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 futurePlastic. 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.
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.
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.
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
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.
Are microplastics similarly diverse in their effects on the human body?
Literally came here to say plastic. That’s the one.
Microplastic is the new asbestos.
Capitalism. Been around for all generations but feels like greed is at its worst now.
Aside from tobacco, all of those things were known to be dangerous but used commercially anyway because they were cheaper than alternatives. Today’s equivalents are PFAS, plastics, and sweeteners of every kind. You will die with all of them in your body.
They’re finding microplastics everywhere now. Even like inside apples and stuff: the plastic somehow travels up the tree into the fruit
Somehow? This rock, and most everything on it, is almost completely water. Microplastics are in “the water”, therefore they’re in everything.
Social Media
Probably brake pads. Everyone’s living in cities now, just breathing in brake pad and lead particles.
Oh and car tires. Just huffing those all day.
Brake pads used to use asbestos.
Aftermarket pads are still allowed to.
Well, that’s fucked up.
there is a comically high amount of random shit that can be made of highly dangerous materials just be cause no one bothered to make regulation against it
like motherfucking breakpads. The average lawyer has more to do than care about the law on the materials of breakpads.
I thought that asbestos was outlawed. Though I do remember learning about its anti - fire uses in school. Yes, I am kinda old.
Oh, thanks, I didn’t know that.
Plastic, PFAS, CO2 Pollution, Tire dust (leading problem is cause of Asthma), Leaded fueled small prop planes (still standard), Oil, Industrialized agriculture (destroys nutrients in soils so food does not have it, produces tons CO2), many more.
Do you know if bicycles also create tire dust or do they not go fast enough?
I haven’t seen studies so this is just conjecture, but I believe its the same material. Likely it does, but not close to the same magnitude of car tires.
Fair enough, thanks for humouring me anyway!
Tiktok.
You said product, and I mean this legitimately. Not because of meme hate or hating on what is trendy, but because it is and has been a tool of the CCP. This isn’t really in question, and it was one of the first large platforms to entirely erase the idea of a timeline and fully devote itself only to a algorithm feed. One that bytedance has put their finger on the scales of many times.
The effect this has is hard to quantify, but the postmortem on it is going to be incredible as we unpack exactly how much this influenced the trends and politics among zoomers, and to what extent.
There’s a reason the algorithm is different in China.
This is the part that gets me. In China kids are educational content and are blocked during certain times of the day.
StumbleUpon didn’t have a timeline. It was just an algorithm.
Yeah but stumbleupon didn’t send people down radicalized pipelines. Not all algorithms are bad, some are though.
But they said unknown threat. Everyone knows that TikTok is a tool for CCP spying and propaganda, but somehow most of us don’t care.
every social/digital media platform is leveraged for spying and propaganda. if you didn’t want to be spied on you’d throw your whole damn phone away. it’s just the way shit is now. either accept that reality, ignore it, or become a hermit.
Other thing is also bad is not a good argument. You can reduce the amount of spying if you want to.
We’re bombarded with propaganda 24/7 already.
Have you used TikTok? - it’s the only mainstream platform with freedom of speech and mostly free discussion.
Reddit was far, far worse with all the bots, shadow-banning, deleted comments, etc.
I don’t think using the term “free speech” in this context is correct since free speech doesn’t extend to whether an app or website deletes your comments. Free speech just means the government won’t reprimand you.
Tiktok definitely takes things down, and I’d say that algorithm has done more harm than good in how fast it radicalizes people.
“Radicalises” how?
Just because they disagree with you?
It’s one of the few free forums, especially that is so large.
Just look at the Twitter files and Reveddit - they’re far worse if you don’t parrot the line of the US State Department.
The fact that you assume that the reason I used that word is because they disagree with me tells me you arent coming into this discussion with respect, so I’m going to have to-respectfully-decline to elaborate as I’d rather not get into the nuance of this topic with someone who evidently already has their mind made up.
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Eh I disagree about the Sinophobia thing, they’re not expressing fear or dislike of Chinese people, they’re criticizing the chinese government.
Criticizing an authoritarian government =/= racism. People =/= their government.
In comments I’ve seen, the person you’re responding to has always resisted that distinction when it comes to China, though decidedly less so when wishing collapse upon the US. Speaking of the US, apparently our use of color for advertising is literally worse than the Holocaust!
But is it sinophobia? It’s no secret that Xi Jinping and the party like to have companies firmly under their thumb. All you have to do is threaten a few execs. Or hell, a good chunk of companies have deference to the party baked into their charter.
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This is no secret. Maybe have a little skepticism towards your favored country’s claims that any opposition to the government is bigotry towards the people? They use that to maintain control over the population.
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Oh? And what about the party’s practice of disappearing execs when a company’s done something to displease the party? Are other governments not right to be afraid when the CPC exercises that type of control?
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You know that you could have written a comment that doesn’t make you look like a terminally online fucking loser?
++1 TikTok is only political because Americans want to own everyone’s data exclusively.
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?
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
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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.
Microplastics and PFAS
No, seriously, these two will kill Earth, and us
High Fructose Corn Syrup
Artificial sweeteners
Increasingly, yes. It’s shaping to be (ironically) the sugar of the 21st century, where sugar was touted as healthy in the 50s despite the effects on diabetes and obesity that we’re still seeing now.
still seeing now
is a bit of an understatement, to say the least
still seeing now
is a bit of an understatement, to say the least
Yep. The WHO just declared aspartame (diet Coke sweetener) as a carcinogen.
“Possible carcinogen”
The IARC classified this as a possible carcinogen in their category 2b based on limited evidence of a particular cancer in humans — hepatocellular carcinoma, which is a type of liver cancer. The strength-of-evidence classification in Group 2B is the third highest level out of 4 levels, and it is generally used either when there is limited, but not convincing, evidence for cancer in humans or convincing evidence for cancer in experimental animals, but not both. This classification is primarily intended to inform researchers to encourage further research of aspartame, and it does not make any assertion about the relative risk associated with typical exposure levels. It rather determines whether the substance could be carcinogenic at any dose — even if the required dose far exceeds typical exposure.
Notably, JEFCA, the group responsible for researching and making recommendations on food additives, reviewed the same evidence as the WHO and concluded that the data evaluated indicated no sufficient reason to change the previously established acceptable daily intake (ADI) of 0–40 mg/kg body weight for aspartame. The committee therefore reaffirmed that it is safe for a person to consume within this limit per day. For example, with a can of diet soft drink containing 200 or 300 mg of aspartame, an adult weighing 70kg would need to consume more than 9–14 cans per day to exceed the acceptable daily intake, assuming no other intake from other food sources.
https://www.who.int/news/item/14-07-2023-aspartame-hazard-and-risk-assessment-results-released
What about natural sweeteners like Stevia? Has anything come out about it? I know it has weird effects like it can cause indigestion and other things, but I haven’t personally heard anything about it actually being bad for you (though I have not looked very far).
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
Sugar does nothing good and its 100% konessential for the human body. You dont need to eat a single carb.
And 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
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.
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.
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.
Juice isn’t any better. You’re drinking much more fruit than you would eat normally.
Juice isn’t any better
yeah because it’s high sugar. i think that’s absolutely common knowledge by now.
E-cigarettes
It is advertised as a safer option, but it is not.
