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NNadir

(33,368 posts)
1. This article is very poorly written. PFAS in human tissue haven't just been "discovered," there.
Wed Mar 24, 2021, 07:07 PM
Mar 2021

In my general readings in scientific journals this fact has been discussed for many, many, many years.

It's one of the topics that always catches my eye, because of my interest in radiation induced free radical chemistry.

Ferrets are Cool

(21,064 posts)
2. And then there is also this...
Wed Mar 24, 2021, 07:08 PM
Mar 2021

Florida Manatees Face New Threat: Rising Levels of Glyphosate in Blood

A new study in Environment International found chronic exposure to increasing levels of glyphosate, the active ingredient in Monsanto’s Roundup weedkiller, may have consequences for manatees’ immune and renal systems.

https://childrenshealthdefense.org/defender/manatees-new-threat-glyphosate/

Moostache

(9,895 posts)
3. Its way worse than anyone is letting on...
Wed Mar 24, 2021, 07:16 PM
Mar 2021
https://medicalxpress.com/news/2020-08-autopsies-microplastics-major-human.html

There's long been concern that the chemicals in plastics could have a wide range of health effects ranging from diabetes and obesity to sexual dysfunction and infertility.

But the presence of these microscopic particles in major organs also raises the potential that they could act as carcinogenic irritants in much the same way as asbestos, Halden explained.

"It is not always necessarily the chemistry that harms us. Sometimes it's the shape and the presence of foreign particles in our bodies," Halden said. "We know the inhalation of asbestos leads to inflammation and that can be followed by cancer."

Previous research has shown that, on average, people ingest about 5 grams of plastic every week, the equivalent of a credit card, said Dianna Cohen, CEO of the nonprofit Plastic Pollution Coalition.


The last 150 years or so have been a massive, global experiment on the long-term effects of all kinds of things on the human body. The air we breathe, the food we eat, the water we drink...all of it is polluted beyond the wildest dreams of most. The impacts? Totally unknown, but hey, someone got richer by dumping something unknown into the aquifers or land fills or oceans and as it works its way through the food chain and into all living organisms on the planet, we're going to find out a lot of it was really bad and the 'profits' that were taken in the process were nothing more than blood money.

EDIT - in the end, evolution will have the final say on all of this - organisms or populations within species that can survive or thrive on the contaminants and by-products will propagate and those that cannot will die off. My point is not to be alarmist other than to say, we have no idea what the actual multi-generational effects will be on humans...but there are warning signs enough to be far more concerned than society is about this...
 

OldCicero

(43 posts)
4. Why Are You Not Dead Yet? Life expectancy doubled in the past 150 years. Here's why.
Wed Mar 24, 2021, 07:33 PM
Mar 2021
The most important difference between the world today and 150 years ago isn’t airplane flight or nuclear weapons or the Internet. It’s lifespan. We used to live 35 or 40 years on average in the United States, but now we live almost 80. We used to get one life. Now we get two.

You may well be living your second life already. Have you ever had some health problem that could have killed you if you’d been born in an earlier era? Leave aside for a minute the probabilistic ways you would have died in the past—the smallpox that didn’t kill you because it was eradicated by a massive global vaccine drive, the cholera you never contracted because you drink filtered and chemically treated water. Did some specific medical treatment save your life? It’s a fun conversation starter: Why are you not dead yet? It turns out almost everybody has a story, but we rarely hear them; life-saving treatments have become routine. I asked around, and here is a small sample of what would have killed my friends and acquaintances:



https://slate.com/technology/2013/09/life-expectancy-history-public-health-and-medical-advances-that-lead-to-long-lives.html

Moostache

(9,895 posts)
5. My point is not that we're all gonna die tomorrow...
Wed Mar 24, 2021, 07:39 PM
Mar 2021

It is that the pollution and chemical / plastic / biologic contamination of EVERYTHING is an experiment on a global scale without any real understanding of the long-term (generational) effects.

Of that increased life expectancy, I would be interested to know how much of it is directly due to antibiotics. I am going to bet that it is the majority of the prevented deaths and a great deal of the extension of life expectancy too.

Its a moot point for us living now...just fodder for our ancestors to chew on when they ponder what was done to them, by us, in the name of profits for a very few.

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