- cross-posted to:
- futurology@futurology.today
- cross-posted to:
- futurology@futurology.today
Microplastics Found In Human Hearts For First Time, Showing Impact Of Pollution::A study published in the journal Environmental Science and Technology for found microplastics in the hearts and blood of humans undergoing cardiac surgery.
This is such an uninformed take. Plastics are literally everywhere in modern life. Not just the store bags or straws and lids, but objects in the home like appliances, buckles on backpacks, medical devices, items we launch into space. It’s not been shown to meaningfully decrease life expectancy and we may find ways to remove it from our bodies. Cold turkey and you essentially have no infrastructure to replace what is made with plastics.
There are places where it’s absolutely necessary, there are places where it’s inconvenient to get rid of but a good idea, and there are places where it’s absolutely stupid to use plastic.
So it’s an “uninformed take” when I know that 90% of plastics that make it to recycling plants aren’t recycled, and that petroleum plastics are part of the driving factors leading us towards climate chaos?
Climate chaos is not mostly driven by consumer plastics. Burning of fossil fuels to generate power is and has been the largest contributor followed by agriculture. Plastics don’t get recycled because.people don’t even have a fundamental understanding of how recycling works. That’s not the fault of the people, it’s their governments. You and I using a reusable bag and water bottle doesn’t make a dent in climate change. Until our energy shifts to nuclear we aren’t going to be in a better spot. Renewables can supplement but are far away from being a replacement.
Reduction of emissions can’t be the only thing we try. We have to do that and engineer ways to contain and scrub high pollution areas.
Even metals don’t get recycled like they should because they don’t get cleaned and dried.
We have to outengineer the problem at this point because we didn’t engineer a cleaner path fifty years ago when we had the opportunity.
Had we leaned more heavily into nuclear the world would be better off.
Pursuing a useable fusion solution should be the focus of the effort for humanity. That alone can provide us the energy needed to shutdown fossil fuels power plants.
But we decided years ago the nuclear is the boogey man because it is too difficult for the average citizen to comprehend.
You don’t even offer a viable solution. So yea, uninformed take. I’ll stand by it.
Sorry, I didn’t know I was tasked with singlehandedly solving our plastic problem. Either way, I did give a suggestion; replace all plastic with reusable objects made of reusable materials, or make them compostable.