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Reblogged xekstrin
One of the team behind the letter was blunt. “The brain microplastic paper is a joke,” said Dr Dušan Materić, at the Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research in Germany. “Fat is known to make false-positives for polyethylene. The brain has [approximately] 60% fat.” Materić and his colleagues suggested rising obesity levels could be an alternative explanation for the trend reported in the study. Materić said: “That paper is really bad, and it is very explainable why it is wrong.” He thinks there are serious doubts over “more than half of the very high impact papers” reporting microplastics in biological tissue.
But the brain study is far from alone in having been challenged. One, which reported that patients with MNPs detected in carotid artery plaques had a higher risk of heart attacks and strokes than patients with no MNPs detected, was subsequently criticised for not testing blank samples taken in the operating room. Blank samples are a way of measuring how much background contamination may be present. Another study reported MNPs in human testes, “highlighting the pervasive presence of microplastics in the male reproductive system”. But other scientists took a different view: “It is our opinion that the analytical approach used is not robust enough to support these claims.”
Further challenged studies include two reporting plastic particles in blood – in both cases the researchers contested the criticisms – and another on their detection in arteries. A study claiming to have detected 10,000 nanoplastic particles per litre of bottled water was called “fundamentally unreliable” by critics, a charge disputed by the scientists. The doubts amount to a “bombshell”, according to Roger Kuhlman, a chemist formerly at the Dow Chemical Company. “This is really forcing us to re-evaluate everything we think we know about microplastics in the body. Which, it turns out, is really not very much. Many researchers are making extraordinary claims, but not providing even ordinary evidence.” While analytical chemistry has long-established guidelines on how to accurately analyse samples, these do not yet exist specifically for MNPs, said Dr Frederic Béen, at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam: “But we still see quite a lot of papers where very standard good laboratory practices that should be followed have not necessarily been followed.”
A key way of measuring the mass of MNPs in a sample is, perhaps counterintuitively, vaporising it, then capturing the fumes. But this method, dubbed Py-GC-MS, has come under particular criticism. “[It] is not currently a suitable technique for identifying polyethylene or PVC due to persistent interferences,” concluded a January 2025 study led by Dr Cassandra Rauert, an environmental chemist at the University of Queensland in Australia. “I do think it is a problem in the entire field,” Rauert told the Guardian. “I think a lot of the concentrations [of MNPs] that are being reported are completely unrealistic.” “This isn’t a dig at [other scientists],” she added. “They use these techniques because we haven’t got anything better available to us. But a lot of studies that we’ve seen coming out use the technique without really fully understanding the data that it’s giving you.” She said the failure to employ normal quality control checks was “a bit crazy”. Py-GC-MS begins by pyrolysing the sample – heating it until it vaporises. The fumes are then passed through the tubes of a gas chromatograph, which separates smaller molecules from large ones. Last, a mass spectrometer uses the weights of different molecules to identify them. The problem is that some small molecules in the fumes derived from polyethylene and PVC can also be produced from fats in human tissue. Human samples are “digested” with chemicals to remove tissue before analysis, but if some remains the result can be false positives for MNPs. Rauert’s paper lists 18 studies that did not include consideration of the risk of such false positives. Rauert also argues that studies reporting high levels of MNPs in organs are simply hard to believe: “I have not seen evidence that particles between 3 and 30 micrometres can cross into the blood stream,” she said. “From what we know about actual exposure in our everyday lives, it is not biologically plausible that that mass of plastic would actually end up in these organs.” “It’s really the nano-size plastic particles that can cross biological barriers and that we are expecting inside humans,” she said. “But the current instruments we have cannot detect nano-size particles.”
Whoopsie it was all bad science rushed out the door.
Reblogged daughter-of-sapph0
Can’t go a day without seething in rage about how “Woke” was coined to discuss the pervasive nature of antiblack racism throughout all societies and got so fucking mangled by the white masses across all political spectrums that it practically doesn’t mean anything anymore. It’s almost a joke of itself.
@official-linguistics-post look at dude being mad at completely normal semantic shift
Reblogged
I desperately need funds to not go homeless!!! All characters in my For Sale folder on toyhou.se [140 characters] are currently up for offer, OTA with bonuses at certain offers [new image/redesign and ref]. Everyone is free to offer on as many characters as they want.
If you are not interested in any of these designs, I also have a GoFundMe set up here:
Please, help if you can, share if you can. I try my absolute best to not beg for help unless I absolutely need it. As it stands, our lives and livelihoods depend on your assistance. Even just reblogging this will help tremendously.
hello, i am making-you-in-spore, also known as moonlit comet. we are in a serious financial hole, our worst yet, and we need help.
as of right now i am currently selling around 140 character designs on my toyhou.se, and have the gofundme listed above. if you cannot buy or donate, please share. it's an extremely urgent situation for me. thank you all for your support. i love you guys.
Reblogged noellevanious
coworker today was talking about how she tries to drive less to reduce her carbon footprint, so instead of ordering takeout she orders delivery. when I pointed out that this actually results in the exact same amount of emissions because the same amount of driving happens she said "yeah but it's not me driving." and I feel like any critique of progressive individualism I could make based on this would fall flat because like. what else is there to say? she summed up the flaws of individualist environmentalism better than most critics could, without intending to.
Reblogged hbmmaster
you gotta tell your cats theyre small. they dont know. you gotta tell em
Reblogged cynicaljoystick
dry humping in its specificity as a term implies the existence of wet humping
not my best work
Reblogged postoctobrist
people act like CNC is some evil irredeemable kink as if it's not literally just you and your partner(s) deciding that today opposite day.
"But if we let people play the floor is lava around the house, it normalizes being careless around real lava!" that's y'all. that's how you sound.
Reblogged gargamelldansen
katcatk-deactivated20240320
Reblogged postoctobrist
Reblogged clodpoleclub
There is no meme so domain-specific that I won't laugh at it. Give me train fandom memes about fucked up signal flags. Give me Beowulf scholarship memes about how to correctly translate "hwæt". The fact that I have no frame of reference is no obstacle to a sensible chuckle.
Reblogged clodpoleclub
There is no meme so domain-specific that I won't laugh at it. Give me train fandom memes about fucked up signal flags. Give me Beowulf scholarship memes about how to correctly translate "hwæt". The fact that I have no frame of reference is no obstacle to a sensible chuckle.
Reblogged
its so sad when a fanfic trope initially centered around noncon/dubcon gets popular enough that it turns into a watered down extremely consensual healthy-relationship version of it
as retribution i think i'm going to start taking vanilla tropes and making them noncon. the barista is putting roofies in the coffee. there's only one bed and the other guy is getting chained to the radiator. there's no social or legal protections for assault within soulmate matches
that last one already exists and its called soulmarks
Reblogged esthermika
I'll post it again, just to make sure you read it and have the chance to decide if I'm going to stand out here by myself and say this or if you're with me. I posted this as a direct response to the person who targeted me:
ah, so here's why I got banned. for context, this-blog-kills-tmes was posting about wanting to kill herself. I did what I always do when I see a girl in pain: tell her that she's not alone. I will do it again, given the chance.
all I said was "I don't hate you". that's enough, apparently. suddenly, I am dangerous. I need to be punished.
let me tell you a story, you nasty little freak. this is the story I don't tell anyone, but you disgust me so much and I need you to understand why.
I, personally, have put a child molester in jail. I held a girl's hand, sitting on the lawn of the sheriff's office, while she got a confession out of her father on a recorded line.
I did what you think you're doing. I didn't get to feel like a hero while putting nothing on the line, like you. I just got a phone call from a girl crying with nobody else to turn to. she went into the foster system, I lost contact with her. I don't know where she is or if she's okay. I don't get to feel like a hero. I have to deal with all the complexities of reality.
I despise you. you don't know the first fucking thing about protecting anyone, all you know how to do is hurt people.
all those "kill all pedophiles" bumper stickers or, perhaps, all these shitty little blogs? you're the reason she cried because she thought she was going to kill her father if she got help. you make it harder, not easier, for people being abused to get help. she doesn't get to call him a "pedophile", she called him dad.
you are an awful, self-serving, nasty little stain on the world and I hope you get hit by a bus.
@isuggestmaimingpedophiles aka @i-suggest-maiming-pedophiles you too. develop the ability to feel shame, delete your blog, and find a different way to chase clout.
@decentpersonsuggestions I see you in the notes here, I'm not gonna scroll your blog but I assume this applies to you too.
oh, and of course you hit innocent bystanders like me all the fucking time. that's less important and should be obvious, but I can't rely on you to think critically so I guess I have to state it plainly.
I would love to be a teacher, but I can't because of people like you. I know better than to put myself through that.
People who run around saying kill all pedophiles are why i didnt report my abuser or tell anyone until any evidence was long gone.
I didn’t want my cousin to die. She was like a big sister to me, she took care of me and held me when my mother was neglecting me.
She was Babo, a nickname me and my brother gave her since my brother had trouble pronouncing her actual name.
She was a lifeline when we had nothing. We didn’t want her to die, so we didn’t tell anyone until all the evidence was washed away.
Reblogged clodpoleclub
speaking of peeing the bed it's been long enough that i can tell this story publicly. in high school i went to a party at some house with no adults, as you sometimes would, and at the end of the night like 10 people all clonked out together in the same bed. fully clothed, one of those teenage moments where you're like wow heehee how rule-breaking, because sure a lot of our parents wouldn't like us sleeping in a bed with a bunch of other teenagers and no adult supervision blah blah. fond memories. anyway.
i'm an extremely light sleeper, so i barely slept, and sometime around 6 am, i woke up to a girl totally panicking, very quietly, because she peed the bed in her sleep. and listen. this wasn't a group of mean kids by any measure. but there's no level of kindness or understanding in the world that will make peeing the bed when you're 17, surrounded by people you only sort of know, a gentle blow.
so i sat up and she was like "oh my god" and I signaled at her to be absolutely silent and I said I'd be right back. And I crawled over everyone and out of the bed like a stupid cat.
and the thing is, by senior year i wasn't getting bullied much anymore. i was generally pretty well liked by my peers, but, if this makes sense, people still didn't always expect very much from me. i was still figuring out how to mask (autistic) and i still often said or did something that made everyone remember i'm weird and they'd just be like "well. that's story for you. i guess." and for the most part i'd become pretty secure in that.
so what i'm saying is i had nothing to lose and this girl had everything to lose.
so i went downstairs and i made tomato soup. and by "made" i mean i put a whole can of tomato soup in a too-small mug and microwaved it until it was lukewarm so as to be convincingly "made" but not so hot to burn someone.
and then i walked back upstairs, and no longer like a cat, i clumsily "attempted" to crawl back into bed, loudly lost my balance, and spilled tomato soup all over the girl and her lap and several other people's laps and heads and the mattress.
everyone woke up confused and anguished and i was like, "oh my god, I'm so sorry. I just got really hungry and it's all i could find."
and everyone immediately accepted with absolutely no further questions that I would go downstairs, make tomato soup at 6 am,and bring it back to bed. everyone just begrudgingly climbed onto the floor and went back to sleep while I put the bedding right into the laundry.
i don't even know this girl's name. i only remembered this story recently because i'm in my hometown for a few months and recently a high school acquaintance said, "hey. do you remember spilling soup on everyone after prom? why did you do that?" and for a moment i genuinely did not and i stared at them completely dumbfounded while the memory loaded and then i started laughing too hard to answer for 2 minutes.
the best part is i can tell this story, and even if it reaches the people who were there, none of them will know which one of them peed the bed. thanks to tomato soup.
people keep pointing out how bewildering this must have been from her point of view and it's making me laugh to tears. i never considered it. i had such a solid plan in my head. i went downstairs to find something to dump on the bed and when i saw the tomato soup i knew it was perfect because it has a distinct smell that would cover anything else and a color which would do the same.
i was so focused on my mission that in the 14 years since i've never once considered what it must have been like for her to decide to trust me because she had no other options, sit there in anguish for three minutes, and then watch me walk back into the room and dump soup on everyone.