> I am not saying that microplastics are harmless, but statements like: "It seems incredibly unlikely that they don't disrupt various mechanisms in the environment and our bodies." are baseless. It's unlikely that it does nothing, but it's more than likely (all things considered) that it's potentially worth the cost.
I don't see how you can evaluate the cost of using plastics everywhere when the biggest benefit is simply to increase profits for huge corporations that don't have to worry about cleaning up after themselves.
> But it is also alarmist to assume they must have a significant negative impact without any evidence for such a negative impact.
I don't think it is alarmist to decry putting microplastics with unknown effects, into literally everywhere, including people's brains and mothers' breast milk. It's an obviously stupid thing to do - "we don't know what this does, let's pollute the entire planet with it and see what happens".
> if they were shortening our lifespan by a significant amount we would probably already know about it.
That seems overly optimistic to me. There's plenty of nasty chemicals/products that were sold for long periods of time before we eventually realised the damage that we were doing. e.g. lead in fuel, asbestos in buildings, tobacco usage etc. We have already noticed the direct harm that PFAs cause to human development and yet you seem happy to carry on spreading microplastics everywhere without requiring any evidence that they are safe.
I don't see how you can evaluate the cost of using plastics everywhere when the biggest benefit is simply to increase profits for huge corporations that don't have to worry about cleaning up after themselves.
> But it is also alarmist to assume they must have a significant negative impact without any evidence for such a negative impact.
I don't think it is alarmist to decry putting microplastics with unknown effects, into literally everywhere, including people's brains and mothers' breast milk. It's an obviously stupid thing to do - "we don't know what this does, let's pollute the entire planet with it and see what happens".
> if they were shortening our lifespan by a significant amount we would probably already know about it.
That seems overly optimistic to me. There's plenty of nasty chemicals/products that were sold for long periods of time before we eventually realised the damage that we were doing. e.g. lead in fuel, asbestos in buildings, tobacco usage etc. We have already noticed the direct harm that PFAs cause to human development and yet you seem happy to carry on spreading microplastics everywhere without requiring any evidence that they are safe.