yep, microplastics are going to be an issue long term.
The origins of this problem can be traced back to the career advice given to Benjamin in the move The Graduate.
Whenever I fill up, its with unplastics
So what’s the answer?
If it is not plastics, it will be something else that kills us.
Humans have been living long and longer.
Someday, 50 years, 100 years, 500 years some great thinker will come up with a replacement.
Unless you plan to live off the grid. Then you will get bit by some unfriendly insect and be dead any way.
Answer is eliminate or minimize use of plastics.
Maybe it will be something else that kills us; but when science tells
you something, probably wise not to just ignore it.
Its in every fish we eat, if they can handle it so can humans
Even sooner than that!
George Bailey almost got into plastics in It’s Wonderful Life!
His childhood buddy got rich off of plastics and tried to get him in on the ground floor.
I’m guessing the Graduate "borrowed " that part from It’s a Wonderful Life
I am 100% pro science and eliminating any unsafe product is desirable.
Under current conditions I don’t know how we eliminate plastics from our lives. It is part of everything we do.
Including the very mechanisms we are using to communicate in this post.
This world operated for millennia without plastic, and one day we will likely do it again.
We used buggy whips for a very long time. Who thought they would mainly not be needed.
We used to get milk in glass bottles; same way with sodas. Now most all consumable liquids (milk, juices, water) come in plastics. That would be one step IF that is main source
of ingested microplastics. But going back to
all glass would seem difficult and costly.
More research needed in understanding the sources, enhanced microbes to degrade the microplastics from sources, and substitutes for food items would be beginning steps.
We need to defund the NSF and university research into “junk science” like this.
Probably a lot of fraud in all those institutions too. We don’t need their anti-administration negativity and the bad press for publishing this crap. Let the
private sector study this; even though they created it.
/s
Nano-plastics going to be a BFD. If chemical companies are ever found liable for
this, it will make the tobacco company settlements look super small in comparison.