• guyrocket@kbin.social
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    1 year ago

    I've been reading the wikipedia article, not through all of it yet.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microplastics

    Some highlights:
    Bottled water has much higher microplastics content than tap water.

    Coral can ingest microplastics

    Waste water treatment plants filter out most (but not all) microbeads into sludge. Some places use that sludge as fertilizer for farms.

    Microplastics are in stuff you would not guess. Paper coffee cups have a plastic liner. Clothes put off large amounts of microplastics when washed. Tires put off microplastics. Some exfoliants and other cosmetics contain microplastics as microbeads.

    • _number8_@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      Deep layer ocean sediment surveys in China (2020) show the presence of plastics in deposition layers far older than the invention of plastics

      wtfff

      • flambonkscious@sh.itjust.works
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        1 year ago

        Maybe there's plastics stuck to the things we detect plastics with?

        I should really give the scientist some credit, but I think this is a funnier outcome

        • SpiderShoeCult@sopuli.xyz
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          1 year ago

          Or there was plastic stuck to the machines used to sample and it contaminated the area during sampling. Or there was plastic in the lab during testing. Though potentially those should have been ruled out by testing a blank sample and a control sample of just the 'empty' sampling equipment.

      • Roboticide@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        I feel like there could be a few rational explanations to that, but I want someone smarter than me to tell me what exactly they could be…

    • dubyakay@lemmy.ca
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      1 year ago

      clothes

      I'm guessing this is referring to synthetic fibers like acryllic and polyester?

    • Holzkohlen@feddit.de
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      1 year ago

      Haha I drink filtered tap water. Wanna bet that the filter will put more microplastics into my drinking water?

    • MJBrune@beehaw.org
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      1 year ago

      I have 5 gallon plastic jugs of water delivered, I wonder if that's worse or better water than my potentially lead water from my faucet.