NIST: Everyday Plastic Products Release Trillions of Microscopic Particles -2022 | Hacker News Reader

NIST: Everyday Plastic Products Release Trillions of Microscopic Particles -2022

nist.gov

14 pointsasymmetric4 comments

Regularly donating blood (every 2 months) is probably the best thing you can do to mitigate this and other concerns such as PFAS. If you trust the plasma donation machines, it should be even more effective.

There was a study on some firefighters that showed this, but it only served to make me realize that I overlooked this simple and free lifehack for many years of my life.

Obviously diluting the blood will dilute concentrations of anything in the blood. And through osmosis it will dilute concentrations in tissues as well (into the blood), though the effect magnitude of that would vary. There probably are many substances that preferentially accumulate in some tissues and resist being pulled back into the blood, so this is sadly not a panacea.

I worked out a naive equation for just the blood at some point. Doesn't consider tissues.

   % removed = (1 - (1 - 450 / (70 * weight)) ^ donations) * 100

Interesting. But what happens to the donated blood? Is it filtered, reconditioned? I mean besides the usual screening? Or will the receivers have higher levels of the unwanted stuff?

With no effective filtering they would get higher levels of toxins only if they had lower levels to begin with, or visa versa. The transfusion would tend to revert their plastic levels toward the mean. That's not a bad compromise compared to the toxic effect of so many medicines that we tolerate when treating something worse.

This data makes me want to cut back on my trips to Starbucks which is better for the environment and my wallet anyway.

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