I’ve been more and more conscious about microplastics. I was not aware that the laundry and dishwasher pods are just plastic which then goes into the water system.
What can be done to prevent microplastics?
I bet the bigger impact/microplastic culprit is the clothes themselves.
That’s a really good point. It’s unfortunate that polyester tends to be the go-to cheap option for clothes
I just hope we can swap them out for hemp ASAP… I really want to get to the point where hemp is only a few bucks more and an elimination of corn subsidies along with a virgin plastics tariff could go a long way
You can find cotton really cheaply as well! You just have to look a bit harder for it
There’s so much clothing already made that, with the exception of underwear or socks, you could assemble a large and diverse wardrobe of good quality plant fiber clothes entirely from 2nd hand clothing bought for as cheap or cheaper than you’d find new polyester stuff. Thrift shops, Vinted, Ebay, Poshmark etc have tons of good stuff for cheaper than retail.
Not only that, but aside from fossil fuels, what’s the next worst culprit of greenhouse gas emissions? Fashion. Our practices in producing cheap, poorly made replaceable clothes and not making the effort into at least splashing out into clothes that last longer and maybe even repairing what we’ve got is a huge problem.
Most pairs of shoes I buy often don’t last longer than 3 months. And when I do finally get one that lasts longer I wear them till the soles fall out of them. My current pair I’ve had for at least 2-3 years.
What the heck are you doing where shoes only last 3 months?
Don’t forget to check out your local cobbler! What you really want in good shoes are good uppers (the main body of the shoe). The soles have always and forever through history been meant to be replaced after a while, since it’s something you walk on every day.
With some nice leather uppers and a good local cobbler, and you can keep a pair of shoes going for quite a while :)
I guess I need a second set of shoes so when I send my old ones off to the shoe repairer I still have something to wear.
That’s my problem now, Ive only got one good-ish pair, and they ain’t leather
Leather was just an example I gave off the top of my head, since it’s notoriously sturdy, but good shoes by no means need to be leather! Lots of good shoes come in all sorts of materials, so if a pair is treating you well (or it’s all you have), having them resoled when the bottoms wear out could be a good option.
Why worry about something I can’t control. The sack of meat I call a body will only take so much abuse from the world’s oligarchs before it gives up…their bodies too.
I can rearrange me life to the most extremes, but my neighbour will still burn garbage and consume twice as much as I ever will within a week. There’s no stopping this until companies are held accountable and the rich are jailed, which we all know will never happen.
Spoken like a true person under 40
I don’t get it. Not worrying about things you can’t control is an “under 40” take? It seems like a sane human take regardless of age.
The “why worry what I can’t control” is the under-40 part, but to be honest I initially considered under-30.
But by 40 you’d more likely than not have or care about children, and then you’d be worrying more about the the world you leave for them. Since they’re always copying you, you’d be more aware that every action has consequences, and that includes cynicism (especially since, by 40, you’re more likely to accept the idea that you don’t know everything).
Maybe by then it’d be in your self-interest to make the world better even by little increments instead of wearing sarcasm like a cloak of invisibility.
Because many of us were thrust into an extremely fucked up world where caring all the time will give you anxiety and leave you feeling hopeless. It’s much more productive to focus your efforts on things you can control instead of being upset about the things you can’t. I’m very conscious of the world I leave behind. I respect nature, don’t litter, don’t own a car, limit my meat intake, and most importantly I’m not having children. All of these things will contribute to a better world, but they don’t require me to care about anything outside of my control.
This has nothing to do with age, and everything to do with trying to be okay in an increasingly more depressing world. I just want to exist and not dread everything all the time.
Okay, so let’s blame boomers for it, shall we then?
Would it have been better for you in the 60s, with the Cold War? 50s during the Red Scare? Hope you’re not a writer…
How about the 40s, with WWII? 30s & 20s, with the Great Depression and the Dust Bowl? Maybe the teens - nah, WWI. How about the poverty, plague conditions (a la Sinclair Lewis) and the diseases of the early Industrial Revolution? No? Okay - how about the agrarian 1800s, but then there’s slavery and civil war… and on, and on throughout history.
I hate to say it, but comparatively we’re in a Golden Age - and it is decaying. We celebrate billionaires like they’re rock stars and re-elect politicians who do nothing for the working man (and woman), but instead go on fake crusades that serve no-one but their self interests. Wokism, the rights of eggs, guns before people, and today no divorce if you’re pregnant - it’s like the Red Scare all over again, and anyone who doesn’t align with it is an “Enemy of the People” - except it’s the actual people that suffer.
It’s not a Generation - every generation gets dumped into the shit the previous one made - it’s the Politics. When some politicians take one half of us and then point at the other half and say “they’re why you suffer”, it’s a lie. We fight amongst ourselves so they can prosper.
Fight, by all means, but fight for better representation and make sure they stick to the promises they make. And not just representation in our politicians but also in work. Unions can and have been a force of good for the average worker - support them so your one voice can make a difference.
Fight the good fights. Don’t waste your time fighting each other for scraps, for lies, for someone’s else’s power.
I wasn’t blaming it on anyone. I was just explaining why so many young people, myself included, choose to not give any thought to things they can’t control. It’s not worth the mental energy and will make you depressed and miserable. I’m all for fighting for things that can be changed, but there’s only so much one person can do. Prioritizing what one can give effort to is a much better way to go about it than stressing out about everything wrong with the world.
Not to berate you, but your response is as if this is something new for your generation. We all go through this shit unless we’re insulated from it by daddy’s money or power.
Is it worth your mental energy to fight for change? I’d say it is - over time, it’s the only thing that has worked. Letting it slip for someone else to fix is exactly what screws us over, generation to generation.
Hang in there - we’re all in this together. As I said before, fight the good fight.
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No, thinking that the missing ingredient to solve microplastics is to punish powerful people, is the under 40 part.
So being a capitalist bootlicker is a monolithic feature of the over-40 crowd?
Ok boomer.
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Just because you’ve learned some new words doesn’t necessarily mean you can string them into a cogent sentence… ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
I’ll take that as a yes, boomer.
Or should I say bootlicker?
Oh, have you got a life of regrets to come.
Enjoy!
Ah yes climate doomerism. “The Earth is going to become uninhabitable, but there’s nothing anyone can do about it now so I’ll just keep on keeping on”. Classic!
I never said nothing cant be done…
True, you said “Why worry about something I can’t control”. Paired with “I never said nothing cant be done” gives me the impression that you think something can be done, just not by you.
If you don’t think you can, who do you think could?
It isn’t going to be just one person that will motivate change, it will have to be a bunch of people. You could be one of those people, but I don’t think those people will have much success if they maintain the “Why worry about something I can’t control” way of thinking.
If all the people with a brain who give a shit stress themselves out into having health issues and heart attacks, what are we left with?
Health issues and heart attacks.
I assume you mean the clear plastic around the pods that gets sticky when you touch it with wet hands. Relevant YouTube short with Hank Green https://youtube.com/shorts/mm997MpLNeA?si=ZdBiX7ZTjbpLQMLS TLDW: you don’t have to worry about this kind of plastic it is water soluble and turns into water and carbon dioxide when burned I believe.
Yes I am worried about microplastics in everyday things, for example drinking water from my tap. I am also worried about using plastics for anything food related that is heated up. As such i have removed all plastic containers in our kitchen that would be used near or with heat. Any containers remaining is only for cold foods and dry storage.
Hank Green makes me feel slightly better about the laundry/dish pods. I love that guy and he’s wicked smart
I still wouldn’t use them for dishwashers. They’re overpriced and usually are worse than a standard detergent https://youtu.be/_rBO8neWw04
Aren’t laundry and dishwasher pods basically gelatin? Which isn’t plastic, it’s made from animal collagen.
Edit: I have educated myself, and it’s PVA; which is essentially wood-glue. PVA is a biodegradable acetate which dissolves completely in water.
It seems that some are made of PVA. It is disputed how damaging PVA is in the water system. New York is considering a ban on it
Considering the overwhelming majority of microplastic in water comes from car tire dust probably nothing until transportation changes worldwide.
This is correct, but there are really 2 main sources, tire dust and synthetic fabrics (polyester).
The rubber tree is endangered so I wouldn’t recommend switching away from synthetic rubbers for tires, not without another replacement. But we have a lot of alternatives to polyester, we could start moving away from that material. It just takes the will to do it.
Not much I can realistically do about them. Consumption on my level has no measurable effect. So, no. I’m going to die of a bowel explosion in a couple decades anyways, according to the cards. If there’s plastic, so be it.
Don’t microwave your food in plastic containers. Pretty easy way to cut a chunk of microplastics from your diet.
Also evidently Ziplock is one of the only brands of plastic storage bags that don’t contain pfas.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2024/mar/14/plastic-sandwich-bags-pfas-chemicals
I think that being informed can help dilute the worry. Here’s what I’ve learned:
Most microplastics found inside humans come from synthetic clothing followed by car tires. Theres a great Veritasium video on this. Plastic cookware is also a consideration.
Food & Cookware
Don’t buy dishwasher pods, they’re worse for the environment (plastic waste) and worse for your wallet than just a regular fluid container. Both fluid container and pod container are plastic so theres not much improvement to be had there.
My friend with a Chemical Engineering degree tells me that the plastics are stable chemically, and insufficient evidence exists to deem them harmful when left alone in cool temperatures. HOWEVER, unreacted precursor chemicals and thermosets are highly reactive, and new plastics come still coated with this. New car smell? Thats unreacted precursor, and it’s very harmful. Additionally, plastic cookware also gets hot, breaking it down slowly, and potentially making it harmful.
Avoid plastics and “non-stick” coatings in cookware.
Clothing
First thought is to avoid synthetic clothing, but theres a catch… Synthetic clothing is significantly better at blocking harmful UV light from the sun. For example, polyester & Nylon UPF is about 30-50+, whereas cotton is around 5. UPF = SPF generally. For this, I prefer wool (UPF ~40) or denim (UPF 1000+ off the chart). However, thats hot, so using some tight knit polyester shirts is a must in warm climates. Many shirts from retailers like REI have this stuff. So far, the ones I own have never shed noticeably, though that may change.
Why am I talking about sun protection? Remember, the goal is your health, not fearful avoidance of one harm that subjects you to another.
For all fabrics that aren’t expected to protect from the sun, natural fibers are preferred. Included is bedding, towels, bathrobe, pajamas, casual clothing, socks, etc.
Other thoughts
For all of this, my friend says that I probably don’t need to worry, and I have never seen convincing evidence that microplastics are harmful inside the body. Yet, I operate as if it were proven, because I don’t want to risk reading that I’ve been poisoning myself ten years from now.
Detergent pods?
Boy are you about to lose 81 minutes of your life that you’ll be happy to waste: https://m.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLFOQW4J4mT3E4f_Y6O7H4OFq2SXKpWLF2
I don’t even need to click the link. All Lemmy users (including myself) just share one personality.
Technology connections huh?
Edit: yup
Great watch! Never knew I wanted to know so much about dishwashers
I really like that guy from the videos, so if you do, too, also check his video about a 50 year old toaster out! (It’s cooler than any toasters we have nowadays and I want one) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1OfxlSG6q5Y
I had one growing up. My sister has one now that she found in a thrift store. They are awesome.
maybe I should start checking thrift stores around me as well, hmmm… I doubt I’m going to find one of these seeing as I am in germany lol
edit: actually looks like there are a bunch available on ebay. I really should check those thrift stores around me…
Yes. Almost half of all microplastic particles are fibers from synthetic clothing. So I avoid buying clothes that are not made with natural materials. I also avoid single use plaatics as much as I can and recycle as much as I can.
I keep hearing random statistics about sources of microplastics and have no idea what to believe at this point. Just yesterday I saw something saying that 78% of microplastics come from tires.
That’s why this is such an issue, that’s 128% microplastic, just between those two things!
Well tires and textiles are the two main culprits.
Same. I reduce usage when I can. If not, then I try to at least reuse it (such as a plastic bag). Last resort is to recycle.
Unfortunately, plastic recycling seems to largely be a scam (in that it doesn’t actually get recycled)
Yeah, very little plastic actually gets recycled but its better than none of it.
I think the issue is that people feel empowered to use plastic because they think it ultimately will be recycled.
NPR has done various reporting on this, but essentially the players in the plastic industry have long known that plastic recycling did not work but they actively promoted it (knowing that it would increase plastic usage)
The producers should also be made to collect their waste, or pay for the waste produced so it will be processed properly.
Which they would undoubtedly let the customer pay for when buying their clothes
Yes, so the prices should reflect their actual cost. More natural products would then be cheaper.
Refuse, reuse, recycle is exactly the mantra you’ve unwittingly mentioned. We should be refusing things where possible, it does need legislation to prevent the production of harmful materials in the first place though.
I found a source that supports your “almost half” number for microplastics contribution from synthetic clothing.
The source is a little lacking in that they don’t have real numbers for synthetic textile contribution to microplastics, just the overall contribution of textiles to micropolution, but they do talk about the relationships between the two.
I do my best to minimize micro plastics but also try not to worry about things I can’t control. That cat is already out of the bag, micro plastics are inescapable. The silver lining this study show that they aren’t that dangerous and its relatively easy for the body to get rid of them over the course of a month. While obviously its hard to say about long term toxicity it seems that life is at least generally resilient to it.
If I may add one personal anecdote. My parents were born in the 60s and 70s. They chain smoked cigarettes for many decades before their health finally caught up with them. Yet somehow they resisted the numerous toxins and carcinogens and tar they exposed themselves too every moment of the day. Maybe they are just really lucky but also maybe living things that got this far in the evolutionary tree already have expetience in biologically adapting to survive. Our cells aren’t such easy pushovers to die over any and every little changes in the environment or new chemical players introducing themselves in the game of life.
I mean, every person who has died from cigarette related lung conditions might disagree that we’ve evolved past it. That’s just survivor bias.
But also, micro plastics can get past the blood brain barrier and as far as we know, there’s no way for our bodies to clean them out. Nano plastics are also getting imedded in lung tissue. We don’t know yet the repressions of this but I avoid buying plastic any time there is an alternative. Yes, it’s unavailable that we consume it, but that doesn’t mean I’m going to bring it into my house.
These days plastic products are sold at huge profit. It blows my mind to see a polyester shirt and a cotton shirt selling for the same price when the polyester probably cost a couple cents to produce.
My siblings and I often marvel that we survived growing up in the 1950s and 60s. DDT, leaded petrol, lead paint, asbestos fake snow, most adults smoking like chimneys, coal fires… My brother recently got through a type of leukaemia linked to the glue he used to make model planes.
On the other hand, plastic was rare back then. Containers were metal, glass, wood, ceramic. Shopping was carried in string bags or wicker baskets. The butcher wrapped meat in paper, lined with a sheet of waxed paper if it was bleeding. When plastic arrived big style it was cool, convenient, modern. In the 70s everyone had Tupperware - argh, those parties…
This was all in New Zealand btw, something of a conservative backwater. The Australian time zone joke ran: “If it’s 7pm in Sydney, it’s 1956 in Auckland.”
Go to any VA hospital. Some people can live through being shot. Some people can live a full life with their legs blown off. Ask them about the “unevolved” people who couldn’t handle loving with a bullet hole in their body.
Go to a rehab facility and ask people what it’s like when most of their cells find a way to keep living.
Go to a graveyard and ask how many people didn’t survive lung disease or smoking related cancer.
Yeah it’s a bit of a buzzword, there’s no real evidence yet that it’s a problem and a few areas we’d expect to see them already - plastic factory workers and similar seem to be no less healthy than counterparts in other industries for example.
It feels bad hearing micro plastic is found on ocean floors but really it’s just going to vanish under a layer of other creatures trash like shells and bones or the dirt drifting in the currents until it finally settles. We need to look after the planet but it’s worth remembering she’s a tough old egg.
I’m happier to live in an age of micro plastics than lead and asbestos and extreme smog.
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I would highly recommend getting a UV flashlight with a 365nm wavelength. That wavelength makes leaded glass easy to identify and glow blue. I got one and lead is still very much prevalent in a large amount of drinking glasses that I shine it on.
China still doesn’t really have restrictions on lead and brass plumbing fixtures in America still had 8% lead as recent as 2014
Yes. I usually join several cleaning groups per year, cleaning thrash from nature. I also don’t buy cheap plastic clothing (basically stop caring about fashionable trends) and repair as much as possible. I think about packaging when buying stuff, which I btw also limit as much as possible. Our waste stream is extremely low, with 95% going into recycling and upcycling.
I live a comfortable modern life, these are minor adjustments everybody can and should be able to make.
Always keep in mind that apathy and fomo are part of capitalist consumer ideology.
I don’t want to assume your economic situation, but it seems like limiting in this way is only possible from a privileged position.
I’m absolutely not in a financially privileged position, income wise. I’d say I’m in the bottom 30th percentile. Far less than median income.
My privilege is living in an affluent western country with affordable healthcare. And only if you’re outside of the western world could I understand having to make different choices.
And by the way… Shouldn’t especially affluent people be making these choices? Why the hell would we force homeless people to only buy linen. It’s the people who make the most who have the highest impact.
At some point in your life you realize that you can’t worry about things you don’t have control about
Nothing can be done to prevent microplastics. They’re already out there.
The problem will solve itself via microbiology. Organisms will evolve that eat plastic and then it’ll be “over” (by which I mean there will be a constant, but not increasing, amount of microplastics in the environment).
In the meantime, our health will suffer and hopefully our medical technology will expand to handle the negative outcomes.
Our civilization relies too heavily on plastic. And that’s not a bad thing. It has its drawbacks, but plastic is also super useful as a material and it’s part of what we are.
We aren’t just Homo sapiens any more. We’re Homo sapiens cybogified. Giving up plastic means giving up what we are. Going back is an illusion that we create for children so they can have an environment that mimics our environment of evolutionary adaptedness. In the real world, the world that an adult by definition engages with, change is a constant.
We have filled the world with plastic and there’s no way in our power to get rid of it. But nature has a way. Life has a way to handle it, and it will.
It takes a very long time for evolution to adapt to changing environments. We’ve littered the planet with microplastics in less than a century. I’m not sure it can adapt that quickly.
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There are already plastic eating bacteria
So at least there’s that
There are, but it’s more of a question of how quickly they could go global and counteract the microplastics.
All I’ve ever heard about microplastics is that everyone is filled with them and that they are everywhere.
What I haven’t heard is why that is a concern. Is it going to affect my health in the long run? When? How much do I have to have consumed for it be an issue?
Even if we identify those issues, can it be removed? Will it make a difference?
For such a ‘everyone is now worried about this’ type problem, I never once heard why they’re concerned. I suppose I could look it up, but I’m surprised that all of the discussion is about the issue existing, but not why it’s an issue to begin with.
The reality is that we do not know what the long term effects are. But nonetheless, without knowing what the consequences are, we managed to contaminate most of the planet including our food and water supply with them. Thats what is worrying because there are many cases where we did something similar with disastrous consequences.
A recent study indicated they appear to contribute to strokes and heart attacks.
Exactly my take. “Plastic” is a huge word covering thousands of compounds. I’m no chemist, but all the plastics I deal with day to day are inert, which is much of the reason we use them.
I’m absolutely in favor of reducing single use plastics, but there’s so much plastic in so many things that I can’t imagine existing without it. People are rather unreasonably of the “plastic bad” mindset without considering what the alternatives could be.
Not everything can be glass or wood/wood-like substances. Metal has its own environmental concerns. What else is there?
That some of those billions of profits were invested into finding better solutions.
Plastic at the microscopic level, if they aren’t doing anything chemically interesting, really ought to function about like “rock, but light”. Most organisms don’t run into trouble because there are tiny bits of rock in the world, so I would expect tiny bits of plastic not to be a huge problem. Which is sort of backed up by how we have noticed microplastics everywhere and we haven’t seen huge problems resulting from it (most people are still alive, most children still develop to adulthood, etc.).
But it’s entirely possible that some of these plastics are not chemically inert, and that they emit chemicals that do exciting and unwanted things in people’s bodies. If we can’t keep our plastics from becoming microplastics, we probably need to discontinue the manufacture of non-implantable plastics, since all the plastics will end up in someone’s body at some point.
And it’s also possible that the microplastics physically do do something interestingly bad. I think there was a recent study to this effect on heart disease. But at this point, that’s the question we need to be asking. How many or what kind of microplastics does it take to give a ferret epilepsy? Not “are there microplastics in my all brands of peanut butter?”
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