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'Invisible' microplastics spread in skies as global pollutant
- accrual 10mo ago> which are too small to be seen with the naked eye Though likely a given, I wonder what the difference in outcome would be if consumers could see the issue with their own eyes. Maybe we'll need microplastic detectors at some point. It feels like a problem too easy to ignore while the effects pile up globally.
- gsf_emergency_6 10mo agoCheap, rudimentary, microscopes exist which can be used at home, automate the following? https://old.reddit.com/r/AskScienceDiscussion/comments/mi9bw7/is_there_a_quickeasyaffordable_method_of/ https://old.reddit.com/r/AskScienceDiscussion/comments/mi9bw... https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0165993618305247 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S016599361...
- woleium 10mo agoYou can see smog, but it still requires government intervention to effect change.
- rjdj377dhabsn 10mo agoGovernments respond to populist pressure. I think most people just aren't aware of how bad air pollution can be or that it even exists. I was recently in a small Asian village where the pollution gets very bad for a couple months when farmers burn the sugar cane and rice fields. I mentioned it to some locals, and they thought the thick haze was just harmless "mist" from the winter weather patterns.
- Lutger 10mo agoIf it presents a threat to comfort, lifestyle or wealth, people can fiercely resist becoming aware even when presented with overwhelming evidence. In the Netherlands, millions of people burn wood in stoves or fireplaces, just for coziness, or use it for heating where alternatives are readily available. The evidence for its massive detrimental health effects is overwhelmingly clear. When you dare to even present this evidence, you will get flamed and ridiculed as if you are an evil luddite out to take away their small pleasures in life. We are slowly getting rational about the effects of smoking, but choking out your neighbors (and children) by burning wood is still something people feel is their human right.
- brendyn 10mo agoNothing. Look at the deathscape polluted smoggy skies in India as people walk around without masks coughing.
- userbinator 10mo agoNot that I believe any of this BS in the first place, but I've always found it quite amusing that traditional blown-film plastic bags are being replaced with "reusable" ones... which are also made of the same plastics, except in textile form and thus easily shed fibers everywhere.
- leoh 10mo agoOkay, feel free to ignore everything about PFAS, etc.
- userbinator 10mo agoA century of progress is getting destroyed thanks to radical misguided "environmentalism".
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- metalman 10mo agonot in China, progress there is picking up pace, powered by solar. China is also prempting the loss of labour as people get older, and are building out fully robotic factories ,"dark factories" for the fact that the lights are turned off, not on, when they are running, as there are no humans on the floor. On the plastic's side China is by far the largest manufacurer of all things plastic, and buys load after load of US natural gas that gets pumped strait into cracking plants to be converted into polymers, but you can be sure that they, and others are working along sytematicaly to find a ploymer with the right properties for use, but that then iether breaks down comlpletly, or is inhearantly benign, and inert. My main point is that China, and nowhere else will decide how the whole plastic thing goes, and what we are loosing here in the west, is agency and credibility.
- stubish 10mo agoAsbestos and lead in petrol and CFCs were also progress. But we decided to progress further to reduce the chance of dying of cancer. And we did!
- rjdj377dhabsn 10mo agoI wonder how the amount compares to other fine particulate pollution.. would it move the needle on a pm2.5 sensor? And would a standard air filter remove most of it?