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This is how the human extinction will happen and it won't be epic.
It'll be because of plastic.
No, it will be because internet education will cause people to ignore actually preventative medicine like Pasteurization, hygiene, and vaccines.
Probably no extinction, but our current way of living will come to an end.
Since microplastics disrupts small blood vessels in the brain it probably causes cognitive decline.
Idiocracy?
I'm already feeling it bro
Yup. Climate change will get us close, but this will push us over the edge. Can't survive a genetic bottleneck if you can't make babies.
Can we think positive pls. What if our cells learn to process plastics and we slowly mechanically become immortal instead of carbon lifeforms we evolve into living silicon.
imagine future paleontologists a million years from now, being supercondused by the sedimentary layer full of WTF shit. why are all the fossils from that era contain strange polymers found nowhere in nature followed by a mass extinction.
I hope they write stories about how a mysterious giant asteroid made of strange synthesized polymers must have smashed our planet. It was probably a devastating mass driver attack by a technologically superior enemy capable of alchemy.
they would look for asteroids with similar polymers, and spend way too much time studying carboniferous asteroids.
i find that concept fascinating. because it's "it's never aliens" except this time it practically is but also unprovable.
I'm a few million years, i doubt there's even human traces on the moon. although I imagine them finding some human dead satellite in geostationary orbit would blow their fucking minds
A plastic asteroid must have hit the Earth!
except no asteroid crater was found, and while space research has discovered some organic compounds on some comets, they weren't a match.
Also, hopefully we used all fossil fuels, so. they don't have crude oil, therefore they might not develop plastics and have no idea how that happened.
although eventually a chemist will figure out plastics, and when they start using them, some will find that they are a match, and beg politicians to ban plastics, as they are the thing that ended a previous civilisation. but they will be ignored...
wait a few million years and then a new civilization will discover two distinct layers of micro plastics both with an ancient extinct civilization
Conservative weirdos out there going nuts about vaccines and 5G, and meanwhile all that Vitamin P they've got in their brains is like "lol now hallucinate deficit spending on turning feral hogs gay."
None of these articles address how microplastics could be harmful. Everyone just assumes they're bad. For example, what cellular machinery is being damaged?
as a cell biologist this confuses me.
usually we find the symptoms and discover the cause afterwards.
however, with micro plastics, we discovered the "cause" but somehow, haven't really found any symptoms.
I'm assuming that having then is bad, yet it's surprisingly inert.
I'm sure in 10 years we will find a massive horror that they cause when it's too late.
How can we find a control group in the first place if we are all affected?
Good point, and another reason why it's difficult,
however, you don't always need a control, look ar Rachel Carson's Silent spring.
which documented how having DDT everywhere in the world polluting all the waters leads to a decrease in Bird population without a DDT free planet to compare with besides the past.
You have an interesting writing style.
Gonna have to dissect some deceased inhabitants of North Sentinel Island as a control group.
I thought we've already been warned that all this plastic causes cancer. Like that's why we're not supposed to microwave things in plastic bowls & with plastic wrap, it supposedly causes cancer.
Some plastics cause cancer, others seem to be completely ignored by biological processes. Plastics range from cellophane which is basically just cellulose fibers chained together to Teflon which is basically entirely man made. It all depends, but generally speaking, plastic in the microwave is bad.
We think it might cause cancer, but don't think we really seem any strong sognificant relationship.
Because it's ultimately a Pascal's Wager due to it being unknown.
You can assume they're not bad and go all in on plastics. But if you're wrong, you'll pay for it worse than if you probably tried avoiding further intake as much as possible.
At the very least, we know that they're chemically inert, but the current school of thought is that they might cause trouble as a result of that, by physically obstructing things, even if they don't otherwise cause problems.
Asbestos is chemically inert, as are PFAS, but both are understood to be pretty bad for you
I think you might mean that PTFE/Teflon plastics are inert (at least unless burned).
PFAS chemicals used to emulsify or coat things with it are what gets into the water supply and causes problems.
PTFE and some others are considered chemically inert. Other PFAS are mostly chemically inert.
Carbon-fluorine bonds are extremely strong. If these weren't mostly chemically inert, they wouldn't be "forever" chemicals. They would readily degrade and it wouldn't be an issue.
Phthalates are not chemically inert and they are endocrine disrupters.
Between microplastics, COVID, and loosening of environmental laws things are looking rough
We'll just use our internal plastics to 3D print our way to Mars colonies, why can't you see that?
Future humans, or probably aliens, will use the plastic's make up to determine how old we are. Like carbon dating. Or isotopes.
There used to be a joke that they'd find that layer of beige and blue that every computer peripheral was made of at one point, and be like "Ah, 1997".
That doesn't sound bad. It sounds helpful
Welp can't do anything about it now!
I've eaten plastic all my life and I'm perffxct;yufines.
I just started watching Crimes Of The Future by David Fincher. It's about human evolution and how we as a species are adapting to the world we're making.
spoiler
SPOILER: there's a secret subset of people who are in hiding because they eat plastic, and the governments of the world want to suppress them because they're the next stage of human evolution
David Cronenberg?
That makes more sense, tbh. And is probably true.
YES. And because this was a unbiased anecdote about the movie, I definitely want to see it now