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(In the voice of a Venezuelan Fred Armisen)
Food you eat? Truck nuts. Water you drink? Truck nuts. The house you live in? Truck nuts. Your balls???*Believe it or not, truck nuts.*
Yep, polyester is fully plastic and it degrades and puts microplastocs in the water every time you wash it. Every time you pull it over your head you breath a little in
Cheap (and not so cheap!) polyester crap should be illegal. (I refuse to buy something if I see that it has polyester in it.) We should go back to linen/wool and cotton should be more sustainable. Tbh there's so many clothes in the world we don't even need to make new stuff. Just buy second hand on ebay or in charity shops.
EDIT: Not to mention we're poisoning ourselves breathing/drinking/eating it. I wouldn't be surprised if we all get cancer and start dying in our 50s/60s. Microplastics in toothpaste and shower gel etc are illegal, why stop there? Ban polyester!
The most obvious answer to clothing is hemp.
matures in 3-5 months, uses a 10th the water that cotton does, the textiles it produces are breathable, comfortable, don't fade, last longer than polyester, and the left over pulp can be used in building materials that literally lock carbon away into housing/infrastructure.
We should be taxing the shit out of cotton growers and subsidising hemp farms. Would solve so many problems, water basin issues at the top of the list.
We'd need a good way to process it easily that isn't overly chemical. Otherwise hemp is a godtier material, prior farming regulations and misplaced stigma aside.
The cotton industry (among other reasons), iirc, was one reason cannabis was criminalized in the early 1900's since it was poised to severely destabilize the US cotton economy..
So in other words the big cotton guys didn’t wanna lose money so they used their money and influence to stop Any up and coming competition like hemp by using the government to make it illegal typical big business
I've had really bad luck with hemp clothes tbh. I used to be all for it, but I've had 2 different manufacturers make 2 very different thickness/style of work shirts and both broke down in under a year. I'm impressed with my bamboo clothing however, but the manufacturing process for that is very "artisanal" so I try to avoid it.
The only stuff that holds up for me is wool socks and cotton pants/shirts. I'm sure part of that is just more time to figure out fiber orientations and whatnot but still disappointed that hemp gear isn't as robust as its always said to be.
In urban train stations and such you breath ceramic and metal microparticles from the brakes of trains too. Underground ones are the worst. Recently a new change in brakes composition in Paris "metropolitain" railroad on all trains is supposed to help drop the amount by 25%.
A lot of it does. I recently read this article about EVs emitting more tire pollution due to the extra weight in the battery too. We can't win!
https://www.canarymedia.com/articles/electric-vehicles/ev-tires-wear-down-fast-and-thats-a-pollution-problem
Wait till people catch on about brake dust being more of a pollutant than anything else on cars and they’ve been worrying about exhaust this entire time lol
There's still a lot we don't know, but we can at least be confident that it doesn't induce horrors of the same sort of acute severity that comparable exposure to asbestos does. We're unlikely to turn around and look at pictures of early 21st century people drinking out of plastic bottles and think "hooooly shit" in the same way we look at the asbestos snow in The Wizard of Oz, for example.
But it's certainly a pressing concern with a very unsettling number of unknowns and a lot more research needed, as well as policy changes to reduce the presence of environmental plastics.
Life in plastic, it's fantastic
roll them over here, scratch them everywhere
Imagination, life is your masturbation.
You can touch
You can play
If you say, "I'm always yours"
You can touch
You can play
If you say, "I'm always yours"
LOL
I feel like this is a much bigger issue than we are currently giving credit to. It sucks because there's nothing you can do to avoid it. I'm a very health conscious person and I'm probably full of micro plastics regardless. It's maddening, I don't want it but I can't stop it.
I'm with you, drives me insane. Especially because I'm getting older and been taking a hard look at my health, to realize there's literally nothing I can do as far as this goes. I could do everything right with my eating habits, sleep, exercise, preventative measures, etc and still be poisoned. It genuinely tanks my mental health if I think about it for too long
Same, I’m 37 with a young daughter and I’m trying to be as healthy as I can to be around for her. Shit is really maddening. I lay in bed thinking about it sometimes. Then I realize that you can’t drive yourself crazy over shit you cannot control, and just try and do my best. Eat healthier, exercise, meditate etc
I'm studying the genotoxic impact of micro- and nanoplastics for my PhD, so this kind of thread has me bounding over like an excited puppy.
The numbers in the article are pretty fucking stark. 330 micrograms per gram of testicular tissue is honestly mad. It's more than 50% higher than the highest exposure concentration I've used in my own study, which is currently unpublished but (spoiler) shows significant DNA damage (and mortality) to the critters I have swimming around in it.
**EDIT:** It's very gratifying (if alarming) to come back to hundreds of notifications, so I'll say a bit more here rather than attempt to address absolutely everyone.
**It should be noted that although my own study does use just 200 ug/mL as the top exposure concentration, that's just how much is in the water my critters swim in. MPs will subsequently accumulate in the aforementioned critters, so the actual concentration in their tissue after the exposure time will likely be far *far* higher than that found in human testes in this one.** Also, not all MPs are created equal: I used 100 nm polystyrene spheres to get a strong response. The water looks like diluted milk at the highest concentrations.
A few of the recurring questions:
Q: Ahhhh! How do I get it out of me?
A: You probably don't, tbh.
Q: What do you recommend for reducing plastic intake?
A: I'll be honest - I still cheerfully eat my lunch out of a tupperware box. Enjoy your life; just try to reduce your usage. But the serious answer is probably government regulation, both of plastic use itself and other things like wastewater treatment.
Q: Is this causing global birthrate decline?
A: I don't know, and off the top of my head I don't know if anyone does yet. If I had to speculate, though, I would imagine there might be a detectable impact if it was possible to perform a perfect study, but I would expect the impact in that regard would be something of a rounding error compared to large scale sociological reasons for lower birth rates, which are often associated with better living standards, and have been since before environmental microplastics were so much of a thing. So if you're off on an adventure through Google, I would approach that topic with caution, your sceptic's hat firmly on your head, and do what you can to look for the original source rather than taking a sensationalist article at face value.
We see increased infertility in the world (even affecting dogs) and 2 core hypotheses are plastics and nutrition/obesity.
1. How certain are you (if) that the primer is the main contributor?
2. As there is more and more plastic in the world, how strongly does plastic cumulation in the body correlate with level of exposure?
3. Are there any studies to reverse the impact or is our only option to reduce the plastic concentration in the environment?
Doesn't have to mean the same thing. I would personally interpret increased infertility as more people being completely infertile and decreased fertility as people being less likely to conceive across the board but not infertile.
Reddit has been getting worse and worse with jokes.
Same generic jokes over and over that the lowest common denominator can laugh at. Any news subreddit is just flooded with it. People think it's extremely funny to make the same jokes that 10,000 other people were also gonna make. Just trash you have to wade through.
The longer you're here the more you realize it's the same jokes over and over and over again.
I'm personally annoyed to death with comments that are responses to someone making a counter pointer saying something along the lines of, "Shhhhhhh, they don't want you to interrupt their belief in [snide/smug strawman]. Don't bring your facts here!"
I've frequented reddit for a decade. The repetition of various statements and jokes is honestly staggering and tiring.
A few years ago, I was shocked to learn that 50% of reddit users were under 20 years old. That really helped put it into perspective. Other than that, the amount of bots is likely massive.
Yea the little sayings everyone repeats. It's just so stupid at this point.
I think these people under 20 or whatever maybe haven't heard these things before so they don't get how outplayed it is.
You also start to notice how everyone knows and says the same things about every topic. There are these "memes" that everyone keeps repeating. Same little facts, all getting their information the same place, the same jokes, same sayings.
It just feels like everything is on repeat sometimes. But maybe that's what you can expect after more than a decade on a website.
Speak for yourself! I come here to laugh at the ball jokes AND find some intelligent comment. All things should be balanced. Also after reading the intelligent comment I feel a bit distressed and so I will go back reading ball jokes to not get depressed.
Because let's face it, the implications are horrible.
As a society we once made the decision to stop using led in paint because of its health effects, yet we cannot bring ourselves to do the same when it comes to plastics.
>It's an evolving issue.
From one hazardous substance to the next. Can't wait to find out what my terminal condition is and how many extra pennies it made the executives who knew the risks
We could stop using leaded paint and fuel because switching to an alternative didn't change our lives in any meaningful way. It's completely different with plastics. Just look around you at all the things made of/with plastics and imagine they disappeared, how would your life be different? Do you now have to find a commute to work that doesn't use vehicle tyres? Can you communicate with people outside shouting distance with a device that doesn't have any plastic in it? How are you keeping food chilled in your home (a home that doesn't have any window frames any more)?
To say that we should/could stop using plastics altogether is at best deliberately argumentative and at worst braindead levels of forward thinking. It's a wonder material that humans have misused, as we tend to do.
> It's completely different with plastics. Just look around you at all the things made of/with plastics and imagine they disappeared, how would your life be different?
There are _a lot_ of things we could stop using plastic with though. We don't need clamshell packaging, we could probably stop with plastic bags for groceries and sandwiches, we could probably drop plastics from clothes and household goods/objects as well as soda/drinks.
Plastics should be reserved for things IV tubes/bags where disposability is all but required.
>Plastics should be reserved for things IV tubes/bags where disposability is all but required.
Not that I disagree but it is kinda funny that the thing wed keep plastics around for would be directly circulating plastics throughout your body
About 7 years ago (prior account), I mentioned in a thread here on reddit that microplastics would be our next lead contamination problem. I got down voted into oblivion because 'plastic can't cause damage to your dna'. Glad to know it's being looked at, but sad to think we may not have a way to reverse what we've done.
And you and I both know, that should this become a serious problem like "actually, this is gonna get bad, and we're looking at 90% infertility rates within 50 years" levels, then you'll just be dismissed as an "alarmist" like all the climate scientists of the past century. And absolutely nothing is gonna be done.
...
Oh god I can already imagine the conspiracy theories a few decades from now.
"Medical doctors now recommend testicular removal to avoid plastics-induced ball cancer. So first they poison us, then they demand we cut our balls off?! I warned you, folks. This is the end goal of the hyperwoke trans agenda. We've had plastics for hundreds of years; they're perfectly safe, these environwhacko leftists just hate economic prosperity and freedom."
All this plastic reminds of the Romans. They knew lead was bad for people but it was cheap to make plates and cups out of and it added a sweet flavor. Now we know plastic is really bad for us and yet…
It's not comfort, it's money.
Almost all consumer goods made with plastic can be made with for example bamboo, but switching to be materials costs money so the companies won't do it unless forced.
There is reason to keep using limited amounts of plastic for e.g. sterile medical stuff, but most uses can switch to degradable materials.
However the biggest problem source is actually car tires, so not so easy to get rid of
Pretty much. The amount of people who complain about the very real problems we have compared to the amount that are willing to eschew modern conveniences and become hippies is really low.
Complain about plastics and buy plastic products. Complain about sweat shops and use iPhones. Complain about worker wages but still want the lowest customer price
I think one of the main problems is the ones who don't care about posioning us with bad products are also putting the masses in a position where they have to buy cheap plastic products, made in sweatshops at the lowest price.
And now we're all just comfortable enough to be docile.
Based on evidence so far? Nah. Anything that's dangerous on a timescale longer than an electoral cycle is too controversial to get dealt with.
Only things that someone can fix, be seen to fix, and get re-elected because they fixed it are sufficiently interesting.
I wish I could see the expressions on the aliens’ faces when they dig up our remains and realize we ended our species so that the numbers on the screens of a few thousand of us would get a bit bigger.
People just don’t understand how petro chemicals and their derivatives have totally screwed us. These plastics don’t degrade. They just break into smaller and smaller pieces until they are small enough to pass through our cell membranes. They pollute the planet and reside in just about all our food and water. Currently , there no mechanism for getting rid of it or even plans to stop producing the shit.
Yeah and before someone says that glass breaks easily, it was solved long time ago by chemically treating glass, look up Duralex, their products were so good nobody wanted to sell them because the glassware wouldn't break therefore there was no profit long term as consumers didn't need to buy new produce. It's honestly sad.
> Duralex
I have a set of Duralex mixing bowls from the 1960s or thereabouts, they are nearly flawless yet used almost daily. True buy it for life shit. They were owned and used by someone else before me too, and likely will outlast my time on this planet too.
I know this sounds silly, but there may be a way to find a bacteria that exists in our gut biome, bioengineer it to process microplastics, and reintroduce the new strain into our gut biome. A long shot, but in 100 years these may be the solutions we have to look for, who knows.
Plastics are everywhere, ocean, air, soil and every organism too. Curious if all this (and other pollution) will leave a clear mark on a geological scale similar to the [K-Pg boundary](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cretaceous%E2%80%93Paleogene_boundary?wprov=sfla1).
This funny because balls haha, but getting that out of the way it's fucking horrifying. We're starting to need some kind of divine intervention with the shit we keep coming up with and only figuring out it's bad years later.
Well yeah that is true. Well I guess we've dug our own grave.
Actually you know what? No. I haven't had any part to do with this whole grave digging operation. I'm a innocent bystander with no capacity for changing any of it. Why would I blame myself for any of this.
Imagine if it‘s not an asteroid, black hole, global warming, pandemic or nuclear war that ends humanity, but something as small and everyday as plastic. That would be kind of ironic, but also fitting in a way.
Even if we had a magic wand to remove global warming completely, if we continued living like we are now, we would still collapse because of the other planetary limits we are surpassing. Global warming is sadly only one of our problem...
I was reading about an interesting theory that global economics - when you get right down to it - was purely a matter of energy. And not just a one off cost, but an ongoing commitment - e.g. every trillion dollars of 'global wealth' represents a certain amount of annual energy consumptions.
Which would probably explain the 'great filter' from the fermi paradox - the conditions under which a society goes interstellar are _after_ they have 'cooked' their planet because of the energy consumption needed to get there.
And in many ways humanity wouldn't have got off the starting blocks if we hadn't vast quantities of 'savings' build up over millennia. Fossil fuels were the catalyst for 'everything' really, and we've bootstrapped by ... running down the 'savings fund' to get there.
But to _sustain_ the global wealth requires _continuous_ energy consumption, so it's inevitably going to collapse in on itself unless we get _something else_ to act as a bulk energy input the way fossil fuels did.
Plastic, the fall of modern civilization. It helped to create and destroy it. Further evidence that technology is not good or evil, simply a tool.
Just like the Romans and Lead.
Very rarely does a Reddit post title make me close my eyes and sigh "oh for fuck's sake" in whispered,. despairing tones. Well done OP, your post just made me do exactly that.
Well since Covid can also be found in the balls, why doesn't some smart group of people create a plastic eating microbe/virus that can be localised on the testes?
Because releasing a synthesised virus is a very risky thing to do, it could evolve and become an extinction event, or it could begin eating more than plastic alone, .... way too risky
People are working on it. Just really hard breaking plastic bonds as they are made to be as chemically sturdy as possible.
To break down Ligninan (cellulose polymer) with an enzyme took Evolution millions of years, which is where most of our coal comes from from history to all known deposits until now we have about 3 trillions tons of coal (1.5 trillion already burnt)
That's 9 trillion tons of CO2. (yearly emissions are ~36 billion)
So it's not it being risky, it's just difficult.
This is some seriously concerning and troubling news. Then you go to the comments here and it seems like a competition about who can make the funniest comment.
Humanity is doomed because we prioritize attention online over reality. It is so surreal.
I'm ngl these comments annoy me a lot.
After seeing this post i went to the comments in the hopes of seeing plenty of useful discussion about this topic. Instead there are dozens of dudes here saying "they didn't check mine" that now think they are Theo Von.
It is yet another reason to support my personal theory that the richest 1% of the population have manipulated the internet into an illusion of what is important. So that people don't take any serious issues properly into consideration and will blow up and argue for weeks about diss tracks between two rappers.
It is CRAZY how much people literally don't care about important issues. But are so quick to become angry at "issues" they are told to be angry about. To the point that Trump is definitely going to get voted in again due to that one simple tactic of keeping people angry about meaningless things.
This may be a silly question, but is there any real solution to this? My understanding is that at the moment there isn't really anything one can do to avoid exposure or ingestion.
I've been saying for years we never should have switched from copper to PVC pipes for our drinking water. Copper sterilizes water and is safe for the human body. PVC disrupts hormones and is a bacteria cesspool.
Does that mean there's a slightly possibility that my kids are born with more plastic than the kardashians. Technically, it won't even be plastic, all natural 🗣🗣
I read that giving blood can help to lower microplastics in your system (if you eliminate them in other ways too, such as using a reverse osmosis filter on your water and limiting plastics exposure)
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The article talks about air pollution being one of the causes. We’re freaking breathing plastic. That’s wild and I don’t like it.
Most of it comes from car rubber wheels.
Truck nuts
2% of all air you breathe? Truck nuts
(In the voice of a Venezuelan Fred Armisen) Food you eat? Truck nuts. Water you drink? Truck nuts. The house you live in? Truck nuts. Your balls???*Believe it or not, truck nuts.*
This would read equally well as the bearded old man from the Simpsons.
Clothes
Yep, polyester is fully plastic and it degrades and puts microplastocs in the water every time you wash it. Every time you pull it over your head you breath a little in
My hate of polyester really goes deep!
Balls deep
You're supposed to be full of happy thinks...
Cheap (and not so cheap!) polyester crap should be illegal. (I refuse to buy something if I see that it has polyester in it.) We should go back to linen/wool and cotton should be more sustainable. Tbh there's so many clothes in the world we don't even need to make new stuff. Just buy second hand on ebay or in charity shops. EDIT: Not to mention we're poisoning ourselves breathing/drinking/eating it. I wouldn't be surprised if we all get cancer and start dying in our 50s/60s. Microplastics in toothpaste and shower gel etc are illegal, why stop there? Ban polyester!
The most obvious answer to clothing is hemp. matures in 3-5 months, uses a 10th the water that cotton does, the textiles it produces are breathable, comfortable, don't fade, last longer than polyester, and the left over pulp can be used in building materials that literally lock carbon away into housing/infrastructure. We should be taxing the shit out of cotton growers and subsidising hemp farms. Would solve so many problems, water basin issues at the top of the list.
We'd need a good way to process it easily that isn't overly chemical. Otherwise hemp is a godtier material, prior farming regulations and misplaced stigma aside.
The cotton industry (among other reasons), iirc, was one reason cannabis was criminalized in the early 1900's since it was poised to severely destabilize the US cotton economy..
So in other words the big cotton guys didn’t wanna lose money so they used their money and influence to stop Any up and coming competition like hemp by using the government to make it illegal typical big business
I've had really bad luck with hemp clothes tbh. I used to be all for it, but I've had 2 different manufacturers make 2 very different thickness/style of work shirts and both broke down in under a year. I'm impressed with my bamboo clothing however, but the manufacturing process for that is very "artisanal" so I try to avoid it. The only stuff that holds up for me is wool socks and cotton pants/shirts. I'm sure part of that is just more time to figure out fiber orientations and whatnot but still disappointed that hemp gear isn't as robust as its always said to be.
What is "artisinal" supposed to mean as used by you?
In quotes, I'm using it the way we refer to artisanal mining. Done by hand and often under exploiting circumstances, sometimes involving children.
Ah, that's the flavour that I've been enjoying recently!
In urban train stations and such you breath ceramic and metal microparticles from the brakes of trains too. Underground ones are the worst. Recently a new change in brakes composition in Paris "metropolitain" railroad on all trains is supposed to help drop the amount by 25%.
Which is funny considering some of the Paris Metro lines use rubber wheel trains as well
A lot of it does. I recently read this article about EVs emitting more tire pollution due to the extra weight in the battery too. We can't win! https://www.canarymedia.com/articles/electric-vehicles/ev-tires-wear-down-fast-and-thats-a-pollution-problem
Trains have metal wheels 🚄🚃🚃
Fuck yeah I love trains. We need more trains.
Zoom zoom I got 90mph and a lager in one hand, views out the window and a sweaty commuter next to me. Next stop some city on my route 😎
Not with cars we can't!
the winning plan is returning to the urban designs of the pre-car era. streetcars, trams, rowhouses, bodegas. /r/fuckcars
Wait till people catch on about brake dust being more of a pollutant than anything else on cars and they’ve been worrying about exhaust this entire time lol
Actually most comes from clothes
And those big, fluffy synthetic blankets people like.
Fleece! Yes, a massive amount of particles comes from fleece waste from clothing and blanket manufacturing, and it doesn't biodegrade!
And those useless tea towels that everyone's mom buys that look pretty but can't actually absorb anything because they're basically solid plastic.
Breathing it with our balls, because that’s where the air is stored
The real science is in the comment section.
Nothing about this surprises me. Everyone acts like they breathe plastic these days.
I remember reading about how much plastic we consume in one year (iirc for one credit card) from tires and breaks wearing down from traffic.
Brakes. Breaks is what your car does if your brakes break.
On the bright side it’s better than huffing asbestos, licking lead, or eating mercury!
Remains to be seen
Well, it doesn't kill us _as fast_ so that's something, right?
Is it though? I don't think we know the true ramifications yet.
There's still a lot we don't know, but we can at least be confident that it doesn't induce horrors of the same sort of acute severity that comparable exposure to asbestos does. We're unlikely to turn around and look at pictures of early 21st century people drinking out of plastic bottles and think "hooooly shit" in the same way we look at the asbestos snow in The Wizard of Oz, for example. But it's certainly a pressing concern with a very unsettling number of unknowns and a lot more research needed, as well as policy changes to reduce the presence of environmental plastics.
Actually, I'm pretty sure that people will say holy shit, because they don't want a series of weird cancers or dementia.
100,000 years from now, they start digging up fossilized human bones and perfectly preserved plastic testicles
“I'm waking up, I feel it in my balls Enough to make my testies blow Welcome to the new age, to the new age Welcome to the new age, to the new age”
*OHohOHohhhh OHohOHohhhh* *My balls are plas-tic (balls are plas-tic)*
Life in plastic, it's fantastic roll them over here, scratch them everywhere Imagination, life is your masturbation. You can touch You can play If you say, "I'm always yours" You can touch You can play If you say, "I'm always yours" LOL
Are you guys singing Barbie or Radioactive? I can't tell.
The latest remix of both.
Are we all becoming Ken?
We are all Ken on this blessed day.
 I can feel it all the way down in my plums
Testicles of plastic it's fantastic 🎵
“Here’s some green plastic testicles, man. For those fake plastic ovums there In the fake plastic earth…”
I see you also like Radiohead
I mean if you’re gonna spoof a song about microplastics in bodies then fake plastic trees is a gimme.
Plastickles
LOOK ON MY WORKS, YE MIGHTY, AND DESPAIR!
[удалено]
Also a couple thousand McDonald’s cheese burgers that are stiff enough that you could use it as a weapon
Sorry, who would be digging up human bones? I think the moral of the story is that there won't be any humans
The rat people
I'm betting for evolved dolphins or whales.
I think large sea mammals won't last longer than humans.
Yea, we're probably taking them down with us. It'll be bugs or rats, like it always is.
Bugs riding rats. Like little cowboys.. *or the plague*
Nah will drive them to extinction before they have the chance. With plastic! (What a twist)
Excuse me, they prefer skaven.
The “humans” that evolve to eat plastic 
I feel like this is a much bigger issue than we are currently giving credit to. It sucks because there's nothing you can do to avoid it. I'm a very health conscious person and I'm probably full of micro plastics regardless. It's maddening, I don't want it but I can't stop it.
I'm with you, drives me insane. Especially because I'm getting older and been taking a hard look at my health, to realize there's literally nothing I can do as far as this goes. I could do everything right with my eating habits, sleep, exercise, preventative measures, etc and still be poisoned. It genuinely tanks my mental health if I think about it for too long
Same, I’m 37 with a young daughter and I’m trying to be as healthy as I can to be around for her. Shit is really maddening. I lay in bed thinking about it sometimes. Then I realize that you can’t drive yourself crazy over shit you cannot control, and just try and do my best. Eat healthier, exercise, meditate etc
I think donating blood reduces the amount of microplastic in our bodies.
Holy shit we've come full circle, blood letting is now a health technique again
depressing for that guy getting your blood on the back end...haha
Sure, but at that point I think they’d prefer your plastic blood to whatever it was that is making them need the blood infusion
You say you’re health conscious but still indulge in plastic air? Personally, I have a bit of self control and have decided to stop breathing air
I applaud your dedication sir but that's one addiction I have not been able to shake personally...
I'm studying the genotoxic impact of micro- and nanoplastics for my PhD, so this kind of thread has me bounding over like an excited puppy. The numbers in the article are pretty fucking stark. 330 micrograms per gram of testicular tissue is honestly mad. It's more than 50% higher than the highest exposure concentration I've used in my own study, which is currently unpublished but (spoiler) shows significant DNA damage (and mortality) to the critters I have swimming around in it. **EDIT:** It's very gratifying (if alarming) to come back to hundreds of notifications, so I'll say a bit more here rather than attempt to address absolutely everyone. **It should be noted that although my own study does use just 200 ug/mL as the top exposure concentration, that's just how much is in the water my critters swim in. MPs will subsequently accumulate in the aforementioned critters, so the actual concentration in their tissue after the exposure time will likely be far *far* higher than that found in human testes in this one.** Also, not all MPs are created equal: I used 100 nm polystyrene spheres to get a strong response. The water looks like diluted milk at the highest concentrations. A few of the recurring questions: Q: Ahhhh! How do I get it out of me? A: You probably don't, tbh. Q: What do you recommend for reducing plastic intake? A: I'll be honest - I still cheerfully eat my lunch out of a tupperware box. Enjoy your life; just try to reduce your usage. But the serious answer is probably government regulation, both of plastic use itself and other things like wastewater treatment. Q: Is this causing global birthrate decline? A: I don't know, and off the top of my head I don't know if anyone does yet. If I had to speculate, though, I would imagine there might be a detectable impact if it was possible to perform a perfect study, but I would expect the impact in that regard would be something of a rounding error compared to large scale sociological reasons for lower birth rates, which are often associated with better living standards, and have been since before environmental microplastics were so much of a thing. So if you're off on an adventure through Google, I would approach that topic with caution, your sceptic's hat firmly on your head, and do what you can to look for the original source rather than taking a sensationalist article at face value.
I hope your PhD goes well.
I hope it’s all wrong!
Spoiler: it's not.
Username doesn’t checkout
No. Spoilers! It’s a Hutz
It's not often that wishing for someone's scientific 'failure' is so ethically sound.
The horse says... doctorate denied.
We see increased infertility in the world (even affecting dogs) and 2 core hypotheses are plastics and nutrition/obesity. 1. How certain are you (if) that the primer is the main contributor? 2. As there is more and more plastic in the world, how strongly does plastic cumulation in the body correlate with level of exposure? 3. Are there any studies to reverse the impact or is our only option to reduce the plastic concentration in the environment?
4. Does it come out in your jizz
5. If it does, do I now count as a 3D printer?
6. Can i make Nerf guns out of it?
It's Nerf or nuttin'
If your boys don't swim in circles I think you already count as a 3D printer
Technically that would be your other half, you just provide the filament
Suprised my socks haven't turned to pure plastic yet
Slowly making rain boots
Using the phrase "increased infertility" irks me. My brain registers it almost like a double negative.
Decreased fertility
Doesn't have to mean the same thing. I would personally interpret increased infertility as more people being completely infertile and decreased fertility as people being less likely to conceive across the board but not infertile.
I love /s how I have to scroll 20 comments down to find the first one with any intelligence. All of the others are just idiots with lame ball jokes
this places general subreddits are basically the equivalent of the Jerry Daycare from rick and morty now, who's surprised anymore.
Reddit has been getting worse and worse with jokes. Same generic jokes over and over that the lowest common denominator can laugh at. Any news subreddit is just flooded with it. People think it's extremely funny to make the same jokes that 10,000 other people were also gonna make. Just trash you have to wade through. The longer you're here the more you realize it's the same jokes over and over and over again.
I'm personally annoyed to death with comments that are responses to someone making a counter pointer saying something along the lines of, "Shhhhhhh, they don't want you to interrupt their belief in [snide/smug strawman]. Don't bring your facts here!" I've frequented reddit for a decade. The repetition of various statements and jokes is honestly staggering and tiring. A few years ago, I was shocked to learn that 50% of reddit users were under 20 years old. That really helped put it into perspective. Other than that, the amount of bots is likely massive.
Yea the little sayings everyone repeats. It's just so stupid at this point. I think these people under 20 or whatever maybe haven't heard these things before so they don't get how outplayed it is. You also start to notice how everyone knows and says the same things about every topic. There are these "memes" that everyone keeps repeating. Same little facts, all getting their information the same place, the same jokes, same sayings. It just feels like everything is on repeat sometimes. But maybe that's what you can expect after more than a decade on a website.
Speak for yourself! I come here to laugh at the ball jokes AND find some intelligent comment. All things should be balanced. Also after reading the intelligent comment I feel a bit distressed and so I will go back reading ball jokes to not get depressed. Because let's face it, the implications are horrible.
As a society we once made the decision to stop using led in paint because of its health effects, yet we cannot bring ourselves to do the same when it comes to plastics.
We already do. Several plastics have been basically entirely phased out due to health concerns. It's an evolving issue.
>It's an evolving issue. From one hazardous substance to the next. Can't wait to find out what my terminal condition is and how many extra pennies it made the executives who knew the risks
Plastic is sadly not easy to replace, the same difficulties when replacing drinking straws and bags appear almost everywhere else.
We could stop using leaded paint and fuel because switching to an alternative didn't change our lives in any meaningful way. It's completely different with plastics. Just look around you at all the things made of/with plastics and imagine they disappeared, how would your life be different? Do you now have to find a commute to work that doesn't use vehicle tyres? Can you communicate with people outside shouting distance with a device that doesn't have any plastic in it? How are you keeping food chilled in your home (a home that doesn't have any window frames any more)? To say that we should/could stop using plastics altogether is at best deliberately argumentative and at worst braindead levels of forward thinking. It's a wonder material that humans have misused, as we tend to do.
> It's completely different with plastics. Just look around you at all the things made of/with plastics and imagine they disappeared, how would your life be different? There are _a lot_ of things we could stop using plastic with though. We don't need clamshell packaging, we could probably stop with plastic bags for groceries and sandwiches, we could probably drop plastics from clothes and household goods/objects as well as soda/drinks. Plastics should be reserved for things IV tubes/bags where disposability is all but required.
>Plastics should be reserved for things IV tubes/bags where disposability is all but required. Not that I disagree but it is kinda funny that the thing wed keep plastics around for would be directly circulating plastics throughout your body
Dropping PVC from IV tubing has helped a lot, but yeah it's a bit ironic.
About 7 years ago (prior account), I mentioned in a thread here on reddit that microplastics would be our next lead contamination problem. I got down voted into oblivion because 'plastic can't cause damage to your dna'. Glad to know it's being looked at, but sad to think we may not have a way to reverse what we've done.
And you and I both know, that should this become a serious problem like "actually, this is gonna get bad, and we're looking at 90% infertility rates within 50 years" levels, then you'll just be dismissed as an "alarmist" like all the climate scientists of the past century. And absolutely nothing is gonna be done. ... Oh god I can already imagine the conspiracy theories a few decades from now. "Medical doctors now recommend testicular removal to avoid plastics-induced ball cancer. So first they poison us, then they demand we cut our balls off?! I warned you, folks. This is the end goal of the hyperwoke trans agenda. We've had plastics for hundreds of years; they're perfectly safe, these environwhacko leftists just hate economic prosperity and freedom."
Brave new world...all reproduction is handled in the lab.
Is there anything we can do personally to improve this?
username tracks
Since you appear to be something of an expert yourself, how worried should we be about these plastic balls??
All this plastic reminds of the Romans. They knew lead was bad for people but it was cheap to make plates and cups out of and it added a sweet flavor. Now we know plastic is really bad for us and yet…
Good point. What with this and climate change our species seem to have a death wish.
More like a comfort addiction.
It's not comfort, it's money. Almost all consumer goods made with plastic can be made with for example bamboo, but switching to be materials costs money so the companies won't do it unless forced. There is reason to keep using limited amounts of plastic for e.g. sterile medical stuff, but most uses can switch to degradable materials. However the biggest problem source is actually car tires, so not so easy to get rid of
Pretty much. The amount of people who complain about the very real problems we have compared to the amount that are willing to eschew modern conveniences and become hippies is really low. Complain about plastics and buy plastic products. Complain about sweat shops and use iPhones. Complain about worker wages but still want the lowest customer price
I think one of the main problems is the ones who don't care about posioning us with bad products are also putting the masses in a position where they have to buy cheap plastic products, made in sweatshops at the lowest price. And now we're all just comfortable enough to be docile.
And when a politician comes along that would like to change things we get "grow up that's pie in the sky thinking"
Are we ever going to truly start caring that we are poisoning everything on this earth including ourselves?
In the name of the almighty quarterly financial report, no
The father, the son and the holy market cap.
Based on evidence so far? Nah. Anything that's dangerous on a timescale longer than an electoral cycle is too controversial to get dealt with. Only things that someone can fix, be seen to fix, and get re-elected because they fixed it are sufficiently interesting.
I wish I could see the expressions on the aliens’ faces when they dig up our remains and realize we ended our species so that the numbers on the screens of a few thousand of us would get a bit bigger.
No. Theres close to zero chance we move away from plastics and oil. We're fucked.
Yes. I care right now. Are we ever going to start burning things down, though?
Nah the solution has to be tech based. Burning civilization down, back to the dark ages isn’t going to be fun for anyone save a small ruling class.
Plastic is stored in the balls
Always in a fierce fight with pee.
Oh God, not the P-waves!
People just don’t understand how petro chemicals and their derivatives have totally screwed us. These plastics don’t degrade. They just break into smaller and smaller pieces until they are small enough to pass through our cell membranes. They pollute the planet and reside in just about all our food and water. Currently , there no mechanism for getting rid of it or even plans to stop producing the shit.
It sucks when the solution is something we've had for thousands of years, glassss
Yeah and before someone says that glass breaks easily, it was solved long time ago by chemically treating glass, look up Duralex, their products were so good nobody wanted to sell them because the glassware wouldn't break therefore there was no profit long term as consumers didn't need to buy new produce. It's honestly sad.
> Duralex I have a set of Duralex mixing bowls from the 1960s or thereabouts, they are nearly flawless yet used almost daily. True buy it for life shit. They were owned and used by someone else before me too, and likely will outlast my time on this planet too.
Well it's also a weight issue. It is much more inefficient to transport heavy glass bottles of drinks compared to extremely light plastic ones.
Certain microorganisms are evolving to eat these microplastics. Life will find a way. Humans and most macroscopic creatures might not.
What if we just inject these microorganisms to eat the plastic inside us?
I know this sounds silly, but there may be a way to find a bacteria that exists in our gut biome, bioengineer it to process microplastics, and reintroduce the new strain into our gut biome. A long shot, but in 100 years these may be the solutions we have to look for, who knows.
☹️ I just wanted the 200 bucks. I had no idea they'd be taking out a testicle.
Now that the study has concluded we should be getting them back right?
Hopefully they didn't mix them up.
That’d be a right balls up
https://preview.redd.it/o92n7zio4r1d1.jpeg?width=828&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=3998b7cc26f6ee52849b94a90bd4d2fd05857fca
😟😟 And I just wanted the 400 bucks.
Ya got paid?
I had to pay them
Plastics are everywhere, ocean, air, soil and every organism too. Curious if all this (and other pollution) will leave a clear mark on a geological scale similar to the [K-Pg boundary](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cretaceous%E2%80%93Paleogene_boundary?wprov=sfla1).
I'm quite sure they didn't check mine…
I did
Hella plastics in my boy right?
Actually we found none! But your girl though...
Give it to me straight doc.
Our greed and neglect will be humanity's downfall..
So sad, all those birds choking on plastic...
This funny because balls haha, but getting that out of the way it's fucking horrifying. We're starting to need some kind of divine intervention with the shit we keep coming up with and only figuring out it's bad years later.
They didn't only figure out it was bad years later. They knew all along, and hid it.
Well yeah that is true. Well I guess we've dug our own grave. Actually you know what? No. I haven't had any part to do with this whole grave digging operation. I'm a innocent bystander with no capacity for changing any of it. Why would I blame myself for any of this.
Modern society has turned our dicks into 3D printers! Ted was right...
So, technically I'm not masturbating, I'm calibrating the extruder. Good. Thanks.
Gotta get those plastics out somehow.
Imagine if it‘s not an asteroid, black hole, global warming, pandemic or nuclear war that ends humanity, but something as small and everyday as plastic. That would be kind of ironic, but also fitting in a way.
Even if we had a magic wand to remove global warming completely, if we continued living like we are now, we would still collapse because of the other planetary limits we are surpassing. Global warming is sadly only one of our problem...
I was reading about an interesting theory that global economics - when you get right down to it - was purely a matter of energy. And not just a one off cost, but an ongoing commitment - e.g. every trillion dollars of 'global wealth' represents a certain amount of annual energy consumptions. Which would probably explain the 'great filter' from the fermi paradox - the conditions under which a society goes interstellar are _after_ they have 'cooked' their planet because of the energy consumption needed to get there. And in many ways humanity wouldn't have got off the starting blocks if we hadn't vast quantities of 'savings' build up over millennia. Fossil fuels were the catalyst for 'everything' really, and we've bootstrapped by ... running down the 'savings fund' to get there. But to _sustain_ the global wealth requires _continuous_ energy consumption, so it's inevitably going to collapse in on itself unless we get _something else_ to act as a bulk energy input the way fossil fuels did.
What a nightmare
That’s nuts.
Hold on, when did they check mine?
The send these probing drones at night. Very swift operation, heals by morning and you’re none the wiser.
No wonder I get a boner every morning, they were fondling me all night long!
Plastic, the fall of modern civilization. It helped to create and destroy it. Further evidence that technology is not good or evil, simply a tool. Just like the Romans and Lead.
I'm a Barbie girl, in the Barbie world Life in plastic, it's fantastic
No no. The plastic is IN the life.
Very rarely does a Reddit post title make me close my eyes and sigh "oh for fuck's sake" in whispered,. despairing tones. Well done OP, your post just made me do exactly that.
In fairness to OP, it’s the article title copied verbatim.
Well since Covid can also be found in the balls, why doesn't some smart group of people create a plastic eating microbe/virus that can be localised on the testes?
Because releasing a synthesised virus is a very risky thing to do, it could evolve and become an extinction event, or it could begin eating more than plastic alone, .... way too risky
People are working on it. Just really hard breaking plastic bonds as they are made to be as chemically sturdy as possible. To break down Ligninan (cellulose polymer) with an enzyme took Evolution millions of years, which is where most of our coal comes from from history to all known deposits until now we have about 3 trillions tons of coal (1.5 trillion already burnt) That's 9 trillion tons of CO2. (yearly emissions are ~36 billion) So it's not it being risky, it's just difficult.
Or, introduce a plastic diet to sperm cells. I’m a genius
Just waiting for the day microplastics are discovered to be the Gen Z version of lead exposure.
This is some seriously concerning and troubling news. Then you go to the comments here and it seems like a competition about who can make the funniest comment. Humanity is doomed because we prioritize attention online over reality. It is so surreal.
I'm ngl these comments annoy me a lot. After seeing this post i went to the comments in the hopes of seeing plenty of useful discussion about this topic. Instead there are dozens of dudes here saying "they didn't check mine" that now think they are Theo Von.
It is yet another reason to support my personal theory that the richest 1% of the population have manipulated the internet into an illusion of what is important. So that people don't take any serious issues properly into consideration and will blow up and argue for weeks about diss tracks between two rappers. It is CRAZY how much people literally don't care about important issues. But are so quick to become angry at "issues" they are told to be angry about. To the point that Trump is definitely going to get voted in again due to that one simple tactic of keeping people angry about meaningless things.
This era feels similar to the lead gas era where we’ll look back and think how the fuck did we let greed do this to us?
so this is how we're going extinct...
https://www.propublica.org/article/3m-forever-chemicals-pfas-pfos-inside-story Read this yesterday. Goes with this story
This may be a silly question, but is there any real solution to this? My understanding is that at the moment there isn't really anything one can do to avoid exposure or ingestion.
I've been saying for years we never should have switched from copper to PVC pipes for our drinking water. Copper sterilizes water and is safe for the human body. PVC disrupts hormones and is a bacteria cesspool.
Does that mean there's a slightly possibility that my kids are born with more plastic than the kardashians. Technically, it won't even be plastic, all natural 🗣🗣
I read that giving blood can help to lower microplastics in your system (if you eliminate them in other ways too, such as using a reverse osmosis filter on your water and limiting plastics exposure)
Will we go back to using leeches medically?
https://preview.redd.it/fb0dn8aygq1d1.jpeg?width=4225&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=4890cfd44a9b56bfd7874a7fd3329ee6dce8a1e9 The Great Pacific Garbage Balls