Disposable Face Masks Used During Covid Have Left Chemical Timebomb
- Reference: 0179093474
- News link: https://science.slashdot.org/story/25/09/08/2157248/disposable-face-masks-used-during-covid-have-left-chemical-timebomb
- Source link:
> It has been estimated that during the height of the coronavirus pandemic 129bn disposable face masks, mostly made from polypropylene and other plastics, were being used every month around the world. With no recycling stream, most ended up either in landfill or littered in streets, parks, beaches, waterways and rural areas, where they have now begun to degrade. Recent research has reported a significant presence of disposable face masks in both terrestrial and aquatic environments.
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> They left newly bought masks of several different kinds for 24 hours in flasks containing 150ml of purified water, then filtered the liquid through a membrane to see what came out. Every mask examined ... leached microplastics, but it was the FFP2 and FFP3 masks -- marketed as the gold-standard protection against the transmission of the virus -- that leached the most, releasing four to six times as many. And they made an even more worrying discovery.
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> Subsequent chemical analysis of the leachate [2]found medical masks also released bisphenol B , an endocrine-disrupting chemical that acts like oestrogen when absorbed into the bodies of humans and animals. Taking into account the total amount of single-use face masks produced during the height of the pandemic, the researchers estimated they led to the release of 128-214kg of bisphenol B into the environment.
The findings have been [3]published in the journal Environmental Pollution .
[1] https://slashdot.org/~alternative_right
[2] https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2025/sep/08/disposable-face-masks-covid-chemical-timebomb
[3] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0269749124005062
This is getting annoying (Score:2)
Vaccines, COVID, masking, conspiracies, Trump. All in a gigantic doom loop that's not worth re-visiting ad nauseam. So just stop already. And please, stop with the microplastics while you're at it.
33% of Republicans think vaccines don't work (Score:2, Insightful)
Vaccines have become the next abortion. They're the next issue the Republican party will offer its base in exchange for taking all their money and property.
It's an absolute fact that Republican policies are bad for republicans, everyone else too.
When you run the country like that and you are still nominally a democracy you have to offer your voters some reason to vote for you besides the economy. No matter how much propaganda you throw at them some, really most, are going to figure out that you're b
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
The next moral panic for MAGA's: ... hmmm.. Gay marriage, Blacks, Jews, Women, Disabled people. Most likely the smallest, and weakest minority group possible.
Re: 33% of Republicans think vaccines don't work (Score:2)
67% Republican here.
Vaccines work for what they do. They're not a magic forcefield or a lucky charm that wards off demons. Making public policy as if vaccination were a lucky charm isn't winning any intelligence contests against the 5g microchips crowd. And insisting that kneejerk mandates for nth shots are a rational response to changing data didn't win any honesty contests either.
Similarly, the monkeys mindlessly repeating the alarm call to wear a mask no matter what, even if the what is watering your flo
Re: 33% of Republicans think vaccines don't work (Score:1)
That's the point: dumb fucks on one side were disappointed it wasn't a magic forcefield and dumb fucks on the other side continued to act like it was.
Too much hfcs in the brain, all around.
Re: (Score:2)
No, the other side is forcing others into medical treatments against their will when you know or ought to know there is no more public health justification for it. If COVID jab does not prevent transmission, what right do you have to demand that others take it?
Just out of curiosity (Score:2)
What makes you a Republican anymore?
Re: since when did people care about plastic? (Score:1)
What if you replaced plastic with hemp?
Not only was they turning our women into (Score:1)
burqa'd up secret muslims,
> Subsequent chemical analysis of the leachate found medical masks also released bisphenol B, an endocrine-disrupting chemical that acts like oestrogen when absorbed into the bodies of humans and animals
they was turning our menfolk into frogs...and then turning the frogs gay!
Perfect example of bad science (Score:5, Insightful)
They compared a common type of covid face mask with surgical masks.
Things they did not do that would make this real science, instead of click bait junk science:
1) Compare with other common disposable items such as straws, plastic bags, plastic cups, etc. etc. Better yet, compare with the 6 major types of plastics (PET, HDPE, PVC, LDPE, PP, PS) Those are the numbers 1-6 on the recycle symbol used in the USA.
2) Compare with a ton of random garbage from a legal land fill.
So we have no idea if those numbers are high, normal, or low. All we were told is that modern materials give off chemicals with strange sounding names. Also, some of those chemicals are bad for you in sufficiently high quantities.
That is not news. If you are shocked that modern materials give off chemicals, or that some of them are bad for you in high amounts, you should sit down and pour yourself a stiff drink before doing some googling about the topic.
Re: (Score:1)
China would be a good spot for this kind of research due to their high pop following their government's strict covid protection requirements. Image Chinese drinking a cup of plastic tea everyday, yummy. It not like President XI get to eat every lo mein now, can he?
Re: (Score:2)
> That is not news. If you are shocked that materials give off chemicals, or that some of them are bad for you in high amounts, you should...
FTFY.
The pre-modern era had plenty of dangerous substances, too. Probably the deadliest was woodsmoke (way worse than microplastics in practice, though it doesn't accumulate the same way), but there were plenty of others. The modern era has added variety and subtlety, but that latter point is mostly just because we've gotten good at recognizing and mitigating the acute and/or obvious harms.
But what about wearing masks (Score:2)
The study worries about what the remains of face masks ending up in the environment and though a lot of indirect means, come back to us.
Ok, but how does it compare to wearing masks. I am not just talking about the pandemic, I am thinking about medical and construction workers wearing respirators similar to COVID masks all day as they are working. All of the air they breath is filtered though these plastic fibers. Ok, these masks are presumably in good shape and not decomposing, but they are also ideally loc
New movie (Score:2)
Coming to a theater near you.
He didn't wear a mask...
He didn't get the vaccine...
He didn't social distance...
and now he's coming for you... to make you clean up the mess!
Everything has a dark side (Score:2)
IV bags and tubes also transmit microplastics...directly into the blood stream. But those same IV bags and tubes, save a whole lot of lives. So far, there hasn't been a single documented case of a person becoming sick or dying from microplastics from IV tubes.
Doctors and nurses and dentists have been wearing them long before COVID because...they are effective at what they do. How many doctors--who have worn these masks for their entire careers--have died from inhalation of microplastics? If this were a comm
Re:My mask your mask (Score:5, Informative)
Completely true and also true that this is a problem. But note that these are tiny levels of pollution which if not for the controversial nature of masks would likely be getting little attention. For example, they estimate that this lead to 214kg of bisphenol B into the environment as their upper bound. But in 2010 around 400,000 kg of bisphenol A were released into the environment with slightly smaller numbers for bisphenol B [1]https://linkinghub.elsevier.com/retrieve/pii/S0882596309001407 [elsevier.com]. Since 2010, there's been a concerted effort to reduce bisphenol release, but even if that's been by an order of magnitude, this is a a less than 0.1% increase in worldwide production. Similar remarks apply to the microplastic production where the ratio is even more extreme.
[1] https://linkinghub.elsevier.com/retrieve/pii/S0882596309001407
Re: My mask your mask (Score:5, Insightful)
Oh for the love of god, please fuck right off
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
This is a Venn Diagram of anti-maskers and people who give even the tiniest shit about the environment:
O O
Re: My mask your mask (Score:5, Insightful)
Much of what you wrote is wrong or misleading or more of a rant than anything with content. You didn't respond at all to the point that the environmental damage here is tiny. But I do want to address two specific bits which are the most contentful parts:
> The masks were stupid. Everyone lifted them up to do business in public, everyone was breathing out their car windows in traffic while people drive in long straight lines breathing each others air from non-airtight vehicles.
This is confused at multiple levels, but does almost touch on a valid point. It is true that a lot of people were awful maskers, and lifted up their masks all the time, or had terrible seals, making their masks not function. And then you had people doing things like wearing masks in indoor restaurants and then taking them off when they sat down to eat as if their dining table was somehow protected. And if you go back to Slashdot, you'll see me explicitly saying that all of this was awful behavior. People failing to mask properly isn't a problem with masks though any more than people dying in car accidents due to not wearing their seatbelts is a sign that seatbelts don't work. And the point about car windows out non-airtight cars misses something we figured out pretty early in the pandemic, namely that outdoor environments in general were pretty safe.
> People became immune to covid without needing a hundred vaccines. No masks now and everyone is okay arent they.
People didn't need a hundred vaccines, but we're still getting new covid variants, and vaccines are still helping prevent people from getting seriously sick. Vaccines worked, and they drastically saved lives. Here is a really good essay about that [1]https://www.natesilver.net/p/the-2-key-facts-about-us-covid-policy [natesilver.net] which shows how prior to the vaccines, death rates in the US among Democrats and Republicans looked nearly identical and only after vaccines showed up they started diverging. There's one easy explanation for that. And it is worth noting that the author there Nate Silver, generally takes the position (and argues explicitly in that piece) that mask mandates were not substantially effective, even as vaccines worked really well. It may be worth realizing that while you somehow see vaccines and masks as interconnected issues, they aren't, and not everyone falls into the vaccines-bad-masks-bad and vaccines-good-masks-good categories. To use two fun anecdotes: One of the most strict maskers I know was a couple who were highly anti-vax and was also taking HCQ as a preventative. One of the most vocally pro-vax people I know is a Rabbi who despised not getting to see his congregant's faces and was pushing for the vaccines so people would feel comfortable unmasking. Maybe don't treat all matters as some giant soccer game with two large sizes?
[1] https://www.natesilver.net/p/the-2-key-facts-about-us-covid-policy
Re: My mask your mask (Score:1)
Do you know how much of a pain it is to track down stupid safety buzzers in my car to cut their wires because they just cause unnecessary noise when I'm out by myself camping in the forest, but the car decides to beep because it can't detect my key fob, or because my door is open, or because there is weight in the seat but the seatbelt isn't fastened because it doesn't need to be?
Does a child?
Re: (Score:2)
Maybe not. But since you're an adult you thought to cut the buzzers instead of the seat belt, a useful safety device that you reasonably use as intended.
Re: (Score:2)
In my car, I have an after-market satellite radio and navigation system installed. Every time I turn on the car, I get some idiotic disclaimer saying not to use it while driving. The system takes a few seconds to boot up, so often I'm already started and in reverse by the time the stupid warning comes up. I back out, shift into drive, and start moving. Then I see the stupid warning, and it distracts me to dismiss it so I see the damned map. So it accomplishes nothing, and actually worsens what it tries to p
Re: (Score:2)
My car starts beeping about seat belt from the moment I start it, while it is still in park. Some idiot safety inspector decided that I have to be wearing a seat belt in a non-moving vehicle.
Re: (Score:2)
> People didn't need a hundred vaccines, but we're still getting new covid variants, and vaccines are still helping prevent people from getting seriously sick
Seriously? After everyone vaccinated, myself included, had multiple rounds of COVID you are still insisting that jabs did anything? They did not work on variants and did not prevent infection or transmission. Plus, they came with a small chance of serious side effects and we are still not finished with excessive deaths do to that.
Re: My mask your mask (Score:2)
Let me make this simple. Do you cover your mouth when you sneeze? Surely you don't expect that to be an airtight seal? No, you just don't want to spray everyone around you. Covering your mouth blocks some of the sneeze and slows down the rest.
Masks were the same. Just...more.
Re: My mask your mask (Score:1)
Did you sneeze into your mask?
Re: My mask your mask (Score:2)
You usually know a sneeze is coming. You know it's going to spread your germs unless you stop it.
Thats where it's different. When your exhalations are carrying COVID, you usually don't know. That was the whole problem: contagious before symptoms. Without that, no pandemic.
And that's why everyone needed a mask, even though it really only did anything when worn by the sick. Because you never knew if you were the sick one.