People eat at least 50,000 plastic particles a year, study finds - Sensationalist Headlines

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/jun/05/people-eat-at-least-50000-plastic-particles-a-year-study-finds The average person eats at least 50,000 particles of microplastic a year and breathes in a similar quantity, according to the first study to estimate human ingestion of plastic pollution. The true number is likely to be many times higher, as only a small number of foods and drinks have been analysed for plastic contamination. The scientists reported that drinking a lot of bottled water drastically increased the particles consumed.

https://files.facepunch.com/forum/upload/716/ae99bc90-12c5-41f9-8829-03f4fafcdc4f/114841585-baby-baboon-eating-plastic.jpg https://files.facepunch.com/forum/upload/716/c7b1ee1d-4105-4143-bcf1-396ffca2ae4b/tortoise-eating-plastic.png https://files.facepunch.com/forum/upload/716/6df024e3-2c6b-4890-8533-a14850ceae08/76172461-indian-palm-squirrel-eating-plastic.jpg https://files.facepunch.com/forum/upload/716/8f91030e-ecbc-4367-b306-5e917f65c7ab/istockphoto-521027085-1024x1024.jpg https://files.facepunch.com/forum/upload/716/22bee791-1d70-43d0-bb05-a0305cd96f48/74789363-long-tailed-macaque-monkey-eating-plastic-bag-in-bako-national-park-in-borneo-malaysia.jpg The cycle of life

https://youtu.be/YcW7ttZfZ8c

Of course, we being the smartest species alive, will continue to ignore things that we feel can be "safely ignored", so everything that doesn't explode immediately and instead builds up over time

Basically, everything in the god damn world is going to end up with you ingesting plastic and there isn't a damn thing you can do about it. So just live and hope nothing bad happens is your only option, basically.

And there's nothing anyone can do to stop me

So we should be wearing gasmasks all the time, unless we live in rural areas, only drink tested clean tap water, and a strict diet of certain tested foods

Well if you travel to countries like India or Nepal, there is no way for you to avoid bottled water

is 50k particles supposed to be a lot? and a YEAR at that? isn't that actually a tiny percentage of the number of non-microplastic particles we eat?

say what you want, you'll never stop me from eating lego

The problem is that at least some of these microplastics will stay in your body. And accumulate.

Hah HAH! I knew all these years of sitting naked in front of the computer wearing nothing but a GP-5 covered in cheetos stains would pay off. Take that, mom!

its likely everybody in the world has some detectable level of the teflon precursor C-8 https://www.wvpublic.org/post/c-8-contamination-spreads-around-us

I imagine this being one of many things future generations will look back on in horror. We are still so ignorant as to the health effects of so many of these man-made environmental phenomena.

thank you china and indonesia

How are China and Indonesia responsible for this? Plastic is a global problem.

https://160g7a3snajg2i1r662yjd5r-wpengine.netdna-ssl.com/wp-content/uploads/2018-04-06_1145.png

It's almost like China is the cheap-ass-plastic-shit manufacturing hub of the world. That table demonstrates my point, it's a global issue. If China never existed there'd still be microplastics in the environment.

I knew China would be high up on the list for waste but holy shit you'd expect them to manage it better. I thought the poorer countries had the worst waste disposal systems.

Up until recently they were actually the top destinations for the Western world's plastic waste that wasn't profitable enough to recycle on site. It would be kind of hypocritical to point and shame China for this when a substantial amount of their waste is imported from us. Plastic recycling infrastructure is saturated all over the world. This won't stop until cheap plastic stops being used literally everywhere, even where it's not needed.

and they're fuckin delicious