oops

I remember when I found out that shit was plastic. I always assumed they were organic material of some kind, like the body scrubs with the crushed up walnut shell in it (which probably has fucking microplastic in it, too). So disgusting.

This is why we need to change how shit works. It shouldn't go: company does some shit > fall out > government steps in. It should go: company has an idea > must get permission first from environmental agencies

Nah corporations really don't give a shit at all, like all chewing gum is literally just plastic too and sheds tons of microplastics into your mouth as you chew it.
https://www.vice.com/en/article/rethink-chewing-gum-habit-essentially-plastic/
Plastic is an organic material though, so your assumption was correct.
- The difference is in the definition or organic. When the average person thinks organic, they mean something that is or used to be alive. When a scientist think organic, they're talking about carbon compounds.
- Interesting. Always thought chewing gum was more like when you made "plastic" out of the caesin in milk.
i assumed it was just glass or similar, maybe the same material as those moisture-absorbing silica packets
- There are probably some with sand and other hard minerals, I think Dove had some soaps with aluminum oxide in it?

Plastic gotta be this age's lead/quicksilver.

It is. Along with PFAS.

Don’t like thinking about how much of that probably made it to my brain, organs, and muscles :)

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-024-03453-1
This study released last year based on samples from cadavers suggests there’s enough in your brain to make a plastic spoon
- Maybe they can recycle me into a plastic spoon then.
- "this is not what we meant by brain plasticity"
- Damn.. yeah those samples suggest ~6–8mg of plastic per gram of sample tissue in the brains from 2024 😟 That would be like 10 grams in an entire adult brain if the distribution is even.
  “Thankfully” it looks like the brain has the highest concentration of all studied organs 🙃
- Sometimes I feel like my brain is a plastic spoon already
- people passing close to a crematorium:
  someone is burning plastic
- we could make 8 billion spoons with the right recovery recycling operations?
  fuck yeah
You don't like glitter in your brain?

Wtf is this meme border?

bordering on insanity
It's that bullshit when they take a vertically oriented picture/video, stretch it and blur it to a 4:3 ratio, and center the content over it.
Imo a waste of bandwidth and computer power for people who can't cope with the idea of vertical content on a horizontal screen, on a platform primarily accessed by phones anyway.

It's not what microplasitcs are! Does anyone knows what micro is at this point?

Microbeads are manufactured solid plastic particles of less than one millimeter in their largest dimension.[1] They are most frequently made of polyethylene but can be of other petrochemical plastics such as polypropylene and polystyrene. They are used in exfoliating personal care products, toothpastes, and in biomedical and health-science research.[2]
Wikipedia
- To add to this, the definition of microplastic is less than 5mm. So yes, 1mm microbeads are microplastics.
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microplastics
- Millibeads
If these aren't microplastics, what are?
"Micro" just means "small" in this case and doesn't mean "microscopic" or have anything to do with "micrometer".
The definition of "microplastic" according to NOAA: "Microplastics are small plastic pieces less than five millimeters long".
- The problem with that, is that if you include everything "small" in the definition, the word loses all it's meaning, feeble as it is already.
  The word microplastic was introduced to describe not just any small piece of trash, but specifically that very small, invisible, pieces of plastics that are, as it turned out, everywhere, in the air, in the water, in our food, in our blood, even in space. If you add just small pieces of rubbish to it, we remove all the sense from the word, and will need another one.
1x10^-6 m.
a micron in size?

Oh I'd somehow forgotten this era

That shit was in everything non solid for like 2 years

I still use a few profucts with a similar concept, though the beads are of cellulose or similar fiber as opposed to plastic. I’m not aware if they’re problematic or not, so I thought I’d comment in the hope that perhaps someone who feels strongly about these things might educate me if they are indeed bad for you or the environment or something.

Used to?

Map of countries where they're banned
- Chuckles, I am in danger
- dam us government trying to prevent colorful toothpaste

That's not micro though?

No, but these beads pretty much go straight into the local waterways where they can very quickly break down into micro plastics. All so a human didn't have to use a tool like a brush or a loofa to scrub themselves. Convenience at any cost.
- The brushes and loofas also contribute to micro plastic pollution.
But they become micro as part of abrasion with your teeth.
Up to 5mm is still considered microplastics.
- Seriously? That's a lot of mm...
- Big airsoft lobbying?
my microwave has been lying to me!?

Please, do name and shame.

This stuff still exists in my country, and the expensive toothpaste my mother bought is one of them 🙂

You know that old saying: If it's stupid but it works it's not stupid? This is the proof that it is incorrect.

Yeah, it's sooooo funny... it's heeeeeeel-larious! I don't know about you, but I for one can't stop laughing!

The way language is used or abused creates patterns in the mind.
I strongly suspect that this way of using language is not healthy at all, for an individual nor for a community.

I think my face scrub still has these. But I would have to check, it might be just sand they put in there. Works great tho.

Edit - I checked, the ingredients say it's silica. So yes, they put sand into it.

Haha, my poorly googled current events assignment is highly relevant after all these years! Take that you dork try hards!