How avoid microplasics?

aviation_hydrated@infosec.pub to Asklemmy@lemmy.ml – 94 points –

I am busy and don't have time to research all of the ways corporations have poisoned us.

What are some good rules on how to avoid microplastics?

Eat local foods? Avoid processed foods? Walk/bike? Use dry soaps? Don't use any take away containers? Avoid walking near busy roads? Use cotton/wool for all clothing?

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Short term: grow your own food.
long term: politics

The micro plastics are in the soil. If you live urban or suburban, your soil is likely more contaminated with micro plastics than food grown on a rural farm.

You can't buy and optionally clean a bag of dirt?

Considering it’s also in the water, probably not, no.

Next to none in my water :p

There’s next to none in all water, when measured by volume.

But things concentrate, so the 0.00005% adds up over time.

A quick google finds me an article going into the measurements taken with the tap water here: it's so little it's in the range of a measuring error for none at all.

I'd have to pour 350 cups of water to find even one particle, if I'm unlucky

This is a “parts per million billion” sort of thing.

Think of it like PFAS or some other harmful chemical (which, you know, it basically is): the layperson would be categorically unable to get a meaningful measurement from a glass of water, but it can still fuck you (and everyone else) up real bad in the long run.

The only particles found were really small: 50 microns

going with that, 350 glasses, 250ml per glass, 1e+12 cubic microns per cm3

So 1 particle in 3502501e+12/50 cubic microns of water

according to my calculator that would be about 5.7×10^-10ppm

aka, next to none

yes I did the math using the simple example I found on the doc :0

Do you not understand what the prefix “micro” means?

Which has to do with buying a bag of dirt?

The micro plastic is in the dirt. Most commenters here think microplastic means a bit of plastic that broke off packaging.

Microplastic are plastic pieces that you need a strong microscope to see. They can be as small as bacteria.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2215016121003095

How does that stop me from shopping around to find clean dirt?

  1. Where? https://tc.copernicus.org/articles/16/2127/2022/

  2. You are going to pay hundreds per bag to send it for testing?

That's one approach, I suppose. I'd just pick a couple bags for testing then stick to a supplier tho

That still means you have to find a source that's not contaminated. Given it's even in Antarctica, that's going to be a challenge.

Why don’t you tell me how you think you’re gonna clean literally microscopic plastic fragments out of said dirt?

I think I'll call around to find some that have dirt with little plastic. I said optional for a reason

Let me put it another way:

Microplastics are so small that they are found in rainwater - as in, they’re found in water collected from precipitation in a pristine vessel. They’re literally everywhere, in every part of our ecosystem and food chain at this point. There is unfortunately no escaping them.

welp, sucks to be you I guess. It's monitored and minimal out here :p

Lmao dude if it’s in the rainwater, it’s everywhere. It’s pervaded our ecosystem now. They found it in fresh snow in fucking Antarctica. I genuinely do not understand how you can be so glib about the fact that microplastics have infiltrated very literally everywhere on the planet, without exception.

I understand that it's measured here, and those measurements are not as bad as you seem to want them to be. Not everywhere on the planet is equally polluted

The plastic particles are small enough to enter the cells of your body. No filter can let dirt through and block micro plastics.

Maybe stop thinking in absolutes and see if blocking 99% makes a difference? You gotta be smarter than to think in black and white

I don't think you understand how small the particles are. You can't filter micro plastics out of soil because the micro plastics are the same size as the soil particles. Take a bucket of sand and dye half red. How are you going to filter it?

There are methods to destroy micro plastics like raising the temp. But that will kill the bacteria in the soil making it sterile.

They're there in varying sizes. We're not looking for perfection. We're looking for 'good enough'. And if the place you live is so polluted that you can't even grab some dirt out of your yard without poisoning your plants... I think you have to get out of there

I don't think you understand the physics of the problem. Have you played connect 4, the game with the checkers that you drop down a slot?

Imagine the black checkers are dirt particles and the red checkers are microplastic. The game set with the slots is the filter the particles drop through. Play a game and then open the slider at the bottom to dump the checkers. Do the red checkers stay in the game set while only the black fall out? Of course not, because they are the same size.

There is no possibile way to filter the plastic because it is the same size as the dirt in all its different sizes. There are large and small dirt particles. There are large and small micro plastics. If you remove 1% of the microplastic you remove 1% of the dirt, so the remaining dirt is just as contaminated. You didn't filter it, you only removed an equal amount of dirt and plastic.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2215016121003095

Can't wait for the Water World future, these bags of dirt are gonna be worth a fortune.

I've found bits of plastic trash in almost all of the potting soil I've bought. I'm at the point where I think a heavily filtered hydroponic setup is one of the only ways to really minimize microplastics.

Hydroponics are done with plastic components. I've never heard of hydroponics done with glass.