Microplastics Detected in Clouds Hanging Atop Two Japanese Mountains (theguardian.com) 39
Microplastics have been found everywhere from the oceans' depths to the Antarctic ice, and now new research has detected it in an alarming new location -- clouds hanging atop two Japanese mountains. From a report: The clouds around Japan's Mount Fuji and Mount Oyama contain concerning levels of the tiny plastic bits, and highlight how the pollution can be spread long distances, contaminating the planet's crops and water via "plastic rainfall." The plastic was so concentrated in the samples researchers collected that it is thought to be causing clouds to form while giving off greenhouse gasses.
"If the issue of 'plastic air pollution' is not addressed proactively, climate change and ecological risks may become a reality, causing irreversible and serious environmental damage in the future," the study's lead author, Hiroshi Okochi, a professor at Waseda University, said in a statement. The peer-reviewed paper was published in Environmental Chemistry Letters, and the authors believe it is the first to check clouds for microplastics. The pollution is made up of plastic particles smaller than five millimeters that are released from larger pieces of plastic during degradation. They are also intentionally added to some products, or discharged in industrial effluent. Tires are thought to be among the main sources, as are plastic beads used in personal care products. Recent research has found them to be widely accumulating across the globe -- as much as 10m tons are estimated to end up in the oceans annually.
"If the issue of 'plastic air pollution' is not addressed proactively, climate change and ecological risks may become a reality, causing irreversible and serious environmental damage in the future," the study's lead author, Hiroshi Okochi, a professor at Waseda University, said in a statement. The peer-reviewed paper was published in Environmental Chemistry Letters, and the authors believe it is the first to check clouds for microplastics. The pollution is made up of plastic particles smaller than five millimeters that are released from larger pieces of plastic during degradation. They are also intentionally added to some products, or discharged in industrial effluent. Tires are thought to be among the main sources, as are plastic beads used in personal care products. Recent research has found them to be widely accumulating across the globe -- as much as 10m tons are estimated to end up in the oceans annually.
Oh my goodness (Score:2)
Ok ok. You can mark me as a troll now.
Re:Oh my goodness (Score:5, Informative)
Plastic nano particles have recently been shown to pass through the blood brain barrier. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/p... [nih.gov] Whether or not this poses any dangers has yet to be determined. Personally I'm not a fan.
Re: Oh my goodness (Score:2)
On the one hand, plastics have been around for so long, if they were harmful you'd think we'd know by now.
On the other hand, it does seem like people are crazier, stupider, and more emotional than before.
On the third hand, IQ scores have also been going up too, over the decades.
Maybe it's more subtle than a simple sound byte and a scapegoat to get mad at?
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Well, it's not like if there were something bad about some ubiquitous pollutant you'd magically know. You have to look. In particular *ubiquitous* pollutants are bound be unlikely.
As for IQ tests, the so-called "Flynn Effect" seems to have petered out over the last 30-40 years and there are some evidence it may be reversing in some places.
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In particular *ubiquitous* pollutants are bound be unlikely to draw your attention if you're not looking for an effect.
FTFM
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IQ is a measure of precociousness in children, not intelligence.
Plastics are quite toxic and leech toxic chemicals into the environment. They also contain and release known endocrine disrupting chemicals like phenols and pthalates. We've already seen abnormalities in fish and amphibians. Amongst higher vertebrates, we see increased amounts of body fat and lower sperm counts in males. Even in humans, the length of the scrotal-rectal perineum, the strongest anatomical signal of androgen sensitivity, has bee
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personal care products (Score:5, Insightful)
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Exfoliation, I have to imagine it's cheaper (and probably milder) than say ground pumice.
Yes, it should be banned entirely because the concept is silly.
Also microplastic encompasses more than that though because all plastic when exposed to the UV and the elements doesn't degrade into nothing but rather gets broken into smaller and smaller pieces to where there are just molecules of hydrocarbon plastic floating about now.
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They replaced those with ground walnut shells a long time ago.
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They replaced those with ground walnut shells a long time ago.
The Body Shop had a product called Blue Corn Mask I would get which used blue corn as an exfoliatoring portion. But, as it wont to happen to me, they discontinued it (many years ago).
One of St Ives' products uses ground apricot pits, though it is not as rough as the blue corn mask was. Still decent.
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Yup...
The Beat the Microbead campaign is supported by 100 NGOs from 42 countries.
To date, 448 brands from 119 different manufacturers have promised to remove plastic microbeads from their products.
https://www.beatthemicrobead.o... [beatthemicrobead.org]
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Microbeads are added as an exfoliating agent to cosmetics and personal care products, such as soap, facial scrub and toothpastes.[13] They may be added to over-the-counter drugs to make them easier to swallow.[14] In biomedical and health science research microbeads are used in microscopy techniques, fluid visualization, fluid flow analysis and process troubleshooting.[15][16]
Sphericity and particle size uniformity create a ball-bearing effect in creams and lotions, resulting in a silky texture and spreadab
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How about clothing. The idea that personal care products are to blame and not all the plastic clothing regularly tumble dried and vented outside is absurd.
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What winds up in the ocean is supposedly about half from tires. The clothing is probably way, way up there though. I for one have a lint trap, though, and very little lint comes out of the vent. That it gets landfilled is still a problem, but I do try to avoid synthetics in general.
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Very little visible lint comes out. But we're talking about microplastics, which you aren't seeing with the naked eye.
Re: personal care products (Score:2)
You can see them in the aggregate, which tends to happen when they are damp. The lint in the trap is made up of microplastics too.
Glass and paper products (Score:3, Interesting)
We got by with glass and paper products until the 1950s. Sure, grocery bags ripped and there was broken glass at the roadside, but we weren't poisoning the biosphere with estrogenics and toxic micro-particles either.
We talk a lot about reducing plastic pollution, but everywhere I go I see more and more blister packs and other single-use plastics for packaging. Obviously there's no economic pressure to revert.
Re:Glass and paper products (Score:5, Interesting)
The big one is the fuel costs between transporting things in glass and plastic.
This is a case of not having the externalities prices in, the manufacturers who use plastic only see the bottom line of production and transport to the customer, not the recycling or environmental costs. If that is baked into their costs chances are they would consider alternatives like metal, glass and paper.
Re: Glass and paper products (Score:3)
They might also choose to have more regional production, which means both less transportation and more jobs due to overhead of management and maintenance.
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...And that's another one.
The truth is we're all living beyond our means, selling our future for a more convenient present.
Because we can use oil to move things and make handy clear plastic containers, we do. It's cheaper to do that than to decentralize to cut shipping costs. It's easier to do that than deal with less convenient packaging.
Without a replacement for our current use of plastic that is environmentally friendly, economic pressures will probably ensure we keep doing what we're doing, because th
Re: Glass and paper products (Score:3)
The alternative is a small reduction in corporate profits. And that cannot be permitted because wealthy people are better than the rest of us. Or so say the congresscreeps.
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The only solution seems to be to create consumer demand for slightly higher priced or lower "quality" products. I use quotes there because a slightly chipped bar of soap isn't really lower quality in any meaningful way, just a little less visually appealing to a society that has come to value airbrushed perfection.
There has been some success, with certain products managing to move to glass and cardboard packaging. Not nearly enough though.
That said, a lot of these microplastics are additives for stuff like
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but everywhere I go I see more and more blister packs
Blister packs are for security. You can tell by looking at them if someone has tampered with the product. It's the same reason there is a piece of foil over top of bottles of medicine. Someone thought it would be fun to dump cyanide into Tylenol bottles [pbs.org].
Re:Glass and paper products (Score:5, Informative)
Blister packs are for security. You can tell by looking at them if someone has tampered with the product. It's the same reason there is a piece of foil over top of bottles of medicine.
No, they're about deterring shoplifting. The number of products I see in blister packs where tampering is a concern is vastly outweighed by the number of products I see that do not need to be in a blister pack. USB Thumb Drives for starters. That's all about trying to make it harder to shoplift. Small, easy to conceal item, that isn't big enough for a security tag, until you cram it into a huge ass blister pack.
The pathetic thing is they don't deter shoplifting. A professional shoplifter would just razor the thing out of there. Takes two seconds. Or "forget" to scan it at self-checkout. All they do is add more plastic to the environment and piss normal consumers the fuck off when it takes 15 minutes and a blood sacrifice to get the damn thing open.
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The number of products I see in blister packs where tampering is a concern is vastly outweighed by the number of products I see that do not need to be in a blister pack. USB Thumb Drives for starters.
That's not a very good example you picked there. There is a very real tamper concern with USB drives.
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It's mostly not about shoplifting, it's because vacuum formed and heat sealed plastic packaging is the cheapest type that offers the product good protection against the rigors of retail. Nothing needs to be folded or glued, and it doesn't get scuffed up like cardboard boxes do. Hanger hole built in.
The shoplifting element is mostly about making the while thing a bit larger, so it is not so easy to pocket. They could sell a lot of that stuff loose in bowls, or in much smaller wrappers, but then theft would b
Re:Glass and paper products (Score:5, Insightful)
We got by with glass and paper products until the 1950s. Sure, grocery bags ripped and there was broken glass at the roadside, but we weren't poisoning the biosphere with estrogenics and toxic micro-particles either.
Are we poisoning the planet with microplastics? I mean I see a lot of concern about how microplastics are being found in all kinds of unusual places but not much about any actual harm.
Plastics came to a rapid maturity during the 1940s as the USA and other nations were looking for alternatives to many natural substances that were difficult to obtain because of trade interruptions from World War Two. It's a good thing we had plastics then since plastic materials saved many lives with parachutes, helmet liners, and much more. I'm amazed at the technological developments from WW2, so much was developed in that time out of a fight for survival. You can claim we are poisoning the environment with plastics but I see a net good coming from it. Plastics were used then to save lives and are still used today to save lives.
I'm sure we could do plenty to reduce our use of plastics but consider what was used before. An example given of early plastics was to use them to make billiard balls instead of elephant ivory. Some of these early plastics weren't exactly stable, and that lead to some billiard balls exploding from being struck. Well, perhaps "explode" is a bit hyperbolic but they apparently could make quite a noise and a flash if hit just so. The point is that plastics replaced a lot of very difficult to source natural materials and that lead to a great many improvements in our lives. I prefer to get my drinks in aluminum cans than plastic bottles, just one example on how to cut some of the plastic from our lives if we chose to do so. If the choice is getting billiard balls made from plastic or elephant ivory then I hope people choose plastic for the sake of what damage that could do to the natural environment.
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"I'm sure we could do plenty to reduce our use of plastics but consider what was used before."
Or rather, consider: plastics are VERY cheap and VERY good at what they do. Alternatives are more expensive and not as good at doing the job.
Imagine if we were to phase out plastic from all product packaging. How would the world work instead?
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Paper, glue, and aluminium foil for non-reactive dry products. Metal and glass for wet.
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Looking at the past with rose-colored glasses like you are doing does not help anything.
Plastic is a wonder material, and one of the most important things it does is extend shelf life of food and reduce food waste. You know what is one of THE LARGEST causes of GHG emissions? Food waste. Food waste in the US alone causes the same GHG as 42 coal plants.
If reducing plastic use in food results in higher food waste - which it does when not done intelligently - then it is a faustian bargain.
Now what? (Score:5, Funny)
Ho hum. (Score:2)
Ho hum. Let me know when you've detected microplastics in exoplanets.
We're doomed. (Score:1)