“There’s no escaping them no matter what you eat, it seems.”

It isn’t just seafood that’s loaded with microplastic pollution. In a new study, scientists found microplastics in nearly 90 of sampled meats and meat-like alternatives – including seafood, chicken breasts, beef steaks, tofu, and plant-based burgers.

It’s become well-documented that seafood is often tainted with the presence of microplastics due to the shockingly high quantities of plastic in the planet’s oceans. For instance, a 2017 review found that regular eaters of fish and shellfish could be ingesting up to 11,000 microparticles a year.

However, until now, there’s been relatively little research into the prevalence of plastic in terrestrial protein sources, like beef and chicken.

To pry into the issue, scientists at Ocean Conservancy and the University of Toronto sampled 16 protein types, including highly processed protein products and minimally processed “fresh” products.

  • Gigan@lemmy.world
    1021·
    10 months ago

    Single-use plastics should have been banned 10-15 years ago and we should be phasing out the rest of them now.

    • rowrowrowyourboat@sh.itjust.works
      63·
      10 months ago

      Nearly half (44 percent) of the identified microplastics were fibers, while a third (30 percent) were plastic fragments. This is in tune with other studies that have shown plastic fibers from clothes and other textile products are the most prevalent form of microplastic in the environment.

      More important than single-use plastics seems to be synthetic clothing.

      • BlanketsWithSmallpox@lemmy.worldEnglish
        35·
        10 months ago

        And even worse than that? Tires. Now if only we could connect a bunch of cars together and put them on some kind of metal rail with metal wheels instead…

        2020 report found tyre dust contributes 78% of the total mass of microplastics

        https://www.reuters.com/sustainability/land-use-biodiversity/rising-microplastics-seas-puts-pressure-tyre-industry-2023-07-17/

        The report says that tires generate 6 million tons of particles a year, globally, of which 200,000 tons end up in oceans. According to Emissions Analytics, cars in the U.S. emit, on average, 5 pounds of tire particles a year, while cars in Europe, where fewer miles are driven, shed 2.5 pounds per year. Moreover, tire emissions from electric vehicles are 20 percent higher than those from fossil-fuel vehicles. EVs weigh more and have greater torque, which wears out tires faster.

        https://e360.yale.edu/features/tire-pollution-toxic-chemicals

          • arin@lemmy.worldEnglish
            2·
            10 months ago

            It’s in the air you breathe as well, goes straight from your lungs to your blood and everywhere in your body

      • Aux@lemmy.world
        31·
        10 months ago

        Quality synthetic clothing is actually great. You can wear the same t-shirt 10 years in a row and it will look and feel like a new one. But cheap ones tend to fall apart faster than cotton variants.

      • andros_rex@lemmy.world
        1·
        10 months ago

        Thrift stores throw away most of the clothing they get. $5 shirts on Shein are obviously garbage, but even the stuff sold in malls is basically single use.

        Know tons of people who’d rather toss/“donate” something than sew a button back on.

      • andrew_bidlaw@sh.itjust.works
        18·
        10 months ago

        Or there are some megacorps that teach us that so we grow up not even remembering there were any alternatives. Reusable containers were a thing just like paper bags and paper wraps, refills can become a thing one day, but in the supermarket I see individually packed old cucumbers like they are dicks in a condom, and I cringe at the thought they’d be trashed just like that.

      • Anamnesis@lemmy.world
        81·
        10 months ago

        How dangerous are they? I see lots of articles about them being in everything but not much about what they actually do when they get inside you.

        • freebee@sh.itjust.works
          2·
          10 months ago

          Tiniest pieces of plastic from for example tires would classify as fine dust particles, which is like a containerword for tiny particles from any kind of material, as long as it’stiny enough it counts as PM. PM10 and PM2.5 is somewhat researched. Breathing in fine dust particles often and in large quantities for sure ain’t healthy, correlation with lung irritation, asthma, etc. Whether it’s specifically the plastic share of the PM that’s bad: still unknown I think.

          https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Particulates

      • andros_rex@lemmy.world
        3·
        10 months ago

        That’s why “recycling” is so popular I think. The industry knew that there would be pushes against plastic, and came up with an ingenious way to make you the one “responsible” while also selling you the fairy tale that we could just reuse the stuff forever. People feel good about themselves for putting stuff in the blue bin, without realizing the near certainty that it’s going to end up in the landfill too.

      • Aux@lemmy.world
        22·
        10 months ago

        It’s not a question of convenience. Plastics require several magnitudes less energy to produce goods than alternatives like metal, glass and wood. If we stop using plastics today our emissions will sky rocket so high the planet will start boiling.

        We need to force governments to recycle better, because a lot of plastics are completely ignored in many countries.

        Here’s a quick example. My hobby is 3D printing and I live in the UK. The most common plastic in this hobby is PLA. It is both sustainable and recyclable. But Britain doesn’t recycle it as part of household waste. There are companies here which offer PLA recycling, but they require at least 50L worth of PLA to pick it up from you. I use about 5kg per year, so even if I throw away everything I print, I will need 10 years to fill the recycling order. But since I only want to throw away failed attempts, it will take a lifetime to fill it.

        If my council would start using hot composters instead of cold ones I could at least throw my PLA waste into compost with food and it would decrease into lactic acid, but the government doesn’t give a shit, so all my plastic goes into landfill.

  • Someology@lemmy.worldEnglish
    7·
    10 months ago

    I keep hearing George Carlin’s old comedy routine about how we evolved because Mother Earth needed plastic for reasons, and now that we’ve made enough to last a very long time, she can get rid of us…

  • Sagrotan@lemmy.world
    38·
    10 months ago

    For years, we got our farmers and hunters where we get our meat, search on your vicinity, it’s not only better, it’s cheaper in the long run. You’ll notice that you’ll eat less meat, but better one. Stop the supermarket overlords.

  • werefreeatlast@lemmy.world
    614·
    10 months ago

    They should compare meat from cans, from plastic bags and fresh meat…get a live chicken and stab it a few times with a sample core auger. Right? How could we beat torture the animals before we eat them? Grinding them up using plastic bushings makes plastic particles, grinding them using stones makes stone particles. Finally grinding them using carbides and metals leaves carbide and metal particles!

    We chew… maybe our methods of animal torture should include calcium carbonate tools, smashers, mushers, cutters, grinders, etc? All particles would then be made of stuff that is good for us.