[timellis-smith]

Colour me a bit cynical but we use plastic massively in healthcare and food industries precisely because it is non toxic.

Given the massive prevalence of plastic on just about all our food, if it was really such a threat I would expect life expectancies to have dropped.

Personally I regard this all as fear mongering.

[llamaimperative]

We used mercury in fur clothing and lead in gasoline also because they were nontoxic.

We are seeing population-scale effects exactly identical to what we see in animal models and in Petri dishes. Hormone disruption, which you’d expect to see metabolic disorders (like obesity), changes in sexuality (in animals we see a reduction in sexual dimorphism — plausibly connected to gender dysphoria), and fertility problems.

We don’t know for certain this stuff is bad, but I am absolutely sure that your confidence is unwarranted.

[Der_Einzige]

Don't talk too loudly about this stuff. You'll be roped in with the "Alex Jones" crowd because any talk like that implies biological determinism, which is deeply against the "acceptable ideology list" in our overton window.

God forbid if you connect the massively increasing youth LGBT identification rates to any biological or environmental factors - it must be 100% due to cultural change!

[ruszki]

OP won’t be categorized as such, because they haven’t added some bullshit, which would make it immediately obvious that the argument is used only to back a prejudice. I quite rarely see an accusation where the prejudice is not obvious, and facts are used to just back feelings.

[llamaimperative]

The trick is not being hateful of other people and transparently exploiting science to rationalize that hatred.

[lotsofpulp]

> Hormone disruption, which you’d expect to see metabolic disorders (like obesity)

I would suspect consuming multiples more dissolved sugar day and night and sedentary lifestyles way before hormone disruption. Especially considering reducing caloric consumption leads to losing weight.

[llamaimperative]

I think most major problems in the world are both overdetermined and multicausal. If we spend our time trying to isolate “the” culprit before taking action, we’ll solve roughly zero important problems.

[germinalphrase]

“ We used mercury in fur clothing and lead in gasoline also because they were nontoxic.”

Ah, yes. That nontoxic mercury not at all turning our hatters mad.

[paulryanrogers]

The dose makes the poison, especially for things that bio-accumulate and can cross the blood-brain barrier.

[qbxk]

sure, the plastic molecules are non-toxic, they don't have any chemical reactions with organic molecules. they're inert. safe.

but when they clump together, or when large sheets of them fall apart, you get particles. microplastics. still inert, no chemical reactions. but they get stuck in places like tiny blood vessels or tiny pockets in your intestine. not inert. not safe. not toxic, but not good

[RetroTechie]

Polymers are the result of chemical reactions. Some of the feedstock chemicals & other reaction products inevitably wind up in the plastic. Even if a tiny %.

Then there's additives. Last I read, some ~10k different ones. A good % of those known to be harmful. Or lacking data on their safety. I suspect some of those additives are way more harmful than the polymer itself (or its feedstock).

Never mind that we're ingesting a whole cocktail of these things. Interactions a go-go!