That's incredible. Though the effect of this will be claims that microplastics don't exist while no one in that case claimed that murders didn't happen. Happy to have learned about an interesting historical oddity either way.

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kQq9oHeAz6wLLS 11 hours ago | parent [-]

I don't think anyone will claim microplastics don't exist, but people will definitely be skeptical of articles about how many there, and where they're found.

At worst, I'd expect to see people disregarding the threat, not disregarding the presence of the microplastics themselves.

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Lerc 10 hours ago | parent [-]

I'm not sure if they have established a threat. I thought it was mostly hypothesised or very locally specific harms.

On the other hand I suspect much of the real science on environmental plastic might avoid the term microplastic since it seems to have a meaning that flows to whatever can make the scariest headline today. I have seen the size range to qualify run from microscopic up to a couple of millimetres. Volumes, quantities, or location stated without regard to individual particle size. I'm relatively certain that they have not discovered 1mm particles inside red blood cells.

Even what counts as a plastic seems to be an easy way of adding vagueness, I saw one table that seemed to count cellulose as a plastic, which makes sense if you are thinking about properties of the material, but unsurprisingly easy to come across that it's not really worth going looking for it.

	▲	dijit 10 hours ago \| parent [-]
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