Every generation has some product/ingredient that they didn’t know was dangerous at the time: tobacco, lead, asbestos, etc. What is that item for this generation?

Jpopy@lemmy.world to Asklemmy@lemmy.ml – 717 points –
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I would probably say either alcohol or microplastics. Both are carcinogenic. At least alcohol is avoidable, but microplastics pretty much saturate all of our environments. It reminds me of when they were doing experiments to figure out the impact of lead, they couldn't even open the door to the lab, because the airborne concentration of lead would throw off the readings. We might not ever know what real health is like without walking around with grams of microplastics inside us.

I am confused as what the prompt is supposed to be, by your answer. Alcohol is well known to be awful, it's one of the most destructive things you can put in your body. It's a literal poison that can kill you by acute excessive consumption, and destroys almost literally every part of your body over time with excessive consumption... which is easy to do, because it's also highly addictive. In fact it's so addictive, it's one of the few things that you can actually die from withdrawing from. What else is there to learn?

They probably mean that young people now is drinking less that previous generations. Sure, we have known for a while that alcohol is bad, but only recently it has been seen as "why would you drink it?", And it's falling out as social engager.

Saying that, I still drink, I know it's not great for my health, but I usually have a good time with it, and it helps with my introvert Ness.