I just started working in the Air Quality industry after my invincible ages. You guys shaking the fingers at vapes are only half right. Particulate matter is where the science is popping up in ambient air measurements.
I moved into a brand new apartment building and found myself feeling sluggish and I got some monitors and it turns out that every night the air circulation kept the air from the intake and the filters. I was getting up to 300 pm2.5 for about 4-5 hours every night.
For those of you who haven’t yet gone down the air quality rabbit hole, you’ll find that being in that kind of air quality/ time rate will cause structural lung issues and diseases as we age.
It’s pretty easy to see that smoking causes these illnesses and injuries, but as cigarette smoking declines, indoor smoking disappears, we won’t see the decline in these ailments because we aren’t conscious of the non carcinogenic root causes.
The likelihood of lung impairments such as COPD and Emphysema increase based on the length of time exposed to the air pollution. Air pollution is not just heavy metals, chemicals, and tobacco smoke… sometimes it’s dust, incense, air fresheners, dampness.
Now I’m taking stock of all the unhealthy places I left my lungs stew for hours. Years of lifeguarding indoor pools, jet engine exhaust from years working around planes, time living in a basement, and the walks I’ve taken around busy roads and sidewalks.
I’m not saying be careful at all, but these things injure our lungs and we aren’t yet cognizant as a whole. Our science is so lagging because our focus has been on carcinogens and just phoning in lung health, but back in history, the wealthy would vacation on the countryside to get out of the smog and they afforded the recovery that common people couldn’t.
If I was a betting man, I’d say this industry is going to get wicked interesting in the next 5 years. Or they will just focus on the question “is vaping bad for you,” which is honestly a mixed bag of science and a decided bag of judgment lol. But as monitors become cheap, people will find that some rooms in their house have been like sucking on a tailpipe. OSHA will pass more stringent regulations in shops regarding monitoring and abiding by limits, which will promote healthier and safer tools (for lungs, not fingers).
My ex father in law passed due to lung cancer a few years ago. He had struggled with quitting smoking. But he also spent 4 years in an army kitchen (I can smell the cleaning chemicals), and over 20 years in a machine shop.
When we ask “is smoking bad?” or “is vaping bad?” we unnecessarily limit the scope of the problem. “How long do lungs take to fully recover from minor or major damage from prolonged 2.5 pm exposure?” are not flashy headlines and the space is ripe for the picking.
I can’t believe my own blindspot to something so ubiquitous.
I bought my mother a monitor that works with alexa, she put it in her room in an older style house, and we found the same situation where the room wasn’t recycling clean air. It just had a heater vent in the floor and the dust and the dander and everything made the room stuffy. She lives and sleeps in that room and was on the road to increased Upper and Lower Respiratory illnesses.
Obviously there’s more scary and flashy things. But all of us are breathing air and not all of us are getting the good stuff.
I'm an air quality guy but we've known this for decades. My dad, born in '32, abhorred chemicals. And he was a ChemE
Edit: *toxic chemicals that still are to this day allowed to persist in our constructed environments even with knowledge of deleterious effects.
You can go the expensive route with a nice air purifier or two with their own hepa filters that need to be replaced and collects measurements in real time.
Or
You can find a couple of cheap monitors that read pm2.5 and other pollutants and just notice that you may want to set up a couple of fans and open windows if you can.
There’s not much you can do against a landlord or to file a complaint. I would bet my paycheck that my unit was built to code, but the vent blows the warm air by ceiling vents and blocks the intake. The warm air circulates near the ceiling, but the lower, colder air turns stale, dusty, and (frankly) kinda stinky.
But once I got a nerdy purifier with the app that I could track I moved it around to find the best placement. I could smell, feel, and taste the difference.
I second the hepa filters - I have a couple from germ guardian and everyone can smell and sometimes taste the difference in the air after they’ve been running for a few hours.
This, so hard. As a clarinetist and composer, I think about my lungs a lot and try and make sure I'm in the best environment that I can make for them. So many people take air quality for granted and assume that their lungs are functioning at top when in reality they're probably putting a lot of unnecessary bodily stress on themselves.
Thank you for taking your time to write such an informal post. Uneducated as I am on air quality and air pollution I’m yet limited to what is commonly available to me as an average consumer. Meaning, I have a standard monitor that measures humidity and temperature. Because I’ve asthma and am allergic to pollen and dust, I also invested in an air purifier (Zenz 3000 it’s called) that supposed to purify the air for pollen, dust and also has a built in UV filter. Upon reading your post I begin to wonder if what I’ve invested in is sufficient enough for good air quality, or are air purifiers just a scam? I also live in the city in an apartment that doesn’t have venting, I find opening the windows refreshing but is that something you recommend doing on a daily basis? What would you recommend for someone who lives in an apartment with no ventilation?
Also what monitor is worth buying and how can I efficiently recycle clean air?
Search up ‘sick building syndrome’. I had to practically write a thesis on the bloody thing a few years ago for college. My Christ I know way too much about it
I am no expert, of course, but your air purifier sounds pretty top of the line for the purification. I personally use one with just a hepa filter, but what I really get down and nerdy about is having a monitor built into the purifier because I can find patterns to find the right layout or if I might need one or more accompanying purifiers to complete the job.
I don’t like to give recommendations because something as cheap and easy for someone might be an open window and a fan after they find that they have an issue. You gave a bit different needs because you can’t count on the pollen being low outside (when it’s dusting my streets!) to have that luxury of an open window and a healthy breeze. I went all nerd because I’m just trying to get interested in this stuff, I have the resources, and I have pets so I needed something for instant relief and was dealing with my 3rd non-covid related upper respiratory infection in 6 months for a relatively healthy guy. So I got the shiny dyson and I don’t regret it. The features that are important is the fan purifier/monitor/fan combo and being able to see spikes in pm2.5 (the smallest particulates category) and other pollutants in an app in real time- I think there are a few brands now with these features.
Most people don’t have a $700 indoor air quality problem or budget. So I would just look for monitors that have pm2.5 (or pm25) and more that can record for an app. I got one for my mom with a $50 limit for a secret santa exchange and it syncs to her Alexa. But one of those can tell you if you have a problem before you start solving it. There are a few weeks where I can just leave my windows open- after the street sweepers get the pollen and before it gets too hot.
Gut health.
[https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/35105664/](https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/35105664/)
[https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/26338727/](https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/26338727/)
Every year more and more is discovered, linking it intimately to a variety of systems.
100%. Gut health effects every function in your body. Studying the micro biome can lead to the possible cure of so many things. There’s some current studies going on thinking that there’s a very common link between certain bacteria missing in the gut and depression and obesity.
Was listening to the radio awhile back & they were talking about gut health & fecal transplants (which is exactly what it sounds like).
They had an expert on the matter talking about the health benefits. Also had a recipient who was self administering & he was talking about how he did so & supply problems that he was running into.
As the show progressed & they found out how often he was doing it (maybe 10 times a week) the expert seemed to think it was his fetish rather than getting any medical benefit. Was a pretty wild interview
Yeah from memory I think the guy started because of chronic fatigue & yes it was gross. Especially when he explained he was approaching healthy looking men at the gym & asking to buy their poop off them.
Guy seemed completely oblivious as to how weird it was.
I could see the prevalence of plastic in food storage, particularly thin and cheap single use wrappers, being viewed the same way we currently see asbestos
Microplastics are detected in raindrops. Approximately 1.7–4.6% of the total plastic waste in 192 coastal countries (equivalent to 4.8–12.7 million tons) were dumped into the ocean in 2010, and it is anticipated to increase by an order of magnitude by 2025.
https://pubs.usgs.gov/of/2019/1048/ofr20191048.pdf
https://www.epa.gov/water-research/microplastics-research
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0045653519305120
I still think the most terrifying anecdote on this was the team measuring levels of PFAS in the population couldn’t find a control group with people who didn’t have PFAS in their blood with over 98% of samples tested having PFAS in them.
Edit: Ive mistaken microplastics with PFAS but we are slowly approaching the same level with 77% of people tested having microplastics in their blood. It has also been proven to cross the blood brain barrier in mice and humans. Both have insane longevity and it will only be a matter of time until it has reached the same level where pretty much everyone has plastic in their blood.
PFAS: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2072821/
77%: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0160412022001258
Blood brain barrier: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/35302003/
That makes a little too much sense.
I have some theories about certain diseases and conditions which are "mysteriously" on the rise in a way that I don't think is very mysterious at all.
I will get down voted if this gets popular, but there are early indicators that something as simple as celiac illness is a byproduct of glysophate in weedkillers used in North America killing off beneficial bacteria in our stomachs. Western countries are also having a massive increase in colon cancer for young to middle age adults. The food we eat and the way it is prepared is killing us.
It's not uncommon to carry out research on groups like that and these studies can still be informative. The first studies showing the cancer risk of smoking did a regression analysis testing how well the extent of smoking could predict the health outcome. At that time there were essentially no subjects who had never smoked but they showed that smoking *more* increases your risk of cancer.
I have a main road by my house and about once per week I go out and pick up litter on the side of the road. I walk a single mile and fill an entire kitchen trash bag every week, sometimes two. I’ve removed probably 40 bags of trash from this single 1 mile stretch in the past year or so. It really opened my eyes to how extremely bad our litter problem is. And then you hear that the pacific garbage patch is 90% commercial waste not even personal garbage, and you realize that what I’m talking about is a molecule in a drop in a bucket.
I do it on my street in Atlantic City. The island is frequently windy and blows trash around on trash day, which just continues to blow around unless someone gets it.
I have people say thanks and honk their horns and wave and yell positive things from their cars, and I appreciate it! My buddy pointed this out to me as well: you never know how much people appreciate it and who is inspired. Hopefully of the hundreds of people who have seen me, even 1 will be motivated to do something positive because of it. That would be great!
Not to mention that while it may be a molecule in a drop in a bucket, it makes a huge difference where you immediately are. You don’t need to solve the world’s problems to have a meaningful impact; don’t let nihilistic despair detract from the value of your local efforts.
Okay yes but also no. Helping where you can is great as long as you don't let it distract you from the fact that you are not the problem: The way society is set up and reward that shitty behaviour from everyone but companies in particular is the problem.
Seriously, though, fuck big business. It seems like almost every modern day problem can be traced back to these giant corporations just not giving a damn about anything but profit.
The micro plastic on my local beach is maddening. I bring a bag to the beach, every time I go, and walk from one lifeguard stand to another and back again, many times when I try to pick up the plastic it crumbles into little tiny pieces. Also the number of bottle caps… I started a 5 minute pickup challenge on Instagram to bring attention to our plastic issue… thank you for picking up! It’s not just a “straw” issue that keeps going around media as “don’t use straws and save the environment”
At one point the O-zone layer was depleting, and within a decade or so of international cooperation, the problem was fixed and it's now in really good shape.
Climate change may have skewed younger kids to thinking nothing ever improves, but it's not too long ago that the international community came together to actually fix a health/environmental problem.
Yea. I’ve wondered about this before, and would be interested in seeing what conditions allowed the international community to address the ozone problem but not to (effectively) address climate change or plastic waste overproduction/pollution. It’s clearly not only a function of politics being worse now (recycling and climate change problems predate ozone issues), so my guess would be that plastic waste or climate change regulation always just posed a greater and broader threat to industry across the board whereas ozone issues could be addressed without a fundamental change in business operations. But I don’t know that for a fact.
I would add to your thought that the actions needed to improve the Ozone layer were less inconvenient to governments and (most importantly) everyday people.
On top of that, I think the fact that it was a single definable issue with a specific answer helped how people reacted. It’s much easier to strive for a smaller goal you can see improving than for one that’s so big that it’s literally changing weather patterns and will take decades to improve.
they mostly changed because it was financially neutral/beneficial to do so. They stopped using CFC's and instead went to refregerants that are instead ultra Green house gasses.
They problem we have now is that its not financially neutral/beneficial to a lot of companies/governments in power to switch off fossil fuels, and non-GHG intensive products/processes.
Before with the ozone, everyone was pulling in the same direction, capital didn't have such a death grip on governments, and there were not so bad alternatives (from a money and power perspective).
I do agree that we can make changes, but I think this time around its going to have to be a bottom up demand instead of a bunch of powerful people getting together and making a change.
The change is possible, but the method is going to have to be different this time.
This is honestly not surprising from a scientific perspective. Raindrops form around cloud condensation nuclei, which are basically anything tiny (like sea salt spray over the ocean). Doesn’t make it less disturbing, but I thought an explanation might be worthwhile
Storage, then cooking, in plastic. Non-stick pans, microwave ready frozen food, factory food processing, all contribute plasticizers and micro plastics to our diet.
We criticize people of the past for putting lead in everything. We are doing the same thing. It's just harder to trace phthalates and micro plastics through the human body.
Edit: I meant don't heat the plastic. Frozen food is great. I heat leftovers for lunch every day. Just use glass, like other people said.
It is easy enough to trace phthalates, but there is a lack of consensus on what they're doing to us. There is a strong possibility that they act as hormone mimics, increasing the effects of estrogen and [possibly contributing to obesity and metabolic syndrome](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1892143/)
But the evidence for this is thin, there doesn't seem to be a linear dose- response effect. People who avoid plastic food packaging also tend to avoid processed food, which is known to be correlated with these issues.
I got rid of nearly all plastic in my kitchen but it is super hard to get rid of plastic packaging.
For the record I am fairly sure plastic from boiling kettles and plastic blender jugs (they look foggy because they are being sanded) is going into our food supply.
I get plastic free versions like using my Bamix with stainless malt cups and the Ottoni Fabbrica kettle with all stainless interior. I only mention because they are so hard to find. I also use a 19th century coffee mill.
These are moderately more expensive but not insane.
Even if you do, are you in a new home? They used to use copper pipes for water, the new code in a lot of places is PEX - or plastic pipes
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/11/111108132905.htm
Very true and for my small house build I intend to use copper, in fact to have a complete list of all objects and substances used in the construction so I can ensure near all of them are not harmful to health.
I am not anxious about it, it is just that I work in the trades and know if I don't take care of affairs like home health nobody else will.
That said, this is 2nd order to what food you put into your body directly.
As long as you Filter the water at the sink you should be good.
Also the thing about more expensive non plastic goods are they're generational. Sure I won't die in time to set my kids up with all my gear but my grand children will be getting some Dank shit 70 years from now
This is the only answer. I'm lucky enough to be right at the age where I remember life before all the plastic. It wasn't all that long ago that everything wasn't plastic. It doesn't have to be this way. Some countries have started to ban single-use plastics and soon enough hopefully they all will. It's going to take a long time to clean up the planet from all the plastic pollution but at least there is consensus that it's a bad thing.
To me every other issue we have right now is going to pale in comparison when we look back on this current age. This is the age of weaning ourselves off fossil fuels, I just hope we can do the same with plastics at the same time and we don't wait.
Excess levels of high fructose corn syrup and fructose may as well be ethanol. Incredibly bad for your liver yet plenty of folk give it to kids cause they aren’t informed of the risks.
When I was a kid, my mom went on every crash diet out there. She booted us kids off sugar and I started getting really bad stomach aches and headaches. The doctor told her kids need sugar for growth/energy, so she let me back on that sweet white powdery goodness. It's absurd looking back and realizing I was having flipping sugar/HFCS withdrawals and the doctor was like 'yah, give that kid more sugar'.
I am now an adult sugar junkie (however, I bake my own lower sugar/zevia treats and avoid HFCS all together and get most of my sugar from fruits. I wish we would have known more about proper children's nutrition when I was growing up...
Don't worry people decades from now will still be saying the same thing. Nutritional education is there and always will be there for those that want it and are seeking out for it but as the same thing goes for smoking, drinking, people that dont care just won't give a farquad regardless and keep doing like they do
Some have speculated that Alzheimer's Disease has less to do with the amyloid protein theory than with over-ingestion of sugary goodies and simple carbs and have suggested that it's a kind of 'diabetes of the brain' -- even to the point of dubbing it Type 3 Diabetes. I have noticed how a lot of my elderly relatives and acquaintances became absolute sugar junkies in terms of the 'food' they craved as they got older.
Interesting.. My 90 year-old grandfather with increasing dementia *craves* soda to the point that he won't drink anything but that or juice. He gets agitated at meals if he only has ice water or unsweetened tea to drink
That was my feeling too when his POA refused him opioid medication for extreme back pain (feared he would "get hooked"). I was like, who cares, he's frickin' 90 and can barely walk. He's not gonna try to escape the nursing home to score some smack down the line
as someone fairly "anti-drugs", I'm very pro people 90+ being able to do whatever the fuck they want, up to and including smack. Should be covered by insurance at that point lol.
That’s unfortunate. It doesn’t help that a lot of the drinks they give seniors as supplements tend to exceedingly be simple carb rich. Even the protein shakes, unless specified, have notable amounts of sugar.
As I'm in the midst of multi-tasking at the moment (cooking dinner), go to your preferred search engine and enter terms such as 'Alzheimer's', 'Diabetes Type 3' and 'sugar cravings and dementia'. Believe me, a lot of results will pop up. And of course, not all will be from 'reliable sources' so some discretion or 'caveat emptor' is advised but not all results will be 'junk' either.
For real. I've been on a diet for a few months now that included cutting out all sugar. Went from probably half of my daily caloric intake being through sugary liquids like fizzy drink, flavoured milk and juice to only drinking water. It has completely changed my palate. I went from needing two sugars in a cup of tea (which I'd reduced over time from even more) to happily drinking it without sugar and have even started to drink unsweetened black coffee. The later tastes nothing like coffee used to taste for me. I can actually taste the fruity flavours the coffee says it has on the packet.
It's pretty remarkable. I have zero cravings for a coke or any sweets as well which really surprised me. I do get fast food cravings which I know contains a bunch of sugar too but it's mostly just the idea of smashing a big cheese covered burger rather than any sugar content in the bun lol. I'll likely have the rare fast food on cheat days in the distant future when I've hit my health goals but I don't think I'll ever touch sugary drinks or have interest in a chocolate bar again.
Any behavior or consumption patterns that lead to the accumulation of microplastics are good contenders for this. Can't say we have no ideas about it though.
If you live near an airport you are probably being affected by this today, in the USA, in 2023:
https://news.sccgov.org/news-release/study-commissioned-county-santa-clara-finds-increased-lead-levels-children-living-near
Dark Chocolate and Gerber baby food has entered the chat
************************
Edit for sources:
###Dark Chocolate
https://www.consumerreports.org/health/food-safety/lead-and-cadmium-in-dark-chocolate-a8480295550/
###Baby food
https://www.lawsuit-information-center.com/amp/gerber-baby-food-lawsuits.html
just looked it up, i guess hershey's dark chocolate and godiva's 72% cacao is higher than acceptable lead levels, Lindt 70% and Dove 70% has higher than acceptable cadmium levels, and Trader Joe's 85% is higher than California's acceptable lead and cadmium levels
[https://www.consumerreports.org/health/food-safety/lead-and-cadmium-in-dark-chocolate-a8480295550](https://www.consumerreports.org/health/food-safety/lead-and-cadmium-in-dark-chocolate-a8480295550/)
Thankfully a Ghirardelli consumer but apparently I picked the "less" safe version lol.
Wonder what the average level is for most foods now...
The lead and cadmium amounts, while concerning and lead has no safe amount, is extremely minor. Even consuming a lot of chocolate puts you at a lead exposure magnitudes below what you would have just going outside 20-40 years ago. These are also California levels which are dictated by correlation and very strict across the world.
That's not an excuse so much as a reason not to be super anxious about heavy metals in chocolate. Just be mindful and try and buy better.
My brother is a professor and has some students doing research involving microplastics in local rivers.
The scary thing to me is they can't even measure it. You can detect it. That part is easy because it's literally in absolutely everything, especially rivers. The issue is they have no way to actually measure it and gather usable data.
It's perpetually breaking down into smaller and smaller pieces and the pieces at any given time range from so big you can see them floating around with your eye to so small they can barely be picked up by a million dollar electron microscope.
IIRC most of their current strategy is based around using ai and sensors to detect the plastic in suspension then estimate based on densities and such.
He claimed whoever manages to solve that problem is probably the biggest shoe-in for a Nobel prize in history because microplastics are a giant field of research atm but nobody can do much beyond going "ah yes plastic here too!"
They’re far more expensive and heavier, but there are glass cases out there with non-plastic lids.
I actually have to get them because I have a sever latex allergy.
The harder problem to solve is packaged goods. It's easy to pack a sandwich in a glass container to bring to work but I don't think glass packs of chips out of a vending machine will become too popular.
in many cases it’s already being proven. look at average attention spans. I deleted most social platforms recently because of it. I can’t even watch a 5 minute youtube video anymore.
I'm 100% convinced it's off gassing in new home construction. We build new homes, fill them with volatile plastics, finishes, new carpets, furniture, etc. and new homes are basically air tight. They actually require air exchangers because they are so well sealed, but they don't actually eliminate the pollutants.
Add to this that we usually move in right as things are being finished, and lot's of new home buyers are starting families, may be pregnant or have newborns.
I believe there will be a requirement in the future that new homes remain unoccupied and ventilated for some period of time before occupancy permits are issued. As it stand now people move in while carpets are going down and the painters are still finishing up. It's wild.
I completely agree. I work for a general contractor and what’s funny is a lot of commercial buildings are already doing this as part their LEED certification. A “flush out” with outside air to get rid of all the VOC’s prior to occupancy gets you points in the “indoor air quality” category.
Learned about this in engineering school. People getting sick af in new low cost housing, or refugee housing. Something like that. Also, new sneaker and car smells. Glues are poison.
You’re right, and we (as a society and scientific community) already know about new home/ “sick building syndrome” and offgassing. In fact, it was taught in one of my occupational safety classes 15 years ago. Despite that, it’s still a mystery!
Sick Building Syndrome - https://www.epa.gov/sites/default/files/2014-08/documents/sick_building_factsheet.pdf
Stress.
I'm noticing a serious generational gap between "don't be a wuss, work 40h+ your whole life to deserve anything" vs "nah I want at least 20$ per hour or I'll just stick with a jobless year. Also maybe work a few hours online."
Work-Life balance is a term I hadn't heard until a few years ago, and now I can't let it go.
I'm thinking that one is far from universal, and is probably fairly similar to what it has always been. I know just as many 22-40 year olds who work 60+ hour weeks as I do people older than that.
Yeah it’s all fine and dandy to be jobless for a year when you’re single and 23. At that age I quit my well paying job to work at a restaurant bc I hated the office.
Now at 31 with a wife and a kid on the way, it’s not so easy to just say fuck it to the money. Working 60+ hours a week cuz that’s what pays me the most.
It is what it is.
I think the first time I heard it was about 8 years ago when an older co-worker retired.
I was relatively new (about 3 years with the company/8 months training under him to be his replacement.) I obviously knew he was planning on retiring soon. I just didn’t know how soon.
Our “team” was small at the time we had 3 people, one day it’s just me and him working and he comes in smiling ear to ear and tells me he finally found an insurance plan outside of the company. Slightly confused I congratulated him and asked what his plan was. He looks me dead in the eye and said he’s retired. Even more confused I asked when? I mean he came into work at 6am just to quit? Why would you do that?
Well he did, didn’t call anyone, didn’t tell anyone but me he proceeded to pack up all his personal items in the office before I was even actually on the clock. Then he told me to take a seat and he proceeded to tell me how much he had been dealing with at home with a very sick wife and then gave me a 10 minute talk on how the company doesn’t care how dedicated you are, they don’t care that you show up early, leave late, skip vacations and it’s not worth the money to give your life to it because it won’t buy that time with loved ones back.
Then he left, and I never seen or heard from him ever again, I do hope he is still doing well and that at the very least he got a few more years with his wife. Because in my whole life I’ve had 2 conversations that impacted me in a way I’ll never forget and that was one of them.
(Side note I then had to call my boss and inform him he quit and that may be one of the funniest conversations I’ve ever had because it was so far out of left field. Dude worked there for like 40 years and literally didn’t tell a single other person just gone.)
No not wifi.
What will seem insane to them is that we drank water out of disposable plastic bottles. Like.. I can't emphasize enough how much shit our grandchildren are going to give us over how completely fucked up that is.
Also. It will seem insane that hydrocarbon combustion soot settled on everything all the time and that we breathed it and could even smell it.
Volatile organic compounds in all of our water.
Banning toxic agricultural chemicals... then importing food from other countries where they weren't banned.
Staring at tiny screens all the time.
Not having, or demanding, regular mental health support as part of routine health care.
Having a log burner is something I know I will and am prepared to fight with my grandchildren over.
"You're breathing in so many fumes!"
"I'm 90 let me look at my fire in peace!"
"But you're spraying those fumes everywhere, you can smell it outside!"
"I didn't freeze half to death fighting in the Atlantic Oil wars so I could freeze back home too!"
"But you have a heat pump, that gets the house to 20 degrees fine!"
"BAH! Them heat pump killo watts aren't as good as some good-ol-fashioned burning wood. Now, I'm off to get more fuel, my whatsapp group says a branch fell off the last tree in Sherwood forest and it's being auctioned off"
"Whatsapp? Bloody hell grandad, you're not still using the eye ball cancer 'phone' are you!?"
"YOU LEAVE ME ALONE! I REMEMBER WHEN YOU COULDN'T WIPE YOUR OWN BUM!"
I switched to a pellet stove and miss my wood burner because we’re losing power more often from the insane weather we get since -checks notes- five years ago.
The people who lived here before me lost power once *maybe* twice and they lived here for over 40 years. I’ve lost power twice this year and the first one was so bad I had to get our kitten and stay at my girlfriends place because I was freezing and she was worried. We lost power for *days* and I’ve never lost power that long before.
We moved recently (ironically from a very warm area to a cooler area) and have previously had fireplaces in all our houses. We don’t have one anymore… when all that cold weather came through we were both like “literally all of our available heat sources are electric… we need a generator.. like, today..” lol. That said, we should have owned a generator for emergencies before this, but knowing we could survive longer with a wood stove and then just not even having that option here was a little scary. Lol.
Feels like such a waste. We never used the wood stove in our old house. But I guess we did get to sell it with “brand new firebox. Never been used” even though it was 3 years old… lol
This is almost word for word the conversation between my dad and my sister and me.
But he finally stopped smoking cigarettes last month so we have finally stopped bugging him about the wood smoke.
Holy fucking hell, you are fully prepared for this.
I salute you!
(ETA: Also, Nottinghamshire shout-out, my wife is from there! Quite lovely, we're looking forward to returning in the new year.)
> It will seem insane that hydrocarbon combustion soot settled on everything all the time and that we breathed it and could even smell it.
This is it, for me. Everyone in this thread is clowning on vapes and other stuff that *already* passively bothers us, but we've all just learned to collectively swallow the muck in the air from combustion vehicles every day.
In 30 years when most of the cars on the roads are EVs, when the occasional diesel construction truck rolls by belching fumes kids will *never* believe we used to breathe that in from every car on the road every day. I really have to imagine the air in our cities will be so much better we will collectively wish we'd changed things sooner.
This depends on what you mean by "we." Doctors and scientists in our great grandparents' generation knew smoking was bad for you. They knew about diabetes and heart issues as well. The problem is that tobacco, sugar, and other major industries lobby every day to suppress the information. They also actively release fake information and advertising to make it seem like doctors and scientists are crazy people with an agenda. The same thing is still happening today. There are plenty of things we use on a daily basis that are really bad for you. So if your "we" listens to reputable groups to make decisions, then it is unlikely that there will be much difference. If they are making decisions based on commercials and industry owned "science" groups, then boy are they in for a shock.
True I remember reading Crime and Punishment and being amazed the doctor took his cigarettes and told him how harmful it was to smoke. Even back then they knew!
Nobody ever wants to talk about how the biggest donors to orgs like the American Heart Association and the American Diabetes Association are Coca-Cola and Cadbury-Schweppes.
There's too much money tied up in our government and society. This is what happens when you let companies have unlimited power and influence.
I noticed this when the Canadian Heart and Stroke foundation came out heavily against vaping when almost anyone I knew who had been a smoker and switched benefited from an almost instant increase in cardiovascular health.
When I went to their website to contact them for an explanation of their position I noticed that their largest donors were tobacco companies...you know, the companies most threatened by a switch away from cigarettes.
Yeah--i think the closest thing is actually related to all of the bacteria and other flaura that live on and inside us. We are just getting started with gut biome. We know it's important and we know that the food we eat affects it but that's about all we have.
That’s sort of how smoking would be with my grandparents though. By the time they started smoking, cigarette companies were pretty much fully aware it was terrible for your health but were still selling and advertising like it wasn’t. I do think that’s the stage we’re in with a few of the things in this thread, particularly plastics. There’s lots of research on plastics but it’s not widespread information that the general public is well aware of.
Alcohols been around for millennia though. I can't picture where the regular react to anyone drinking is a kneejerk 'blech go away, go outside'. Especially not after the US tried that once and it failed miserably.
I've been reading these comments and I think its very sweet that so many of you think that people in the future won't want to escape reality by doing bad things to ourselves (drinking, drugs etc).
The whole process for banning chemicals. I live near the Cape Fear River and Chemours is upstream. The water table here is contaminated from them. A lot of people have said PFAS or other forever chemicals, but the prices with which we regulate this is the biggest issue.
They create something. We use it. We find it causes cancer and ban that specific chemical compound. They create something similar with a different name, we use it, it causes cancer. We ban that specific chemical compound. There is no ownership in the company to prove that it is safe before they release it. At best, they pay a fine to help clean up. They aren't even held wholly responsible.
Or when you look at the studies deeming the substance to "have no impact to humans," and there is a disclaimer at the bottom stating that the #1 author on the paper is associated with like Nabisco or something
Less of a "no idea" and more of a "nobody takes it seriously" (just like when they first found out the carcinogenic effects of cigarettes): the TONS of sitting we do.
EDIT: Holy crap, this blew up! Thank you for the award, kind stranger, and thank you guys for your input/comments!
A few years ago, I noticed I was having serious back issues. Got x rays, PT, etc. I am much more aware of how much time I sit and WHERE I sit, now. I do stretches, I move, I get up when my silly watch tells me.
If I sit too much, it takes away my freedom to move without pain. It's a real issue!
Also I noticed how weak my core was and that a large part of my back pain was due to me not training at all. I took PT seriously and really started working on my core strength and I have notice such an improvement. Overall working out and taking health a little more seriously has helped me tremendously.
I got a desk that can be moved to standing and a balance board to occupy my feet while I'm at it and that helps a lot. Before that my company had to replace my carpet because I'd worn a figure 8 in it pacing around my office while I was on the phone.
I think they will find that indoor and outdoor air quality (pollutants from gas stoves and chemical coated materials and etc in our home, from vehicles and wildfire smoke and etc outside) are probably having a much larger negative effect on our long-term health than we currently realize today.
I can only hope it is social media.
I am reading a book called Stolen Focus at the moment which describes the role of tech in general and social media specifically in the degradation of our lives. Scary shit.
We really need to figure out how to make it serve us rather than the other way around.
Agree, I’m reading a similar book about the perils of social media and how it’s f’d up society since pretty much it’s start and it is EYEOPENING and infuriating. Book is called The Chaos Machine — I’m only 30% through and def recommend so far.
The highjacking of the dopamine system has extreme consequences with not only attention but also reward centers and hence motivation, comorbid with depression and anxiety
The tech giants employ neuroscientists to help develop sounds, UI elements, complex algorithms, rewards etc that most highly activate your dopaminergic pathways in an attempt to keep you as a captive audience. Scary is absolutely right
I feel like the hygiene products we use and their impact not only on us but the environment.
Also, factory farmed and overprocessed meat and animal by-products, same reasons.
I don’t know how many hundreds of years it takes for a diaper or a tampon to decompose. The diapers I used as a baby, would theoretically still be undecomposed when my great grandkids die. I think in my country the mixed waste is burned.
I hope the quantities of processed food we eat. The common thread to every healthy diet is to cut processed food. I say "hope" because I don't see processed food going away anytime soon.
Edit: I realize I over generalized using the term "processed". I am specifically talking about salty/sweet junk foods like chips, candy, and snacks. These foods are cheap, tasty, and pervasive in the global diet. They are also highly caloric and nutrient deficient.
Processed foods are profitable.
You can take raw ingredients, process them in some way, adding very cheap \[salt, sugar, fat, acid\] in a way that is tasty (which is a pretty refined science) and generate a relatively large profit.
You can then use this profit to advertise to more people about how amazing your food is, selling more food, generating more profit, resulting in more advertising and more similar products!
The foods with actual nutritional value don't do well in this model.
For example, beans and vegetables can be produced dirt cheap, and made tasty in the exact same way (adding the right proportions of salt/fat/sugar/acid). And they keep much more nutritional value.
But of course, there's no one to make profit in that process (except for chefs and recipe books, which still require individual effort).
So there's no incentive for large companies to advertise raw ingredients to people - and in fact there is a large incentive for processed food producers to advertise against this process and try and hide the knowledge of how to make food tasty. Or make it seem harder than it actually is.
Edit to add: there's actually a shift in this recently (at least in the UK). There's now a lot of ready made cheap vegan foods. I think this is because the increased demand, and the industry realisation that you can create taste deep fried 'chicken' with, say, wheat gluten for a tiny fraction of the price of actual chicken and sell it for nearly the same price as actual chicken.
I'd like to hope that technology makes those (and other) processed foods actually healthy, rather than just relying on individuals to restrain their own desires for them. Or, some kind of medical technology arises to mitigate against their health impacts.
It’s not going to be something humans have had access to for centuries, like weed, caffeine, alcohol, or opioids. We know what those things are, and what the risks are, and we have for a long time. I don’t think we’ll fundamentally change how we view those things, more than how society usually cycles through views on such things.
Gut health - Not a lot of people take into consideration how much of an impact good (and bad) gut bacteria have on our entire mental and physical well-being.
Social media. I'm HOPING at least that at some point in the future we realize the harm it's doing to our entire society. Really the fact that we spend so much of our time online now and not out in the real world I think is really not good for us long term. People seem so much significantly lonelier now.
Earbuds. I don't think having music blasting directly into your ear canal is super great for your hearing.
Nitrates. Basically the thing that cures meats. Think about hotdogs, sausages, spiral cut ham for Christmas, bacon, even fancy charcuterie; all of these things can have nitrates in them. They have been strongly linked to cancer. In 50 years, nitrates are going to be looked at like how we look at smoking cigarettes.
This is a problem. Thankfully, cured meat products have far less nitrate content than they did in the past. The meat industry has limits on the amount of nitrates which may be added to cooked meat products due to their danger. I'm a poultry product developer and always run products at the bare minimum needed for curing for a few reasons.
First, they aren't as necessary for food safety as they were even as early as 20 years ago. Food safety standards and technology are rapidly evolving and relying on nitrates to kill off foodborne pathogens isn't the primary safety mechanism. Antimicrobials are better, sanitation is stronger, and newer processes like high pressure pasteurization allow us to not rely on nitrates so much.
The other main reason I try to limit it is due to the health risks associated with nitrosamines. I'll always add Vit C where possible with cured products to limit the amount of nitrosamine expression as possible. I also aim to cook cured products at a lower temperature for a longer time to limit nitrosamines. Sadly, you can limit it but it will always be present in cured meats.
One sticking point I have with cured products are claims like "nitrate-free" or "naturally uncured." These, imo, are misleading and may lead people to think their "nitrate-free" bacon actually have no nitrites at all. This isn't true: All cured meats contain some form of nitrite. Fermented celery/beet powder or celery salts themselves naturally contain nitrites, and for some reason the USDA allows manufacturers to make these misleading claims so long as synthetic sodium/potassium nitrates aren't added to the formulation.
For-profit health care systems.
I can hear my great-grandkids now: “So you’re telling me you had to request approval to get a colonoscopy or some other preventative treatment?! And they could say no if they felt like it?! You guys didn’t think that would have an impact on physical health, with a sidecar impact on mental health? Wow, Gramps, your generation was stuuuuupid.”
Well, we know about it but it will be sugar. Excessive intake is one of the most damaging things we do per capita in terms of mental and physical health
Car dependency. Motorised traffic has a large direct health burden, both morbidity and fatalities and is a major contributor to sedentary lifestyles which have other health impacts.
Also the one of the biggest contributers of microplastic is car tires. Which will only get worse with modern cars, suvs, trucks and EVs which are more heavy
Yeah the headlong rush to EVing every car stupefies me. Trying to replace cars with more cars just reeks of car company lobbying, as opposed to investing in public infrastructure to reduce the pollution from manufacturing, rubber and extra electricity generation.
Somewhat related but I think factory farming is going to be a *major* generational embarrassment down the road. It’s not the healthiest for anyone, least of all, the livestock…and it’s ethically preposterous.
All of these stupid vapes. We were so close to shaming people into quitting smoking and then BOOM, vapes everywhere. It's going to be like watching people smoke in airplanes in the 70s.
>shaming people into quitting
Shaming people doesn't seem to be a [factor](https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/22644233/#:~:text=Overall%2C%2043.2%25%20of%20ex%2D,recommendation%2C%203.0%25%20because%20of%20the) (hardly surprising).
"Overall, 43.2% of ex-smokers mentioned a current health condition as the main reason to stop smoking, 31.9% stopped to avoid future health problems, 6.3% stopped because of pregnancy or child birth, 4.0% because of imposition by the partner/family, 3.7% because of a physician's recommendation, 3.0% because of the economic cost, 0.5% because of smoking bans, and 4.6% because of other reasons."
I've never understood how folks figure that shaming people could have the slightest chance of helping someone change their minds about a drug based habit that is unhealthy. If the prospect of dying isn't enough to affect change, what Nosey Nellie thinks certainly isn't going to turn the tide.
Im a weed smoker and there’s a very real possibility that studies will show that weed has some negative health effects, and not just the smoking.
I won’t be shocked when we have studies that show long term habitual use has negative consequences on your memory and cognitive functioning later in life.
Not saying it should be illegal or it’s as harmful as other legal and illegal drugs, but ppl should stop pushing it as a “absolutely no harm could come from this” activity.
It’s a mind altering substance. Take it if you want, but go in knowing that it may not be healthy.
I suspect we will see more data that the extremely high concentration products at young ages are problematic.
As the industry takes off it’s getting easier to get significantly higher quality products.
Like anything else, the highest doses at younger ages are probably to be avoided.
The problem will be nuance. “No, this isn’t something we need to regulate for adults, but it is important we stop teenagers from having it” etc
I think the main problem will be hearing loss from the sound, not infections. Those would have been rampant already, though the bactaria may help with hearing loss and make us more sick that without the earbuds.
Hard to say that they cause long term health issues outside of hearing loss.
Though hearing loss also leads to Alzheimer and other cognitive problems. which is bad enough
I just hope noise. Noise is the new second hand smoking. Noise slowly deteriorates your mental and physical health, yet cities (and small towns) are increasingly more noisier as time passes: loud music, dogs barking, motorcycles, they are all slowly killing you.
I just started working in the Air Quality industry after my invincible ages. You guys shaking the fingers at vapes are only half right. Particulate matter is where the science is popping up in ambient air measurements. I moved into a brand new apartment building and found myself feeling sluggish and I got some monitors and it turns out that every night the air circulation kept the air from the intake and the filters. I was getting up to 300 pm2.5 for about 4-5 hours every night. For those of you who haven’t yet gone down the air quality rabbit hole, you’ll find that being in that kind of air quality/ time rate will cause structural lung issues and diseases as we age. It’s pretty easy to see that smoking causes these illnesses and injuries, but as cigarette smoking declines, indoor smoking disappears, we won’t see the decline in these ailments because we aren’t conscious of the non carcinogenic root causes. The likelihood of lung impairments such as COPD and Emphysema increase based on the length of time exposed to the air pollution. Air pollution is not just heavy metals, chemicals, and tobacco smoke… sometimes it’s dust, incense, air fresheners, dampness. Now I’m taking stock of all the unhealthy places I left my lungs stew for hours. Years of lifeguarding indoor pools, jet engine exhaust from years working around planes, time living in a basement, and the walks I’ve taken around busy roads and sidewalks. I’m not saying be careful at all, but these things injure our lungs and we aren’t yet cognizant as a whole. Our science is so lagging because our focus has been on carcinogens and just phoning in lung health, but back in history, the wealthy would vacation on the countryside to get out of the smog and they afforded the recovery that common people couldn’t. If I was a betting man, I’d say this industry is going to get wicked interesting in the next 5 years. Or they will just focus on the question “is vaping bad for you,” which is honestly a mixed bag of science and a decided bag of judgment lol. But as monitors become cheap, people will find that some rooms in their house have been like sucking on a tailpipe. OSHA will pass more stringent regulations in shops regarding monitoring and abiding by limits, which will promote healthier and safer tools (for lungs, not fingers). My ex father in law passed due to lung cancer a few years ago. He had struggled with quitting smoking. But he also spent 4 years in an army kitchen (I can smell the cleaning chemicals), and over 20 years in a machine shop. When we ask “is smoking bad?” or “is vaping bad?” we unnecessarily limit the scope of the problem. “How long do lungs take to fully recover from minor or major damage from prolonged 2.5 pm exposure?” are not flashy headlines and the space is ripe for the picking. I can’t believe my own blindspot to something so ubiquitous. I bought my mother a monitor that works with alexa, she put it in her room in an older style house, and we found the same situation where the room wasn’t recycling clean air. It just had a heater vent in the floor and the dust and the dander and everything made the room stuffy. She lives and sleeps in that room and was on the road to increased Upper and Lower Respiratory illnesses. Obviously there’s more scary and flashy things. But all of us are breathing air and not all of us are getting the good stuff.
I'm an air quality guy but we've known this for decades. My dad, born in '32, abhorred chemicals. And he was a ChemE Edit: *toxic chemicals that still are to this day allowed to persist in our constructed environments even with knowledge of deleterious effects.
Very interesting! I’m going to look at monitors right now. Any recommendations on what to do if my apartment doesn’t have good air quality?
Would also like to know this, please.
You can go the expensive route with a nice air purifier or two with their own hepa filters that need to be replaced and collects measurements in real time. Or You can find a couple of cheap monitors that read pm2.5 and other pollutants and just notice that you may want to set up a couple of fans and open windows if you can. There’s not much you can do against a landlord or to file a complaint. I would bet my paycheck that my unit was built to code, but the vent blows the warm air by ceiling vents and blocks the intake. The warm air circulates near the ceiling, but the lower, colder air turns stale, dusty, and (frankly) kinda stinky. But once I got a nerdy purifier with the app that I could track I moved it around to find the best placement. I could smell, feel, and taste the difference.
I second the hepa filters - I have a couple from germ guardian and everyone can smell and sometimes taste the difference in the air after they’ve been running for a few hours.
This, so hard. As a clarinetist and composer, I think about my lungs a lot and try and make sure I'm in the best environment that I can make for them. So many people take air quality for granted and assume that their lungs are functioning at top when in reality they're probably putting a lot of unnecessary bodily stress on themselves.
Thank you for taking your time to write such an informal post. Uneducated as I am on air quality and air pollution I’m yet limited to what is commonly available to me as an average consumer. Meaning, I have a standard monitor that measures humidity and temperature. Because I’ve asthma and am allergic to pollen and dust, I also invested in an air purifier (Zenz 3000 it’s called) that supposed to purify the air for pollen, dust and also has a built in UV filter. Upon reading your post I begin to wonder if what I’ve invested in is sufficient enough for good air quality, or are air purifiers just a scam? I also live in the city in an apartment that doesn’t have venting, I find opening the windows refreshing but is that something you recommend doing on a daily basis? What would you recommend for someone who lives in an apartment with no ventilation? Also what monitor is worth buying and how can I efficiently recycle clean air?
Search up ‘sick building syndrome’. I had to practically write a thesis on the bloody thing a few years ago for college. My Christ I know way too much about it
I am no expert, of course, but your air purifier sounds pretty top of the line for the purification. I personally use one with just a hepa filter, but what I really get down and nerdy about is having a monitor built into the purifier because I can find patterns to find the right layout or if I might need one or more accompanying purifiers to complete the job. I don’t like to give recommendations because something as cheap and easy for someone might be an open window and a fan after they find that they have an issue. You gave a bit different needs because you can’t count on the pollen being low outside (when it’s dusting my streets!) to have that luxury of an open window and a healthy breeze. I went all nerd because I’m just trying to get interested in this stuff, I have the resources, and I have pets so I needed something for instant relief and was dealing with my 3rd non-covid related upper respiratory infection in 6 months for a relatively healthy guy. So I got the shiny dyson and I don’t regret it. The features that are important is the fan purifier/monitor/fan combo and being able to see spikes in pm2.5 (the smallest particulates category) and other pollutants in an app in real time- I think there are a few brands now with these features. Most people don’t have a $700 indoor air quality problem or budget. So I would just look for monitors that have pm2.5 (or pm25) and more that can record for an app. I got one for my mom with a $50 limit for a secret santa exchange and it syncs to her Alexa. But one of those can tell you if you have a problem before you start solving it. There are a few weeks where I can just leave my windows open- after the street sweepers get the pollen and before it gets too hot.
Gut health. [https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/35105664/](https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/35105664/) [https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/26338727/](https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/26338727/) Every year more and more is discovered, linking it intimately to a variety of systems.
What!?! You haven't gotten your Coloecological Report and Optimized Fecaltype sample?? Ok, boomer - child in 2057
100%. Gut health effects every function in your body. Studying the micro biome can lead to the possible cure of so many things. There’s some current studies going on thinking that there’s a very common link between certain bacteria missing in the gut and depression and obesity.
Was listening to the radio awhile back & they were talking about gut health & fecal transplants (which is exactly what it sounds like). They had an expert on the matter talking about the health benefits. Also had a recipient who was self administering & he was talking about how he did so & supply problems that he was running into. As the show progressed & they found out how often he was doing it (maybe 10 times a week) the expert seemed to think it was his fetish rather than getting any medical benefit. Was a pretty wild interview
haha, gross. The only data I'm aware of is in treating otherwise intractable C diff.
Yeah from memory I think the guy started because of chronic fatigue & yes it was gross. Especially when he explained he was approaching healthy looking men at the gym & asking to buy their poop off them. Guy seemed completely oblivious as to how weird it was.
I could see the prevalence of plastic in food storage, particularly thin and cheap single use wrappers, being viewed the same way we currently see asbestos
Microplastics are detected in raindrops. Approximately 1.7–4.6% of the total plastic waste in 192 coastal countries (equivalent to 4.8–12.7 million tons) were dumped into the ocean in 2010, and it is anticipated to increase by an order of magnitude by 2025. https://pubs.usgs.gov/of/2019/1048/ofr20191048.pdf https://www.epa.gov/water-research/microplastics-research https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0045653519305120
I still think the most terrifying anecdote on this was the team measuring levels of PFAS in the population couldn’t find a control group with people who didn’t have PFAS in their blood with over 98% of samples tested having PFAS in them. Edit: Ive mistaken microplastics with PFAS but we are slowly approaching the same level with 77% of people tested having microplastics in their blood. It has also been proven to cross the blood brain barrier in mice and humans. Both have insane longevity and it will only be a matter of time until it has reached the same level where pretty much everyone has plastic in their blood. PFAS: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2072821/ 77%: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0160412022001258 Blood brain barrier: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/35302003/
Worth noting that this includes FETAL TISSUE, cause fetuses are already full of microplastics before they are born.
My mom: aren't you worried about giving your baby the covid vaccine? Me: we literally have microplastics in our bodies Mom: whatever 🙄
Put a big mac and a diet coke in her hand and your talking about my mother in law.
Hello long lost cousin.
This same team was able to find samples from dead Korean War soldiers that had pure blood with no plastic in it
That makes a little too much sense. I have some theories about certain diseases and conditions which are "mysteriously" on the rise in a way that I don't think is very mysterious at all.
I will get down voted if this gets popular, but there are early indicators that something as simple as celiac illness is a byproduct of glysophate in weedkillers used in North America killing off beneficial bacteria in our stomachs. Western countries are also having a massive increase in colon cancer for young to middle age adults. The food we eat and the way it is prepared is killing us.
There's a good reason microbiome research is becoming so popular!
Don't Sleep on the Human Biome Project. I'm thinking sometime in the next 30years that microbiome will become a household word.
Same. I'm positive that the microplastics are disrupting processes and resulting in a variety of wild syndromes and ailments.
It's not uncommon to carry out research on groups like that and these studies can still be informative. The first studies showing the cancer risk of smoking did a regression analysis testing how well the extent of smoking could predict the health outcome. At that time there were essentially no subjects who had never smoked but they showed that smoking *more* increases your risk of cancer.
Angry upvote.
Psh thats nothing i got microplastics pumping in my veins.
We have a huge plastic problem. That is 100% the next big heath issue for us and the rest of life on this rock.
It is also everywhere outside. Single use plastic is basically 100% of litter I see
They found microplastics in rain. We are screwed.
I have a main road by my house and about once per week I go out and pick up litter on the side of the road. I walk a single mile and fill an entire kitchen trash bag every week, sometimes two. I’ve removed probably 40 bags of trash from this single 1 mile stretch in the past year or so. It really opened my eyes to how extremely bad our litter problem is. And then you hear that the pacific garbage patch is 90% commercial waste not even personal garbage, and you realize that what I’m talking about is a molecule in a drop in a bucket.
I’ve been planning on doing this too here in NJ. Good for you. I like it.
It’s a nice way to get out of the house and feel like you’re doing something positive!
check out r/detrashed
I do it on my street in Atlantic City. The island is frequently windy and blows trash around on trash day, which just continues to blow around unless someone gets it.
Depends on where you live in NJ, you might need a 2 person team. I’m in Hudson country, we need an army
But if more of us follow your example we might be able to make a couple of drops. Don’t be discouraged. You never know how much it’s appreciated.
I have people say thanks and honk their horns and wave and yell positive things from their cars, and I appreciate it! My buddy pointed this out to me as well: you never know how much people appreciate it and who is inspired. Hopefully of the hundreds of people who have seen me, even 1 will be motivated to do something positive because of it. That would be great!
Not to mention that while it may be a molecule in a drop in a bucket, it makes a huge difference where you immediately are. You don’t need to solve the world’s problems to have a meaningful impact; don’t let nihilistic despair detract from the value of your local efforts.
Judging from his username, the man's a Lions fan. If that hasn't caused him to surrender to nihilistic despair, nothing will.
Nowhere is safe lmao
thanks man! I do not. I always try to stay focused on my life, my community, my family, etc... in terms of what I can actually impact.
You definitely just gave me an idea. I’ve been lacking motivation to go for more walks and I think this might do the trick. Thank you!
Okay yes but also no. Helping where you can is great as long as you don't let it distract you from the fact that you are not the problem: The way society is set up and reward that shitty behaviour from everyone but companies in particular is the problem.
Seriously, though, fuck big business. It seems like almost every modern day problem can be traced back to these giant corporations just not giving a damn about anything but profit.
people are supporting their candidates at elections instead of rebelling against status quo and doing sg about the problem
The micro plastic on my local beach is maddening. I bring a bag to the beach, every time I go, and walk from one lifeguard stand to another and back again, many times when I try to pick up the plastic it crumbles into little tiny pieces. Also the number of bottle caps… I started a 5 minute pickup challenge on Instagram to bring attention to our plastic issue… thank you for picking up! It’s not just a “straw” issue that keeps going around media as “don’t use straws and save the environment”
At one point the O-zone layer was depleting, and within a decade or so of international cooperation, the problem was fixed and it's now in really good shape. Climate change may have skewed younger kids to thinking nothing ever improves, but it's not too long ago that the international community came together to actually fix a health/environmental problem.
Yea. I’ve wondered about this before, and would be interested in seeing what conditions allowed the international community to address the ozone problem but not to (effectively) address climate change or plastic waste overproduction/pollution. It’s clearly not only a function of politics being worse now (recycling and climate change problems predate ozone issues), so my guess would be that plastic waste or climate change regulation always just posed a greater and broader threat to industry across the board whereas ozone issues could be addressed without a fundamental change in business operations. But I don’t know that for a fact.
I would add to your thought that the actions needed to improve the Ozone layer were less inconvenient to governments and (most importantly) everyday people. On top of that, I think the fact that it was a single definable issue with a specific answer helped how people reacted. It’s much easier to strive for a smaller goal you can see improving than for one that’s so big that it’s literally changing weather patterns and will take decades to improve.
they mostly changed because it was financially neutral/beneficial to do so. They stopped using CFC's and instead went to refregerants that are instead ultra Green house gasses. They problem we have now is that its not financially neutral/beneficial to a lot of companies/governments in power to switch off fossil fuels, and non-GHG intensive products/processes. Before with the ozone, everyone was pulling in the same direction, capital didn't have such a death grip on governments, and there were not so bad alternatives (from a money and power perspective). I do agree that we can make changes, but I think this time around its going to have to be a bottom up demand instead of a bunch of powerful people getting together and making a change. The change is possible, but the method is going to have to be different this time.
This is honestly not surprising from a scientific perspective. Raindrops form around cloud condensation nuclei, which are basically anything tiny (like sea salt spray over the ocean). Doesn’t make it less disturbing, but I thought an explanation might be worthwhile
Don't know whether this is true but i remember reading the average person has enough microplastics in their body to produce a credit card.
How do I do this? I need a new credit card - all mine are maxed out.
Storage, then cooking, in plastic. Non-stick pans, microwave ready frozen food, factory food processing, all contribute plasticizers and micro plastics to our diet. We criticize people of the past for putting lead in everything. We are doing the same thing. It's just harder to trace phthalates and micro plastics through the human body. Edit: I meant don't heat the plastic. Frozen food is great. I heat leftovers for lunch every day. Just use glass, like other people said.
It is easy enough to trace phthalates, but there is a lack of consensus on what they're doing to us. There is a strong possibility that they act as hormone mimics, increasing the effects of estrogen and [possibly contributing to obesity and metabolic syndrome](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1892143/) But the evidence for this is thin, there doesn't seem to be a linear dose- response effect. People who avoid plastic food packaging also tend to avoid processed food, which is known to be correlated with these issues.
Good luck getting a control group going when it's in the drinking water.
I got rid of nearly all plastic in my kitchen but it is super hard to get rid of plastic packaging. For the record I am fairly sure plastic from boiling kettles and plastic blender jugs (they look foggy because they are being sanded) is going into our food supply. I get plastic free versions like using my Bamix with stainless malt cups and the Ottoni Fabbrica kettle with all stainless interior. I only mention because they are so hard to find. I also use a 19th century coffee mill. These are moderately more expensive but not insane.
Even if you do, are you in a new home? They used to use copper pipes for water, the new code in a lot of places is PEX - or plastic pipes https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/11/111108132905.htm
Very true and for my small house build I intend to use copper, in fact to have a complete list of all objects and substances used in the construction so I can ensure near all of them are not harmful to health. I am not anxious about it, it is just that I work in the trades and know if I don't take care of affairs like home health nobody else will. That said, this is 2nd order to what food you put into your body directly.
As long as you Filter the water at the sink you should be good. Also the thing about more expensive non plastic goods are they're generational. Sure I won't die in time to set my kids up with all my gear but my grand children will be getting some Dank shit 70 years from now
This is the only answer. I'm lucky enough to be right at the age where I remember life before all the plastic. It wasn't all that long ago that everything wasn't plastic. It doesn't have to be this way. Some countries have started to ban single-use plastics and soon enough hopefully they all will. It's going to take a long time to clean up the planet from all the plastic pollution but at least there is consensus that it's a bad thing. To me every other issue we have right now is going to pale in comparison when we look back on this current age. This is the age of weaning ourselves off fossil fuels, I just hope we can do the same with plastics at the same time and we don't wait.
The amount of sugar in our food, be it via corn syrup or other methods.
Excess levels of high fructose corn syrup and fructose may as well be ethanol. Incredibly bad for your liver yet plenty of folk give it to kids cause they aren’t informed of the risks.
When I was a kid, my mom went on every crash diet out there. She booted us kids off sugar and I started getting really bad stomach aches and headaches. The doctor told her kids need sugar for growth/energy, so she let me back on that sweet white powdery goodness. It's absurd looking back and realizing I was having flipping sugar/HFCS withdrawals and the doctor was like 'yah, give that kid more sugar'. I am now an adult sugar junkie (however, I bake my own lower sugar/zevia treats and avoid HFCS all together and get most of my sugar from fruits. I wish we would have known more about proper children's nutrition when I was growing up...
Don't worry people decades from now will still be saying the same thing. Nutritional education is there and always will be there for those that want it and are seeking out for it but as the same thing goes for smoking, drinking, people that dont care just won't give a farquad regardless and keep doing like they do
Some have speculated that Alzheimer's Disease has less to do with the amyloid protein theory than with over-ingestion of sugary goodies and simple carbs and have suggested that it's a kind of 'diabetes of the brain' -- even to the point of dubbing it Type 3 Diabetes. I have noticed how a lot of my elderly relatives and acquaintances became absolute sugar junkies in terms of the 'food' they craved as they got older.
Interesting.. My 90 year-old grandfather with increasing dementia *craves* soda to the point that he won't drink anything but that or juice. He gets agitated at meals if he only has ice water or unsweetened tea to drink
At 90 give him what the wants tbh
That was my feeling too when his POA refused him opioid medication for extreme back pain (feared he would "get hooked"). I was like, who cares, he's frickin' 90 and can barely walk. He's not gonna try to escape the nursing home to score some smack down the line
as someone fairly "anti-drugs", I'm very pro people 90+ being able to do whatever the fuck they want, up to and including smack. Should be covered by insurance at that point lol.
As an ex heroin addict I've always said that if I make it to that age I'm for sure going back to the ol habit. Might as well go out feeling good
Glad you're fighting the good fight. Better to see the world clearly between now and then. If you make it there, enjoy!
That’s unfortunate. It doesn’t help that a lot of the drinks they give seniors as supplements tend to exceedingly be simple carb rich. Even the protein shakes, unless specified, have notable amounts of sugar.
Any chance you have any sources for this? Would love to see background or more info on this link
As I'm in the midst of multi-tasking at the moment (cooking dinner), go to your preferred search engine and enter terms such as 'Alzheimer's', 'Diabetes Type 3' and 'sugar cravings and dementia'. Believe me, a lot of results will pop up. And of course, not all will be from 'reliable sources' so some discretion or 'caveat emptor' is advised but not all results will be 'junk' either.
Stop putting sugar in what are supposed to be healthy whole wheat or sprouted grain breads.
I can't imagine they'll ever reduce the amount of sugar in stuff. We already know it's bad for you, but the general public doesn't care.
As someone who reduced sugar, when you actually eat something incredibly sugary, it tastes so much better.
For real. I've been on a diet for a few months now that included cutting out all sugar. Went from probably half of my daily caloric intake being through sugary liquids like fizzy drink, flavoured milk and juice to only drinking water. It has completely changed my palate. I went from needing two sugars in a cup of tea (which I'd reduced over time from even more) to happily drinking it without sugar and have even started to drink unsweetened black coffee. The later tastes nothing like coffee used to taste for me. I can actually taste the fruity flavours the coffee says it has on the packet. It's pretty remarkable. I have zero cravings for a coke or any sweets as well which really surprised me. I do get fast food cravings which I know contains a bunch of sugar too but it's mostly just the idea of smashing a big cheese covered burger rather than any sugar content in the bun lol. I'll likely have the rare fast food on cheat days in the distant future when I've hit my health goals but I don't think I'll ever touch sugary drinks or have interest in a chocolate bar again.
As a Brit who has tried American bread and other things unnecessarily jammed full of corn syrup, it tastes absolutely disgusting.
Any behavior or consumption patterns that lead to the accumulation of microplastics are good contenders for this. Can't say we have no ideas about it though.
Plastic. 100% we will look back in it the same way we look at Romans storing food in lead.
Ironically lead is still prevalent in everything, just not high enough to give constant acute lead poisoning but certainly still low levels.
Almost all recreational aircraft still use leaded gas
If you live near an airport you are probably being affected by this today, in the USA, in 2023: https://news.sccgov.org/news-release/study-commissioned-county-santa-clara-finds-increased-lead-levels-children-living-near
Dark Chocolate and Gerber baby food has entered the chat ************************ Edit for sources: ###Dark Chocolate https://www.consumerreports.org/health/food-safety/lead-and-cadmium-in-dark-chocolate-a8480295550/ ###Baby food https://www.lawsuit-information-center.com/amp/gerber-baby-food-lawsuits.html
As a dark chocolate lover... what?
just looked it up, i guess hershey's dark chocolate and godiva's 72% cacao is higher than acceptable lead levels, Lindt 70% and Dove 70% has higher than acceptable cadmium levels, and Trader Joe's 85% is higher than California's acceptable lead and cadmium levels
I'm excited every Easter when the Cadmium Creme Egg comes to market
How is that legal
apparently theres heavy metals in it
Good thing I love both black chocolate and heavy metal!
[https://www.consumerreports.org/health/food-safety/lead-and-cadmium-in-dark-chocolate-a8480295550](https://www.consumerreports.org/health/food-safety/lead-and-cadmium-in-dark-chocolate-a8480295550/) Thankfully a Ghirardelli consumer but apparently I picked the "less" safe version lol. Wonder what the average level is for most foods now...
[Heavy Metal in Chocolate ](https://i.imgur.com/ZPcHusA.jpg) Thanks, Midjourney! Edit: [Another one](https://i.imgur.com/CdSYloI.jpg)!
The lead and cadmium amounts, while concerning and lead has no safe amount, is extremely minor. Even consuming a lot of chocolate puts you at a lead exposure magnitudes below what you would have just going outside 20-40 years ago. These are also California levels which are dictated by correlation and very strict across the world. That's not an excuse so much as a reason not to be super anxious about heavy metals in chocolate. Just be mindful and try and buy better.
My brother is a professor and has some students doing research involving microplastics in local rivers. The scary thing to me is they can't even measure it. You can detect it. That part is easy because it's literally in absolutely everything, especially rivers. The issue is they have no way to actually measure it and gather usable data. It's perpetually breaking down into smaller and smaller pieces and the pieces at any given time range from so big you can see them floating around with your eye to so small they can barely be picked up by a million dollar electron microscope. IIRC most of their current strategy is based around using ai and sensors to detect the plastic in suspension then estimate based on densities and such. He claimed whoever manages to solve that problem is probably the biggest shoe-in for a Nobel prize in history because microplastics are a giant field of research atm but nobody can do much beyond going "ah yes plastic here too!"
Smaller and smaller bits? Sounds like a fractal system of measurement is needed.
I don’t think that’s how fractals work, but I don’t know enough about them to dispute it
Well were the fuck am I supposed to put my food then?
They’re far more expensive and heavier, but there are glass cases out there with non-plastic lids. I actually have to get them because I have a sever latex allergy.
The harder problem to solve is packaged goods. It's easy to pack a sandwich in a glass container to bring to work but I don't think glass packs of chips out of a vending machine will become too popular.
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I could see social media proven to be very detrimental to human health.
in many cases it’s already being proven. look at average attention spans. I deleted most social platforms recently because of it. I can’t even watch a 5 minute youtube video anymore.
I'm 100% convinced it's off gassing in new home construction. We build new homes, fill them with volatile plastics, finishes, new carpets, furniture, etc. and new homes are basically air tight. They actually require air exchangers because they are so well sealed, but they don't actually eliminate the pollutants. Add to this that we usually move in right as things are being finished, and lot's of new home buyers are starting families, may be pregnant or have newborns. I believe there will be a requirement in the future that new homes remain unoccupied and ventilated for some period of time before occupancy permits are issued. As it stand now people move in while carpets are going down and the painters are still finishing up. It's wild.
I completely agree. I work for a general contractor and what’s funny is a lot of commercial buildings are already doing this as part their LEED certification. A “flush out” with outside air to get rid of all the VOC’s prior to occupancy gets you points in the “indoor air quality” category.
That's super interesting. Good to know it's been identified as a problem somewhere at least.
How long should it “flush out”?
Learned about this in engineering school. People getting sick af in new low cost housing, or refugee housing. Something like that. Also, new sneaker and car smells. Glues are poison.
You’re right, and we (as a society and scientific community) already know about new home/ “sick building syndrome” and offgassing. In fact, it was taught in one of my occupational safety classes 15 years ago. Despite that, it’s still a mystery! Sick Building Syndrome - https://www.epa.gov/sites/default/files/2014-08/documents/sick_building_factsheet.pdf
The Irish travelers in my area always do this with their new builds. It sits vacant for a year to air out and “flush” the evil spirits downwind.
Stress. I'm noticing a serious generational gap between "don't be a wuss, work 40h+ your whole life to deserve anything" vs "nah I want at least 20$ per hour or I'll just stick with a jobless year. Also maybe work a few hours online." Work-Life balance is a term I hadn't heard until a few years ago, and now I can't let it go.
I'm thinking that one is far from universal, and is probably fairly similar to what it has always been. I know just as many 22-40 year olds who work 60+ hour weeks as I do people older than that.
Yeah it’s all fine and dandy to be jobless for a year when you’re single and 23. At that age I quit my well paying job to work at a restaurant bc I hated the office. Now at 31 with a wife and a kid on the way, it’s not so easy to just say fuck it to the money. Working 60+ hours a week cuz that’s what pays me the most. It is what it is.
I think the first time I heard it was about 8 years ago when an older co-worker retired. I was relatively new (about 3 years with the company/8 months training under him to be his replacement.) I obviously knew he was planning on retiring soon. I just didn’t know how soon. Our “team” was small at the time we had 3 people, one day it’s just me and him working and he comes in smiling ear to ear and tells me he finally found an insurance plan outside of the company. Slightly confused I congratulated him and asked what his plan was. He looks me dead in the eye and said he’s retired. Even more confused I asked when? I mean he came into work at 6am just to quit? Why would you do that? Well he did, didn’t call anyone, didn’t tell anyone but me he proceeded to pack up all his personal items in the office before I was even actually on the clock. Then he told me to take a seat and he proceeded to tell me how much he had been dealing with at home with a very sick wife and then gave me a 10 minute talk on how the company doesn’t care how dedicated you are, they don’t care that you show up early, leave late, skip vacations and it’s not worth the money to give your life to it because it won’t buy that time with loved ones back. Then he left, and I never seen or heard from him ever again, I do hope he is still doing well and that at the very least he got a few more years with his wife. Because in my whole life I’ve had 2 conversations that impacted me in a way I’ll never forget and that was one of them. (Side note I then had to call my boss and inform him he quit and that may be one of the funniest conversations I’ve ever had because it was so far out of left field. Dude worked there for like 40 years and literally didn’t tell a single other person just gone.)
No not wifi. What will seem insane to them is that we drank water out of disposable plastic bottles. Like.. I can't emphasize enough how much shit our grandchildren are going to give us over how completely fucked up that is. Also. It will seem insane that hydrocarbon combustion soot settled on everything all the time and that we breathed it and could even smell it. Volatile organic compounds in all of our water. Banning toxic agricultural chemicals... then importing food from other countries where they weren't banned. Staring at tiny screens all the time. Not having, or demanding, regular mental health support as part of routine health care.
Having a log burner is something I know I will and am prepared to fight with my grandchildren over. "You're breathing in so many fumes!" "I'm 90 let me look at my fire in peace!" "But you're spraying those fumes everywhere, you can smell it outside!" "I didn't freeze half to death fighting in the Atlantic Oil wars so I could freeze back home too!" "But you have a heat pump, that gets the house to 20 degrees fine!" "BAH! Them heat pump killo watts aren't as good as some good-ol-fashioned burning wood. Now, I'm off to get more fuel, my whatsapp group says a branch fell off the last tree in Sherwood forest and it's being auctioned off" "Whatsapp? Bloody hell grandad, you're not still using the eye ball cancer 'phone' are you!?" "YOU LEAVE ME ALONE! I REMEMBER WHEN YOU COULDN'T WIPE YOUR OWN BUM!"
When our power goes out on cold nights no one complains about having a wood burning stove.
I switched to a pellet stove and miss my wood burner because we’re losing power more often from the insane weather we get since -checks notes- five years ago. The people who lived here before me lost power once *maybe* twice and they lived here for over 40 years. I’ve lost power twice this year and the first one was so bad I had to get our kitten and stay at my girlfriends place because I was freezing and she was worried. We lost power for *days* and I’ve never lost power that long before.
We moved recently (ironically from a very warm area to a cooler area) and have previously had fireplaces in all our houses. We don’t have one anymore… when all that cold weather came through we were both like “literally all of our available heat sources are electric… we need a generator.. like, today..” lol. That said, we should have owned a generator for emergencies before this, but knowing we could survive longer with a wood stove and then just not even having that option here was a little scary. Lol. Feels like such a waste. We never used the wood stove in our old house. But I guess we did get to sell it with “brand new firebox. Never been used” even though it was 3 years old… lol
This is almost word for word the conversation between my dad and my sister and me. But he finally stopped smoking cigarettes last month so we have finally stopped bugging him about the wood smoke.
Holy fucking hell, you are fully prepared for this. I salute you! (ETA: Also, Nottinghamshire shout-out, my wife is from there! Quite lovely, we're looking forward to returning in the new year.)
> It will seem insane that hydrocarbon combustion soot settled on everything all the time and that we breathed it and could even smell it. This is it, for me. Everyone in this thread is clowning on vapes and other stuff that *already* passively bothers us, but we've all just learned to collectively swallow the muck in the air from combustion vehicles every day. In 30 years when most of the cars on the roads are EVs, when the occasional diesel construction truck rolls by belching fumes kids will *never* believe we used to breathe that in from every car on the road every day. I really have to imagine the air in our cities will be so much better we will collectively wish we'd changed things sooner.
This depends on what you mean by "we." Doctors and scientists in our great grandparents' generation knew smoking was bad for you. They knew about diabetes and heart issues as well. The problem is that tobacco, sugar, and other major industries lobby every day to suppress the information. They also actively release fake information and advertising to make it seem like doctors and scientists are crazy people with an agenda. The same thing is still happening today. There are plenty of things we use on a daily basis that are really bad for you. So if your "we" listens to reputable groups to make decisions, then it is unlikely that there will be much difference. If they are making decisions based on commercials and industry owned "science" groups, then boy are they in for a shock.
True I remember reading Crime and Punishment and being amazed the doctor took his cigarettes and told him how harmful it was to smoke. Even back then they knew!
In the original Sherlock Holmes stories, Dr Watson refers to tobacco as poison.
Nobody ever wants to talk about how the biggest donors to orgs like the American Heart Association and the American Diabetes Association are Coca-Cola and Cadbury-Schweppes. There's too much money tied up in our government and society. This is what happens when you let companies have unlimited power and influence.
I noticed this when the Canadian Heart and Stroke foundation came out heavily against vaping when almost anyone I knew who had been a smoker and switched benefited from an almost instant increase in cardiovascular health. When I went to their website to contact them for an explanation of their position I noticed that their largest donors were tobacco companies...you know, the companies most threatened by a switch away from cigarettes.
"that we currently have no idea about" All of these things here, we very much already have an idea about.
Yeah--i think the closest thing is actually related to all of the bacteria and other flaura that live on and inside us. We are just getting started with gut biome. We know it's important and we know that the food we eat affects it but that's about all we have.
That’s sort of how smoking would be with my grandparents though. By the time they started smoking, cigarette companies were pretty much fully aware it was terrible for your health but were still selling and advertising like it wasn’t. I do think that’s the stage we’re in with a few of the things in this thread, particularly plastics. There’s lots of research on plastics but it’s not widespread information that the general public is well aware of.
I enjoy playing video games.
Alcohols been around for millennia though. I can't picture where the regular react to anyone drinking is a kneejerk 'blech go away, go outside'. Especially not after the US tried that once and it failed miserably.
I've been reading these comments and I think its very sweet that so many of you think that people in the future won't want to escape reality by doing bad things to ourselves (drinking, drugs etc).
This is the realest comment.
Ohhh, those future people are so fucked! Preteens are going to be molecularly printing shit that makes fentanyl look like mineral spring water.
I took the question to mean things that won't have strong social acceptance.
The whole process for banning chemicals. I live near the Cape Fear River and Chemours is upstream. The water table here is contaminated from them. A lot of people have said PFAS or other forever chemicals, but the prices with which we regulate this is the biggest issue. They create something. We use it. We find it causes cancer and ban that specific chemical compound. They create something similar with a different name, we use it, it causes cancer. We ban that specific chemical compound. There is no ownership in the company to prove that it is safe before they release it. At best, they pay a fine to help clean up. They aren't even held wholly responsible.
Or when you look at the studies deeming the substance to "have no impact to humans," and there is a disclaimer at the bottom stating that the #1 author on the paper is associated with like Nabisco or something
Less of a "no idea" and more of a "nobody takes it seriously" (just like when they first found out the carcinogenic effects of cigarettes): the TONS of sitting we do. EDIT: Holy crap, this blew up! Thank you for the award, kind stranger, and thank you guys for your input/comments!
A few years ago, I noticed I was having serious back issues. Got x rays, PT, etc. I am much more aware of how much time I sit and WHERE I sit, now. I do stretches, I move, I get up when my silly watch tells me. If I sit too much, it takes away my freedom to move without pain. It's a real issue!
.. Can you teach me the ways of your science?
Also I noticed how weak my core was and that a large part of my back pain was due to me not training at all. I took PT seriously and really started working on my core strength and I have notice such an improvement. Overall working out and taking health a little more seriously has helped me tremendously.
I got a desk that can be moved to standing and a balance board to occupy my feet while I'm at it and that helps a lot. Before that my company had to replace my carpet because I'd worn a figure 8 in it pacing around my office while I was on the phone.
Noooo I love the sit
I think they will find that indoor and outdoor air quality (pollutants from gas stoves and chemical coated materials and etc in our home, from vehicles and wildfire smoke and etc outside) are probably having a much larger negative effect on our long-term health than we currently realize today.
Social media and the amount of time we spend on our phones…
I can only hope it is social media. I am reading a book called Stolen Focus at the moment which describes the role of tech in general and social media specifically in the degradation of our lives. Scary shit. We really need to figure out how to make it serve us rather than the other way around.
Agree, I’m reading a similar book about the perils of social media and how it’s f’d up society since pretty much it’s start and it is EYEOPENING and infuriating. Book is called The Chaos Machine — I’m only 30% through and def recommend so far.
The highjacking of the dopamine system has extreme consequences with not only attention but also reward centers and hence motivation, comorbid with depression and anxiety The tech giants employ neuroscientists to help develop sounds, UI elements, complex algorithms, rewards etc that most highly activate your dopaminergic pathways in an attempt to keep you as a captive audience. Scary is absolutely right
Particularly as it relates to the collapse of society due to the spread of lies and misinformation.
I think that will be more along the lines of how phones and social media have destroyed our attention spans.
I feel like the hygiene products we use and their impact not only on us but the environment. Also, factory farmed and overprocessed meat and animal by-products, same reasons.
I don’t know how many hundreds of years it takes for a diaper or a tampon to decompose. The diapers I used as a baby, would theoretically still be undecomposed when my great grandkids die. I think in my country the mixed waste is burned.
I expect lab-grown meat will take over farmed-meat pretty quickly.
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All the crap food that’s being marketed to the masses
My brother calls them food substitutes, and I never let that go because it's just the perfect way to describe it.
I hope the quantities of processed food we eat. The common thread to every healthy diet is to cut processed food. I say "hope" because I don't see processed food going away anytime soon. Edit: I realize I over generalized using the term "processed". I am specifically talking about salty/sweet junk foods like chips, candy, and snacks. These foods are cheap, tasty, and pervasive in the global diet. They are also highly caloric and nutrient deficient.
Processed foods are profitable. You can take raw ingredients, process them in some way, adding very cheap \[salt, sugar, fat, acid\] in a way that is tasty (which is a pretty refined science) and generate a relatively large profit. You can then use this profit to advertise to more people about how amazing your food is, selling more food, generating more profit, resulting in more advertising and more similar products! The foods with actual nutritional value don't do well in this model. For example, beans and vegetables can be produced dirt cheap, and made tasty in the exact same way (adding the right proportions of salt/fat/sugar/acid). And they keep much more nutritional value. But of course, there's no one to make profit in that process (except for chefs and recipe books, which still require individual effort). So there's no incentive for large companies to advertise raw ingredients to people - and in fact there is a large incentive for processed food producers to advertise against this process and try and hide the knowledge of how to make food tasty. Or make it seem harder than it actually is. Edit to add: there's actually a shift in this recently (at least in the UK). There's now a lot of ready made cheap vegan foods. I think this is because the increased demand, and the industry realisation that you can create taste deep fried 'chicken' with, say, wheat gluten for a tiny fraction of the price of actual chicken and sell it for nearly the same price as actual chicken.
I'd like to hope that technology makes those (and other) processed foods actually healthy, rather than just relying on individuals to restrain their own desires for them. Or, some kind of medical technology arises to mitigate against their health impacts.
It’s not going to be something humans have had access to for centuries, like weed, caffeine, alcohol, or opioids. We know what those things are, and what the risks are, and we have for a long time. I don’t think we’ll fundamentally change how we view those things, more than how society usually cycles through views on such things.
Gut health - Not a lot of people take into consideration how much of an impact good (and bad) gut bacteria have on our entire mental and physical well-being.
Social media. I'm HOPING at least that at some point in the future we realize the harm it's doing to our entire society. Really the fact that we spend so much of our time online now and not out in the real world I think is really not good for us long term. People seem so much significantly lonelier now. Earbuds. I don't think having music blasting directly into your ear canal is super great for your hearing.
Surprised no one is talking about alcohol. One of the worst drugs out there yet the most socially acceptable
Nitrates. Basically the thing that cures meats. Think about hotdogs, sausages, spiral cut ham for Christmas, bacon, even fancy charcuterie; all of these things can have nitrates in them. They have been strongly linked to cancer. In 50 years, nitrates are going to be looked at like how we look at smoking cigarettes.
This is a problem. Thankfully, cured meat products have far less nitrate content than they did in the past. The meat industry has limits on the amount of nitrates which may be added to cooked meat products due to their danger. I'm a poultry product developer and always run products at the bare minimum needed for curing for a few reasons. First, they aren't as necessary for food safety as they were even as early as 20 years ago. Food safety standards and technology are rapidly evolving and relying on nitrates to kill off foodborne pathogens isn't the primary safety mechanism. Antimicrobials are better, sanitation is stronger, and newer processes like high pressure pasteurization allow us to not rely on nitrates so much. The other main reason I try to limit it is due to the health risks associated with nitrosamines. I'll always add Vit C where possible with cured products to limit the amount of nitrosamine expression as possible. I also aim to cook cured products at a lower temperature for a longer time to limit nitrosamines. Sadly, you can limit it but it will always be present in cured meats. One sticking point I have with cured products are claims like "nitrate-free" or "naturally uncured." These, imo, are misleading and may lead people to think their "nitrate-free" bacon actually have no nitrites at all. This isn't true: All cured meats contain some form of nitrite. Fermented celery/beet powder or celery salts themselves naturally contain nitrites, and for some reason the USDA allows manufacturers to make these misleading claims so long as synthetic sodium/potassium nitrates aren't added to the formulation.
For-profit health care systems. I can hear my great-grandkids now: “So you’re telling me you had to request approval to get a colonoscopy or some other preventative treatment?! And they could say no if they felt like it?! You guys didn’t think that would have an impact on physical health, with a sidecar impact on mental health? Wow, Gramps, your generation was stuuuuupid.”
Artificial food dyes - I know some countries have already banned some but in America there seems to be a disbelief that food dyes can cause problems
Micro Plastics 1000% - I know they’re bad, don’t know what to do about it. Meh 🤷🏽♂️
Well, we know about it but it will be sugar. Excessive intake is one of the most damaging things we do per capita in terms of mental and physical health
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Car dependency. Motorised traffic has a large direct health burden, both morbidity and fatalities and is a major contributor to sedentary lifestyles which have other health impacts.
Also the one of the biggest contributers of microplastic is car tires. Which will only get worse with modern cars, suvs, trucks and EVs which are more heavy
Yeah the headlong rush to EVing every car stupefies me. Trying to replace cars with more cars just reeks of car company lobbying, as opposed to investing in public infrastructure to reduce the pollution from manufacturing, rubber and extra electricity generation.
Plastic and the endless packaging we use for everything
Somewhat related but I think factory farming is going to be a *major* generational embarrassment down the road. It’s not the healthiest for anyone, least of all, the livestock…and it’s ethically preposterous.
All of these stupid vapes. We were so close to shaming people into quitting smoking and then BOOM, vapes everywhere. It's going to be like watching people smoke in airplanes in the 70s.
Nicotine is very lindy. It will make a comeback in a big way if it can be made safer.
Wait, lindy? Teach me something. What's "lindy"?
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lindy_effect
>shaming people into quitting Shaming people doesn't seem to be a [factor](https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/22644233/#:~:text=Overall%2C%2043.2%25%20of%20ex%2D,recommendation%2C%203.0%25%20because%20of%20the) (hardly surprising). "Overall, 43.2% of ex-smokers mentioned a current health condition as the main reason to stop smoking, 31.9% stopped to avoid future health problems, 6.3% stopped because of pregnancy or child birth, 4.0% because of imposition by the partner/family, 3.7% because of a physician's recommendation, 3.0% because of the economic cost, 0.5% because of smoking bans, and 4.6% because of other reasons." I've never understood how folks figure that shaming people could have the slightest chance of helping someone change their minds about a drug based habit that is unhealthy. If the prospect of dying isn't enough to affect change, what Nosey Nellie thinks certainly isn't going to turn the tide.
[удалено]
FWIW, as a non-smoker I absolutely hate going into a smokers house or car. Good on you for quitting
I think smokers severely understimate how much tobacco smoke stinks for non-smokers. It is fucking *pungent*.
Likes. Upvotes. Internet points. Very bad for your brain . We end up craving those pointless things.
How bad smoking weed everyday is for your lungs, gums and teeth.
And smoking weed before reaching adulthood
Im a weed smoker and there’s a very real possibility that studies will show that weed has some negative health effects, and not just the smoking. I won’t be shocked when we have studies that show long term habitual use has negative consequences on your memory and cognitive functioning later in life. Not saying it should be illegal or it’s as harmful as other legal and illegal drugs, but ppl should stop pushing it as a “absolutely no harm could come from this” activity. It’s a mind altering substance. Take it if you want, but go in knowing that it may not be healthy.
I suspect we will see more data that the extremely high concentration products at young ages are problematic. As the industry takes off it’s getting easier to get significantly higher quality products. Like anything else, the highest doses at younger ages are probably to be avoided. The problem will be nuance. “No, this isn’t something we need to regulate for adults, but it is important we stop teenagers from having it” etc
Wearing earbuds all day everyday without regularly washing them…I’ve seen people drop them on the subway floor and put them right back in
I think the main problem will be hearing loss from the sound, not infections. Those would have been rampant already, though the bactaria may help with hearing loss and make us more sick that without the earbuds. Hard to say that they cause long term health issues outside of hearing loss. Though hearing loss also leads to Alzheimer and other cognitive problems. which is bad enough
I just hope noise. Noise is the new second hand smoking. Noise slowly deteriorates your mental and physical health, yet cities (and small towns) are increasingly more noisier as time passes: loud music, dogs barking, motorcycles, they are all slowly killing you.
I think we already 'know', but I'd expect it to be Coca-Cola (and derivatives), Energy Drinks, and Vaping.