[anthropodie]

How did we fail to forsee the effects of plastic before unleashing it on humanity and the world? Is there some org or body that would prevent such thing from happening in future with other material? If we have not learn anything from this we are doomed to repeat it.

[throwup238]

Plastic is a miracle material on par with wood and fossil fuels. We didn’t stand a chance! The economic incentives to use it would have overrode anyone who brought up concerns, even if they had the scientific evidence back then.

Likewise with other chemicals like tetraethyllead in gasoline. We’ve known lead is toxic since Vitruvius but the first anti-knocking agent was just too useful so everyone kind of ignored it.

[TeMPOraL]

We're still to identify any meaningful effects of microplastics other than them being everywhere and looking foreboding.

That on top of what others said - it's hard to predict effects and their scale before actually doing the thing that causes them. Also, it's only in the last 100 years that we learned that large-scale effects and environmental damage of various chemicals are a thing in the first place; it was hard for people to even conceptualize or imagine such things.

[tyho]

We have done a better job with radioactive materials and CFC's than with plastics generally. Plastics suffer from their harms being very difficult to identify, they are still argued about today, no such uncertainty for radioactive materials or CFC's, their harms were (relatively) quickly identified.

[xkcd-sucks]

Consider that CTE chronic traumatic encephalopathy was discovered only a couple decades ago, despite the fact it could in principle be physically observed with stone age technology [0]. Knowing and caring where to look are important, and its tricky if there's no conceptual framework for it

[0] gently bash someone on the head for decades, cut out their brain, notice it's all shrunken and weird in composition ... maybe in a culture with strong warrior and ritual cannibalism practices

[pixl97]

>How did we fail to forsee the effects of leaded gasoline....

Humanity is mostly reactive. Once people are harmed then we launch a decade long fight against massive corporations who gaslight us as to how safe their product is and spend millions in delaying court battles and faking positive public opinion.

[legitster]

This, except for the invention of agriculture.