Initial data says they're at least bad for sea life. Doubtful it's good to have such durable micro materials bouncing around our lungs and digestive tracts. Stopping pollution is also much easier than cleaning up after the fact.
> Doubtful it's good to have such durable micro materials bouncing around our lungs and digestive tracts.
Having odd things in your lungs is bad. Having things bouncing around in your digestive tract means nothing. The whole point of the digestive tract is that you put untrusted materials into it.
Uh, smoke particles and mineral dusts are generally non digestible - and we’ve been eating smoked/cooked meats and slightly dirty things for at least as long as recorded history?
There's growing evidence, especially in the past few years with better studies, that suggests HPV is a significant driver, if not the most significant driver, of the increase in colorectal cancer among younger adults. I suspect it's been a disfavored explanation because of certain implications--implications which should be irrelevant and not even necessarily true, but I digress. The HPV vaccine should in theory be protective[1] so in the next decade or so it might become more clear even in the absence of additional direct investigation. Likewise, we should expect the incidence of oropharyngeal cancers to decrease, which probably not coincidentally has also risen among younger--20-50yo--adults. Notably, the HPV link is more clearly established.
[1] HPV16 and HPV18 being the variants most often identified in HPV-associated colorectal cancers[2], and which are targeted by HPV vaccines as they're the variants primarily responsible for cervical and anal cancers.
Edit: I see they appear to be using the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) intake limits for most of their tests.