You know that old saying: If it’s stupid but it works it’s not stupid? This is the proof that it is incorrect.
Used to?
Chalk one up for the good old US of A. Gotta take our wins where we can get em.
I used to use a facial scrub with the plastic beads. I look back and it’s like what the fuck, but at the time it was fine. Sorry world.
Chuckles, I am in danger
dam us government trying to prevent colorful toothpaste
Wtf is this meme border?
bordering on insanity
It’s that bullshit when they take a vertically oriented picture/video, stretch it and blur it to a 4:3 ratio, and center the content over it.
Imo a waste of bandwidth and computer power for people who can’t cope with the idea of vertical content on a horizontal screen, on a platform primarily accessed by phones anyway.
I remember when I found out that shit was plastic. I always assumed they were organic material of some kind, like the body scrubs with the crushed up walnut shell in it (which probably has fucking microplastic in it, too). So disgusting.
This is why we need to change how shit works. It shouldn’t go: company does some shit > fall out > government steps in. It should go: company has an idea > must get permission first from environmental agencies
Nah corporations really don’t give a shit at all, like all chewing gum is literally just plastic too and sheds tons of microplastics into your mouth as you chew it.
https://www.vice.com/en/article/rethink-chewing-gum-habit-essentially-plastic/
Plastic is an organic material though, so your assumption was correct.
The difference is in the definition or organic. When the average person thinks organic, they mean something that is or used to be alive. When a scientist think organic, they’re talking about carbon compounds.
Plastic are made from fossil fuels which are from primordial plants. So still organic according to your definition. Just a few hundred million years since it was alive.
Interesting. Always thought chewing gum was more like when you made “plastic” out of the caesin in milk.
You can buy chewing gum made from natural materials but it’s not the norm. Most chewing gum is made from mineral oil.
Also, chemically they are identical. Plastic made of a plant is still a plastic.
Nah it’s just rubbery dried chicle sap, no chemical refining like with oil
This is what it looks like
I can almost taste the six seconds the flavor added to that will last!
Five minutes of microplastics or a blink of flavor? Answer might just be no gum :(
Yeah no idea why this is so hard to achieve but it’s a very noticeable difference.
Yes really, still a polymer: it forms polyisoprene upon drying. You also find the stuff (synthesised from oil, yes, but chemically indistinguishable) in tires and condoms.
That’s a different plant
Plastic is an organic material, trees are mostly plastic (lignin, a phenolic polymer, cellulose a polysaccharide polymer, hemicellulose an heteropolysaccharide and suberin a polyester-like polymer).
The problem we’re having is a naturalistic fallacy crossed with the unpleasant fact that almost everything we touch sheds dust and powder absolutely everywhere. This along with spores and yeast and other dusts constantly enter our bodies.
Plastic is only of note because we made it.
Any problems beyond that is speculative and will requires ginormous gobs of grant money to actually answer with anything than precautionary principle-based FUD.
Hydrocarbon based plastic absolutely isnt natural, there are many different kinds of plastic in existence but overwhelmingly stuff from the last 50 years has been the
inorganic hydrocarbonnon biodegradable hydrocarbon type which doesn’t break down and is likely a endocrinologal distruptor & a carcinogen.inorganic hydrocarbon
Had just woken up my mistake! Hadn’t gotten to the coffee yet xd.
inorganic hydrocarbon
Hydrocarbons are, by definition, organic compounds made exclusively of carbon and hydrogen.
Do you know of any hydrocarbon that do not contain hydrogen nor carbon and that are relevant to this discussion ?
Care to not nitpick a slip of the mind (that’s already been pointed out and corrected) literally just after I had woken up and address the actual point?
current plastics not biodegradable is the same problem that trees had for 300 million years. I think it’s a matter of time before some yeast evolves the ability to eat plastic. Then all plastic will start to mold and rot like all other organic matter.
as for being “endocrinologal distruptor & a carcinogen”, yes so is a lot of other stuff, probably stuff in wood, again, like turpentine
We’re not going to ban all plastics until some company has a proprietary alternative that they can force us to buy by making all other products illegal to produce. But that new alternative doesn’t exist yet.
My advice, don’t eat electrical junction boxes
Ty for the response. I do agree we will likely wind up with some sort of plastic eating organism at some point, problem is how many centuries will that take. Might be a opportunity to apply gene editing at some point in the medium term future.
Fair point on turps but turps and other compounds from wood dont tend to linger in the enviroment for as long as plastic does currently.
Unfortunately any solutions will be taken by porkies and as you say regulatory captured into making our lives more expensive rather than for the betterment of humanity, should be govt ran labs looking into this sort of stuff not corpos with dollar signs in their eyes. Having saidthat some early stage alternatives such as a seaweed based biodegradable plastic could help hugely in the single use plastic department.
you get nitpiked because you are nitpiking a perfectly formulated argument
i assumed it was just glass or similar, maybe the same material as those moisture-absorbing silica packets
There are probably some with sand and other hard minerals, I think Dove had some soaps with aluminum oxide in it?
i’ve definitely seen things like that, i think mostly “artisanal” soaps with like ground coconut shell or something, but the thing is that it tends to look like shit.
I would much rather use that bar of soap than the mysterious liquid gels full of dyes and other junk. If natural tones are somehow gross and icky but a blood red goo that faintly smells of petro chemicals is fine then maybe we really are doomed as a species.
You go back a century or so, that bar of soap would likely have been considered a luxury product.
i don’t think soap with grit added would have ever been considered a luxury product, low-quality soap still looks way prettier
The grit exfoliates and makes your skin softer by removing dead skin. Definitely luxurious before soaps were more common.
Soaps like Lava and Gojo have pumice in them. Because sometimes your hands need an 80 grit washing.
For real though, Gojo soap seems to work the best for getting rid of grease and oil from machines. My guess is regular soaps don’t do a great job at carrying away the oil residue, but Gojo soap just sands down your top skin layer to remove it.
The pumice action definitely helps but I’m pretty sure gojo is also full of added chemicals to help the soap lift oils more effectively.
I kinda like the orange smell, too.
It’s not what microplasitcs are! Does anyone knows what micro is at this point?
Microbeads are manufactured solid plastic particles of less than one millimeter in their largest dimension.[1] They are most frequently made of polyethylene but can be of other petrochemical plastics such as polypropylene and polystyrene. They are used in exfoliating personal care products, toothpastes, and in biomedical and health-science research.[2]
To add to this, the definition of microplastic is less than 5mm. So yes, 1mm microbeads are microplastics.
Millibeads
Centibeads🐛
If these aren’t microplastics, what are?
“Micro” just means “small” in this case and doesn’t mean “microscopic” or have anything to do with “micrometer”.
The definition of “microplastic” according to NOAA: “Microplastics are small plastic pieces less than five millimeters long”.
1x10^-6 m.
Plastic gotta be this age’s lead/quicksilver.
It is. Along with PFAS.
The PFAS/PFOA controversy, is mostly about banning these commodity products so that the proprietary, non-commodity alternatives by western companies can become the only high temperature dry lubricant on sale.
Maybe in another 60 years we’ll have the same controversy about them !
No it isnt, its about the production precursors being literal poison for anything they get into with no chance of breaking down. Its a unusually harmful and persistive compound.
And the current goal is to ban them all
https://www.wcl.org.uk/transitioning-to-a-pfas-free-economy.asp
Leaving us only able to buy the proprietary alternative of an oligopoly, instead of regulating the production of this commodity.
End result, we pay for it all and get a degradation in quality.
Hey friend you know the chemicals they make those things from are like WILDLY carconogenic right? And that PFAs and their cousins last forever and don’t break down in the environment?
These chemicals are being banned because humans got too good at making super stable fuck-you-big molecules that just so happen to be wildly incompatible with anything that has DNA. These chemicals are literally everywhere with water treatment facilities having acceptable limits 2ppb or less. Yea, B, Billon. The thing with that amount though, is even THAT isn’t safe, its just regulable. Here’s an oversimplified video on the subject by Veritasium, the clickbait headline is just that. I believe this is also on nebula if you’d prefer to avoid youtube.
They should stop dumping it in the rivers
You should really watch that video. It addresses that point exactly. In short, they mostly aren’t, that isn’t the problem.
Dude it’s literally poison what do you want??? It also leeches into the environment extremely easily.
What’s the proprietary alternative?
More PFAS, but with a secret formula so nobody has to worry
some ptfe/ceramic/titanium/diamond metamatrial that tolerates way high temperatures, which you can use metal utensils on and is not as good as regular ptfe at stopping eggs from sticking to the pan.
But PTFE is used for more than nonstick pans.
Did you at some point read about how some of them, such as the ones used in frying pans, are unlikely to cause problems in the human body, and then completely stopped looking into it further?
It’s a massive group of compounds, some of which currently look to be quite safe, but a significant number of which also have fully verified dangers (especially some compounds required for production).
Yes, I read about it and the teflon on frying pan is explicitely NOT the problem. I understand that pointing to frying pans and saying “PTFE !!” is the attention grabbing thing to do. But there is no danger here.
The problem is the manufacturing plants leaking PFOA/PFAS into their surrounding environment !
Maybe lead with that, instead of the conspiracy angle.
That’s been well known for over 50 years, why do you think now, all of a sudden, this is becoming an issue now ? This is because there are new coatings, silicon based PTFE-free coatings and PTFE-based metamaterial that combine titanium, ceramic and/or PCD.
As the manufacturer invest in this new technology, they either restrict PTFE commodity manufacturers out of their market or merely stop funding lobbying that protects the PTFE.
This is not a conspiracy theory, simple emergent interests that do not require a coordination.
Abestos was used for millenias, and was known the miners a thousands years ago would succumb to a mysterious illness after working years in the mines… and it was just banned in the US in checks notes. Last year. Must’ve been big fiberglass behind it!
Cool.
But the reason you’re being downvoted, is that instead of commenting this, you made a comment that sounded like you were dismissing the dangers of PFAS, and dismissing it as the modern-day equivalent to lead, asbestos, and the like.
Which is what it is, and you clearly agree that it is.
Except plastic doesn’t really seem to do anything. It just “is there”. Unless you swallow enough of it to clog something, it doesn’t seem to do anything.
We’ve seens lots of “it might interefere with hormones”, but that part is always to be confirmed in the next research grant request and then we never hear about it again.
Plastics are a broad category. But specific plasticizers, like BPA, have been demonstrated to cause specific endocrine issues, up to and including a causal link to certain cancers, miscarriages, and other reproductive/immune issues. And it’s not just correlations being found, as the research is showing the mechanism of action by actually inducing the effects in vitro.
And so when a particular plasticizer has been shown to be harmful, the research goes into other chemically similar plasticizers to see whether they have biological effects, as well. BPS is another plasticizer that is being studied, as it is chemically similar to BPA.
So we haven’t shown that all microplastics are bad. I’m skeptical that these effects would extend to all plastics. But some common compounds that are present in many plastics are a cause for concern, and the difficulty in treating water or waste for microplastics in general means that some of those harmful compounds are present in lots of places where we’d rather not.
We moved from leaded gasoline to unleaded gasoline based on the specific dangers attributable to lead itself. We can do the same for the specific compounds in our plastics shown to be harmful. Maybe the end result is that we have a lot of safer plastics remaining. But your comment seems to suggest that we not even try.
I’m more concerned about useless and damaging, performative actions against plastic.
Of course what we need is plastic monomers that are neither carcinogenic nor hormone disrupters. We should stop dumping the stuff into the river. Poisonned blastic with bromine should be labelled in a was that makes it easy to identity. We should breed yeast that can east plastic and keep them in giesters.
I’m more concerned about useless and damaging, performative actions against plastic.
such as?
Just mineral or ground rocks work just as well. I hate my wife’s soft face scrub, i need that shit that feels like I’m scrubbing my face with sandpaper, to exfoliate well. They sell one that has ground up lava rock, i love that shit, and it makes me wonder why anyone ever thought plastic bits was a good idea
I feel like it’s just capitalism doing a capitalism. People are self-conscious about their skin, so you can sell them all kinds of crap.
Even a basic washcloth does a decent job with exfoliating, if you use it regularly. Rub your face dry with a scruffy towel, if you need more than that.But of course, there’s hardly any money to be made with reasonably priced products, so you won’t see TV ads for them.
They probably had some extra plastic to offload lol.
“What do we do with all these old bottles sir?”
My ex would use St. Ives “Apricot Exfoliant” or something, which has powdered apricot pits and walnut shells. Those are waste products that I wouldn’t expect to cause problems but who knows.
I wouldn’t be surprised if they cause issues in pipes. I work in building maintenance and when sand collects in a horizontal drain it causes issues. Kitty litter is the worst because it turns to cement inside the pipes. But over time the beauty products add up im sure
But lava rock grinds are not part of the industrial waste stream repurposed for profit. This is innovation!
Well, rocks in toothpaste would be very bad because they’d be harder than your teeth.
Harder? No. Enamel is harder than steel. It is more brittle though so don’t go chewing rocks.
Tooth enamel is ~5 on mohs scale. Quartz, the most common kinda rock (afaik), is ~7. You’re correct that enamel is harder than steel though, since it’s ~4? Disclaimer: all of these numbers are from a quick google search.
Fun fact, this is why we know ancient people used to make bread - the way they separated wheat from the chuff included dropping it on the ground, which led to sand being in the bread and consequently destroying their teeth over a lifetime of eating it.
Tiny bits of rock and shells is how ancient people kept their teeth clean, that and not consuming sugar every minute
Don’t like thinking about how much of that probably made it to my brain, organs, and muscles :)
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-024-03453-1
This study released last year based on samples from cadavers suggests there’s enough in your brain to make a plastic spoon
“this is not what we meant by brain plasticity”
Maybe they can recycle me into a plastic spoon then.
Turn my micro plastics into one of the old mc donalds coke spoons when I die and have everyone at my funeral use it to take a bump of my ashes.
There are ways to turn human remains into a juwel. Now human plastic spoons would be something new to put on ones shelf.
we could make 8 billion spoons with the right recovery recycling operations?
fuck yeah
Damn… yeah those samples suggest ~6–8mg of plastic per gram of sample tissue in the brains from 2024 😟 That would be like 10 grams in an entire adult brain if the distribution is even.
“Thankfully” it looks like the brain has the highest concentration of all studied organs 🙃
Sometimes I feel like my brain is a plastic spoon already
people passing close to a crematorium:
someone is burning plastic
You don’t like glitter in your brain?
Oh I’d somehow forgotten this era
That shit was in everything non solid for like 2 years
I still use a few profucts with a similar concept, though the beads are of cellulose or similar fiber as opposed to plastic. I’m not aware if they’re problematic or not, so I thought I’d comment in the hope that perhaps someone who feels strongly about these things might educate me if they are indeed bad for you or the environment or something.
Reasons we need more oversight and regulations for these corporate snake oil salesmen. This shit should be a crime against humanity and every damn company that put that shit into their products should be abolished.
we need more oversight and regulations
I think that ship has sailed
Reguwhat now?
And every single person who was part of the decision should be punished.
Call me crass, but we should tie them to a tree and pour molten plastic down their throat.
That’s not micro though?
No, but these beads pretty much go straight into the local waterways where they can very quickly break down into micro plastics. All so a human didn’t have to use a tool like a brush or a loofa to scrub themselves. Convenience at any cost.
The brushes and loofas also contribute to micro plastic pollution.
But they become micro as part of abrasion with your teeth.
Up to 5mm is still considered microplastics.
Big airsoft lobbying?
Seriously? That’s a lot of mm…
my microwave has been lying to me!?
This stuff still exists in my country, and the expensive toothpaste my mother bought is one of them 🙂
Please, do name and shame.
Inalways thought that those were like the crunchy exterior of chewing gum, but as little glitter pellet things
Chewing gum is plastic
https://www.vice.com/en/article/rethink-chewing-gum-habit-essentially-plastic/
yummy
The shell as well? Thought it was some kind of carbohydrate
Haha, my poorly googled current events assignment is highly relevant after all these years! Take that you dork try hards!
