Are we becoming plastic people?

[LordOfWizards]

Studies have found microplastics – that is, pieces or fibres smaller than 5mm – in foods including tea, salt, seaweed, milk, seafood, honey, sugar, beer, vegetables and soft drinks. Tap water contains plastic. Bottled water contains even more.

Microplastic is clearly making its way into our bodies because it has been found in human poo.

Prof Ian Musgrave, a toxicologist at the University of Adelaide, says knowing if microplastics are harmful to humans is hard to untangle when we are exposed to so many other substances.

The study says a 100g serve of rice typically contains 3.7mg of microplastics if it’s unwashed, 2.8mg if it’s washed or 13.3mg for instant rice (in the microwaveable pouches). A single grain of rice weighs roughly 30mg.

There has been no definitive proof of harm to humans, yet. But the absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.

It’s on our plates and in our poo, but are microplastics a health risk?

The omnipresent plastic is rife in dust, rice, placentas and tap water, but experts say it’s hard to untangle whether it’s harmful to humans

www.theguardian.com

 

[BAYLOR]

There is likely going to be long term health Issues with this , it's just matter of time before it manifests.

 

[Montero]

Microplastics are blinking everywhere - including the arctic.

Plastic ducky anyone?

 

[farntfar]

Who was it who wrote that brilliant story a few years ago, about flesh and blood humans living in the clouds and a sort of underclass of people on the earth's surface (or in the sea?) whose bodies were partly flesh and partly plastic; increasingly so as time went by.
The uncaring overclass was still dumping its plastic waste on the surface.
It was one of our female members, I think. Jo or Juliana or Kerry? It might have been in the 300, but it seems too complex for that, so maybe in Kraxon.

 

[LordOfWizards]

I've been buying distilled water 1 or 2 gallons at a time (not hoarding it during the pandemic like some folks). I cringe when I see people buying these 24 pack (1/2 liter each) cases of "drinking" water. you're buying almost as much plastic as you are water!

Not that the distilled water has less plastic, but it is the most pure kind of water you can get, and it's the same price as the so-called "drinking" water".

 

[Raincloud Man]

I take the same approach to it as I do most things, even if we invent some high tech immortality solution during my lifetime, I'm nowhere near rich or important enough to get it, so I just drink my plastic and move on with my life. At least I have it better than the sea turtles.

 

[Robert Zwilling]

Micro plastic distribution is a democratic process powered by gravity which means everyone is getting exposed to it. Ironically, recycled plastic products shed micro plastic at a faster rate that virgin plastic products. At some point, there might be some kind of pollution free environment available by living on the room.

 

[Ray Zdybrow]

Eventually some organisms will take advantage of this freely available, durable material an incorporate it into their bodies as skeletons, shells or somesuch, much as calcium is used by many animals today. I reckon

 

[Robert Zwilling]

For years fire ants have been eating plastic insulation off of wires which can severely damage electrical equipment.

Some plastics leach out organic substances that are easy for bacteria to digest, kind of like baby food, which primes them to take on harder to diet naturally sourced organic matter. Organic substances just means that it has carbon in the formula, not that it is beneficial to to have it leaching out into the environment.

Bugs across globe are evolving to eat plastic, study finds. 18,000 plastic degrading enzymes have already been isolated. The game is afoot as the saying goes. The first bug that eats plastic was discovered in a Japanese waste dump in 2016. This article also says new research has shown that microplastics do harm human cells in laboratory conditions. The bacteria is traced by the enzymes they secrete. The enzymes are found in soil and water. The concentration of enzymes that break down plastic increases as the water depth increases because the concentration of plastic is greater the deeper you go.

Ocean gyres are collecting floating garbage and act as giant grinding wheels made of water and wind that are shredding ocean plastics into micro particles that rain down into ocean depths. The gyres could probably be viewed as giant garbage disposal units. I have deduced that the plastic in the gyres is getting ground up into finer particles simply because that is what plastic and entropy does. At first glance it appears there are far more quantities of larger plastic pieces on all the shore lines than is floating in the oceans.

You can see outgoing tides take stuff on the beach out into the water which means not all of it stays on shore. The tidal action coupled with the sand grinds down the soft plastic, creating very fine particles which ultimately become weightless and require no effort at all to be redistributed throughout all the oceans.

The plastic starts on land. It washes off the land into rivers and onto shore lands. But not all of the shoreline plastic is from local sources (regardless of where it was manufactured), some of it has traveled great distances and can even come from across the ocean. This must mean that the flow of plastic in the oceans is widespread and the shore lines are most likely not the final places for all the plastic. The plastic stuff temporarily stuck on the beach gives us an easy and cheap way to pick up the plastic waste. All countries should set up a beach and riverside plastic garbage collection service same as the service that picks up the garbage from our dwellings and offices every couple of days. It wouldn't be a bad job, hanging out or walking beaches or alongside rivers. You get paid for what you bring in, so if by chance you spend the day admiring the scenic view, no harm done, you just don't get paid.

If plastic eating bacteria really takes off because the plastic becomes an easy food source that could cause severe problems in the future. It could become something like plastic rust, which could put a damper on the plastic industry.

 

[BAYLOR]

I've been buying distilled water 1 or 2 gallons at a time (not hoarding it during the pandemic like some folks). I cringe when I see people buying these 24 pack (1/2 liter each) cases of "drinking" water. you're buying almost as much plastic as you are water!

Not that the distilled water has less plastic, but it is the most pure kind of water you can get, and it's the same price as the so-called "drinking" water".

I stopped by buying 24 packs of water a long time ago. I buy the gallon containers.

 

[BAYLOR]

And because of this all the plastic , a new species of man will arise, Homo plastic Creditcardus. Maximum unlimitedus who with a simple touch will be able to make financial transitions instantly .