Chemicals in everyday plastics may disrupt the body’s natural 24-hour sleep-wake cycle and circadian rhythm in a way similar to coffee, which increases the risk of sleep disorders, diabetes, immune problems and cancer, new in vitro research shows.
The study looked at chemicals extracted from a PVC medical feeding tube and a polyurethane hydration pouch, like those used by long-distance runners. PVC and polyurethanes are also used in everything from kids toys to food packaging to furniture.
The findings showed for the first time how plastic chemicals probably wreak havoc on cell signals that regulate the body’s internal clock, throwing it off by up to 17 minutes.
“We don’t know the significance of it and you could say, ‘Oh it’s just 15 minutes so it’s not a big deal’, but it’s such a tightly controlled clock that it’s a significant shift,” he (Martin Wagner, a study co-author and plastic chemical researcher with the Norwegian Institute of Science and Technology) added.
Plastics are going to kill us off before climate change does.
Plastics need us for survival and reproduction so I doubt they will decide to just up and kill all their hosts. The climate that doesn’t need us for shit.
That’s why they’re evolving AI and robots. Plastic won’t need us for reproduction for much longer.
doubt that. plastics are going to fuck us up but not kill us at least in our youth. which is of course. worse really. If these types of things would kill us and be done with it, that would not be so bad.
Being able to adapt to our environment is part of what made humans the dominant species. We’ll lose a significant portion of our population, but we’ll survive.
Plastics are already starting to impact our fertility, and that’s the nail in the coffin.
Humans are like cancer. Climate change might be removing the tumor, but plastics are the radiation/chemo that kills what’s left. Without step 2, the cancer will keep coming back.
Correction:
Humans are not cancer. Capitalism is.
No, humans are. Just look at the entirety of our history.
The world’s richest 10% are responsible for two thirds of global heating:
https://www.sciencealert.com/worlds-richest-10-caused-two-thirds-of-global-heating-study-finds
Guess how they got so filthy rich? Capitalism.
Millions and millions of people work hard every single day, for low pay and zero recognition, protecting, researching, and restoring wilderness around the world.
Millions and millions of people are concerned about climate change, and have changed their lifestyles in order to try to help and reduce the strain on our planet.
Buddy, the rich have been exploiting the masses and ruining the environment for basically all of written human history. Capitalism may have sped it up, but it’s not some new behavior that sprang up out of nowhere.
Capitalism is a product of humans, and humans have always either been shitty and exploitative, or willing to let it happen to protect what they have. No matter what system of government or economics you come up with, humans will eventually corrupt it. I believe our ability to do so is our species’s Great Filter.
The people who have fought against these behaviors were outliers.
Native Americans and other indigenous groups do not subscribe to exploiting the masses and ruining the environment.
Discounting these groups, and people working hard to protect the planet as simply “outliers” is disingenuous.
Saying that all humans are cancer or corrupted is basically emotional immaturity-- it’s a very childlike world view that chooses to ignore reality.
Humans are animals, neither good or bad. Their actions may be helpful or harmful, but that is a choice each every single person makes.
And if you actually bothered to look, you’d find that most people just want to live a peaceful and quiet life.
You do know what outlier means right? Just because there are exceptions doesn’t mean that the overall behavior of humans isn’t shitty and exploitative.
Slavery is an invention of humans. Rape is a human behavior. Murder is a human behavior. Every evil thing that a person has ever done is part of human nature.
And exactly, those people who just want to live a peaceful and quiet life are the ones who just sit back and let the rich and powerful exploit everything. It doesn’t take many people to stop the exploitation, but most people just keep their heads down.
I’m one of those people who just want to live a quiet life, so I’m not judging, but all it takes for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing. And there’s a lot of good people doing nothing.
It’s no different than the “all cops are bad” mantra, because there are absolutely cops who aren’t corrupt pieces of shit, but they allow the corrupt pieces of shit to keep being corrupt pieces of shit.
I think we got spoiled by a few decades of relative good and forgot the many thousands of years of war and misery beforehand. And we’re heading back to that world because the evil people aren’t in hiding anymore.
It’s easy to try to blame capitalism, but capitalism is just the end result of human greed and corruption. If industrialization had happened 1,000 years ago, capitalism would have started 1,000 years ago. The fact that it requires a massive amount of regulation to curtail it means that it’s a natural behavior.
Or at least sterilize us for a little while, until we can get our shit together.
I think it’s the sterilization combined with climate change that’ll do it. CC will decimate our population, but being sterile will finish us off.