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submitted 1 week ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
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[-] [email protected] 11 points 6 days ago

Boomers had/have microplastics and lead poisoning. This is not a conspiracy, it is just a fact.

[-] [email protected] 6 points 6 days ago

Did someone say it was a conspiracy?

[-] [email protected] 8 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago)

Can someone tell me what microplastics do to the body? I’m almost too afraid to ask at this point.

[-] [email protected] 23 points 6 days ago

That's the neat thing: nobody can. It's incredibly hard to devise a study that can show anything about it. There is no way to get a human without microplastics in them to get a control group, and by this point as far as I know there is no plausible theory to get a specific study.
Everyone kinda suspects that it can't be good for you, simultaneously there is zero actual evidence that something is ever happening. We don't know, and that's very frustrating.

[-] [email protected] 6 points 6 days ago

It seems like they'd be fairly inert. Although that's certainly no guarantee that they're not really bad for you. Much like inert gas, the danger could well be them replacing or getting in the way of something else.

[-] [email protected] 6 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago)

Veritasium has a video about it on YouTube.

It’s very informative and may just give you the fix you’re looking for

https://youtu.be/SC2eSujzrUY

[-] [email protected] 6 points 6 days ago

IIRC the one thing we are sure of is that they don't break down, nor do they get out. So you better hope they don't do anything bad on top of that

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[-] [email protected] 5 points 6 days ago

Don't forget the nanoplastics! These are even more hazardous!

[-] [email protected] 0 points 6 days ago

I still licked lead pain in the craddle, ate too many food preservatives and artificial colorants, ate too much red meat, too much fat, got micro plastics poisoning...

And all I have to tell is bad breath, flatulence that could strip paint off the walls and a stupid sense of humour.

[-] [email protected] 120 points 1 week ago

Millennials? More like GenX. We’ve been eating out of microwaved tupperware since the sixties.

[-] [email protected] 32 points 1 week ago

So have the millennials who were breast fed.

[-] [email protected] 19 points 1 week ago
[-] [email protected] 25 points 1 week ago

Mmmm, tasty math.

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[-] [email protected] 23 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

It looks like the cumulative total of plastics produced by the 80's was around 2-3 ~~trillion~~ billion tons, whereas now it's probably more like 20-30B.

https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/exports/global-plastics-production.png

[-] [email protected] 87 points 1 week ago

Yeah and also for Gen X, Gen Z, Gen Alpha. We all still alive and everybody gets microplastic in their balls and brains. Its for all ages

[-] [email protected] 7 points 6 days ago

Right? Haha 😂 Oh did we suddenly clean up the entire Earth from free roaming microplastics?

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[-] [email protected] 76 points 1 week ago

Honestly I don't think we're socially responsible enough to end something like lead poisoning these days.

[-] [email protected] 1 points 6 days ago

You'd have people saying they like the lead and deliberately putting more of it in. Pussy-ass liberals trying to take their god given lead away...

[-] [email protected] 57 points 1 week ago

Imagine trying to stop the hole in the ozone today. We'd have people spraying CFCs in the air just to spite the effort.

[-] [email protected] 23 points 1 week ago

As someone just old enough to remember, we did have that with CFCs. Might not have been super mainstream, and nobody who would have done it out of spite really had the disposable income to actually do it.

I grew up in a Fundamentalist Christian "cult" and I remember the adults around me "joking" about it all the time. I remember a Missionary to northern Canada visiting our church (in rural America) to try to raise support talking about the temperatures and joking that it's so cold that he wanted to stand outside with an aerosol can in each hand to try to bring on some global warming, and that getting a laugh from the congregation. You might think that maybe it was a "harmless" joke that maybe as a child I didn't pick up on the sarcasm, but there were absolutely adults there who fully believed that there was nothing humans could do to damage the earth, because God takes care of it. "And how dare the government and these evolutionists try to tell us how to live."

[-] [email protected] 42 points 1 week ago

for the past few months ive started to think we're like a couple years away from putting lead back in the gasoline

[-] [email protected] 22 points 1 week ago

Trump deregulating gas and paint to put lead back in both would be so unsurprising it won't even garner a reaction from me.

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[-] [email protected] 19 points 1 week ago

Someone will call not wanting lead poisoning woke and that will be that.

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[-] [email protected] 66 points 1 week ago

Nah, because every future generation will have it too.

[-] [email protected] 43 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

Bold of you to think that the microplastic is going to go away after one generation...

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[-] [email protected] 38 points 1 week ago

The pipes in the US still contain plenty of lead. Also, Covid brain damage. Tons of it.

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[-] [email protected] 33 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

Except that microplastics have been a major problematic thing since basically plastic become a popular thing, we just didn't know it yet back then. It's not like millenials invented plastic or popularized its use.

[-] [email protected] 10 points 6 days ago

The amount of it in our environment has been ever increasing though. There's more of it in the oceans, the soil, the rivers, the plants. The whole food chain and ecosystems are contaminated more than ever before.

[-] [email protected] 2 points 6 days ago

At what point does it become macroplastic? kiloplastic for the Europeans.

[-] [email protected] 26 points 1 week ago

Microplastics cause neurological damage and anti social violent behavior?

[-] [email protected] 29 points 1 week ago

We don't know about the longer term consequences yet, just like we didn't about lead.

Not saying it's a definite but I wouldn't be surprised.

[-] [email protected] 40 points 1 week ago

No, people knew lead was poisonous even back near Roman days. Though just like how humans constantly do stupid things for some benefit, they kept using it as a sweetener for ages.

Also mercury in relation to, "as mad as a hatter". It's just mercury was very good for the job.

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[-] [email protected] 24 points 1 week ago

I wonder what our neurosises will be.

[-] [email protected] 16 points 1 week ago

Depression, I would say. Same as how boomers are labeled as uncaring and sociopathic because of lead.

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[-] [email protected] 21 points 1 week ago

Everyone has microplastics, even newborn babies, and we have no sign of decrease in its use.

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[-] [email protected] 19 points 1 week ago

I'm crazy. Mark My Words. In 20 years, we'll have so many microbes capable of consuming plastic people will be bitching about their packages not being able to effectively protect their goods from spoiling. The goldfish has spoken.

[-] [email protected] 14 points 1 week ago

I've run across at least three separate articles now of researchers from across the world discovering plastic eating bacteria in the wild. Short plastic. Its days are numbered.

[-] [email protected] 1 points 6 days ago

Based solely on your comment, I'm looking forward to watching a scene where Christian Bale goes around Wall Street collecting mugs in The Big Short 2: Polymer Boogaloo.

[-] [email protected] 19 points 1 week ago

Don't forget about PFAS!

[-] [email protected] 18 points 6 days ago

Every generation alive has microplastics in them

[-] [email protected] 3 points 6 days ago

and probably will for at least a few generations unless we can do some major filtering of all mediums

[-] [email protected] 1 points 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago)

And literally nothing came of it, this whole thing is fear mongering and political theater.

[-] [email protected] 17 points 1 week ago

Luckily, for the younger generations, we'll probably just get cancer instead of becoming massive malleable assholes

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this post was submitted on 13 Jul 2025
576 points (97.1% liked)

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