The limited science we do have unsurprisingly indicates that it is.
It’s weird to me that a lot of HNers, like I see with western doctors, believe that until something is conclusively proven in peer reviewed research it should be treated as if it doesn’t exist at all. IMHO that’s irrational and robotic, there are such things as safe assumptions and educated guesses.
Plastic is pretty chemically inert. We've been using it widely for decades to great benefit and there is no strong evidence that it's harmful. I would not be surprised to find that in the body it's basically benign.
Or maybe not, but I don't see how you can "know" either way, without scientific research.
I don’t understand how one could read user3939382’s comment and conclude that the expressed position is that we don’t need science.
That’s not at all what they said. Rather, they were advocating for the application of the Precautionary Principle while waiting for science.
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanpub/article/PIIS2468-2...
> These findings seemingly contradict a previous GBD estimate published in The Lancet, which emphasised that any alcohol use, regardless of amount, leads to health loss across populations.
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6...
You're very much fighting the "healthy lead" fight
Fertility rates are dropping for different reasons--fewer individuals choosing to enter into long-term relationships and have kids, and families choosing to have fewer children on average than previous generations.
[1] https://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/news/newsroom/news-releases/...
1. You can't prove a negative.
2. What constitutes a change from the status quo? The status quo is a vague concept in a dynamic world.
So you have to use some judgement. Plastic is really, really safe in small amounts. Same with CO2 emissions. It's only in huge quantities that they are a problem.
This is the critical thing. People are really really bad at nuances like “harmless in small quantities, harmful in large”. People tend to want to argue whether X is good or bad in a totally contextless abstract, like sports fans taking fandom too far.
HN doesn’t seem better than reddit or fox news in this respect. It seems to be fundamental to human nature. And yes, I know I do it as well. Such a frustrating bug in human cognition.