vape clouds so you better get out quickly because they disappear like mad
Bah. I dont care about lead, microplastics or even covid.
Chernobyl and mad cow-disease are my jam.
I still licked lead pain in the craddle, ate too many food preservatives and artificial colorants, ate too much red meat, too much fat, got micro plastics poisoning...
And all I have to tell is bad breath, flatulence that could strip paint off the walls and a stupid sense of humour.