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by balaji1 1070 days ago
> There's nothing to suggest it's plastics in particular

Sometimes wonder if these arguments are just devil’s advocating. I mean do you avoid heating food in plastic for you and yours? Or are you so scientific that you believe it’s fine until proven otherwise?

Said another way, if you were to bet money, which way would you bet - that plastics are benign?
1 comments
sfn42 1070 days ago
I'm not OP but yeah I assume it's fine until proven otherwise. Why wouldn't I?

Otherwise where does it end? What other things should I assume are dangerous despite no evidence? Or are you saying I should latch on to whatever baseless hysteria is popular at the moment?

I'm not a betting man. I think plastics have been around for a long time and as far as I know we haven't proven that they have a negative effect. If they did have a significant negative effect I'm pretty sure we would have proven it by now. So maybe they have an insignificant negative effect. I'm okay with that risk. If I weren't I wouldn't have time to do anything other than worry about and avoid shit that might have an insignificant negative effect - not to mention things that we know have a significant negative effect such as alcohol.

Honestly if you drink alcohol and you worry about microplastics you're just hypocritical.

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balaji1 1070 days ago
> Honestly if you drink alcohol and you worry about microplastics you're just hypocritical

That’s correct. Some people feel powerless to address the bigger elephants in the room.

Being obsessively anti-plastic (or anything) shouldn’t be a coping mechanism (but that’s what it is, not hypocrisy).

But I’m suggesting that as a society, we can easily have the collective will to uncover and address issues - more research on plastic, more education on alcohol, etc.

Because we know what short term thinking unregulated actors can do, intentionally or unintentionally.

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rhubinak 1068 days ago
They are man-made, mostly non-biodegradable and mostly non-recyclable. Which means they are thrash. I'd rather avoid ingesting or creating thrash.
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sfn42 1068 days ago
They are microscopic trace amounts of trash that until recently we didn't even know about.

They are unavoidable, doesn't matter what you eat. Fish, vegetables, meat, whatever you can think of it has microplastics.

If you want to expend a bunch of energy trying to minimize it go ahead and good luck. Personally I don't see the point.

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