We're Eating Plastics From Our Own Dirty Laundry (vice.com)

Every time you wash your fleece jacket or other synthetic clothing, microscopic synthetic fibres are released and end up in our food supply and drinking water. From a report: These microfibres are so small -- visible only under a microscope -- that they bypass municipal filtration systems and are consumed by fish and other marine life. A team of women from Waterloo, Ontario is looking to solve that problem. They've designed something that looks a lot like a dryer sheet for your laundry machine. You'd be able to drop this reusable sheet, called PolyGone, into the laundry machine with your dirty clothes. It attracts and traps the microfibres so they can be recycled. They presented their work at the annual AquaHacking conference at the University of Waterloo on Wednesday. "With these fibres entering our food system and ending up on our plates, we are essentially eating polluted laundry," said co-founder Lauren Smith at the conference. The event saw five teams, including hers, compete for tens of thousands of dollars and entry into several local incubators and accelerator centres. Smith has a Masters degree in sustainability management from UW, specializing in water.

Comments

So... is there a problem?

[michiganbob]

Are these microscopic fibers detrimental? The article doesn't mention any health risks, just that they are ending up in the water supply. I would like to know what it is we're panicking about.

Re:So... is there a problem?

[mysidia]

My suspicion is they're benign and that this is a well-known phenomena, or rare, but it upsets people concerned about the idea of "un-natural" or "synthetic" things making their way in their food source.

Otherwise: Wouldn't this discovery have been its own article and study LONG before someone was working on developing a product?

Maybe the findings about microfibers are specifically being printed to create demand for a product.

Also; it's not a very practical product..... sure you may FILTER your own laundry, with a dryer sheet, but what about the tens or hundreds of other people living in your city who still use their washing machines, and still drain washwater into the sewers that will still be consumed by the fishes?

You're not going to be able to force everyone to buy dryer sheets to mitigate this sort of problem.
So if it infact is one, then the Textile industry is in for an upset, or perhaps the municipalities will need new tech to filter Potable water and destroy plastic fibres during sewage treatment..

Re:okay we get it, we eat plastic

[Scarletdown]

This comes across as yet another scare article with the dual purpose of keeping the masses terrified of the world around them and to hopefully sell this new product that is coming out.

Re:okay we get it, we eat plastic

[PPH]

Unless it's going to leech a chemical that mimics hormones,

I think that's the major concern here. Plasticizers mimicking estrogen, etc. Either we eat them directly and suffer the consequences. Or fish eat them and they interfere with their growth/reproduction cycles and we get fewer fish. Or gay fish.

The answer isn't so much to get plastics out of the environment as it is to get these specific components out of the plastics. You will probably absorb far more weird chemicals from your food packaging then from particles that you consume from the environment.

Re:okay we get it, we eat plastic

[ShanghaiBill]

Computers, video games, cable TV, internet, etc.

Yet obesity has gone up most among poor people who are least likely to be able to afford these things. Obesity has gone up the most among African-American females, the demographic least likely to own a computer or play video games. Obesity has gone up as much in Mexico as it has in America, yet all of these things you listed are less common there.

The Dryer Is The Wrong Place to Address This

[crunchygranola]

They need a solution for municipal water systems so all the plastic from everybody gets trapped in one place.