[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.