There’s a lot of logical leaps your making hear. It might not be immediately deadly, but it could have lots of long term subtle effects. For example, it may contribute to cancer rates or obesity. Some people suspect it contributes to low sperm counts among men. All of these would be consistent with the current widespread consumption patterns.
The longer term, and subtler the effect is, the safer a substance is. My educated guess is that microplastics are going to cause a lot fewer human deaths and ingury than any of the following natural stuff:
Bees, coffee (see acrylamide), peanuts, mosquitoes, arsenic, mushrooms, and bodies of water.
Humans aren't the only thing that will be directly affected though. Microplastics are effectively forever and are already in aquifers and falling from the sky like rain/snow.
That means all life is going to become more and more exposed to microplastics as more and more breaks down. Sure, maybe it'll be not be so bad for a random human but what happens when this stuff starts getting into single cell and small organisms where it is in far greater concentrations?
What happens when phytoplankton, or zooplankton start getting a lot in them and it negatively impacts them? Do you get a collapse of an ecosystem?
What happens when pollinators like bees start getting large concentrations in them?
What happens as it accumulates in soil to the hundreds-to-thousands of species that are found in the first couple of inches of an average square meter of soil?
And here's the real problem... the plastic is already out there, it will break down into smaller and smaller pieces and if we entirely outlawed plastic today and no more was ever made in human history, the number of microplastic pieces would continue to grow for quite a long time before leveling off and then would appear to start vanishing as the pieces just got small enough to avoid detection via affordable methods.
Yeah but that has its own issues. Instead of worrying about your steel car rusting, now you'll have to worry about washing it regularly to keep whatever they make from landing on your car/siding/computer monitor/clothes/carpet/curtains/blinds/window molding/etc from being weakened.
That is a good point, and I agree and would add cars, hammers, sodas, and bread mold. But acrylamide studies are all based on rat models to date. Human studies have not shown the same impact. We have been cooking food a long time and it would not surprise me if we have stumbled on and kept a mutation that makes it safe.
Well consider the median American, or the bottom 20th percentile in health American. They are likely to be overweight and maybe have diabetes. I’m not saying those are caused by microplastics, but it could be. There’s no cohort of people we can compare that isn’t exposed to microplastics.
Maybe, but all sorts of things could have long term effects. Even without plastic, the environment is full of toxic or non-digestible things, like dust, or pollen. Many organisms don't want to be eaten and shed particles that evolve to be non-digestible.
If you worry too much about what MAY be dangerous, you couldn't leave the bed anymore. Remaining in bed is definitely dangerous. Not drinking water is also definitely dangerous.
