[sktrdie]

Apart from food packaging, one great way to easily ingest plastic is to use synthetic clothing. Just a basic rubbing of a synthetic sleeve on your nose causes thousands of polyester particles to release in thin air, readily breathable.

Not just clothing, but also bedding is a huge issue. With pillows, mattresses and towels mostly made of synthetic fibers.

My usual instinct is: try rubbing the synthetic material; if it releases thousands of particles in thin air, stay away from it

[ericmcer]

Clothing industry has somehow gotten by unscathed during all the environmental awareness that has spread in the past 20 years. I am pretty sure clothes are the #1 cause of the microplastics that have inundated the ocean and our water supply.

We have been heavily pushed to drive less, recycle more, and use less water, but I have not seen messaging about not buying new clothes you don't need.

[jabl]

> Clothing industry has somehow gotten by unscathed during all the environmental awareness that has spread in the past 20 years. I am pretty sure clothes are the #1 cause of the microplastics that have inundated the ocean and our water supply.

Surprise surprise, it has actually been studied. One recent review article of the field:

https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adl2746

From figure 2b) we can see that while microplastics from synthetic fibres are certainly an issue, they are far from #1. Dwarfed by tires, paint, and macroplastics (large plastic pieces thrown away slowly grinding down into microplastics e.g. by wave action).

[calf]

Pretty sure PP was referring to mainstream criticism and concerns which tend to be about plastics in foods, etc. but less acknowledgement of the problem of fast fashion switching from cotton to plastic based textiles.

[jerlam]

France passed a law back in 2020 to require new washing machines to have a microplastics filter by 2025:

https://www.europarl.europa.eu/doceo/document/E-9-2020-00137...

It has also begun to subsidize the clothing repair industry:

https://www.cnn.com/2023/07/13/business/france-shoe-clothing...

[klipt]

Maybe we should subsidize plastic-free fibers instead. Cotton, hemp, wool...

[anonym29]

Or perhaps we could all agree to stop wearing so much clothing in warm climates? I have a hard time believing that out of all mammals that ever came to be on this planet, we just so happened to be the only ones with this unique need that our biology failed to provide us with.

[echelon]

Though I wouldn't expect the average consumer to take a full course in organic chemistry, perhaps we can train the public to see benzene rings.

Counting electron delocalization density and reactivity can be a rule of thumb for DNA mutation.

Basically a, "Does your chemical look like this? Maybe consume less of it." infographic.

[GuB-42]

> perhaps we can train the public to see benzene rings But benzene rings are everywhere, from deadly poison to essential nutrients.

And in fact, some chemicals that behave very differently may look extremely similar on paper. Especially when it comes to biology.

[westurner]

Linen; linen is made from the Flax plant.

Natural fibers: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_fiber

Green textiles: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_textile

There are newer more sustainable production processes for various natural fibers.

TIL that there are special laundry detergents for synthetic fabrics like most activewear like jerseys; and that fabric softener attracts mosquitos and adheres to synthetic fibers causing stank.

[bilbo0s]

You still have massive downsides to new cotton or wool clothes. There's just less of the micro plastic downside. Clothing is just a place where we take a massive hit on everything from carbon output to micro plastics.

Another issue is clothing repair. I think the clothing repair thing is kind of brilliant. But for clothing repair to work you would need to disincentivize buying new clothes. Which subsidizing clothing would work against.

[JumpCrisscross]

> for clothing repair to work you would need to disincentivize buying new clothes

Why? I repair clothes. I also like buying new ones. In between I ruin and lose items, or find that I no longer wish to wear them for purely stylistic reasons.

[pkaye]

Higher quality clothes like in the past might be nice. Stuff seems to fall apart so quickly these days.

[ffujdefvjg]

Older clothes weren't just made better, people also took care of them better. Partly because of cost, but also culture -- fewer changes in fashion trends with slower and more local communication, cheap labor to launder your clothes by hand (which puts much less wear on the garment). Also a culture of repairing and mending (also easier to do this when you have fewer things to occupy your free time).

[baq]

sad truth: dryers absolutely destroy clothes.

[schiffern]

The problem isn't really "buying new clothes," since most of the microplastics are released in the laundry. Sewage treatment plants aren't designed to remove them, so they get released with the discharge water. It can also clog up septic leachfields.

They do make purpose-built products to filter microplastic lint from laundry[1][2], but a more hacker approach is to just search for "pool filter."

I wish they made comparable products for the dryer.

[1] https://www.filtrol.net/

[2] https://planetcare.org/

[onlypassingthru]

> I wish they made comparable products for the dryer.

Isn't that just the lint filter? Every dryer I've seen has one.

[kyleee]

Those are probably not fine enough (in terms of filtration) and retrofit may be difficult if it restricts airflow.

[haccount]

There's an entire big and celebrated business sector that spends every working hour taking intact plastic products and grinds then into fine shreds, a process likely to contribute more than a fair share to microplastic dissemination. Maybe worth investigating, a good candidate for more microplastic release than the clothing industry.

Name of that business sector? Plastics recycling.

[arcticbull]

Plastics recycling also kinda barely exists. Only 5% of plastic in the US is recycled, the whole thing was a greenwashing operation by oil companies to encourage additional consumption. Realistically putting the plastic deep underground back from whence the hydrocarbons came is not a bad sequestration strategy.

https://www.npr.org/2020/09/11/897692090/how-big-oil-misled-...

[DebtDeflation]

The way we used to "recycle" plastic was to put it on a container ship along with glass and aluminum and send it to China. Once it arrived, they would recycle the glass and aluminum and bury or burn the plastic. We reduced the quantity of (valuable) aluminum and glass over time until China got mad and told us to stop shipping them just the garbage (plastic). That was largely the end of the show.

[brnt]

The US is at the back of the pack though, in Europe some countries recycle more than half of plastic.

[pkaye]

Do they recycle or just burn it for energy?

[greenavocado]

Countries like Sweden, Denmark, and Switzerland incinerated 50-80% of their plastic waste. Germany incinerated around 50%. Countries in Eastern and Southern Europe generally had lower incineration rates and higher landfill rates. Approximately 42% of plastic waste in Europe was being incinerated in waste-to-energy facilities.

[brnt]

Recycling is not burning.

[redwall_hp]

Same for aluminum, which is highly recyclable. A ridiculous amount of it ends up in landfills for no reason other than people can't be fucked.

Plastic recycling is just another American "we tried nothing and are out of ideas." Much of the lack of recycling for plastics, when it comes to bottles, isn't some grand conspiracy so much as people just throwing bottles in the trash or on the side of the road, because:

* There aren't omnipresent recycling bins to go alongside trash cans.

* There aren't local programs for recycling pick up.

* Some people can't be bothered and the government isn't punching them in the face, as it should.

Only a half dozen states have a can/bottle deposit, even. Each state should be required to have deposits and municipal recycling pickup in any city of appreciable size, and heavy penalties for littering, or all sorts of federal funding should be withheld.

[mistrial9]

> Plastic recycling is just another American "we tried nothing and are out of ideas."

not sure where this comes from -- this statement is definitely not accurate. Is recycling of plastics "going well" ? no. Please note that USA is composed of States, and then Counties. In the USA law system, counties have the most jurisdiction over most waste laws. Some State laws override those, including toxics handling; then Federal laws including interstate commerce (transportation) and many more toxics regulations.

Counties do vary dramatically. In fact most counties in the whole USA are different in important respects. There is no single USA this way. Overall, recycling is very dependent on economics. It costs money to recycle, and sometimes you get some of it back on materials markets. The costs to the environment are not accurate with respect to markets.

The comment then proceeds to dictate advice to "each state" and that is never going to happen, by definition, for legal matters under the jurisdiction of states, in simple terms.

[throwaway19972]

> We have been heavily pushed to drive less, recycle more, and use less water, but I have not seen messaging about not buying new clothes you don't need.

It's there if you follow the right people on social media.

Campaigns that center around personal responsibility, however, aren't ever going to work, and there's obvious reasons why people are willing to pay to push this narrative but not the buying fewer clothes one (at least here in the US).

[stephen_g]

It hardly moves the needle - apart from often needing huge amounts of awareness education that busy people hardly have time to think about, there usually aren’t enough affordable alternative options for ‘personal responsibility’ to work, but when you regulate to reduce the sale of the bad stuff it just forces it to happen.

Often regulation forces better alternatives to reach the scale where economy of scale can make it affordable, whereas with the ‘personal responsibility’ model the alternatives will often just stay the far more expensive, premium option.

[smm11]

Vintage clothing stores are a great resource to combat this. It's sad how expensive many are, but you can also try thrift stores for clothes.

[SlightlyLeftPad]

Oh no, I love my lululemon clothes. New fear unlocked. It makes sense though, these clothes still generate lint and it can only be thousands of synthetic particles and dirt.

[andai]

>not buying new clothes you don't need

Pretty sure I don't need the ones made of microplastics!

[rustcleaner]

With luck, maybe some new nudity tolerance movements can be fomented. :^D

[afh1]

Hum, almost all of my t-shirts are 100% cotton, or at least that's what the label says. I use mostly the same clothes from 15 years ago so maybe synthetic is more common nowadays? I think the only t-shirts I own that are not 100% cotton are those I've got for free on things like marathons and hackathons. Does it contain phthalate? I have no idea, there is no label saying what they are made of. Probably polyester. Does it have phthalates in any meaningful concentration? This review says basically that "it varies a lot" and "needs further study". https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S138266892...

[resoluteteeth]

Interestingly Table 4 in that link shows "Plain weave cotton" and "polyster" having similar levels of phthalates.

I don't think phtalates are needed as plasticizers in polyster, so I guess they are coming from the dyes or something else used to treat the fabrics, meaning that the choice of cotton or polyster may not matter for phthalates specifically?

[s1artibartfast]

100% cotton is usually treated with plasticizers, even without dyes

[dghughes]

I wear mostly the same clothes too from 15 years ago I'd agree synthetic is more common nowadays? Shirts, underwear, hoodies, jackets, relzed fit stretchy pants/trousers all seem to be something just not cotton anyway.

[brookside]

I recall the cotton tees of my youth being stiff and terrible-feeling.

[SoftTalker]

Did your mother (or whomever did the laundry) dry them on a clothesline? Air-dried clothes will be a bit more stiff than tumble-dried.

[noisy_boy]

When I was younger, it was common to add starch to make the cotton easier to iron etc - that would definitely make it stiff. Thankfully we don't do that anymore. Comfortwise, Cotton beats practically any other fabric + it gets softer the longer you use it so in a way it actually incentivizes reuse.

[DontchaKnowit]

100% cotton can be waaay comfier than poly blends. Just depends on the weave/wash

[buildbot]

I hate how normalized this is. Breathing in a difficult to break down plastic dust is not something that seems healthy.

[potato3732842]

Nitpick:

All else being equal you're generally safer being exposed to stable things that don't break down than unstable things that happily react with all sorts of things (and tend to meddle with the chemical processes required for life).

If you get to choose between breathing tires and milk jugs pick the milk jugs every time.

[Terr_]

> All else being equal you're generally safer being exposed to stable things that don't break down than unstable things that happily react with all sorts of things

There's a similar paradox in nuclear radiation. (Sometimes expressed with a puzzle about differently radioactive cookies and what to do with each.)

Gamma rays are scary because it takes a lot of lead shielding to even slow them down... but that also means that they aren't stopping to interact with things--like yourself--as they travel.

Alpha particles seem relatively safe because they don't travel far and are blocked by your skin... But that means they're doing something to that skin, and luckily for you any damage is being dealt to already-dead cells on the outside.

But if you had to put one of them inside your body, it's quite possible the gamma ray emitter would be the safer option, simply because more of its energy would escape harmlessly.

[nordsieck]

> But if you had to put one of them inside your body, it's quite possible the gamma ray emitter would be the safer option, simply because more of its energy would escape harmlessly.

That's definitely the case with Polonium-210. Even though it emits alpha particles, it's very dangerous to ingest.

[mschuster91]

> All else being equal you're generally safer being exposed to stable things that don't break down than unstable things that happily react with all sorts of things

Unless the other thing is asbestos or generally any kind of mineral/anorganic material - pneumoconiosis [1] is nasty in all its variants. There is no mechanism at all for your body to break down or expel anorganic contaminants in your lungs.

> If you get to choose between breathing tires and milk jugs pick the milk jugs every time.

Well, plastic, glass or metal, no matter what the jugs are made of, they'll hurt your lungs just like the tire dust will.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pneumoconiosis

[webstrand]

> There is no mechanism at all

I think that's somewhat misleading, the lung has a mucus layer and cilia to move particles caught in the mucus up and out. But I'll agree that it's not a completely robust system. Anything that gets past or can't be moved by the mucus layer is going to be a problem, especially particles that can't be broken down by the macrophages.

[potato3732842]

>Unless the other thing is asbestos or generally any kind of mineral/anorganic material - pneumoconiosis [1] is nasty in all its variants. There is no mechanism at all for your body to break down or expel anorganic contaminants in your lungs.

Yup. I was thinking of heading off comments like yours by mentioning silicosis or lead poisoning but didn't want to clutter up a simple clarification.

Anyway, still mostly safer than "happy to react with things" compounds which is why people like you get to make comments about it here and now vs it simply being a thing everyone has accepted is not good to breath for hundreds of years (like certain wood dusts)

[brnt]

I doubt this. Sure, reactants aren't good, but impossible to biologically break down neither. Causing havoc and bioacumulating seem to be two ends of a spectrum, where you want to be in the middle. Stuff that safely and easily broken down.

[amanaplanacanal]

Aren't they both plastic?

[klodolph]

There are plastics in the tire, but the exterior bulk of the tire is rubber, which is not plastic.

[verseguru]

Bulk no. Tyres are apparently only 19% natural rubber. Slightly more is synthetic, and the rest… well none of it is good ground up on roads then breathed in. I lived for a while next to a moderately busy road. Feck it was filthy even with windows never open.

Even my mountain bike tyres now contain graphene which doesn't sound like a good idea for the sake of an unnoticeable improvement, and prob only as a racer. Seems a case of new jargon selling more. So they keep adding new compounds.

[arcticbull]

Yep, rubbers are generally the class of elastomers.

Natural rubber is poly-cis-isoprene, synthetic rubbers are a mix of petroleum-derived polymers.

[sitkack]

> All else being equal

This premise only exists in a synthetic hypothetical universe.

[Dilettante_]

Would it be too snarky for HN to reply "Yes, that is indeed how hypothethicals work"?

[sitkack]

That would totally be on brand.

What is important is to take start with a very real problem that should be resolved in this universe, then project the discussion into a very close but different one and argue there.

Now it doesn't matter if you win or lose in that universe because it doesn't matter. It isn't our reality.

Hypothetically speaking.

[Dilettante_]

Well the purpose of such hypotheticals is to isolate a smaller part of the problem and examine it more closely outside of the larger context, to decompose the matter at hand in order to more easily get a grasp. I think there's value to that, of course as you pointed out only as an aside to the larger discussion, not as a replacement.

The person you originally quoted did mark their post as a nitpick.

[kulahan]

Nobody is going around purposely breathing in plastic dust, there's been dust everywhere forever, and breathing in dust is a natural and unavoidable part of life.

What, exactly, do you think is normalized here? That people wear clothing? That people didn't throw out every polyester fiber the moment somebody said plastic can break down into small pieces? That people aren't freaking out over a danger that we know roughly nothing about so far?

People really need to stop finding excuses to freak out over things.

[zw7]

I think about this every time I clean out the dryer lint filter and a plume of lint dust comes off of it. I try to avoid breathing it in but it’s likely some is making it into my airways.

[nosianu]

Try shaking out a piece of clothing in full sunlight. It helps you see the millions of future dust particles that will come off your clothing.

Over the years I found that of all the dust in my home the vast majority comes from my clothing. I deduced that because the collected dust looks the same as what I find in the dryer, and it feels like cotton too (my by far most warn kind of fiber).

That means rooms are full of tiny particles from your clothes, if I assume that my home is not an anomaly (and why should it be).

Direct sunlight really helps to see how much dust there is all around us, and how with every little movement we create more. That does not even show the particles too small to be seen. The difference is gigantic - without that sunlight you don't see any dust and think the air is clean.

I'm not too concerned, since humanity must have dealt with this for a long time. Particles from fire especially, and there are lots coming from even the tiniest flame. My main worry would be chemicals we add to clothes, but given that by now we ingest plastic pretty much all the time, with every meal, with every breath, we just have to wait and see. I don't see a way to end this long-running experiment.

[mike_ivanov]

Besides containing microplastics, the dryer lint is also radioactive

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35990858

[faitswulff]

Since getting used to them during Covid, I've continued wearing masks for situations just like this.

[hedgehog]

I manage that by using a vacuum to clean my lint filter but folding seems to release a lot of dust so I do that next to an air filter.

[cruffle_duffle]

lol I’m sure those masks aren’t full of microplastics themselves. People were wearing them entire shifts and worse we jammed them on kids.

I’m sure those cheap shitty masks were absolutely full of wholesome healthy microplastic.

[jerlam]

The lint is also the residue from your clothes being worn away. If you can, consider not using the dryer at all, especially for synthetic clothing which air dry quickly compared to cotton.

[ninininino]

Get a high-end vacuum with a hepa filter (such as the 0.3 micro rated S-24035 by DeWalt) and turn it on and hold it near the lint trap panel as you open the panel up.

[mschuster91]

> Not just clothing, but also bedding is a huge issue. With pillows, mattresses and towels mostly made of synthetic fibers.

Preach. I vacuum my bedsheets every day because my cats are insane shedders and I'd otherwise get breaded with cat fur, but the vacuum is full with so much what is clearly not cat fur...

[brnt]

I often wonder about carpet or seats and couches. Also made of all manner of synthetic fabrics. Even besides the effects of living in the same space flame retardants slowly gas off over the decades, we rarely deep clean any of this, so when we sit down a cloud of craps wafts up into our lungs.

I prefer noncarpets, but hard seating of course not.

[JumpCrisscross]

> a basic rubbing of a synthetic sleeve on your nose causes thousands of polyester particles to release in thin air, readily breathable

Source?

[sktrdie]

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/03/200309221340.h...

[botanical]

Some of my polyester t-shirts have lasted more than 10 years without any loss in colour or quality, it's a damn shame they cause microplastics since it's probably better that people don't buy clothing every month if clothes lasted longer.

[Tade0]

My mattress cover is like that, as it's made from polyester. When I pull it from the dryer it produces an invisible, but irritating cloud of particles.

All that while most of the shavings accumulate in the lint collector, so it could have been even worse.

[nikolay]

For at least 10 years now, I only by 100% cotton or cotton-linen blend, or 100% wool - nothing else! Yet, there's so many sources of microplastics that can't be eliminated, unfortunately!

[_w1tm]

> My usual instinct is: try rubbing the synthetic material; if it releases thousands of particles in thin air, stay away from it

How thin should the air be and how do you measure the particles?

[hammock]

Are there phthalates in polyester clothing?

[SoftTalker]

Those fleece blankets and jackets too, they are made from recycled soda bottles.

[29athrowaway]

And plastic shower liners.

[kazinator]

Just look at the lint filter of a dryer after just one load.

[binarymax]

It’s frustrating how hard it is now to buy pure cotton or <gasp> wool, from a store. Even if it’s 3% synthetic it’s still not what I’m looking for.

[mandmandam]

Yep. Specifically, why are 100% cotton socks so ridiculously hard to find now?

It used to be that they were a little more expensive - now you need to go online to find them.

'Fun' fact - the average brain has about 7 grams of microplastic [0] in it now, up 50% from 2016. At that rate...

SEVEN FUCKING GRAMS. Guys this is beyond stupid.

Even if plastic were totally inert, as I've heard people insist with certainty (where are they getting these ideas!), 7 grams of plastic in your brain is terrifying.

0 - https://edition.cnn.com/2024/08/23/health/plastics-in-brain-...

[Terr_]

I wonder if anyone's done a study for similar-but-natural compounds... Does lignin accumulate? Could we find a whole bunch of it in the brains of carpenters?

[roncesvalles]

>Specifically, why are 100% cotton socks so ridiculously hard to find now?

My theory is that it's because of Amazon reviews. For most socks on Amazon, there will be at least one reviewer posting pictures of how their socks got holes after a few days of wearing. These reviewers are ridiculous and seem to have sandpaper for flooring, sweat corrosive acid, or deliberately wear down these socks just to post the review. I've bought many different socks from Amazon and none of them get holes even after years of wearing them.

Anyway, I think that seems to have spooked socks manufacturers.

[layer8]

> Even if plastic were totally inert […], 7 grams of plastic in your brain is terrifying.

Why do you find that terrifying, if it’s inert?

To the downvoters: This is a genuine question.

[timr]

Also, don't worry, there's not actually 7 grams. The study that suggested that was ridiculously bad.

When you extrapolate 100,000-fold from uncalibrated micro-scale experiments, you get insane results, but the typical internet reader doesn't get past the abstract of the paper and instantly activates panic mode, instead of questioning the insanity.

[mandmandam]

"Don't panic, it might only be 3 and a half grams of plastic in your brain."

The correct amount of brain plastic is 0 grams. Zero. This is a problem and it's very clearly getting worse.

Why would I have to explain that to someone with a PHD in biology? So weird.

[timr]

Let's assume you're right, and there's 3.5 grams of plastic in your brain (there isn't, but let's run with it).

You've been secretly living with this horrible condition for long enough for it to happen -- remember, this is happening a nanogram at a time, for years and years! This is not a fast process!

Are you dead? No? Hm.

Perhaps you ought to rethink your priors. I'm not saying you're absolutely wrong -- maybe the right answer really is that "0 is the right number". But maybe the answer is that it doesn't matter that much, and you're exaggerating the impact. More to the point, when you simply leap to the most exaggerated conclusion from a bad paper with sketchy methodology, you're not doing science, or being data-driven -- you're just panicking.

[intelVISA]

Hopefully it's not a result of the cerebral plastics..?

[lo_zamoyski]

Because chemical effects are not the only undesirable effects something can have. E.g., mechanical, electrical.

In any case, in one study [0], "researchers looked at 12 brain samples from people who had died with dementia, including Alzheimer’s disease. These brains contained up to 10 times more plastic by weight than healthy samples." Another [1] found "nanoplastics accelerate the aggregation of β-amyloid peptides" and that they exacerbate "the neurotoxicity induced by low-concentration peptides".

[0] https://www.theguardian.com/environment/article/2024/aug/21/...

[1] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S03043...

[abeppu]

Even if they're _chemically_ inert, physical accumulation of particles of foreign matter in your brain might be causing problems. When it gets inside of cells, is it in the way of any processes? When it's between cells, does it trigger scarring? Do the particles clog capillaries? And because the study referenced was only able to find these particles via autopsies, if microplastics in your brain were causing health issues for you, you probably would never find out or be able to mitigate.

[brnt]

The simple answer is that it isn't supposed be there. The more interesting one is: how much would you say is too much? Would a kilo of microplastics towards the end of your life do it?

[layer8]

When it has adverse effects (and no benefits), then of course it’s too much. But GP seemed to be saying they find it terrifying even assuming no adverse effects, which I found curious.

A huge number of people have implements in their bodies (in their teeth, most often), and much more than seven grams of “foreign stuff” in their stomach and intestines all the time, so that by itself doesn’t seem anything to be terrified of.

[klipt]

> In Italy, researchers followed 312 patients who had fatty deposits, or plaques, removed from their carotid artery. Almost six in 10 had microplastics, and these people fared worse than those who did not: Over the next 34 months, they were 2.1 times as likely to experience a heart attack or stroke, or die.

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/article/2024/aug/21/...

[brnt]

Implements that you put there are different from those you don't put there.

That doesn't seem very complicated, does it?

[mandmandam]

> But GP seemed to be saying they find it terrifying even assuming no adverse effects, which I found curious.

It being in my brain is an adverse effect. Inert material in the brain is a problem itself.

Do you want inert rocks in your car engine? Taking up space, interfering with natural processes, etc?

The brain is incredibly complex; far, far, far beyond our current understanding. You don't want anything in there that isn't supposed to be, and plastic isn't fucking supposed to be there.

And, did you miss the part where this is up 50% from only 8 years ago?

... Tbh I'm aghast that anyone needs this explained to them.

[marmadukester39]

it’s more the unknown effects. It’s not clear this stuff is actually inert.

[throwway120385]

Would you be so blase if it were 7 grams of diesel exhaust or coal particulates instead?

[beowulfey]

Even things that are chemically inert can cause problems in our bodies. Silica is similarly chemically inert, but silicosis is a devastating disease.