There is no strong evidence of anything yet, but consider how long it took to "prove" to society's satisfaction that cigarettes are harmful, despite most scientists finding the lung cancer connection quite clear from pretty early. Comprehensive and long term data takes a long time. It could be worth it to be cautious in the meantime.
If microplastics are making our lives 10% worse in some dimension, we will have to stumble onto what that dimension would be basically by luck and then spend at least a decade rigorously studying it before we could make useful assertions.
The hubub about microplastics is that, we don't have great civilization wide health data on most health dimensions, so we don't even have good baselines to figure whether we have regressed in many ways. IF there is a negative effect, it will effect everyone all over the planet and there is no escape
It's an extreme corner of the likelihood/amount of harm graph, and some people think that corner of the graph warrants caution even before harm is proven.
It's the same situation we faced with leaded gasoline, and the US is pretty bad when it comes to those kinds of "mild, diffuse harm that mostly affects people who can't afford whatever system the wealthy use to avoid the harm" problems.
It's not fearmongering, we are literally gambling that microplastics have minimal harm right now.
If microplastics are making our lives 10% worse in some dimension, we will have to stumble onto what that dimension would be basically by luck and then spend at least a decade rigorously studying it before we could make useful assertions.
The hubub about microplastics is that, we don't have great civilization wide health data on most health dimensions, so we don't even have good baselines to figure whether we have regressed in many ways. IF there is a negative effect, it will effect everyone all over the planet and there is no escape
It's an extreme corner of the likelihood/amount of harm graph, and some people think that corner of the graph warrants caution even before harm is proven.
It's the same situation we faced with leaded gasoline, and the US is pretty bad when it comes to those kinds of "mild, diffuse harm that mostly affects people who can't afford whatever system the wealthy use to avoid the harm" problems.
It's not fearmongering, we are literally gambling that microplastics have minimal harm right now.