Showtalk said:

Which is worse, whole plastic bags or millions of pieces

Depends on the size of the organisms that encounter it.

Whole plastic bags are a problem for larger animals, as are the big pieces as it first starts to disintegrate. Then millions of pieces becomes a problem for tiny insects and other things near the bottom of the food chain. The plastic accumulates and displaces nutrients, so critters that ingest the stuff eventually end up starving, if they can't excrete all of it.

The smaller bits might be ingested harmlessly by larger critters, but the smaller critters such as dung beetles could end up with problems from the bits of plastic mixed in the larger critters' feces that the beetles and other tiny things deal with.

Same with dead larger critters that have bits of plastic that have ended up in the flesh and organs in microscopic particles. This stuff probably bio-accumulates. They think everyone now has quite a bit of tiny plastic particles circulating in their bloodstream and in their lungs, and once they get inside they tend to stay.

So we are all victims of plastic. Help!

Indeed. I suspect that if one were to pee in a very clean jar, and then vacuum distill out most of the water, then run the rest through a mass spectrometer, you'd get a surprisingly strong indication of all sorts of microplastics..

That’s a cheery thought.

and if one is cremated after death and the combustion gases are analyzed, there are probably measurable amounts of common plastics that are burned out of the individual cells, that won't ever be excreted during one's lifetime.

Then the traditional burials, if a cemetery is excavated a thousand years from now, one could analyze the bones and teeth to pin down the exact time that person once lived. there will be radionuclides that are products of nuclear weapon tests for everyone who died after about 1945 and microplastics in everyone who died after the late 1980s to early 1990s - which means everyone alive now will have both of these substances in detectable amounts in their remains.

This is much like how you can examine teeth in European cemeteries and see a very distinct time line boundary where most skeletons have extensive tooth decay up to the present, and those skeletons prior to the early 1500s do not have tooth decay.

This is the historical boundary when extensive cheap sugar plantations sprang up in the Caribbean and was imported in such volume that even the poorest peasants could afford a high sugar diet. Prior to then, such tooth decay was only seen among the elites.

So all of us will leave behind remains that indicate we lived in the era after nuclear weapons and after the proliferation of plastics, as well as other chemical signatures of high fructose corn syrup and a few modern pharmaceuticals.

And don't forget the reduction in tooth decay after they started adding fluoride to the water too.

FWIW

We tend to get used to what we are exposed to and adapt.

Showtalk said...

We tend to get used to what we are exposed to and adapt.

How does one adapt when constantly exposed to false media lies and government corruption?

Just asking of course!

fwiw

Fighting it or giving in. A lot of people just ignore it because it’s too crazy for them.

Showtalk said...

Fighting it or giving in. A lot of people just ignore it because it’s too crazy for them.

And will ignoring it make the problem go away? NOPE... it will just continue to get crazier and crazier.

FWIW