Plastic. Its in your blood ffs
This may be true but I hate the practice of referring to “plastic” as if it’s a single substance. It’s a bunch of different materials that don’t really have that much in common with each other, especially from a health/toxicity standpoint.
For example, people treat it as common sense that “you shouldn’t burn plastic” because the smoke is “toxic”. For PVC this is totally true, it makes very nasty stuff like dioxin that will poison you. But on the other hand you can burn polyethylene (think milk jug) and it’s no more toxic than burning a candle. Definitely way healthier to breath than wood campfire smoke, for example.
There’s also such a silly pattern where people learn some chemical might have some effect on the body and suddenly everyone is up in arms about it. For example Bisphenol A in many applications was replaced by the very similar Bisphenol S just so things could be labeled “BPA Free”. BPS probably has similar estrogenic effects to BPA.
I’d say the moral of the story is be wary of received wisdom about chemical toxicity from people who aren’t chemists.
Now I just want an accurate infographic of “safe” combustible plastics.
Yeah! I don’t want to accidentally throw a redneck bonfire with white smoke again.
Have you heard of Dihydrogen monoxide? It literally kills hundreds of thousands of people every single year all over the world, including young children.
You don’t hear about it in the news though do you…
I’m confused about how it kills hundreds of thousands of people per year. How, by drowning?
It’s an old (early-internet?) joke iirc. And yes, I think that’s the answer
Oh shit, I was thinking there was no way that hundreds of thousands of people did from drowning every year, but they actually do.
WHO estimates that every year over 200k people die from drowning
Yea I did my 10 seconds of research before I quoted my number! I could have said ‘200k’ but ‘hundreds of thousands’ sounds much more dramatic don’t you think? Which is the whole point of the Dihydrogen monoxide thing.
Wow, talk about preventable deaths…
According to its Wikipedia page, this joke was first published in 1983! I suspect most people know it from the early 2000’s when it made a resurgence again.
What I think it is, is that every single person who ever consumes it, will eventually die. We are also literally dependant on it. If you stop ingesting it for too long, it can also cause you to die… That’s how it went around here, at least.
That’s my understanding as well, it was a joke about correlation != causation.
Look at all of the related “risks” and add them up. I’m sure that drowning is a small number, but then add in all of the deaths from scalding, acid rain, poisons (that contain water), etc etc and it eventually gets to be a very big number. Probably in the millions
The WHO estimates 236k deaths per year worldwide due to drowning. There’s other ways to die to Dihydrogen monoxide other than drowning, so my numbers hold up!
Acid rain has never killed anyone. It can kill plants and destroy farms, so I guess it can kill indirectly by causing famine, but that’s about it.
Not only BPAs but many chemicals like BPAs can cause birth defects because our bodies think they are estrogen.
If this worries you, read the books It Starts With the Egg and Grain Brain.
They both suggest that not only what you eat, but how it’s prepared can affect the health of a child.
For instance it’s a big no-no, according to It Starts With the Egg, to heat most plastics in the microwave. The heat breaks the plastic down, it can get in your blood, your body will think it’s estrogen, and they don’t even know the full effects of this yet.
So think about
- burritos in plastic wrapping,
- cling wrap on a bowl,
- reheating leftovers in Tupperware,
- disposable cutlery
These chemicals are not just in food:
- your car’s interior
- your cell phone case
- even the clothes on your back, unless they’re 100% pure, untreated, natural fabric, may have been made with these chemicals.
Yep, the long term affects are gonna be worse than we can imagine imo. These plastics are everywhere in the environment so it is literally unavoidable anywhere on this earth. They are in small concentrations for now, but they are increasing rapidly as more and more plastic is created/wasted every minute
Thinking about reducing plastic fucks me up and it’s been on my mind a lot lately. Noticing every single time we bring new plastic into the household, and how hard it is to avoid. Chicken comes in plastic wrap, and even if we got it at a butcher counter, they still toss it in a plastic bag before wrapping it in brown paper. Bags of potting soil, our toothpaste tubes, peanut butter jars… it’s endless.
At least the majority of my clothes are cotton or wool, but another source is carpet and there isn’t anything I can do about this apartment carpet.
Are microplastics similarly diverse in their effects on the human body?
I would guess that chemical effects would be diverse while “physical” effects would not be so diverse. Keep in mind that things like mesothelioma from asbestos are kinda sorta “physical” effects because it’s from jagged roughness of the particles at the nanoscale rather than any specific chemistry.
So what you’re saying is instead of having a bonfire I should be have a milk jug fire?
Yes.
Also be wary of people that say they are chemists on the internet when oil, plastics, and guns have mostly only been researched by their manufacturers. All totally safe.
Social media. It wasn’t until very recently that people started to realize just how harmful it actually is.
Less social media IMO, more the weaponization of techniques first researched in the 60s-80s made real and pushed via automaton to all corners of the public internet.
The reason you become vulnerable is because you abdicate control (most had no idea) of your feed to providers that own domain names.
This was a co-option of how the internet worked previously.
What kind of techniques were researched? This sounds interesting to learn about. Do you have some terms I could search that will help me learn more?
Start with Cambridge Analytica for sure.
I always thought the Cambridge Analytical scandal was just the left trying to point fingers at how Trump could have possibly won, instead of blaming the Democratic party for their terrible handling of the Sanders campaign, and how Clinton was so utterly unlikable, they grasped at so many straws, we’re still reeling from it to this day.
The big ones being the Ukrainian war, the failure of the Afghanistan pull-out, and of course CA.
Well this might come as a shock but the techniques used to groom suicide bombers also work on white people too. Prey on their disillusionment, pump them full of hatred for “the enemy” then give them the means to carry out an attack.
But if you’re digging back through history, check out how once upon a time, everyone from the US government to Coca-Cola was awkwardly trying their hand at mind control.
Fortunately, they’ve pinky promised that’s all behind them now, despite having access to millions of people who voluntarily pin their own eyes open and spend the night scrolling through rapid flashes of sex, violence and extremism, in their own DIY Clockwork Orange therapy (only it’s trying to make them worse, not better)
What could go wrong except for everything that’s currently going wrong?
The damage done by giving neoliberals power and the far-right platform is going to take decades to undo, if we survive it at all.
Climate change is progressing at an alarming rate while the oil and gas lobby teach AI how to astroturf, cheered on by every billionaire hoping they can fire their employees and pocket their wages.
If the far-right are given the power they need, they’ll decimate the population searching for whatever magic group they need to genocide that will make their parents love them, their mental illness evaporate and their dicks 14" long. When they finally realize no such group exists, we’ll get to see what happens when you give the nuclear launch codes to wife beaters ane school shooters.
Vote better.
there were a number of university experiments on human choice often dealing with a disparity of information between the parties.
What was learned by the US government in its testing was also known. The reality is experiments like these were done very heavily up until the 60’s with the vast majority getting nixed by the early-to-late 70s
this coincides also with our release of mental patients which were as much experiment subjects as they were patients. We were mapping out people’s behavior to information stimulus for most of the 20th century.
the programs were all stopped but the information continued on and is used in many strata of our lives.
https://www.bbc.com/reel/video/p0by2ybb/mk-ultra-the-cia-s-secret-pursuit-of-mind-control-
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanford_prison_experiment
Subliminal Marketing (one of many techniques) is banned however use of the technique in other mediums is not. https://smallbusiness.chron.com/laws-subliminal-marketing-69892.html
With regards to international actors and thier domestic collaborators, check into Foundations of Geopolitics. Its a playbook being followed.
I don’t think the SPE is that good a reference, and also not super meaningful to this sort of case of Internet manipulation anyway. Look at the amount of points showing it was basically not a normal experiment but predetermined to act out how the PI wanted - in that wikipedia link.
My understanding of MK Ultra was basically the government wasted a lot of money because of fear of missing out vs the Soviets. It didn’t accomplish anything.
And subliminal marketing has been widely debunked to my knowledge. People thought it might do something, but experimentally it didn’t.
I would have pointed to disinformation campaigns myself - there is research that implies it works.
SPE shows exactly how when you alter a worldview how that person changes. It was extreme and unintended but it showed how powerful it can be when the subjects willingly accept the game.
subliminal marketing in the form of showing single image frames was debuked, thats one of many techniques.
SPE shows that people being paid or encouraged to act a certain way will act a certain way, especially in deference to authority - which we already knew IMO. How does this translate to the Internet - people can be paid to spread info online that might be misleading or straight up disinformation? That doesn’t seem especially novel to me. PR and Propaganda existed long before SPE or the 60s.
Do you have any links to what sort of subliminal marketing you’re referencing that is shown to work?
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6204644/
simple phrases and mnemonics are amazing too, those short insulting names have more of a role than people realize.
That geopolitics book is buy some Russian guy right? I’ve heard that it’s literally being played out even though it was written a long time ago
printed in the early 80s, written by the man who is considered the grandfather of the current Russian’ govt’s ideology and “plan”
he has the ear of putin, or did.
Is that the guy that Adam Curtis talked about in Hypernormalisation?
Buckle up, you’re in for a wild ride Zersetzung
this guy
Abortion was a very well researched controversial topic to divide the feminist movement as much as possible.
Most propaganda boils down to fear, uncertainty, and doubt (FUD) to promote division and conqueror the smaller groups
I agree, and I think it’s even more broader: Anxiety and stress. These are extremely dangerous and underrated, and even exploited by many (e.g. news, politicians, workplace, social media, marketing). It’s like sticking a cigarette into your mouth without you able to immediately take it out.
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Sugar. People don’t realize how bad it is for you and how addictive it is.
Sugar is not bad. Abuse of sugar is bad. Sugar is absolutely fine, as long as one doesn’t exceed. Problem is that in American-inspired diets sugar is everywhere at gigantic doses
Do basic groceries abuse sugar? And I’m not talking about the “organic” ones
Depends on what you mean by “basic groceries.” Produce and generally anything that is not processed or prepackaged is ok, but most anything ready to eat, including any baked goods is likely to be pretty high in sugar.
And just FYI, since glucose, fructose, and sucrose are all naturally occurring, they (and HFCS) are considered organic legally
Glucose (a sugar) is also literally the main fuel of human cells and the only one for brain cells…
Correct. However, there are many ways to get glucose into the brain that are not dependent on eating glucose directly. For example, starch and cellulose are both big long chains of glucose molecules linked together, although no multicellular organisms have the necessary enzymes to break down cellulose into glucose (at least none of which I’m aware, anyway).
For the most part, getting your glucose by breaking down starch is healthier than eating it directly, because it slows down the introduction of starch into the bloodstream which keeps your blood sugar levels more stable, since the enzymes that break down starch (α and β amylase, IIRC) don’t do it instantly. Plus, other simple sugars can easily be converted by the buddy into glucose by a variety of enzymes find naturally in the body.
But even without eating any carbohydrates, the human body had the ability to create its own glucose via a process called gluconeogenesis, which occurs mainly in the liver. So, it’s not generally advisable to eat too much sugar directly, as there are plenty of other avenues through which the body can get its glucose, and eating the glucose directly leads to a much higher chance of developing diabetes later in life, even if you remain at a healthy weight.
Source: I’m a chemist who teaches college-level biochemistry and nutrition. If you want a source with more details, LMK your educational background and I’d be happy to provide some reading material.
This is exactly my point: glucose, fructose and sucrose are not unhealthy. They are just fine. Unless one exceeds. Glycemic index is relevant. Eating a bit of sugar sometimes or an apple is just fine (fruit is a great source of sugars, but it is also very healthy).
Problem is that in America and UK they manage to put additional sugar even in the pasta sauce… Everything is so sweet that it tastes bad for many foreigners (it tastes bad for me for instance)
Source: we have a similar background but mine is more theoretical (modelling, hpc, biophysics, theoretical biophysical chemistry and theoretical chemistry), I have a PhD as well and I used to work in academia (on both biological mechanisms and materials for renewable energy) before moving to AI in industry (different sectors). We are saying the same :D
Sorry I don’t understand what you mean. Could you please rephrase? Thanks
Sugar does nothing good and its 100% konessential for the human body. You dont need to eat a single carb.
Ans that includes fiber, which is also a carb.
Good luck with your digestion if you don’t eat fibers… Your gut flora must live a miserable life :(
I’d go with high fructose corn syrup
Fructose is typically fine when it’s paired with equal amounts of glucose, like in fruit. Your body has a really hard time processing high concentrations of fructose alone, which is how most sugary food is produced now a days since high fructose is a much cheaper method of sweetening food than a balanced mix of sugars.
Except “high fructose corn syrup” doesn’t really have that high of a concentration of fructose. Standard corn syrup and most fruits have glucose and fructose in a ratio that’s roughly 50:50. HFCS is about 55:45 in favor of fructose, mostly because both sugars are roughly the same stability from a chemical sense, so the enzyme that is used to convert one to the other (glucofructoisomerase, IIRC) can’t really get that far from that 50:50 ratio. There are lots of natural sources that are way higher in fructose (agave nectar is like 90:10 fructose, again IIRC).
And fructose isn’t added to everything because the sugar is cheaper than other sugars (although the government subsidies for corn farmers do make HFCS ridiculously cheap); it’s because our taste buds perceive fructose as sweeter than a similar amount of other simple sugars. So it’s actually cheaper to use HFCS than raw corn syrup or other sugar sources, because your actually need less sugar to get the same taste. It’s really similar to how artificial sweeteners work; a synthetic molecule can trick our taste buds into sending signals to the brain that say “this is sweet” at a rate that’s 80-300x more effective per molecule. A lot of artificial sweeteners do actually have calories when digested, but such a small amount of sweetener gets used that the caloric content gets rounded down to zero. But I digress.
The real issue is that simple sugars are being added in large amounts to EVERYTHING (because they taste good), and processed and prepackaged foods are cheaper to buy and easier than preparing food yourself. HFCS ships easily, has a long shelf life, and puts money in the pockets of corporate farms that prefer to grow one (maybe two) crops over vast swathes of land in the US, which is why it’s everywhere. Not that corn is anything special! You can make a high fructose syrup from nearly any starchy crop. Corn was just in the right place at the right time.
Like with most problems in the US, the real underlying cause is the corporations and government subsidies that ignore sustainability (economic and environmental), as well as the health of the population in favor of profit. Unfortunately, that’s a tougher problem to solve and political and economic reform is a tougher sell for Middle America than making one specific ingredient into a Boogeyman.
Thank you for coming to my TED Talk.
Edit: cleaned up autocorrect typos and grammar
HFCS is the #1 reason by far that sugar is added to products. It is cheap and the precursor (corn) is maybe the most heavily subsidized product except oil. Those subsidies also have an additive effect to the US beef (and other meat) subsidies through feed corn.
Look no further for the cause of the obesity problem in America. It’s an everything. I bought what I thought were raw sausages and it was even in there.
There’s no such thing as “raw” sausage. Uncooked maybe. But never raw, like carots or stake can be raw.
Sausage is ground meat mixed with all sorts of spices and things. Including yes almost always sugar and salt. Without the extra spices, it’s not sausage anymore. It’s just ground beef, pork, turkey, venison, whatever.
Fructose is a type of sugar. High fructose corn syrup is almost pure sugar, like honey.
High Fructose Corn Syrup is nothing like Honey.
Totally. Sugar should be seen similarly like alcohol or cigarettes regarding the addictiveness. But we are consuming it everyday and feed our children with it.
Soda specifically - is something we should be looking closer at in relation to sugar abuse. The number of kids and young adults I see quaffing giant plastic cups of fountain drinks is alarming.
Even worse when they use it to replace water.
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Juice isn’t any better
yeah because it’s high sugar. i think that’s absolutely common knowledge by now.
I agree especially with concentrates or “juice drinks” that have less than 10% juice. All of those things are just sugar drinks.
Carbonated water doesn’t kill people.
Can you breathe the bubbles when drowning?
This will be the next big class action suit similar to tobacco. Big sugar has been operating just like tobacco, denying negative side effects and lobbying at state and federal levels to stifle bans and regulatory actions.
America is on the verge of a sytemeic failure when it comes to health care, and a lot of that is due to the prevalence of diabetes in our aging population.
Right now one in every three medicare dollars goes towards treating diabetes, a perfectly preventable disease. It’s not sustainable, and it’s literally siphoning off our ability to treat other ailments.
I get withdrawal symptoms on a regular basis. Cold sweat, ravenous appetite, weak limbs, shaky hands. It’s horrible, really.
Micro plastics. We were advertising them in facial scrubs ffs.
This right here. We are undoubtedly the plastic generation. And it’s not letting up any time soon; our kids will be included in this cohort as well. Banning plastic bags in cities is next to useless when everything we eat, everything we drink, and everything we buy is wrapped in plastic.
Perfluoroalkyls aka PFAS appear to screw with all manner of body functions.
Since you mention tobacco: It’s worth noting that the smoking/cancer connection was noticed long before peak cigarette smoking in the population. Prior to WWII, lung cancer was considered a rare disease. That changed with the mass marketing of cigarettes.
Zembla, a Dutch independent journalism TV program, made a video regarding a big PFAS cover-up in The Netherlands: https://youtu.be/y3kzHc-eV88. If you ask me, PFAS is worse the plastic.
Here is an alternative Piped link(s): https://piped.video/y3kzHc-eV88
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I’m open-source, check me out at GitHub.
Good bot
While what you say is generally true, I would add that many diseases were “rare” in pre-modern times because they were not easily diagnosis at the time or because people were killed earlier by something else that is now treatable.
Sure, but incidence of lung cancer went way up as tobacco consumption rose heavily in the early 20th century.
There’s a couple studies showing that even though your body can’t process and remove PFAS and it just keeps accumulating, if you donate blood regularly you reduce the amount in your body by a bit each time. There are other slight health benefits to donating blood and lots of places will pay you for it. So if you can reduce your PFAS intake and donate blood you can slowly get rid of it. I use arch linux btw.
I also use Arch btw
How do I avoid these?
Starbright boat polish contains and advertises that it has PTEF. Think about that , a product designed to be rubbed all over l boats until it “wears off” in waterways. I used to use it ( it is a good polish) until I realized how messed up that is.
A lot of good lubricants and dry lubricants and anti-sieze bolt coatings have PFAs. Most waterproof fabrics like tents, goretex jackets and boots, waterproofing sprays, etc also contain them. Atleast waxed canvas and wool is making a big comeback in the outdoors communities.
Non stick cookware. Water repellent and stain resistant items and coatings. Stuff like that.
Largely by avoiding waterproof or water resistant skincare products such as sunscreen and makeup. Also avoid using nonstick cookware.
But I need sunscreen or my stupid Irish skin will turn into a big lump of cancer anyway.
I think the key there was “water resistant”, suggesting the substance is used in the additives to make it resist getting rinsed off.
It’s not a required ingredient for sunscreen to work, it’s just to make it more water resistant (it stays on your skin longer) so those chemicals are typically used in sunscreen that’s marked for water/sports applications. You can buy PFAS free sunscreen too
Use the ThinkSport brand.
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Ahh yes, the bury your head in the sand trick
Also non-stick pans, flame-retardant fabrics, …
I recently got a reverse osmosis water filter to remove it from my water. Since I rent I got a countertop filter but if you own your place you can get a filter installed for all your water.
Thanks. Any chance you could share a link so I know what to look for?
Mine is from a company called bluevua. They’re on Amazon.
Social media.
Microplastics are the new lead, and screens are the new tobacco, in my opinion. Overuse of sugar in processed foods is the new version of how they’d cut food with inedible stuff like sawdust back in the day.
Social Media
Microplastics
Social media
Nah
Nah nah
Nana-nah naah
Hey hey hey!
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Plastics.
Yes, all plastics. Even bpa free plastics leak estrogenic chemicals into food, and fpod is often stored in plastic containers. Even milk cartons are lined with plastic.
Teflon(nonstick coated pans and pots) arr similarly terrible
Shoes with a raised heel is bad for your knees. (Easily measurably bad. Especially for running)
Vapes.
What will happen is one or another of the flavorings used will be safe to eat because of stomach acid and digestion, but inhaling it into delicate lungs will cause disease long term. Look up popcorn workers lung to see how a common butter flavoring in the past that was meant for eating on popcorn harmed factory workers breathing it in daily.
One of the existing vape flavors… or a new one… will eventually be shown to cause simular lung disease due to daily breathing it in never truly being studied. Someone with a favorite flavor will use it for years, like any smoker with a favorite brand of cigs, then probably get sick from constant long term exposure.
As somebody who vaped for a long time, I kind of disagree with this one. Of every method for quitting smoking, vaping was the easiest and most effective. It let me titrate down to eventually 0 nicotine juice, which let me stop altogether. I only very rarely vape anymore, I keep my mod around in case I am ever out drinking and get an urge, but it is definitely the reason I was able to quit smoking.
The popcorn lung thing is kind of an urban legend, there is no case of any vaper ever getting it from vaping, but diacetyl (the additive in question) has been discontinued in basically all juice just in case anyway.
The usual mantra in vaping communities was always to tell people that if you weren’t a smoker already, don’t start vaping. Is it better than smoking? Almost assuredly, but it’s still not going to be better than just breathing cleaning air. The recommendation was always as a transition away from smoking. It’s one of the few hobbies we would congratulate each other over leaving.
If you don’t vape or smoke already, don’t start though.
If it’s so effective at helping people quit, why do you still vape?
I quit smoking a decade ago. I don’t occasionally have a cigarette. I don’t EVER have a cigarette. Or vape, because I’m an adult.
I’ve never thought vapes were not-dangerous. Do people really think that? I assume they’re safer than cigarettes but less-bad doesn’t mean good.
Yeah the sentiment surrounding vapes generally is that they’re better than cigarettes. Most people still want to entirely quit vaping, quit nicotine altogether.
Unfortunately, vapes are super enticing to younger people. Even ignoring the underage market entirely, young people love vaping. I’m in the army, so maybe my demographics are skewed, but EVERYBODY is vaping super high nicotine disposable vapes these days.
When I first started vaping, nicotine concrentations were commonly 3 or 6 mg/ml, now 50mg/ml is common.
I think it depends on the vape (and ingredients) in question. Cannabis vapes from dispensaries are required to not have additives. They’re all tested thoroughly. So those would be “safer” than things with added oils or flavoring. I’m not sure if they’re better than vaporizing the actual plant flower instead of concentrate.
Nicotine based vapes, I can only assume use some interesting ingredients since it’s not just a compressed/heated/iced tobacco plant. I’ve never used one, but I’ve also never seen someone ask for test results of a nicotine vape (or have them provided).
When I was vaping I always mixed my own juice, so was very sure of what went in. There’s always the chance of buying from a sketchy vendor and getting something weird in your mixes, but most were fairly benign. Vaping liquid is actually pretty simple in composition.
Just curious, what’s you definition of vaping liquid? And was your vendor reputable or someone you knew from elsewhere?
A base of vegetable glycerin and propylene glycol with additional additives for nicotine and flavour.
I bought my VG and PG from a local vendor, but those are readily available basically anywhere because they have a lot of uses outside vaping. I ordered pure liquid nicotine (in a PG suspension) online. Flavour additives also ordered online from a fairly reputable vendor that was well known in . I have no idea what policies about sharing vendors are here, but I am happy to give recommendations to anyone if they are looking to make their own juice to save money/be safer.
I mostly made fairly simple flavours, nothing too fancy. I had a friend who actually just vaped VG/PG with nicotine and no flavours at all.
Tremedous amount of lung damage in the near future. At the most common sense level it makes zero sense to inhale shit into your lungs.
Microplastics and plastic related byproducts, like phtalates (which are connected with a decreased fertility in mammals)
I’m positive that the long term effects of these substances, that can be found in every link of the food chain nowadays, will be discussed a lot in the futureAutomobiles. Especially in the USA they are causing a public health crisis, environmental crisis, qualify of life crisis. I grew up loving them and they have uses but I’m fully convinced in the future they should be a luxury used for specific tasks or trips rather than the only form of transportation available.
Plastic and sugar are good answers, but cars are right there in terms of harm and way more acceptable despite that.
