• Pasta Dental@sh.itjust.works
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    1 year ago

    Everytime I see microplastics mentionned it reminds me of that post that said that every generation had very toxic products that people just used and didn’t know they were terrible, like asbestos and leaded fuel. Well for our generation it will be plastics that need to be eradicated! Then well find out another thing that is extremely toxic

    • cheery_coffee@lemmy.ca
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      1 year ago

      I don’t think that’s better.

      All the stuff from older generations is still there. That’s the lesson, not “well they were fine”. It’s “this stuff is going to plague humans for hundreds of years, be careful”

      In northern Ontario they dumped mining tailings into lakes, thinking the water works absorb it and eventually it would get buried by sediment. It turns out that natural minerals in the water continuously pull the arsenic out of the sediment and back into the water, making it impossible for the ecosystem to recover, even after 100 years the chemicals are still there. It’s a perpetual process.