A while back I tried to look for those, and it was nontrivial to find papers that would conclusively show that they are harmful, and the mechanisms of this harmfulness.
There's a ton of press about where they are (everywhere) but (as a layman) you could argue it's because they're not very reactive, and this lack of reactivity could mean they're not actually that harmful, and are just there.
Take TFA as an example. Based on the abstract it shows that microplastics are there, but concludes with "highlighting the need for further research on their neurotoxic effects and implications for human health".
Now of course doing good studies about this is extremely hard, as it's hard to find subjects untouched by microplastics for control groups, but I hope someone here can provide me with some good sources on this.
To be clear, I'm not trying to deny the harmfulness here, I'm just looking for good related content.
You'll be surprised what it picks up over time, and consequently what you end up not inhaling...
It’s a more interesting result if plastics are unique in ending up here.
No doubt these are almost entirely due to synthetic fibres in clothing and other textiles, which have been around for more than half a century now:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olefin_fiber
Note that natural fibres aren't great either if you inhale enough of them:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Byssinosis
The amount of pseudoscience and illogicity around microplastics is staggering. Consider those advocating for banning traditional blown-film plastic bags and replacing them with ones which are woven or non-woven fibre... the majority of which will also be made from plastic, but will emit loose fibres far more easily. Go after the textile industry if you really want to reduce microplastics, as that's where the majority of them come from. Of course this is assuming there is any clear evidence of harm, which is far from conclusive.
PS: originally this said boomers, but I meant Doomers, as I. People who run around screaming the world is doomed
When consumers are in debt and deprived of surplus income, they are forced to ignore their ethical concerns and go for the cheapest of the cheap, which is usually bad for the environment.
Had we had a more decentralized system, with less severe inequality, I tend to think that we would be using a far more heterogeneous set of materials in manufacturing. There would be less focus on minimizing costs, leaving more room for ethics and thus we wouldn't end up with massive global problems like this.
It's weird how plastic in its current form has been around and sold in such massive qualities for such a long time. It makes it look as though there is absolutely no room for innovation. But history tells us there is always room for innovation. Capitalism has been good at finding creative paths (plural). The tech monoculture we have today seems unnatural. Likely propped up by our debt-based monetary system which allows infinite compounding of wealth which leads to unsurmountable artificial centralization. It manufactures inequality, homogeneity and groupthink.
Capitalism should be a hydra, but the monetary system has turned it into a one-headed dragon with a single mighty but aging head.
When we are trying to predict the implications of unproven technologies on complex worldwide economies, there is talk of "obvious inevitability"
When we express concerns that chemicals humanity recently started coating the entire planet with at an alarming rate seem to get really deep into every kind of living tissue and nearly everything else we've ever seen bioaccumulate like that has caused a lot of unforeseen issues that took a long time to suss out but most turn out to be at least somewhat harmful, there's all this "well we don't have longitudinal RCTs with enormous sample sizes showing the specific harms of every specific plastic published in prestigious journals yet so who knows really"