Microplastics Can Spread Via Flying Insects, Research Shows (theguardian.com) 38
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: Microplastic can escape from polluted waters via flying insects, new research has revealed, contaminating new environments and threatening birds and other creatures that eat the insects. Scientists fed microplastics to mosquito larvae, which live in water, but found that the particles remained inside the animals as they transformed into flying adults. Other recent research found that half of the mayfly and caddisfly larvae in rivers in Wales contained microplastics. The new study, published in the journal Biology Letters, used Culex pipiens mosquitoes, as they are found across the world in many habitats. The researchers found the larvae readily consumed fluorescent microplastic particles that were 0.0002cm in size. The larvae matured into a non-feeding pupa stage and then emerged as adult mosquitoes, which still had significant microplastic within them. The researchers are now studying if this damages the mosquitoes. Professor Amanda Callaghan, at the University of Reading, UK, says it is "highly likely" that other flying insects that begin as water larvae will also eat and retain microplastics. Furthermore, animals that feed on insects, like birds, bats, and spiders, are likely also consuming microplastics.
Ozzy (Score:3)
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And Ozzy Osbourne eats bats, so he is consuming plastic too. Nobody eat Ozzy Osbourne, or you're just making the problem worse.
Plastic would be the less concerning pollutant you might pick up from eating Ozzy Osbourne.
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Between this and global warming, I'm pretty sure that there will not be a planet Earth in 50 years from now.
Earth will be a giant ball of plastic.
What if all this is planned? What if the blackhole at the centre of our galaxy is a cosmic-sized amazon package and all the stars orbiting it are just cosmic-sized packing peanuts.
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Sorry... that sounded trippy... I took a bite of Ozzy Osbourne earlier.
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Easy solution then (Score:2)
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I do not eat insects [wikipedia.org]. No bird we commonly eat eats insects either. My cat is too lazy to hunt birds these days. Thus -- mosquitoes having health problems? What's the downside?
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I do not eat insects [wikipedia.org]. No bird we commonly eat eats insects either. My cat is too lazy to hunt birds these days. Thus -- mosquitoes having health problems? What's the downside?
Chickens absolutely would eat insects... when they can. Nowadays they're all raised in tiny little cages though so probably won't get to eat many.
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well that explains (Score:4, Funny)
how plastic flowers are pollinated
The conflation continues (Score:2)
This is continuation of media cycle, where they need something scary to sell the views/papers.
Microplastics (referenced correctly by name in this one) are harmless. They are biologically inert and mechanically harmless. They're so small, they're able to travel through the cell walls, and as a result, have no meaningful mechanical impact as far as we know.
Main source of these plastics is washing and drying clothes.
The desperate conflation is with plastic garbage problem in the oceans, which does in fact kill
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"May be", "possibly" and "can do" are beloved words of people who intentionally conflate things. They give a premise that inspires fear, uncertainty and doubt, without actually making the claim they imply they are.
For example, it's pretty obvious that bacteria inside one's body will be recognised and targeted by white cells and other elements of human immune system regardless of particulates that are smaller than said bacteria in size that maybe end up inside the bacteria or be attached to it.
This sort of c
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Pretty sure grey goo isn't going to be "plastic", considering what "plastic" actually means. The entire point of destructive nanomachinery is to fit an actual machine into nanometre-sized assembly.
These plastics are by definition, thousands of times too big and considering what "plastic" actually means, it's going to be rather counterproductive to try to build a nanomachine out of a really long chain of hydrocarbons. Since that would unnecessarily increase the size into, you guessed it, micrometres.
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Did I fuck you and not call the day after?
Cleanup (Score:2)
New paradigm: Earth + Plastic (Score:2)
Yeah for Capitalism! (Score:2)
Poisoning everything it touches, but profit!