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Sea salt around the world is contaminated by plastic

Wonko

Senior Member
Messages
1,467
Location
The other side.
Only if plastic consumption is bad for us. Sure it's bad for fish, I also knew a dog that loved to eat plastic, and it died, no idea if the 2 things are related (I'd need at least 200 puppies, as cute and adorable as you can make 'em....). But no studies have been carried out to test if people eating plastic is harmful, apparently largely because they can't find anyone who's not consuming it.

Sure it's very, very, very, very likely to be bad for us - but no studies say it is, cleanup and change will take ages and cost loads (maybe as much as oodles), and why bother if there is nothing to suggest consuming plastic is bad for us?

So nothing will happen, tomorrow (in a figurative not literal sense) it will all be forgotten about and eventually people will mutate into......either people who can safely consume plastic, or shambling disease ridden zombies, or possibly both. I'm sure there's a profit to be made either way, unless all that plastic has the same effect on us as it does on fish, in which case the only people making money will be fertility experts, at first, and then people selling lynching equipment, but how likely is that?

and.....it's actually a little unfair...I only switched over from table salt to sea salt recently and still have most of the box left and now the world's going to end :(

edit....it's remotely possible that we are all deficient in trace particles of plastic, and upping consumption will cure cancer, the common cold and cut the cost of home insurance. I mean it's not likely, but until some actually researches it...........
 
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pattismith

Senior Member
Messages
3,931
It IS bad...Plastic disintegrates in the sea in microscopic peaces that can enter the blood stream and the tissu.
Fishes are contaminated as well and when we eat them, we eat these tiny plastic peaces that enter our body...
 

Wonko

Senior Member
Messages
1,467
Location
The other side.
It IS bad...Plastic disintegrates in the sea in microscopic peaces that can enter the blood stream and the tissu.
Fishes are contaminated as well and when we eat them, we eat these tiny plastic peaces that enter our body...
It's a whole lot worse than that, if the article is to be believed, and I'd think it probably should be.
 

Snowdrop

Rebel without a biscuit
Messages
2,933
I use tons of sea salt. If ingesting lots of plastic I hope to turn into Karate Barbie.

6000196777788.jpg
 

HowToEscape?

Senior Member
Messages
626
It IS bad...Plastic disintegrates in the sea in microscopic peaces that can enter the blood stream and the tissu.
Fishes are contaminated as well and when we eat them, we eat these tiny plastic peaces that enter our body...

How would it get into your blood? The stuff doesn't digest, so I would think it just goes in and then out much like the cellulose in celery. It's probably not quite that simple but we're very different from fish; we're not breathing water.
 

pamojja

Senior Member
Messages
2,384
Location
Austria

RogerBlack

Senior Member
Messages
902
That's the scariest part, I wasn't even aware of:

I would be truly truly astonished if the vast majority of plastic fibres that people are exposed to does not come from their clothes and bedding.

Have you ever cleaned out a dryer trap?
Or looked closely at the dust around your bed?

Look at the actual numbers reported.
In water, assuming for the moment the guardian is accurate, it reports "The average number of fibres found in each 500ml sample ranged from 4.8 in the US to 1.9 in Europe. "
It then goes on to report 'over 2.5um in size'.
Assuming for the moment that the particles are 10 times this long, that is a yearly consumption of around one fibre much thinner than a human hair, and (5 500ml glasses)*365*4.8*25 microns = 43mm long.

Per year.
About ten micrograms.
As a comparison, it takes around a hundred thousand times this amount of ricin to kill someone (in one dose).
One of the most lethal poisons, Sarin, takes 80 times this to kill.

There may in principle be substances of concern on, or in these fibres. But the dose is so low - and we are exposed in so many other ways that the fibres - of themselves - are not a concern at all, unless there is something unfeasibly toxic in them.
 
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