On my queue for this week.
We’re given a quick history of how plastics became more problematic when it was found that they could be made cheaply from fossil fuels, how ubiquitous those plastics now are, and how the pollution caused by making and disposing of them makes the material an environmental catastrophe before microplastics are even considered. We hear how petrochemical companies have spun the public myths about how easy it is to recycle plastics, while using their power and wealth to compromise governments’ ability to keep citizens safe: there is an extraordinary archive clip of a 2011 Senate committee hearing in which John Kerry forces a guy from the federal regulator, the Food and Drug Administration, to admit that its data on the toxicity of plastics comes from the manufacturers themselves. In terms of harms that were recognised and then largely overcome, comparisons are made with leaded petrol and tobacco, the difference here being that nowhere near enough harm reduction has taken place.
I’ve read quite a few studies involving micro plastics and Alzheimer disease, also dementia, usually involving laboratory mice, latest report below concerns samples from human samples. Considering that plastics only became intensively popular in the 1950, 1960’s, (I remember, most grocers/butchers,confectionery, bakers etc still wrapped food in stiff paper, when I was a child in the late 1950s early 1960s.) Makes me wonder what other effects it may be having on the human psyche. and if any studies cover long term statistics for these brain altering conditions.
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“Every time we scratch the surface, it uncovers a whole host of, ‘Oh, is this worse than we thought?’”
https://www.earth.com/news/human-dementia-patients-have-5x-higher-levels-of-microplastics-in-their-brain-tissue/