Plastic. Its in your blood ffs
Social media. It wasn’t until very recently that people started to realize just how harmful it actually is.
Also social media algorithms are designed to make you dependent, the same way cigarettes are designed to be “nicotine delivery devices” to hook you up.
Micro plastics. We were advertising them in facial scrubs ffs.
This, big time. Pretty much every product or package contains some plastics, including so many one-time use disposable ones. Plastics are infesting the Earth from pole to pole, they are everywhere. Clothes are made of plastic, do laundry and a bunch of microplastics go down the drain. Car tires drop microplastics as they wear. And then there’s all the large ones we can see like plastic bags, bottles, etc.
Plastic in general, except that we know and just keep doing it. I’m trying to use less plastic if I can but it’s frickin everywhere. If you want to buy an ear of corn it’s wrapped in plastic as if it isn’t already wrapped in nature’s protection. Seriously people.
Memory unlocked: “smooth, round microscrubbers” https://youtu.be/Hn15dtxL00A
Perfluoroalkyls aka PFAS appear to screw with all manner of body functions.
While what you say is generally true, I would add that many diseases were “rare” in pre-modern times because they were not easily diagnosis at the time or because people were killed earlier by something else that is now treatable.
Sure, but incidence of lung cancer went way up as tobacco consumption rose heavily in the early 20th century.
Social media.
Sadly I can’t foresee a future where social media isn’t a dominant force. Like what could possibly displace it at this point? Only dismantling GAFAM could make it work.
Yes I am aware of the irony of posting this comment on social media.
We’ll surely invent something even worse ;-)
It’s already here: social media where the “society” we’re interacting with is mostly AI bots rather than other real human beings.
Microplastics
I think we all know that ones bad.
Social media
Nah
Nah nah
Vapes.
What will happen is one or another of the flavorings used will be safe to eat because of stomach acid and digestion, but inhaling it into delicate lungs will cause disease long term. Look up popcorn workers lung to see how a common butter flavoring in the past that was meant for eating on popcorn harmed factory workers breathing it in daily.
One of the existing vape flavors… or a new one… will eventually be shown to cause simular lung disease due to daily breathing it in never truly being studied. Someone with a favorite flavor will use it for years, like any smoker with a favorite brand of cigs, then probably get sick from constant long term exposure.
As somebody who vaped for a long time, I kind of disagree with this one. Of every method for quitting smoking, vaping was the easiest and most effective. It let me titrate down to eventually 0 nicotine juice, which let me stop altogether. I only very rarely vape anymore, I keep my mod around in case I am ever out drinking and get an urge, but it is definitely the reason I was able to quit smoking.
The popcorn lung thing is kind of an urban legend, there is no case of any vaper ever getting it from vaping, but diacetyl (the additive in question) has been discontinued in basically all juice just in case anyway.
The usual mantra in vaping communities was always to tell people that if you weren’t a smoker already, don’t start vaping. Is it better than smoking? Almost assuredly, but it’s still not going to be better than just breathing cleaning air. The recommendation was always as a transition away from smoking. It’s one of the few hobbies we would congratulate each other over leaving.
If you don’t vape or smoke already, don’t start though.
I think it depends on the vape (and ingredients) in question. Cannabis vapes from dispensaries are required to not have additives. They’re all tested thoroughly. So those would be “safer” than things with added oils or flavoring. I’m not sure if they’re better than vaporizing the actual plant flower instead of concentrate.
Nicotine based vapes, I can only assume use some interesting ingredients since it’s not just a compressed/heated/iced tobacco plant. I’ve never used one, but I’ve also never seen someone ask for test results of a nicotine vape (or have them provided).
When I was vaping I always mixed my own juice, so was very sure of what went in. There’s always the chance of buying from a sketchy vendor and getting something weird in your mixes, but most were fairly benign. Vaping liquid is actually pretty simple in composition.
Just curious, what’s you definition of vaping liquid? And was your vendor reputable or someone you knew from elsewhere?
A base of vegetable glycerin and propylene glycol with additional additives for nicotine and flavour.
I bought my VG and PG from a local vendor, but those are readily available basically anywhere because they have a lot of uses outside vaping. I ordered pure liquid nicotine (in a PG suspension) online. Flavour additives also ordered online from a fairly reputable vendor that was well known in . I have no idea what policies about sharing vendors are here, but I am happy to give recommendations to anyone if they are looking to make their own juice to save money/be safer.
I mostly made fairly simple flavours, nothing too fancy. I had a friend who actually just vaped VG/PG with nicotine and no flavours at all.
Billionaires
Not only, but especially if you participate in a ride in their own-built water vehicles
Automobiles. Especially in the USA they are causing a public health crisis, environmental crisis, qualify of life crisis. I grew up loving them and they have uses but I’m fully convinced in the future they should be a luxury used for specific tasks or trips rather than the only form of transportation available.
Plastic and sugar are good answers, but cars are right there in terms of harm and way more acceptable despite that.
Sugar, especially in the US where it’s literally added into everything. What’s worse is the alternative (substitutes like aspartame) might also be a candidate and we just don’t know it yet because enough time hasn’t passed to study the long term effects. I try to take stevia as much as possible because it’s more “natural”, but only a few sugar-free products use it over aspartame. I read recently the WHO still considers aspartame as a carcinogen, but only in excessive amounts, like several glasses of soda a day.
I don’t understand why everything has to be so sickly sweet. Give me a soda with real sugar, but like 1/16 the amount
I love spicier ginger beers and sarsaparilla, they’re so much less sweet and have a lot more flavor
Totally. I actually make my own ginger beer and root beer. I make the ginger beer super spicy
Endocrine disrupters - mainly from plastics
Marketing. We put a person on the moon because we were scared of the space race, and then we spent the next 50 years figuring out how to make rich people richer by manipulating human behavior and gamifying everything so you buy into the buy more stuff you don’t need and click more stuff you don’t care about. We’ve gotten so good at it, we only need a 10 second short to advertise stuff to you.
This affects everything we do down to its core and will likely be the cause of astronomical ADHD rates in the future.
you’re grasping at something deeper here. humans have an underlying tendency to be gullible and easily manipulateable. we need to pour funds and funds into the education system and move more focus onto critical thinking, logical fallacies and self-esteem / self-image, as it plays a large role in calling out injustices and building an accurate world view
imo its the no. 1 reason the world is so fucked. we believe evrything we’re told because it appeals to a sense of self-empowerment (our tribe over theirs). hunter gatherer tribes would sometimes literally slaughter each other to survive. it is in our instincts to be able to be convinced that other groups of people are our enemies, when really everyone thinking the exact opposite would be heaven on earth, except for the ultra greedy
So true. The only way that the human race is to survive and prosper into the far future is for us to move to a mindset of the whole world’s population being one big tribe, as far as I am concerned. We will eventually destroy ourselves if we keep with the ‘us vs them’ mindset.
Star Trek was definitely on to something.
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I disagree that people should be left to educate themselves in isolated communities. What happens when our communities clash on important issues? Instead we should agree on what should be taught in schools and work on regulating it and making it self-improving.
I agree that bureucacy and corruption will inevitably have an impact, but whichever way I think about it, not caring as much for your stranger man as for your family or friends is what allows the mind-rape in the long run, and that makes it necessary for us to globally educate people on at least that, so we don’t end up where we are now.
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People off most cultures drink, not just westerners. See Japan.
Also people have drank for thousands of years and I’ve not seen any studies showing there’s more drinking now not that that hypothetical increased drinking has increased cancer rate.
Yes it’s obviously bad and causes cancer.
Vapes. The less regulated and underground production, which is easily finding its way to the high street, is building to be a repeat of the tobacco issues with cigarettes.
Surprised this isn’t higher tbh.
My mom switched from chain smoking regular cigs to vaping. While I’m glad she’s significantly reduced her lung cancer risk, who knows what it’s really doing?
It’s better than smoking but definitely still unhealthy, especially chain vaping like many do. You should talk to her, let her know you’re worried about her health, and see if she might try reducing intake. I quit smoking cold turkey three years ago. It wasn’t easy, I was extremely irritable for a month, but the cravings became bearable after that. An easy trade for higher quality of life and longer life expectancy with less wasted money.
I said this in the other comment, but vaping is the one thing that helped me successfully quit smoking.
Is it healthy? No, at the absolute best it would be neutral. You shouldn’t be breathing anything other than clean air. However, I have little doubt that it is better than smoking. My lungs are in great shape now, and I feel just generally much better. If people want to continue to do research on longterm effects of vaping, great!
Are there issues about underage vaping? Sure, but that is a regulation/enforcement issue and shouldn’t be used to punish adults with. I have friends that went back to smoking because of vaping being made illegal where they lived, and you cannot convince me that is better for their health.
A lot of the issues we have had about vaping are regulatory issues with stuff like the Vitamin E incident, not a problem with the underlying concept.
