Millennials? More like GenX. We’ve been eating out of microwaved tupperware since the sixties.
this post was submitted on 13 Jul 2025
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So have the millennials who were breast fed.
And formula fed
Mmmm, tasty math.
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It looks like the cumulative total of plastics produced by the 80's was around 2-3 ~~trillion~~ billion tons, whereas now it's probably more like 20-30B.
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/exports/global-plastics-production.png
Yeah and also for Gen X, Gen Z, Gen Alpha. We all still alive and everybody gets microplastic in their balls and brains. Its for all ages
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Honestly I don't think we're socially responsible enough to end something like lead poisoning these days.
Imagine trying to stop the hole in the ozone today. We'd have people spraying CFCs in the air just to spite the effort.
As someone just old enough to remember, we did have that with CFCs. Might not have been super mainstream, and nobody who would have done it out of spite really had the disposable income to actually do it.
I grew up in a Fundamentalist Christian "cult" and I remember the adults around me "joking" about it all the time. I remember a Missionary to northern Canada visiting our church (in rural America) to try to raise support talking about the temperatures and joking that it's so cold that he wanted to stand outside with an aerosol can in each hand to try to bring on some global warming, and that getting a laugh from the congregation. You might think that maybe it was a "harmless" joke that maybe as a child I didn't pick up on the sarcasm, but there were absolutely adults there who fully believed that there was nothing humans could do to damage the earth, because God takes care of it. "And how dare the government and these evolutionists try to tell us how to live."
for the past few months ive started to think we're like a couple years away from putting lead back in the gasoline
Trump deregulating gas and paint to put lead back in both would be so unsurprising it won't even garner a reaction from me.
I’m all with you. But it feels like they did already.
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Nah, because every future generation will have it too.
The pipes in the US still contain plenty of lead. Also, Covid brain damage. Tons of it.
Most lead intoxication in boomers comes from leaded gasoline, lead in other presentations is less bio-available
Bold of you to think that the microplastic is going to go away after one generation...
Who said that? Lead poisoning is still rampant in some communities.
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Microplastics cause neurological damage and anti social violent behavior?
We don't know about the longer term consequences yet, just like we didn't about lead.
Not saying it's a definite but I wouldn't be surprised.
No, people knew lead was poisonous even back near Roman days. Though just like how humans constantly do stupid things for some benefit, they kept using it as a sweetener for ages.
Also mercury in relation to, "as mad as a hatter". It's just mercury was very good for the job.
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We are just beginning to understand how much the chemical Imbalances that lead to depression, anxiety, and other mental health disorders originate in the digestive tract and how microplastics from food may disrupt the processing of these chemicals.
I don't think the impacts of microplastics are quite as catastrophic, they can't be or we would already know.
Which isn't to say they aren't bad just damn lead is realllly bad.
The concentration of them is rising exponentially, that's the part that terrifies me.
It's possible we just haven't crossed a threshold yet.
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I wonder what our neurosises will be.
Depression, I would say. Same as how boomers are labeled as uncaring and sociopathic because of lead.
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I think it's more physiological. Since microplastics are ingested maybe it's related to the rise in oral and rectal cancers.
Yeah, but the nanoplastics get past the BBB (Blood Brain Barrier), what's it, a plastic spoon in every human brain? Enough for some psych effects I guess. Oh, there's 27 million tonnes of nanoplastics spread across just the top layer of the temperate to subtropical North Atlantic
Shit's pervasive and in your brain.
Everyone has microplastics, even newborn babies, and we have no sign of decrease in its use.
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Except that microplastics have been a major problematic thing since basically plastic become a popular thing, we just didn't know it yet back then. It's not like millenials invented plastic or popularized its use.
Don't forget about PFAS!
I'm crazy. Mark My Words. In 20 years, we'll have so many microbes capable of consuming plastic people will be bitching about their packages not being able to effectively protect their goods from spoiling. The goldfish has spoken.
I've run across at least three separate articles now of researchers from across the world discovering plastic eating bacteria in the wild. Short plastic. Its days are numbered.
Luckily, for the younger generations, we'll probably just get cancer instead of becoming massive malleable assholes
And the person responsible for both issues is the same dude Roy J. Plunkett
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This one's gonna last a few (the final few?) generations.
Once at a Phish show, I consumed a rather copious amount of 🍄’s while hanging w/ mah friends beforehand. For some reason I couldn’t get the image of Plastic Man (Comic cartoon on Saturday mornings in the early 80’s) Out of my head. Every fucking song from that show I processed through the Plastic Man perspective. I was done with that memory before my brain would allow me to forget it. It was a loooonnnggg show b/c 🍄’s.
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Eliminating lead products has been a lot more feasible than the impossible task of eliminating microplastics. They are in everything. So unfortunately Gen Z and onward will suffer with us millennials.
Pffft! .... at least microplastics take decades or a lifetime of accumulation to affect your body, mind and health
Social media rots your brain and mental capacity in a matter of years or months
Boomers also have them, or do you think they intentionally target millennials?
What's replacing plastic. Good luck.
What kind of generational hazard would you like to have growing up, kids? :D
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My dad's car ran on 4 star right up until the mid 90s. I was exposed to plenty lead in my formative years as well as micro plastics.
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but at least people are born now without nuclear explosion isotopes
up until a few years ago every living being had them
so if we can stop lead from being blasted everywhere
and we can stop exploding nukes
maybe we can stop the plastic problem... but probably not for a few generations
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