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Under the Streetlight
May. 16th, 2025 07:25 am
Been a while
More and more I am getting exasperated by the narrow focus of folks evaluation of their environment and surroundings. The internet, in all of its glory of immediacy and fear does not in anyway contribute to the individual mental health.
What set off this rant today is the current pearl-clutching going on around the idea of “microplastics”. Now, I am not saying that the issue of microplastics is a trivial issue. The truth of the matter is that, simply put, Neither I nor anyone else can make predictions on the long-term (or for that matter, short term) effects of these on the human or animal population.
Now, some of you will start shouting that the research dates back to the sixties, nope, that dog don’t hunt, the research was done using old tech and was mostly concerned with material science. Around 2000 came the first inklings that this was a problem in the environment, and only around 2021 did the pearl clutching become endemic with this as a focus.
Look, I am not saying that they are good for you, and I am certainly not saying that they aren’t a problem. But good lord, look around you! There are so many risks to human health that cataloging them would take a month. I have no idea what the effects are other than the current bull market in articles announcing microplastics as the latest flavor of armageddon.
I wonder just how much microplastics can be reduced and the source of microplastics in food/water for human consumption? Is there a source that should be avoided? Just how ubiquitous is it in the environment? What is the excretion profile? What levels in the body actually create a health risk.
I have to spend some time writing about the difference in discovery of a potential problem and the actual description and characterization of the problem and the actual risk profile. People want a “fix” to the problem once and for all. In the real world of living things adapting to the environment around them, all that you can do is attempt to lower the odds against an individual. But that is a statistical thing; if you lower the odds for 90% of the population, but raise the odds for 10%, is that actually a win?