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This may be true but I hate the practice of referring to “plastic” as if it’s a single substance. It’s a bunch of different materials that don’t really have that much in common with each other, especially from a health/toxicity standpoint.
For example, people treat it as common sense that “you shouldn’t burn plastic” because the smoke is “toxic”. For PVC this is totally true, it makes very nasty stuff like dioxin that will poison you. But on the other hand you can burn polyethylene (think milk jug) and it’s no more toxic than burning a candle. Definitely way healthier to breath than wood campfire smoke, for example.
There’s also such a silly pattern where people learn some chemical might have some effect on the body and suddenly everyone is up in arms about it. For example Bisphenol A in many applications was replaced by the very similar Bisphenol S just so things could be labeled “BPA Free”. BPS probably has similar estrogenic effects to BPA.
I’d say the moral of the story is be wary of received wisdom about chemical toxicity from people who aren’t chemists.
Not only BPAs but many chemicals like BPAs can cause birth defects because our bodies think they are estrogen.
If this worries you, read the books It Starts With the Egg and Grain Brain.
They both suggest that not only what you eat, but how it’s prepared can affect the health of a child.
For instance it’s a big no-no, according to It Starts With the Egg, to heat most plastics in the microwave. The heat breaks the plastic down, it can get in your blood, your body will think it’s estrogen, and they don’t even know the full effects of this yet.
So think about
- burritos in plastic wrapping,
- cling wrap on a bowl,
- reheating leftovers in Tupperware,
- disposable cutlery
These chemicals are not just in food:
- your car’s interior
- your cell phone case
- even the clothes on your back, unless they’re 100% pure, untreated, natural fabric, may have been made with these chemicals.
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Are microplastics similarly diverse in their effects on the human body?
I would guess that chemical effects would be diverse while “physical” effects would not be so diverse. Keep in mind that things like mesothelioma from asbestos are kinda sorta “physical” effects because it’s from jagged roughness of the particles at the nanoscale rather than any specific chemistry.
So what you’re saying is instead of having a bonfire I should be have a milk jug fire?
Yes.
Also be wary of people that say they are chemists on the internet when oil, plastics, and guns have mostly only been researched by their manufacturers. All totally safe.
Have you heard of Dihydrogen monoxide? It literally kills hundreds of thousands of people every single year all over the world, including young children.
You don’t hear about it in the news though do you…
Social media. It wasn’t until very recently that people started to realize just how harmful it actually is.
Less social media IMO, more the weaponization of techniques first researched in the 60s-80s made real and pushed via automaton to all corners of the public internet.
The reason you become vulnerable is because you abdicate control (most had no idea) of your feed to providers that own domain names.
This was a co-option of how the internet worked previously.
What kind of techniques were researched? This sounds interesting to learn about. Do you have some terms I could search that will help me learn more?
Start with Cambridge Analytica for sure.
I always thought the Cambridge Analytical scandal was just the left trying to point fingers at how Trump could have possibly won, instead of blaming the Democratic party for their terrible handling of the Sanders campaign, and how Clinton was so utterly unlikable, they grasped at so many straws, we’re still reeling from it to this day.
The big ones being the Ukrainian war, the failure of the Afghanistan pull-out, and of course CA.
Well this might come as a shock but the techniques used to groom suicide bombers also work on white people too. Prey on their disillusionment, pump them full of hatred for “the enemy” then give them the means to carry out an attack.
But if you’re digging back through history, check out how once upon a time, everyone from the US government to Coca-Cola was awkwardly trying their hand at mind control.
Fortunately, they’ve pinky promised that’s all behind them now, despite having access to millions of people who voluntarily pin their own eyes open and spend the night scrolling through rapid flashes of sex, violence and extremism, in their own DIY Clockwork Orange therapy (only it’s trying to make them worse, not better)
What could go wrong except for everything that’s currently going wrong?
The damage done by giving neoliberals power and the far-right platform is going to take decades to undo, if we survive it at all.
Climate change is progressing at an alarming rate while the oil and gas lobby teach AI how to astroturf, cheered on by every billionaire hoping they can fire their employees and pocket their wages.
If the far-right are given the power they need, they’ll decimate the population searching for whatever magic group they need to genocide that will make their parents love them, their mental illness evaporate and their dicks 14" long. When they finally realize no such group exists, we’ll get to see what happens when you give the nuclear launch codes to wife beaters ane school shooters.
Vote better.
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Micro plastics. We were advertising them in facial scrubs ffs.
Plastic in general, except that we know and just keep doing it. I’m trying to use less plastic if I can but it’s frickin everywhere. If you want to buy an ear of corn it’s wrapped in plastic as if it isn’t already wrapped in nature’s protection. Seriously people.
This, big time. Pretty much every product or package contains some plastics, including so many one-time use disposable ones. Plastics are infesting the Earth from pole to pole, they are everywhere. Clothes are made of plastic, do laundry and a bunch of microplastics go down the drain. Car tires drop microplastics as they wear. And then there’s all the large ones we can see like plastic bags, bottles, etc.
Memory unlocked: “smooth, round microscrubbers” https://youtu.be/Hn15dtxL00A
This right here. We are undoubtedly the plastic generation. And it’s not letting up any time soon; our kids will be included in this cohort as well. Banning plastic bags in cities is next to useless when everything we eat, everything we drink, and everything we buy is wrapped in plastic.
My country is exceptionally bad about this.
Buy a plastic package of crackers? It will be filled with smaller packages of crackers all wrapped in plastic with a plastic freshener pack for each one. I am not exaggerating. I am not sure I have ever bought something that didn’t have at least two degrees of plastic wrap.
We did stop giving plastic bags out at cashiers unless requested, but that means shitall when everything you buy is triple-wrapped to begin with.
If it makes you feel better a significant amount of microplastics come from tires wearing away on the road.
Another reason to say “Fuck cars!”
Banning plastic bags I could get behind. It was inconvenient, but necessary. My city just passed an ordinance that all paper bags require a $0.15 charge. As if it wasn’t already $7 for a hamburger, now you get to pay more to keep your fries from spilling all over the car seat.
I was incontinent, but necessary.
Uh, okay then…
Lol! I got your message and was like, wtf?
So, the movie The Graduate was prophetic.
Perfluoroalkyls aka PFAS appear to screw with all manner of body functions.
Since you mention tobacco: It’s worth noting that the smoking/cancer connection was noticed long before peak cigarette smoking in the population. Prior to WWII, lung cancer was considered a rare disease. That changed with the mass marketing of cigarettes.
While what you say is generally true, I would add that many diseases were “rare” in pre-modern times because they were not easily diagnosis at the time or because people were killed earlier by something else that is now treatable.
Sure, but incidence of lung cancer went way up as tobacco consumption rose heavily in the early 20th century.
There’s a couple studies showing that even though your body can’t process and remove PFAS and it just keeps accumulating, if you donate blood regularly you reduce the amount in your body by a bit each time. There are other slight health benefits to donating blood and lots of places will pay you for it. So if you can reduce your PFAS intake and donate blood you can slowly get rid of it. I use arch linux btw.
Zembla, a Dutch independent journalism TV program, made a video regarding a big PFAS cover-up in The Netherlands: https://youtu.be/y3kzHc-eV88. If you ask me, PFAS is worse the plastic.
Social media.
Agreed. Feels weird how normalied addictive social media behavior has become.
Also how impossible the thought of a social media free future already is
Sadly I can’t foresee a future where social media isn’t a dominant force. Like what could possibly displace it at this point? Only dismantling GAFAM could make it work.
Yes I am aware of the irony of posting this comment on social media.
We’ll surely invent something even worse ;-)
It’s already here: social media where the “society” we’re interacting with is mostly AI bots rather than other real human beings.
Social Media
Microplastics
I think we all know that ones bad.
Microplastics are the new lead, and screens are the new tobacco, in my opinion. Overuse of sugar in processed foods is the new version of how they’d cut food with inedible stuff like sawdust back in the day.
My mom become an avid anti-plastic person after watching videos and reading things about the damages that microplastics do to the health, nature and the planet. She does everything she can to avoid using plastic things!
When plastics were first introduced to consumers it was sold as indestructible, it will never wear out, never degrade! People were actually concerned at the time, why anyone buy disposable products that never break down, won’t they just pile up forever?
After much lobbying the concept of recycling plastics was introduced to help consumers stop worrying about all this indestructible waste and help push the sales of cheap plastic products. Your mom has the right idea, not buying it in the first place is the only way to drive demand down.
I’m not at the point in life where I can really avoid plastic, but I aspire to get there eventually.
Care to elaborate? Always looking for new tips to cut back on my personal plastic use.
Try to stop using disposable plastic as far as possible. No cups, bags, spoons, straws. Use reusable bags when shopping, and when shopping, check how the stuff is packaged. Get as much as possible of your stuff in glass bottles, and recycle them. Use waxcloth instead of plastic wrap. Buy larger packages. If you have a cheese or meat counter, get your stuff there. The might even let you bring your own tupperware.
The problem with waxcloth is you can’t clean it well enough, because no hot water. If I can’t use it on meat or dairy it’s no good for me. Also I can never get it to stay, maybe because I have cold hands. Reusable lidded takeout containers work for most food storage and go in the dishwasher, until they finally fall apart and get recycled. At least it’s better than using cling wrap.
Your comment sums up what my mom is doing. So I don’t think that I need to reply anymore. Thank you so much!
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If I’m being real, my only knowledge of trans fats comes from that one American Dad episode where Stan tries to smuggle them across state lines to make his food taste good again after they’re banned. Would you mind educating me on what the commotion was about them?
So trans fats are unsaturated fats (which we typically associate with good fats) but because of how trans fats are structured they contribute to LDL cholesterol, the bad type of cholesterol.
Ultimately if you consumes lots of it, it gets deposited into the walls of your arteries. This is a real problem in the heart since it can lead to a heart attack.
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That sounds like BS.
I mean think about it logically, if I only eat several kg of trans fats a day I’ll die of starvation? That doesn’t pass the sniff test.
“They basically sit in your liver until you die” - so if I eat 1lb of trans fats a week at the end of a year I’ll be 52lbs heavier and my liver will be the size of a toddler?
Maybe the body can’t efficiently use them like it does other fats for hormone production and such but they definitely count as calories and they’re definitely not just chilling anywhere in your body till you die.
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They’re illegal because people ballooned up to hundreds of pounds all stored in the liver??? How’d I miss that??
Come on, they’re unhealthy and not considered safe anymore but the stuff you said just isn’t true.
Microplastics and plastic related byproducts, like phtalates (which are connected with a decreased fertility in mammals)
I’m positive that the long term effects of these substances, that can be found in every link of the food chain nowadays, will be discussed a lot in the futuredeleted by creator
Plastics.
Yes, all plastics. Even bpa free plastics leak estrogenic chemicals into food, and fpod is often stored in plastic containers. Even milk cartons are lined with plastic.
Teflon(nonstick coated pans and pots) arr similarly terrible
Shoes with a raised heel is bad for your knees. (Easily measurably bad. Especially for running)
We’ve so much plastic waste that its now our most signifigant marker in the fossil record to say “humans lived here”.
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Vapes.
What will happen is one or another of the flavorings used will be safe to eat because of stomach acid and digestion, but inhaling it into delicate lungs will cause disease long term. Look up popcorn workers lung to see how a common butter flavoring in the past that was meant for eating on popcorn harmed factory workers breathing it in daily.
One of the existing vape flavors… or a new one… will eventually be shown to cause simular lung disease due to daily breathing it in never truly being studied. Someone with a favorite flavor will use it for years, like any smoker with a favorite brand of cigs, then probably get sick from constant long term exposure.
As somebody who vaped for a long time, I kind of disagree with this one. Of every method for quitting smoking, vaping was the easiest and most effective. It let me titrate down to eventually 0 nicotine juice, which let me stop altogether. I only very rarely vape anymore, I keep my mod around in case I am ever out drinking and get an urge, but it is definitely the reason I was able to quit smoking.
The popcorn lung thing is kind of an urban legend, there is no case of any vaper ever getting it from vaping, but diacetyl (the additive in question) has been discontinued in basically all juice just in case anyway.
The usual mantra in vaping communities was always to tell people that if you weren’t a smoker already, don’t start vaping. Is it better than smoking? Almost assuredly, but it’s still not going to be better than just breathing cleaning air. The recommendation was always as a transition away from smoking. It’s one of the few hobbies we would congratulate each other over leaving.
If you don’t vape or smoke already, don’t start though.
I’ve never thought vapes were not-dangerous. Do people really think that? I assume they’re safer than cigarettes but less-bad doesn’t mean good.
Yeah the sentiment surrounding vapes generally is that they’re better than cigarettes. Most people still want to entirely quit vaping, quit nicotine altogether.
Unfortunately, vapes are super enticing to younger people. Even ignoring the underage market entirely, young people love vaping. I’m in the army, so maybe my demographics are skewed, but EVERYBODY is vaping super high nicotine disposable vapes these days.
When I first started vaping, nicotine concrentations were commonly 3 or 6 mg/ml, now 50mg/ml is common.
Tremedous amount of lung damage in the near future. At the most common sense level it makes zero sense to inhale shit into your lungs.
Social media
Tiktok.
You said product, and I mean this legitimately. Not because of meme hate or hating on what is trendy, but because it is and has been a tool of the CCP. This isn’t really in question, and it was one of the first large platforms to entirely erase the idea of a timeline and fully devote itself only to a algorithm feed. One that bytedance has put their finger on the scales of many times.
The effect this has is hard to quantify, but the postmortem on it is going to be incredible as we unpack exactly how much this influenced the trends and politics among zoomers, and to what extent.
There’s a reason the algorithm is different in China.
This is the part that gets me. In China kids are educational content and are blocked during certain times of the day.
StumbleUpon didn’t have a timeline. It was just an algorithm.
Yeah but stumbleupon didn’t send people down radicalized pipelines. Not all algorithms are bad, some are though.
Have you used TikTok? - it’s the only mainstream platform with freedom of speech and mostly free discussion.
Reddit was far, far worse with all the bots, shadow-banning, deleted comments, etc.
I don’t think using the term “free speech” in this context is correct since free speech doesn’t extend to whether an app or website deletes your comments. Free speech just means the government won’t reprimand you.
Tiktok definitely takes things down, and I’d say that algorithm has done more harm than good in how fast it radicalizes people.
“Radicalises” how?
Just because they disagree with you?
It’s one of the few free forums, especially that is so large.
Just look at the Twitter files and Reveddit - they’re far worse if you don’t parrot the line of the US State Department.
The fact that you assume that the reason I used that word is because they disagree with me tells me you arent coming into this discussion with respect, so I’m going to have to-respectfully-decline to elaborate as I’d rather not get into the nuance of this topic with someone who evidently already has their mind made up.
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But is it sinophobia? It’s no secret that Xi Jinping and the party like to have companies firmly under their thumb. All you have to do is threaten a few execs. Or hell, a good chunk of companies have deference to the party baked into their charter.
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This is no secret. Maybe have a little skepticism towards your favored country’s claims that any opposition to the government is bigotry towards the people? They use that to maintain control over the population.
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Oh? And what about the party’s practice of disappearing execs when a company’s done something to displease the party? Are other governments not right to be afraid when the CPC exercises that type of control?
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Eh I disagree about the Sinophobia thing, they’re not expressing fear or dislike of Chinese people, they’re criticizing the chinese government.
Criticizing an authoritarian government =/= racism. People =/= their government.
In comments I’ve seen, the person you’re responding to has always resisted that distinction when it comes to China, though decidedly less so when wishing collapse upon the US. Speaking of the US, apparently our use of color for advertising is literally worse than the Holocaust!
You know that you could have written a comment that doesn’t make you look like a terminally online fucking loser?
++1 TikTok is only political because Americans want to own everyone’s data exclusively.
Vapes. The less regulated and underground production, which is easily finding its way to the high street, is building to be a repeat of the tobacco issues with cigarettes.
Surprised this isn’t higher tbh.
My mom switched from chain smoking regular cigs to vaping. While I’m glad she’s significantly reduced her lung cancer risk, who knows what it’s really doing?
It’s better than smoking but definitely still unhealthy, especially chain vaping like many do. You should talk to her, let her know you’re worried about her health, and see if she might try reducing intake. I quit smoking cold turkey three years ago. It wasn’t easy, I was extremely irritable for a month, but the cravings became bearable after that. An easy trade for higher quality of life and longer life expectancy with less wasted money.
While with tabbaco, as @fubo@lemmy.world said
the smoking/cancer connection was noticed long before peak cigarette smoking in the population. Prior to WWII, lung cancer was considered a rare disease. That changed with the mass marketing of cigarettes.
With vaping, lots of studies on pg/vg vaping was done and not much has been found. The UK gov supports it for years now. Most of the bad name of vaping caused by people who didn’t bother to research or people who confused it with the EVALI cases,which bought their products illegally and contained vitamin E
Yeah, the 2019-2020 vaping lung illness outbreak had nothing whatsoever to do with nicotine vaping.
It was specifically caused by black-market THC vape cartridges containing vitamin E acetate as a filler. This chemical was marketed to black-market vape makers as “Honey Cut”, intended to dilute or “cut” cannabis extracts while keeping the mixture thick so it looked good to customers.
Legit cannabis vapes don’t include fillers; a typical California dispensary vape cartridge contains ~90% cannabinoids by weight. Nicotine vapes are water-based rather than oil-based, so vitamin E acetate would not mix with them.
Vitamin E acetate sounds like a healthy thing — it’s a vitamin, right? — but it’s not. When it’s heated in a vape, it produces a variety of chemicals that would be entertaining to the organic chemist — but no good for your lungs. You don’t need to be inhaling alkenes or ketenes, to say nothing of carcinogenic benzene.
(Hey stoners! Don’t use black-market carts, just like you wouldn’t smoke “synthetic cannabis” aka “spice”. If you want to vape instead of smoking, and you’re not in a place with good dispensaries with lab-tested vape products, use a dry-herb vape and plain ol’ herb.)
Yep. the whole vaping industry got ruined because of this, and it wasn’t even related to said industry. I guess it’s just another example of what lobbying is capble of.
I’ve never used a nicotine vape product in my life.
I tried cigarettes once as a teenager and didn’t like them; tried a cigar once and threw it away.
I don’t like nicotine. I like beer and weed.
But the whole scare about nicotine vaping is utterly bogus.
Almost all of the harm of smoking is from the smoke — soot, tar, and carbon monoxide — and not the nicotine. Inhaling smoke is bad for you. It doesn’t matter if that smoke is from tobacco, or cannabis, or a forest fire. Inhaling smoke is bad for you.
If all the cigarette smokers could be switched to vaping overnight, keeping their nicotine doses the same but using vape juice rather than burning plants to get it, that would be a huge public health win.
The fact that regulatory agencies have gotten in the way of converting all the smokers to vaping, instead of gleefully endorsing such a change, is utter madness.
I said this in the other comment, but vaping is the one thing that helped me successfully quit smoking.
Is it healthy? No, at the absolute best it would be neutral. You shouldn’t be breathing anything other than clean air. However, I have little doubt that it is better than smoking. My lungs are in great shape now, and I feel just generally much better. If people want to continue to do research on longterm effects of vaping, great!
Are there issues about underage vaping? Sure, but that is a regulation/enforcement issue and shouldn’t be used to punish adults with. I have friends that went back to smoking because of vaping being made illegal where they lived, and you cannot convince me that is better for their health.
A lot of the issues we have had about vaping are regulatory issues with stuff like the Vitamin E incident, not a problem with the underlying concept.
