...and there is literally nowhere on earth that isn't contaminated with ground-up, broken granules of this stuff, leaking bisphenols into the surroundings, being accidentally ingested by detritus feeders and contaminating them so it leeches it's way up the food chain.
You get the feeling that this is why there's no sign of intelligent life out there, that the answer to the Fermi paradox is that intelligent life has a tendency to kill itself off before it gets very far.
>> ...and there is literally nowhere on earth that isn't contaminated with ground-up, broken granules of this stuff, leaking bisphenols into the surroundings, being accidentally ingested by detritus feeders and contaminating them so it leeches it's way up the food chain.<<
That plus a lot of other toxic soup.
>> You get the feeling that this is why there's no sign of intelligent life out there, that the answer to the Fermi paradox is that intelligent life has a tendency to kill itself off before it gets very far.<<
That matches my observations. I have been pointing to the bottleneck for some time. And what do people do? They go and elect an internet troll. >_
Okay, I have a *different* dumb question, most plastics these days are petrol-based. What about the newfangled plant-based ones? Particularly compostables?
I suspect that plant-based plastics may be safer. However, the repeating problem suggests that it's not just one substance, which means it's probably a shape problem. Anything that looks like a key will fit in the endocrine lock. If the performance of a material requires a certain molecular shape, then everything will that trait will tend to have that same drawback.
Some interesting things in that report. The last paragraph talks particularly about aging plastics being an issue. We bought a number of reusable water bottles and use those extensively to the point that we don't often buy plastic water bottles from stores, and when we do, we reuse those until they start smelling, then they're tossed. Perhaps we should start favoring glass water bottles from the stores? Come to think of it, when we ordered still water in Germany (non-carbonated, it came in glass bottles.
The main disadvantage of glass is that it's fragile. It's clean, plentiful, reusable, recyclable ... but if you drop it, you get pointy bits everywhere. People don't like that.
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dancing_serpent
(no subject)
Date: 2018-09-15 08:51 am (UTC)You get the feeling that this is why there's no sign of intelligent life out there, that the answer to the Fermi paradox is that intelligent life has a tendency to kill itself off before it gets very far.
Thoughts
Date: 2018-09-15 10:34 pm (UTC)That plus a lot of other toxic soup.
>> You get the feeling that this is why there's no sign of intelligent life out there, that the answer to the Fermi paradox is that intelligent life has a tendency to kill itself off before it gets very far.<<
That matches my observations. I have been pointing to the bottleneck for some time. And what do people do? They go and elect an internet troll. >_
(no subject)
Date: 2018-09-15 04:31 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2018-09-15 05:01 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2018-09-15 05:03 pm (UTC)Well ...
Date: 2018-09-15 07:10 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2018-09-15 04:47 pm (UTC)Well ...
Date: 2018-09-15 07:08 pm (UTC)