cross-posted from: https://lemmit.online/post/6121775
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The original was posted on /r/technology by /u/lurker_bee on 2025-06-20 05:10:26+00:00.
People will do EVERYTHING but dealing with the root of the problem.
This is expensive and time consuming Because this is not a permanent solution (the patient will get reinundated with microplastics shortly after the procedure), they will need reapplications throughout their whole lives. Thus, this will likely only be available to the ultrarich.
The article does point out that prevention is still the best solution. But the corpos make that hard.
There are other ways to lower the amount of plastic in you. If you donate your blood you can measurably lower your pfas levels. Really just removing blood which carries plastic through your whole body will also lower your concentration of plastics. Because plastic is in the water, make sure you drink filtered water. They do make filters that will catch micro plastics and some will advertise it. If you want to keep your levels lower avoid hydrophobic coatings that sit next to food for extended periods of time and definitely don’t heat that food next to a hydrophobic coating. Think microwaving food in a container with coatings that’ll leach into the food. So bags of popcorn should be avoided like the plague, unfortunately.
Source: Veritasium, skip to at least 50:15, but honestly I’d recommend watching the whole thing https://youtu.be/SC2eSujzrUY.
If it’s Veritasium, I would just recommend watching. End of sentence. This bloke is amazing.
What’s a “hydrophobic coating” in relation to foods?
I don’t use plastic to heat anything up. I may buy microwavable foods, but then scrape them into a metallic or class container and heat them in the oven (that’s more out of necessity, as I don’t have a microwave oven). And I don’t like popped corn (though I kind of wish I did).
I just hate that he exudes privilege. It’s not his fault, he does amazing science communication. But man it’s hard for me to watch his stuff.
And if there’s ever a brand integration, he’ll spout their marketing drivel uncritically and try to pass it off as science. I can’t trust him anymore.
Yeah, that’s a good way of putting it. I don’t like him either, but the information is useful and/or interesting so I’ve been watching some of them.
Hydrophobic coating loosely means a thin water proof coating on a material that otherwise isn’t waterproof.
Example: the previously mentioned popcorn bags are paper based but with a thin plastic based coating. (Historically we used to use wax for this kind of thing but in the modern day it’s almost always plastic)
Not that containers made of glass, ceramic, or metals that don’t corrode don’t need and typically don’t have hydrophobic coatings.
So bags of popcorn should be avoided like the plague, unfortunately.
Unfortunately? Popcorn is the least flavorful thing in existence. Just find some other bland edible material and put your toppings on that instead.
A while ago there was a reddit post about how you don’t need bagged popcorn to pop popcorn. You don’t even need any of them there fancy air poppers. All you need is a glass container and the popcorn itself. And it’s true!
The only part that presented any trouble was finding a safe container with a safe lid - during the process of popping, an individual kernel is super warm, so if it hits a lid that can’t tolerate that it can melt pits into the lid.
Other than that (and making sure you don’t add too much popcorn, that stuff expands like crazy), just dump the kernels into your container, cover it up (don’t forget to vent as appropriate) and then microwave as you would the bagged stuff. Add your seasonings, shake up the container, and enjoy.
There’s an even more accessible way to pop popcorn. Add oil to a pot, heat it on the stove and dump in some kernels. Optionally cover with a lid.
That indeed is a functional method, but I’m not sure I’d call it more accessible. Unless you mean that more people probably own a pot than an appropriate microwave safe container, in which case, fair enough.
There are other ways to lower the amount of plastic in you. If you donate your blood you can measurably lower your pfas levels. Really just removing blood which carries plastic through your whole body will also lower your concentration of plastics.
I’m pretty sure regular blood letting is actually not great for you either.
Oh, and I suppose you’ve figured out a more modern way to balance the humors‽
Describing donating a pint of blood every several weeks as “regular bloodletting” is really something. I mean I guess in a literal sense that is what is happening, but they literally will not take your blood if it is not safe to do so, including donating too recently.
Edit: by the way, after thinking about this for only a few moments longer, i have realized you can probably do even better just by donating plasma only, and now you are not even losing your blood cells.
I know pfas levels are immediately lower after the donation. I’m not under the impression that pfas levels stay low for very long i.e. long enough to safely donate blood again.
Plasma donations can be done more frequently, though, so that might be actually effective way to reduce contamination.
But, it’s kind of messed up that we’re donating contaminated blood and/or plasma. Is that good for the people that use our blood? Who knows!
I think it’s definitely worth doing some serious math first before publicly writing it off. Even if its a marginal benefit, as long as its just a tiny bit greater than the marginal benefit you get from intentionally avoiding exposures as much as reasonably possible, then over time the PFAS levels will come down slowly but steadily
Secondly, no its not okay to give people contaminated blood. But the blood is contaminated with something basically everyone is contaminated with already, and the person who needs transfusion will likely die without it, so it is kind of moot.
But after only a few more moments of thought, if we were really concerned about it, we could just perform the dialysis on all the donated blood and plasma after it has been taken where we have economies of scale and nobody needs to be hooked up to a machine for it
It is not expensive, assuming you don’t mind giving someone else your microplastics. In fact, you can get paid about $100 to do it in most places. How? Apharesis is exactly what is performed when donating plasma.
Once the plasma is collected, I wonder if you can perform dialysis on it at an enormous scale to protect future recipients while still keeping things economical.
Is there any actual proven point of filtering out microplastics from the body? We still don’t know if there are any serious health effects from them, there is just this they might be connected to X,Y,Z. Even then the focus really should be environmental purification and water treatment.
We still don’t know if there are any serious health effects from them
That’s no longer entirely true. They can cause inflamation and cancer for example and that’s been proven well beyond “potentially”.
Even then the focus really should be environmental purification and water treatment.
I think both is important. Getting rid of all the microplastics in the environment isn’t possible with current tech and if it ever is it’ll still be an extremely slow process. Plus there are people who are exposed to large doses of microplastics due to their work or the location of their home and for those it could be especially beneficial to get that stuff filtered out.
I believe I read that not only are micro plastics unavoidable, the amount entering the environment produced by any organization is an order of magnitude higher than anything we produce at home.
Especially anything that comes in plastic wrap.
Do you mind pointing out where are those studies?
I can give you the next best thing. This video explains various aspects that need to be considered with microplastics. It’s mostly an interview with Spanish scientist Joaquim Rovira sharing his findings with what’s usually a cooking channel. He has also published several papers on the topic. Him and his peers are a good place to start if you want the latest findings.
The effects that worry me most and are arguably the best studied are those on the human endocrine system. It unarguably interferes with our hormonal system, although it is not yet known to which degree or how it impacts each individual separately. Most likely this will go the way of cigarettes; with the world “knowing” it’s poison but not taking action until the effects can absolutely no longer be ignored. By which time it will be too late for many.
No, it’ll go the way of carbon emissions i.e. the world “knowing” the problem but not taking action except for useless emissions targets that we blow past constantly.
Sure you could filter them out of the blood but don’t they get embedded in regular cells too?
Regular cells die or split regularly. When they die, white blood cells eat them, and they’ll be part of filtering the blood.
Neurons don’t though. There’s still some concerns.
Neurons die and replicate on a longer time frame, something like 7+ years, so I guess it’s just the long game with those ones
A lot of our neurons are with us for our whole life. Early neuron degeneration is what causes Alzheimer’s, Parkinsons, and similar disorders.
Not all neurons last a lifetime, and there are kinds that die off and are replaced, but a good chunk of them aren’t meant to replicate anymore and so won’t be freed of microplastics by bloodletting, and would cause serious problems if microplastics harm their normal processes.
