A dream collaboration between 2 wonderfully evil #corporations, working hand in hand on the future we now live in:
"Is everything of plastic? - Almost!"
Are microplastics from car tyres contributing to heart disease?
"Add one more likely culprit to the long list of known cardiovascular risk factors including red meat, butter, smoking and stress: microplastics.
"In a study released Wednesday in the New England Journal of Medicine, an international team of physicians and researchers showed that surgical patients who had a build-up of micro and nanoplastics in their arterial plaque had a 2.1 times greater risk of nonfatal heart attack, nonfatal stroke or death from any cause in the three years post surgery than those who did not."
So it's not just the sedentary lifestyles that car-dependent planning encourages that's causing health issues.
And it's not just exhaust fumes either.
There's also the health impacts of microplastics, including from car tyres.
Worth noting as well that internal documents from the big oil companies show that they knew since the 1970s that recycling wasn't going to solve the problem of plastic pollution. They promoted it anyway: https://aus.social/@ajsadauskas/112064312364853769
“Microplastics have been found in every human placenta tested in a study, leaving the researchers worried about the potential health impacts on developing foetuses.” What are we doing to ourselves and why are our ‘leaders’ fighting their own stupid nationalist squabbles rather than saving humanity? #MicroPlastic
The skin of your laundry pods dissolve in the washing machine, right?
They dissolve into microplastic.
And wastewater treatment systems have no way to filter that out so the microplastics go straight into streams and the ocean.
Just pour your laundry soap out of a box or bottle.
Microplastic pollution affects a wide range of the planet's processes, from cloud formation to phytoplankton making our oxygen.
"From the evidence gathered, one can infer that #microplastic pollution plays a significant role in global warming and #ClimateChange and that MPs and climate change issues are inextricably linked. The current article bridges the gap between MPs and climate change challenges that were previously regarded separately."
Microplastics Found In 88 Percent Of Sampled Food, From Sirloin Steaks To Plant-Based Burgers
Nearly half (44 percent) of the identified microplastics were fibers, while a third (30 percent) were #plastic fragments. This is in tune with other studies that have shown plastic fibers from clothes and other textile products are the most prevalent form of #microplastic in the environment.
💡Must-read new review on current approaches using life cycle assessments (LCA), which largely fail to consider #plastics#EndOfLife, e.g. plastic particulate pollution, leading to risky policy-making, e.g. in the UN #PlasticsTreaty or EU context. #microplastic https://t.co/QjTbVkKnmO
A new technique used to try and accurately measure the nanoparticles showed surprising results, mainly that there was a LOT of plastic in bottled water, but that it was NOT the plastic from the bottle, but rather the plastic polyamide, used in the filters to purify the water.
Given that we can now assume that we're all consuming microplastics, and that we all have loads of the stuff floating around in our own bodies, the next question is So What?
As in, do we know what effects this has? Are we worried because we know it's harmful, or because we're assuming that it will be but we haven't figured out how yet, or are we worried because we simply don't know and past experience has given us reason to anticipate some negative long-term effect?
Is there any chance that it might turn out to be unimportant, that these plastics are mostly inert, or that our immune systems are able to neutralise or expel them over time? Or is it more likely that we're screwed?
"[Nanoplastics] are particles that are less than a micron in size.
Much of the plastic seems to be coming from the bottle itself and the reverse osmosis membrane filter used to keep out other contaminants."
Thanks for pointing to this article about #nano#plastic particles in bottled water. Because there appears a lot of tracking, fingerprinting and advertising on the website, here a link to the article via a proxy:
Really interesting presentation at #SEPAWA by Stefan Meinecke about mesocosm experiments at @Umweltbundesamt simulating #plastics abrasion and fragmentation into #Microplastic in water systems. The processes might be much faster than we think! Looking forward to the paper!
The good news: The majority of ocean microplastics come from one source, which means we could dramatically reduce their occurrence by focusing on just one solution.
Important side note: Tyre wear depends disproportionately on vehicle weight. Lorries and busses are worst. Bicycles are almost irrelevant. I.e. EVs and SUVs worsen the problem, because they are typically heavier.
The solution is: Make wheels of steel. Make roads of steel, too. Put a lot of lorries and busses in a row and connect them, so that only one motor and driver is needed for many cars. Electrify them efficiently with a catenary.
When I did screenprinting noticed some plastic containers made the paint go bad while others did not… which made me wonder what the difference was in the plastic containers
Non-stick pans are all bad as even tho chemicals have been banned, only slight changes have been made to the chemicals on new non-sticks #cancer#carcinogenic
[Diagram of fluoridated packaging Fluorinated Packaging During the fluorination process, fluorine atoms replace hydrogen atoms on the surface, effectively plugging any “pores.” Fluorinated Liquid plastic on@EE eeo0o0co0 HE 0000000 " = ‘e ooo0se " n eccccccce NENL _EEN ecccccce NI o i H eecccccoo l B n u e0000000 u eccccccoe o EEEE u 00000000 == eecccccoo l u n u o.o.o.o.o.o.o.o.o - u u u ecccccce NEN, _ENEN eecccccoco N u n n e0c00000 N n ecccccccoy E.mH 00000000 EEEE eccccccce N oo N ecccccce B o o B .o.o.o.o.o.o.o.o. 1 [0 u cccccccce NEE, _EEN ecccccce BN o i H eecccccoo u coeesssee N = um = u eoccccce N o n ] DOOOOOOOCY ] u eoc00esee N = = u ecccccce NEN, _HNEN ecocc0c00 0000000 - u eeocccoe =. ~ = High-density polyethylene, or HDPE, is the most commonly fluorinated type of plastic. No requirement exists for labels to indicate whether a given container has undergone the process. Air Products’ expertise was in-mold fluorination, which introduces fluorine oac a¢ confainere ocet made Brown and ](https://media.zeroes.ca/media_attachments/files/111/148/790/711/331/725/original/04ba36f08b5744b1.jpeg) Diagram of un-fluoridated plastic A red & black photo of silhouette of common household product that most likely gone through the fluoridated process
#Microplastic brain infiltration could also decrease glial fibrillary acidic protein, GFAP. “A decrease in GFAP has been associated with early stages of some neurodegenerative diseases, including mouse models of #Alzheimer’s disease,as well as depression.” 👀
“Ubiquitous” – Scientists Discover That the Oceans Release Microplastics Into the Atmosphere (lighthouse-eco.co.za)
New research identifies the composition and origins of the microplastics.