469
Scientists in Japan develop plastic that dissolves in seawater within hours (www.reuters.com)
submitted 1 year ago by to c/technology@lemmy.world
86 comments fedilink hide all child comments
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] 24 points 1 year ago (4 children)

The catch is that it’s useless in most plastics applications, where you really don’t want it to dissolve easily. Probably more catches, but that’s the one I see right away.

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 4 child comments
    •
  • [–] -2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (3 children)

    Also probably gonna turn out it dissolves into smaller plastics, perfectly sized for penetrating the blood-brain-barrier.

    Edit: I get it, no new technology has ever had issues with safety and efficacy uncovered after entering mass production and being discarded with reckless abandon in our environment

    I apologize to the articles authors for my cynicism, it is clear from the article that nothing bad could possibly come from allowing this new plastic to dissolve in our oceans. It is nice to see plastic pollution has been definitively solved for the rest of time and we no longer have to worry about it.

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 3 child comments
    •
  • [–] 17 points 1 year ago

    If you read the article, you'll find that they claim it's broken down into something which is processed by naturally occurring bacteria. I would have preferred that they linked to an actual research article for details, but this is explicitly not one of these "degradable" plastics that just dissolves into microplastic.

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent