So people kind of knew asbestos was harmful wayyy before it mostly stopped being used in 1979 (USA). But, it was still used constantly in many industries and ended up everywhere. What do you think is an example of something we find out is DRASTICALLY harmful 10-50 years from now? My guess would be screen time.
Micro plastics
Crude oil and fossil fuel?
They harm the environment.Got to say the obvious: sugar.
Industry sugar is just very bad for us for multiple reasons but it’s used everywhere because of addictive properties.
Go research the sugar cartel and the sugar Vs fat thing which brought the US to fat free stuff which massively raised obesity.
Honestly? Oil usage. Everyone knows it’s bad, and the only people really in a position to do anything about have a vested interest in leaving things as is.
This sounds exactly like Asbestos.
What oil?
You mean fossil fuelfuel or like sunflower and olive?
The one that’s choking the world economy because total output went down 20%
Microplastics.
In everything from clothes to blankets to tires. Everything including chewing gum.
There’s no replacing plastic like we could do with asbestos. We’re screwed
There are bioplastics that are actually compostable and biodegradable, and I’m sure with enough research we could develop others with better properties.
But why would we research a way to make the world a better place when we can just pull oil out of the ground and burn it and make forever chemicals out of it instead?
Yeah thats a scary one
PFAS?
Don’t know much about them.
That’s the problem, the main people who do are the companies profiting. Something something conflict of interest
Teflon, see my other comment.
The sources are more understood than the consequences.
Here’s a Veritasium deep dive (54min) on PFAS and their history. I thought I knew about PFAS, then this video taught me more:
Thank you!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PFAS
TL;DR - Teflon, plus other chemicals, but particularly Teflon
Isn’t Teflon itself fine though? My understanding was it was the chemicals used during manufacturing of Teflon that were the problem.
You can also get some ill effects if you exceed temp limits
Teflon itself is technically “fine” if you ignore that it’s a forever chemical on its own. The chemicals used in the manufacturing, and the chemicals used to make a notoriously non-stick material stick to things are the big issues.
But like the other commenter said, even Teflon, despite its hydrophobic and non-stick properties, eventually wears out and spreads micro particles everywhere.
Everything wears out, regardless of temperature. Sure Teflon lasts a good long time as long as certain temperatures aren’t exceeded, but even at room temperature/dishwashing temperature, particles of those molecules are still gonna wear off, and they don’t just randomly vanish.
What’s that stink you smell out of your vacuum cleaner? Well yeah, lots of dust and dead skin cells and such, but also all the other toxic debris gradually wearing away from our household items and whatnot…
For all the panicky people:
Microplastics are bad, but they’re not remotely close to asbestos bad. Nobody is dying horribly from emphysema because they accidentally contacted microplastics two decades ago. The effects absolutely exist, but they’re quite subtle and do not involve suffocating while you cough your lungs out in small pieces.
Gylphosate is bad, but it’s mostly bad for the people working directly with it and ignoring every safety precaution (the Venn diagram of those two groups is pretty much a circle). Eating food that was once treated with gylphosate will not be remotely bad for you on any measurable scale.
Source: am chemist, work as a safety professional (independent, no large company is paying me for anything but an occasional audit that is mostly unrelated to chemistry)
But, I’ll happily add something that’s bad, but not on the level of asbestos. Indoor cooking on fire and/or with poor ventilation. It creates combustion products, releases particulate and smoke and many complex volatiles that are just drifting around in your house for pretty much the entire evening.
Edit: and growing your own food on local soil in a city. That dirt has been collecting pollution for a century, and the odds are pretty decent that it might actually qualify for remediation if you live near anywhere industrial or a big road that’s been there for a while. Get your soil tested, or use raised beds if you’re growing food.
Microplastics get smaller and likely more dangerous every year. We don’t know how much present day cancer can be attributed to microplastics, there is no control group.
Nobody is dying horribly from emphysema because they accidentally contacted microplastics two decades ago.
Aren’t the vast majority of people suffering cancer from asbestos exposure the people that worked with asbestos for years? From what I understand, you’re very unlikely to suffer from a single exposure.
That being said, asbestos is fucking everywhere. Veritasium recently did a video on it, and a lot of the soil around Las Vegas just naturally contains it, and gets kicked up by vehicles, construction, wind, etc.
Aren’t the vast majority of people suffering cancer from asbestos exposure the people that worked with asbestos for years?
Sorta kinda. It was much easier to get prolonged asbestos exposure than repeated glyphosate exposure. We used it in everything, including carpets and roofs. The asbestos fibers in those roofs are fine, but the glue holding them together isn’t. It’s been falling on the ground since forever, but it’s accelerating more and more.
Meanwhile, the only people working unsafely with glyphosate are basically a subset of farmers. Now, I’ve basically NEVER seen a farmer handle chemicals according to the instructions, so within that group unsafe exposure is basically 100%, but it’s a much smaller fraction of the population.
I’m not panicking, I just had my daily inhaled dose of asbestos dust today, doing a front end alignment. What do you think most brake pads are made with?
Source: Am mechanic, and know what the smell of freshly wet road consists of, which is all sorts of toxic substances, including asbestos dust. And we’ve all smelled freshly wet pavement before…
What do you think most brake pads are made with?
Today I learned the US allowed asbestos brakepads till mid 2024. Jesus fucking christ people.
Yup, sad world we live in.
But I have no lung problems… cough cough…
43 and already got toes in the grave…
- The American industrialized food chain
- Glyphosate
- Modern technology-centric lifestyles
- Dark patterns
- Most social media
Look at the silicosis litigation that has started. Everyone wanted granite and quartz countertops, 30 years later, people cutting all that now have lung disease
I do workplace safety, and it’s incredibly hard to work with (manufactured) stone in a safe way. The dust gets everywhere, and you basically have to take the same safety precautions as with asbestos remediation.
Not to mention the use of fine silica in things like abrasives and friction braking compounds.
Seems like the lungs are way more fragile than we would like to admit.
3/4 of politicians will say porn. 1/4 will say marijuana. Gotta protect the children /s
I think porn is equivalent to a drug/alcohol. Some people can do a glass of wine with dinner and relax. Others need to get hammered every time and punch a cop. Some people can get the poison out with some porn daily/weekly and be cool. Others end up gooning for hours a day and fucking themselves up. Regardless, I don’t think access to any drug/legal porn should be restricted by the government.
Hottest take and speculative: Covid.
And it kind of depends on how you think about the scale of impacts. Aspestos is horribly damaging for a few people directly exposed. The rate of exposure to covid is orders of magnitude higher.
I think we’ve really only begun to see the long term impacts, and we know already of many of the long term issues related to decline in cognitive abilities, heart issues, all kinds of other stuff. But we right now, only know the small “near tail” behavior of those issues. It will take decades to find the “long tail” behavior of the disease.
So if asbestos exposure is 100x as damaging as covid exposure, say… but 10,000x as many are exposed to covid… its overall impact is 100x that of asbestos.
Very interesting what long term effects many aspects of that situation will be.
Yeah. I mean, I think we’ll see a global drop in total average intelligence equivalent to wide-scale exposure to an environmental toxin like lead.
Asbestos is bad.
But how do you quantify the impacts of a global average decline in IQ of 1-2%?
From having covid or the vaccine?
I wouldn’t speculate trying to split out anything regarding covid. I would treat it as a singular event.
Vape juice
Definitely lungs are for air
You know that stinky smell on the streets and roads just after it starts raining? Yeah, that’s a combination of asphalt, tire rubber dust, and asbestos brake pad dust… What a lovely smell!
Asbestos never disappeared, it’s still used in most brake pads to this day, though there is at least some recent motivation for vehicle manufacturers to switch to other materials.
A day late and a dollar short if you ask me, cuz I bet that unless you live under a rock, you’ve inhaled asbestos before. ☹️
Yeah, thats why I included “mostly” in my question.
In terms of materials, plastic food packaging maybe?
Yeah microplastics seem creepy
High THC cannabis vapes.
Why do you think so? Obviously lungs are ONLY for air, but why high thc specifically?
Mostly feeling the vibes given the recent Australian report linking nicotine vapes to cancer and the anecdotal evidence I have for these strong vapes causing all sorts of negative mental outcomes or dependency for people I know who use them heavily. We still have a lot of space to learn about unintended consequences here and I’m pessimistic.
Fuck, I hope not.
