wait, we skipped the part where we found out microplastics were bad for you. concerning, yes, but plastic is relatively inert and there's no actual evidence of harm yet.
Plastic is biologically inert, but the plasticizers added to modify the qualities of plastics may not be. From what I understand, that's one of the major concerns with microplastics.
Plastics are basically all endocrine disrupting chemicals (your body confuses them for hormones, usually estrogen). Even nylon has been shown to be a EDC. BPA was by far the worst of them and wound up diffusing public concern, getting the rest completely off the hook.
That's not the whole story. Plastic is a chemical 'sponge' that soaks up contaminants from the environment (eg heavy metals, brominated flame retardants, pesticides, etc), concentrating them to many times background levels before delivering them into your body. For example household dust (which is >50% microplastics) is the primary route for brominated flame retardants to enter the human body.
And that's not even to mention intentional additives (phthalates, Bisphenol-*, BFRs again), which are far from inert.
And so are rice, broccoli, beer, wine, and brussels sprouts due to their absorption of arsenic from pesticides, mining, and other causes. The Chinese don't seem to be too concerned with it, even though it is well known.
Hey but eat meat and eggs! ALA helps to detoxify it. Not getting into the fear list on meat ;)
Extreme confidence is probably a mistake. Chronic diseases are rampant and we don't have good answers for what the causes are.
Have we been using the same exact compounds and processes and habits for 40 years? Every new advance is a chance for some new fuck up, and it takes time to realize it, if we ever do.
There's a huge range of possibilities between arsenic and "minor harm."
We have decent reason to believe they are active in the endocrine system, and pretty good reason to believe there are population-level endocrine issues (obesity and fertility).
Given that these plastics seem to accrue intergenerationally (i.e. babies are being born "poisoned" by them), an apparently minor, apparently not-very-acute issue could actually end up being a much, much, much bigger problem than any of the examples you listed.
That's incorrect, after invention of a leaded fuel, the first health concerns were raised in 1 or 2 years of production, and major heath investigation happened in 4 years time. We just lobbied (bribed) our way to continue using it regardless for half a century. And even a century later leaded fuel is widely used even in the USA, and probably even worse in other countries.
You're totally right, my choice of language should have been better. Thanks for the correction!
Is the situation all that different for plastics? I'm not sure. We've been running health studies on them for a while and the harmful effects of BPA, Teflon, PFAS, and the androgenic affects of most polymers are pretty well known at this point.
My point is mainly that how long we've been using something is not a great way to determine safety.
Your argument might have made sense if excess consumption of carbohydrate, saturated fat, and other nutrition deficient foods did not skyrocket over the same time frame.
This is a big part of the struggle with in vitro vs in vivo studies. We can have a repeatable result with in vitro effects, but can't confidently say what the macro effect will be. We might be able to say it doesn't "directly" cause none, some, or all of those, but we can't definitively say it doesn't contribute at all.
Personally I'm of the opinion that is evidence large scale studies are needed on live subjects. I'm not educated enough to know if that is feasible or reasonable, but I am confident you can't be "sure" until that is done.
There's effectively no way to test this with fully unadulterated control group. The entire planet more or less is covered in microplastics.
It's not clear how, even theoretically, you get better evidence than "this is what we see in vitro, and the effect seems analogous at population scale."
Sure, maybe there isn't, I can't argue that with my knowledge.
What I am confident on is there won't be significant societal change with that level of evidence. Most of those health issues have "easy" reasons they can be associated with (right or wrong), and it's going to be tough convincing people that in vitro effects are enough reason to significantly curtail (nevermind ban) plastics.