• Nalivai@lemmy.world
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      5 hours ago

      That’s the fun thing about all this. Nobody knows. Is it much? Is it nothing? Is it dangerous? There is no people without microplastics in them, there is no way to have the control group for an experiement.
      Everyone kinda suspects it can’t be good, nobody has any fucking idea is it really

      • saimen@feddit.org
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        5 hours ago

        I mean they could set in relation to the absolute values. Does a person who doesn’t drink bottled water ingests 100 or 100.000 particles?

        • Nalivai@lemmy.world
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          3 hours ago

          Oh, that’s measurable. What isn’t exactly measurable is what ingesting whatever number of particles does to you

      • BanMe@lemmy.world
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        4 hours ago

        We know some of the effects, like endocrine and cellular disruption, which should be damning enough but the media likes to make it sound like microplastics may not be bad, people are being alarmist, etc. Because the media is owned by people who would be negatively affected by a plastic ban. Much like how we know tire and brake dust is a cause of autism, but no one is willing to put that in a headline.

        • village604@adultswim.fan
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          3 hours ago

          The link between tire and brake dust to ASD isn’t a concrete causation yet. The papers do show a correlation, yes, but that isn’t the same as definitive proof of causation.

          For example, areas with higher tire/brake dust will have higher vehicle traffic, so it might be some other pollutant vehicles produce.

          • Telodzrum@lemmy.world
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            32 minutes ago

            Most public health policy (and hell, most of medicine) is based on correlation. Causation isn’t generally needed and sometimes it’s not even possible to prove.

            • humorlessrepost@lemmy.world
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              13 minutes ago

              Sure. But they were responding to the claim that “we know tires and break dust is a cause of autism”. Not “there seems to be a correlation, so maybe we should err on the side of abundant caution and treat it as if it’s causal when drafting public policy.” The correction was warranted.

    • confusedbytheBasics@lemmy.world
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      4 hours ago

      From the article, this might help:

      Sajedi reviewed over 140 scientific papers to determine the effects of plastic bottles on the human body. She found that people ingest an average of 39,000 to 52,000 microplastic particles per year from food and drinking water, and those who use bottled water on a daily basis ingest nearly 90,000 more microplastic particles into their bodies.

    • Lemminary@lemmy.world
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      4 hours ago

      I think they should be presenting that as particles per liter. At least the chemists among us would know, and they’d hold up their hands and say, “about this much!” /s