49 Comments

Thanks, Thom for this article. Greed has ruined this planet.

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Greed is nothing new. Consider the possibility that an economic system that allows greed to run the show may be the real culprit here.

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Aug 29, 2023Liked by Thom Hartmann

Well, at least we can't say we weren't aware. Thanks Thom. I don't think it'd matter what containers were used, there'd always be an issue. I remember when our fish and chips used to come wrapped in newspaper - imagine the chemical residues! All we can do is try to assuage our consciences by using the best available containers; guess I'll be switching to a stainless steel water bottle.

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Remember the scene in "The Graduate" when the man (perhaps Mr. Robinson, I don't recall) pulls Benjamin aside to give him advice for a successful future? He says, "I just have one word--"plastics".

Who then had any idea of the double-edged sword plastics would turn out to be?

One of my mother's favorite sayings was "the road to hell is paved with good intentions". I doubt any of the chemists who discovered the makeup of plastics, or those who found practical applications for them had any idea of the disaster they were creating.

Evolution generally functions over millennia in response to exposure to the natural environment. The modern environment to which we are being exposed is man-made, bring us into contact with elements of human invention not natural selection. Thes inventions are exposing us to elements which nature might never have created if left alone.

Remember the motto of the chemical industry: "better living through chemistry"? There was another popular at about the same time:: "it's not nice to fool mother nature".

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Right that's great reference to those old tv spots. Problem we discovered though - we can't fool Mother Nature, only ourselves.

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founding

Well, maybe not the 1960s but surely only a decade and definitely 2 decades later per the chemists I knew and surely in the 90s as a working "molecule bender,"

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In a related issue, there is pretty good evidence that for decades male fertility rates have been dropping all over the world. While correlation is not causation, and there are many chemicals that could be culprits, this certainly is a bad sign. In a way it is sort of understandable; humans damage nature, so nature reacts by reducing the number of humans. (A similar irony is how climate change could well make the largest oil exporting states of the Middle East so hot as to be virtually uninhabitable.) I am old enough to remember when people were debating whether smoking was really that bad for you, and it is just a matter of time until plastics gets the same sort of public discussion. Unfortunately by that point they will be far harder to control than tobacco ever was.

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Definitely, and other impacts on biology have been discussed as well as fertility.

https://www.salon.com/2021/04/04/plastic-pollution-infertility-extinction/

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founding

This is an excellent article and a great book reference.

THANKS

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Heavy topic, but on a lighter note, Tucker Carlson thinks and promotes tanning one's genitals to bring the fertility rates back up.

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Well, that explains something...just not quite sure what! That nanoplastic, in every organ...even the brain. I think I will go with that one for Tucker.

He seems so lonesome...sad. Good thing he has the $$$ to summer in the Hamptons. There's a useless pair of over-tanned gonads to be sure. At least the rest of us don't have to look at that early dementia scowl nightly. Yes, yes to be sure no one HAS to watch FOX but his impact is a reportable event.

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LOL

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I understand that tap water is a large source of micro and nano plastics. I see people buying filtered water in 5 gallon and 1 gallon plastic jugs, they even refill machines for these jugs.

I use well water, which I then filter. Now I am very concerned. I wonder if they have a kit for testing well water, for plastics.

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Aug 29, 2023·edited Aug 29, 2023

Totally depends on the local water. NYS is famous for its great water from the croton and related reservoirs. County by county we get annual water testing results. Many issues arise from local conditions - runoff from fertilizers and chemicals. One really big topic during the last few years has been the "forever chemicals," often resulting from use by fire departments. Even in fire dept training sessions much of these flame retarding forever chemicals have gotten into ground water.

A amazing thing really:

The New York City Water Supply System provides one billion gallons of safe drinking water to New York City’s 8.5 million residents every day. The system also provides about 110 million gallons a day to one million people living in Westchester, Putnam, Orange, and Ulster counties.

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As seen on TV, there are law firms championing class action suits against the makers of Fire Retardant Foam as it has proven to cause cancer.

I understand that NYC hast \he best tasting water in the country, thanks to it's source, which is a limestone reservoir, or the limestone it travesl through.

But is that enough to filter out nano particles or micro particles?And doesn't the chlorine and fluoride get through the filtration process. I read that hormone disruptors and hormones like progesterone,estrogen and testosterone are too small for filtration.

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Inside concert in Saratoga springs ny they sell in the venue the regular purified water in bottles. The venue is in a state park where, steps outside the gate there are not only mineral springs but fresh water springs and anyone is free to take as much water as they want, all free, truckloads if you want, best in the world.

Apparantly there was an incident last week where activists blocked the road to burning man festival in Nevada desert to insist that they stop selling water in non-reusable bottles there.

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founding

Go figure

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We wouldn't even have had the clean water act - now 50 years old - if not for a bipartisan congressional override of Nixon's veto.

https://waterkeeper.org/news/bipartisan-beginnings-of-clean-water-act/

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Bipartisan ship is as dead as the dinosaurs, a relic of times past.

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I think Howard baker was involved in the override - a Republican known as "the great conciliator."

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And the Howard Bakers are as extinct as the Dodo bird

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founding

Yes. They are but the filter systems that work are at the molecular level so you have to start from large to small to smaller size contaminates.

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You can get a meter that reads TDS...NO, not that Totally Dissolved Solids.

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Not really. I worked with lab water production and in research. There are not tests for water at that necessary measurements for tap. Using a Brita filter is the best solution.

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Thanks I have two Brita pitchers, and one we are going to install to service the water/ice system in my refrig. I was looking on the net for a kit, thanks for letting me know, there is no such.

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founding

You would need to go for an RO system. They are available for the faucet, domestically. From there a lab water system with DI resin, and end filter that is an end filter with molecular filtration.

But the rest of the world has PFAS or PPMP or polyvinyenls, etc. like floors,food,food wrappers,etc.

So, environmentally speaking we are surrounded and just do common sense applications probably the best.

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The image of everyone infected with microplastics, can't leave my head. The first time I ever felt a benefit of being 84 years of age, and in remission, for now, from lung and brain cancer

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founding

Young man, you are doing just fine! That brain & lung cancer is a tough combo. s A friend had it and had a front row seat. I am actually getting a mammogram today as a recent breast cancer check. Glad i could be of service. Hang in there.

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You must be at least 100 yrs of age to call an 84 year old young man. I do appreciate the compliment, though I would love to be a young man again. I would have quit smoking much sooner.

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What a mess greed has made of this world.

It seems nothing is good enough in its natural state.

So much ‘ progress’ is killing us.

And the manufacturers of the most toxic , are the wealthiest .

When we have it backwards, we are unable to respect what we’ve been given.

And our duty to protect is insulted by the lies that protect the manufacturers of these killer ‘goods’.

Again the Supreme Courts repeated blunders

have sentenced us to death by toxins . They refuse to allow protections to water sheds and bodies of water.

It seems looking into and investigating , before their blatantly ignorant decisions are made, might be an option for a less arrogant group who might choose people over profits.

Not this conservative cult.

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How are the right wing Republicans going to blame the liberals for this?

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Pretty easy. If it qualifies as a crisis facing humanity, one has to be "woke" to care about it.

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They don't need a rationale or excuse. Truth and facts are irrelevant to them, all that matters are memes and publicity, which the corporate (fossil fuel) media provides.

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In my opinion, the truth is, it is too late for mankind to turn it all around. I did solve the not evolving problem, by abolishing the family unit, but it will take at least 200 years for man and the remnants of man to evolve. I think in my opinion we have less than 10 years before a major die off ? If I'm correct, the aborted fetuses will be the lucky ones.

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Aug 29, 2023·edited Aug 29, 2023

My son, who is brilliant, and quite original in his thought, has analyzed the situation carefully, gone over the numbers and the impacts. "It's too late," he's told me numerous times. "Even if we started today, we couldn't stop the warming." Sad, but not unexpected. He's somewhat cheered by the technologies that pull CO2 out of the air, but that fix is likely unaffordable anywhere and the political will is simply not there. It would just so many to make an impact and people don't want to pay for it.

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founding

Is it too late for the current life style as we currently live it? Yes. Is everyone going to croak, no.

Will it be a comfy transition? Probably not. Have humans lived through catastrophic conditions-yes.

So, work towards a better future. The answers are not binary. As in paas/fail. Live/die, etc.

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Its what give me hope for my children.

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It seems that we share the same opinion

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founding

G!eez, Bob what a buzzkill

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That's why I tried to post way low. I didn't say everyone would die off, I left out probably in my opinion 80%, trying to be positive!

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founding

Haha

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Cause of death:

Pragmatism in pursuit of profits.

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Aug 30, 2023·edited Aug 30, 2023

Life or death? Are we going to let the industry, market place and stock markets continue to determine what we do or don't do with fossil fuel? It's long past time to decide, much less stop the subsidies.

If people can reduce, reuse, and repurpose it would be a start. Regulate and stop the crazy packaging we are using! Chasing down the chain of the worst sources would help.

The scientists working on ocean plastic pollution are on it. The Guardian published an article titled "Microbes discovered that can digest plastics at low temperatures" on May 10, 2023.

Of course, the answer is to leave fossil fuels in the ground and find new materials that can possibly biodegrade.

Know a brilliant young person that wants to save the world? Tell them about what they could do with a degree in Material Science.

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founding

Agree with everything you said.

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My chemistry education and later work experience for a biotechnology company has affirmed this situation in a cumulative way. While there were plenty of research jobs when I was in college all the way to my current retirement the actual research of what all this synthesis was about lagged behind. I guess there is no money in it and only a bit more in hindsight.

In one of my Organic Chem classes I recall a passing statement of 30,000 organic chemicals (approx. at the time) but no research on their effect and of course more in development every year. Unless there is a known carcinogenic compound like say benzene ( everyone knows the benzene ring symbol?) there isn't much restrictions in place for use. The issue 3M has with their development and product application with forever chemicals may be widely known locally but there are bad news stories like 3M's everywhere as we are finding out, AFTER of course when it is too late.

There is an article in WaPo recently about how breast cancer is happening in younger women at increasing rates. Like in their early 20s! Unfortunately we the people maybe experiencing the "f-ed around and found out" as a result of our inability to face facts and deal with them politically. Nice going GOP the party of the death cult which also has me recalling the movie The Graduate..."plastics", indeed,!

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Aug 29, 2023·edited Aug 29, 2023

It appears that folks in and around the Aegean Sea, who travel to resort Islands in this beautiful part of the world, have noted for years how the plastic in the Sea washes up all over the beaches. I heard a podcast about Montenegro (I think it was) which has certain arrangements with Germany and industrial areas of the EU to do trash carting to the east via rail and much is dumped in eastern Europe, where environmental standards are weaker, and some time a ago one of those landfills washed into the sea. Also, supposedly researchers can see that even at the top of the Pyrenees mountains, there is high levels of plastic components (whatever becomes airborne, I suppose).

Of course we also know that so-called trades deals often involve the protected ability of companies to leverage or arbitrage the lower environmental standards that apply outside the US. So even when certain standards are good here we allow offshoring with lower standards.

Of course we have this situation in which this country had a much more rational attitude about dealing with environmental issues some 20-30 years ago, and we've noted that whether we are discussing transitioning to the new EVs, or just the ridiculousness of driving a car to supermarket to buy and take home heavy beverages often of no particular health value (soda) in fossil fuel-based containers, the American society lags behind in awareness and sensible steps that can be taken. My neighbor had a soda fountain at home in the 70s - we made soda at his bar with a squirt of syrup mixed with seltzer - all you needed was a metal spoon and drinking glass. Now try this at home today - my understanding is they make it too difficult. They want you to get your soda premade in plastic containers instead, and for everyone to drive back and forth. Thank about how inefficient this is! I dont mean to drone on but we should point out that these plastics are petroleum-based products that the oil industry profits from.

In the 60's there was an expression, people would say (I think this may be in "the Graduate" film) "I'm getting into plastics" because it was the new growth industry for hungry professionals in business. It seems that Bakelite was the first synthetic plastic and was well-known and kloved in its time.

"I'm not a telephone junkie

I told you that we were just good friends

But when I hold you like I hold that bakelite in my hands

There's no action...."

(Elvis Costello referring to bakelite in 1978)

This topic logically raises again the issue of ESG investing, which would enable better data reporting and analysis about this and other environmental impacts of business activities. Theres no doubt - use of the hazardous materials to store and serve food should be subjected to ESG reporting, to better inform and highlight the impacts. So, ESG anyone?

https://www.sec.gov/news/statement/peirce-statement-esg-052522

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Aug 29, 2023·edited Aug 29, 2023

Having looked around and spoken to many people about new cars, really have to emphasize that although many good options exist, the pricing, availability and dealer greed involved in buying a vehicle that gets over 35 mpg (with hybrids, plug-in hybrids especially) is daunting today. Many major companies (Mazda) don't make hybrids or have poorly rated EVs. Although Audi in the luxury sector announced its goodbye to all combustion engines within 2 years. US really has to get its act together. Today the companies and car dealers are impeding progress, and who knows how much of a role tge oil companies are playing.

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founding

Only 68...but feel like 100! Hahaha

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I think it all begins with, Santa Claus, the tooth fairy, the Easter Bunny, and Messiah's coming back. After that the human brain is toast. Kind of sad really.

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