It's tires. Millions of cars and their tire wear for literally the last hundred years. How can it not be in our bodies and causing issues at this point.
That’s a factor for sure, especially with the finding (that was posted last week on HN) that there are tire compounds in leafy greens. But it’s almost certainly also due to the use of various plastics in everything; even if you’re drinking from a glass bottle it most likely passed through plastic at some point.
I also entertain the idea that the “feminization” that appears to have occurred since the 50’s is due to (micro)plastics and PFAS being literal ligands of the estrogen receptor, and their well documented endocrine disrupting effects. I recall some study found that 100% of males tested had microplastics in their testes.
That’s essentially the problem. Everything is plastic because plastic is cheap and versatile, but surprise, it’s also bad for you! Maybe in a century after a bunch of bickering on whether or not it’s really bad, if it’s worth solving, and lobbying by every industry against any potential hit to revenue, it’ll finally get solved, and then we get to find out all the problems with the solution, rinse and repeat.
I wonder how hemp would work out as a replacement, it seems pretty promising - stable, biodegradable, likely inert, and versatile (it can be used for containers, textiles, paper, and a lot more). For degradation, (GMed) fungi or bacteria seem like a potential avenue, surely nothing could go wrong with that.
People use synthetic fabric sheets, pillow cases, not to mention mattresses. Most pillows are filled with plastic. We cover our bodies in plastic, then wash our clothes and microplastics enter the wastewater system.
Rubber tires aren't new, they've been around for 120 years. If there has been an uptick in IBD in the past few decades that didn't exist for the first 80 years of the 20th century, you'd have to suspect a number of different things before tires.
Tires have been around for a while, but the average weight of a personal car greatly increased after the 80's. Sure there were some heavy land-boats in the 50's and 60's, but it seems now everyone is driving something 3.5k lbs or higher.
Also consider the expansion of the US highway system (starting in '56), increased freight trucking, popularity of tuning / high performance cars etc. I'd imagine more tires are getting shredded into the environment than at any point before the 80's, even with improvements in tire compounds.
Cars were even heavier in the 30s, 40s, 50s, and 60s. They had steel bodies, chrome bumpers, massive trunks, V8 engines too. It wasn't until the oil crisis in the late 70s and the introduction of Japanese brands that cars got small.
Take a look at a 1950s Coup de Ville, Buick Roadmaster or any other famous models from that era. All pushing 4K, sometimes 5K pounds.
Synthetic plastics, synthetic pipes, Tetrapak packaging, BPA can linings, BPA receipt paper… we’ve had a Cambrian explosion of plastics in the past several decades
