History repeats itself
History repeats itself
Fun fact: the Romans knew that lead was toxic from their own observations, but still chose to use it because it was just so useful, and because the health effects are chronic so do not manifest for a long time, meaning it could be much more easily ignored until it was too late.
Sound familiar?
It's not as uf they could easily solder copper pipes either.
Lead was immensely convenient. It's no wonder it's still called plumbing (plumbum is lead, in case you missed that bit).
Fun fact, lead is delicious and counts itself among the most historically accepted forbidden snacks. Wine, in veggies absorbed through fertilizer, dissolved in solution, lead can be, and has been, enjoyed many ways.
See also: sugar of lead.
It is believed that Ludwig van Beethoven died of lead poisoning as the port he used to drink was supposedly adulterated.
The US still has a lot of lead pipes and I think that kind of explains a lot.
Many parts of Europe also do. What's your point?
Europe actually has about 3x more households with lead pipes (per capita) than the US
Everything and anything for the corporations to profit and squeeze every ounce of economic power out of the people.
because they're safe.
running water covers them with a layer of stuff
not just plastic bottles / containers,
we literally have teflon cookwareTeflon cookware is mostly a non-issue during cooking because PTFE starts melting only at temperatures largely higher than cooking temperatures.
The problem is when it gets discarded and incinerated and it emits residues, and during its fabrication.
The problem is when the surface gets damaged, which is always. Just throw away all of your Teflon and use cast iron pans. They're almost as easy to clean, and they don't have the same health risks. Sure, DuPont claims their new Teflon is safe, but they're the same company that knowingly lied about their first Teflon, fought in court about it for 30 years, and even bribed health authorities.
No way it doesn't degrade and emit PFAS occasionally during normal use. There's a reason nobody who keeps birds will keep that shit in their house.
The risk:reward ratio is so skewed it's stupid.
Risk: if you heat it slightly too much a class of chemicals literally called "forever chemicals" because of how long they stay in the body will enter your lungs and your food
Reward: food no sticky
327°C
My current research is about pfas and how bad it is. You wanna know yhe most fun part? It probably is in your drinking water. Current testing methods are only for specific compounds and many manufacturers just use a slightly different chemical structure, whose effects can be the same in a biological system...
Would you crosspost this (or give me permission to crosspost) to RoughRomanMemes and HistoryMemes? This is perfect!
For some extra context for those not in the know - the Romans boiled down wine in lead pots to make sweetener, because the lead made it even sweeter. Not because they didn't know that lead was bad - they understood it full well, and even associated certain forms of lead poisoning with lead cosmetics.
But sweetener? Just a little tasty sweetener on your bread and in your wine? What could go wrong!
Be my guest!
I keep finding memes like this and was wondering if we had a fediverse equivalent for it yet.
Subbed to the historymemes one just now, but roughromanmemes doesn't seem to be visible to me for whatever reason.
You may be the first RoughRomanMemes visitor from your instance.
That lead pipes are still around is even funnier: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-67585011
Even funnier(?), the Romans knew that lead pipes could leech lead into the water, but also knew how to counteract it (allowing calcium buildup in the pipes and ensuring a certain distance the water traveled to ensure that buildup); but this method doesn't work with modern pipe systems because the water remains in the pipes for longer, allowing the lead to seep into the water even when there is buildup. Huzzah for worse lead piping problems than the Ancient Romans?
Same with cars. But don't worry, they'll be electric soon!
Do we know microplastics to be toxic?
Not as bad as lead but definitely not good.
Maybe not in small enough quantities, but what happens when your body accumulates enough of it? Maybe its completely inert but it will build up inside us like dust builds up on devices and eventually it might start clogging something critical, like extremely small bloodvessels or maybe some badly understood cleaning mechanism on brains.
Yes, we know the chemicals in plastics are toxic.
Most of USA still use lead pipes for tap water
At least the lead pipes are coated on the inside with calcium from the water.
The issue is, when the water becomes acidic this calcium coating dissolves as well as some lead beneath it.
That's not even remotely accurate. Only ~7% of US households have lead service lines.
In Europe that number is ~25%
Yummy, I love eating garbage
i know im gonna get hated for this, but: fluoride tap water
Science says no
Fluoride is literal poison that everyone knew about until the chemical industry infiltrated the government to install politicians and university leaders to add it into drinking water to certain municipal water supplies without public knowledge
I'm surprised that I think there's a small chance this isn't satire
We don't have enough data to know whether plastic is actually harmful to humans long-term. A better comparison would be lead paint or leaded gasoline.
This is absolutely untrue.
We absolutely have enough data to know that microplastocs are effecting us
Really? BPA is an issue for sure but I've not seen anything about Microplastics specifically. It has to do something...
We have studies showing that sperm count is lowered by microplastics. We might actually have a reproductive crisis on our hands in the future. But, hey, its cheap, so why not right?
I think it has been shown that certain plastic softeners (e.g. phatalates) cause fertility issues, some of that might be included in microplastics but plastic itself I have not seen anything (And these specific softeners can be banned and are already mostly banned in the EU).
I see this as an absolute win.
You know that science gets further the more evidence we can observe right? Please look up your sources and date them for me, will you? Then do another search and pay attention to recent studies on the effects of plastics on the human body.