this post was submitted on 02 Jun 2024
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Today I Learned (TIL)
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Pretty much, humans only will act if it effects them directly. Though I guess once we get going we can be pretty quick about it. Example the ozone layer.
I would guess we all ingest a quantity of plastic the size of a credit card a year, through our water, food intake, and any products like toothbrushes we may use.
I've been using the same toothbrush for over 3 years. It doesn't seem to be losing any plastic, though the bristles do seem to be curling over.
Now my hairbrush is a slightly different story, I've had that for over 30 years. And yes, it's showing signs of significant wear and tear.
I thought plastic was supposed to last like 400+ years though? 🤔
Plastic does deteriorat or disintegrat, but it only does so into smaller and smaller pieces of its self.
Things like a plastic bottle will break into smaller parts of the bottle and linger around for hundreds or thousands of years but the bottle "shape" will not be recognised in this sense.
Unfortunately plastics like organic materials don't breakdown and get absorbed the same way back into nature. Our streets would look a lot cleaner IMO if all our litter broke down quicker. Ie less plastic rappers flying around and chip bags.
Fun fact, when we freeze a bottle of water it too slowly deteriorates and disintegrates. That plastic is then transferred into the water contained in the bottle. Doing this multiple times can show the wear and tear overtime.
Even at microscopic levels things like toothbrushes brissle do show signs of wear and tear, as all products do.
My example of toothbrushes is more on how interwoven our plastic dependency is in our day to day lives. We may be ingesting plastics without even realistically knowing where from.
For example in our foods. https://edition.cnn.com/2024/04/22/health/plastics-food-wellness-scn/index.html#:~:text=Apples%20and%20carrots%20were%20the,also%20the%20least%20contaminated%20vegetable.
“People don’t think of plastics as shedding but they do,”
“In almost the same way we’re constantly shedding skin cells, plastics are constantly shedding little bits that break off, such as when you open that plastic container for your store-bought salad or a cheese that’s wrapped in plastic.”
Thank you for your very detailed response. 👍
The way bigger problem is all the plastic waste in the oceans, landfills, out in the streets and beaches and other environments, etc.
It really sucks that people have become so dependent on plastic. It's almost like humans have totally forgotten that there was a time before plastic was even invented, yet somehow humans managed to function just fine without the stuff for hundreds of thousands of years...
It's MICRO plastic, literally too small for you to see. If you look at a new tooth brush under a microscope compared to a used one there are very clear signs of wear.
Electron microscope view: https://www.medicaldaily.com/pulse/after-you-brush-your-teeth-3-months-what-your-toothbrush-looks-why-you-need-replace-361258