alt Hacker NewsThe various "OMG MICROPLASTICS" studies always smacked of alarmism. No one has actually identified tangible harms from microplastics; it's just taken as a given that they are bad. So this fueled a bunch of studies that tried to find them everywhere. Even the authors of this study go to great pains to not challenge the dogma that microplastics are existentially terrifying. So I fully expect we'll still be panicking over vague, undefined harm whenever we find microplastics somewhere.
This type of research requires very little creativity or study design -- just throw a dart in a room and try and find microplastics in whatever it lands on. Boom, you get a grant for your study, and journalists will cover your result because it gets clicks. Whenever this type of incentive exists, we should be very skeptical of a rapidly-emerging consensus.
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Look up on fish and the consequences of microplastics on water animals. From starvation to sex change, microplastics wreak havoc there.
Just because you as a single consumer may not seem impacted by microplastics does not mean it's alarmism to suggest that it's a really bad phenomenon.
Beware of the confirmation bias, it works both ways. Reporting might be alarmist (it always is), actual research is largely not. This study doesn't discredit the entire field, it's pretty obvious that microplastics are everywhere and different types are harmful to an unclear extent, even if the amount might be overestimated in some studies.
>This type of research requires very little creativity or study design -- just throw a dart in a room and try and find microplastics in whatever it lands on. Boom, you get a grant for your study
Precisely, and mapping of that kind is entirely valid and required in huge amounts to have the full picture. Somebody has to do the grunt work.
> Even the authors of this study go to great pains to not challenge the dogma that microplastics are existentially terrifying.
What great pains are they going through? The study is a discussion of measurement techniques and makes no comment on whether they are harmful because that’s irrelevant to the paper.
This could just as easily be a paper on how wearing the wrong type of gloves results in overestimating calcium in soil. You’re the one injecting a political agenda.
Off the top of my head, wouldn't it be super easy to expose lab rats to microplastics and measure results?
No way this isn't heavily studies by now.
Edit: found a whole meta-study in like 30 seconds of searching: https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/public-health/articles/...
I’ll breathe tires a little easier today :)
Hey remember what happened with BPA? That was frustrating. We saw ostensibly legitimate concern, then manufacturers telling us they got rid of it. Maybe it would’ve inspired confidence if the removal adverts came with data sheets on the replacement chemicals.
Peter Attia (I know, but I trust his ability to synthesize medical research) did a whole deep dive on this and IIRC determined that for the most part, it wasn't a big concern for anyone with remotely normal consumption patterns.
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So, I think that while it's true that we haven't really demonstrated any tangible harms of microplastics, and there is a lot of alarmism around it, I think the concern is more rational than it might appear.
If it's true that microplastics are everywhere and in everything (which maybe that's now not actually the case), even a very small chance that there's some serious harm we're not aware of should be taken extremely seriously, because at this point there's (apparently) no practical way to avoid or get away from them, or to even stop producing them. And since they're such a new phenomenon in these quantities, we haven't really had the time to really drill down and figure out *if* there are longterm negative effects.
IMO, we should be intellectually humble about our lack of knowledge on these microplastics, and part of that humility should involve being cautious about introducing them to our bodies and environment.