this post was submitted on 13 Mar 2024
122 points (97.7% liked)

Fuck Cars

9824 readers
4 users here now

This community exists as a sister community/copycat community to the r/fuckcars subreddit.

This community exists for the following reasons:

You can find the Matrix chat room for this community here.

Rules

  1. Be nice to each other. Being aggressive or inflammatory towards other users will get you banned. Name calling or obvious trolling falls under that. Hate cars, hate the system, but not people. While some drivers definitely deserve some hate, most of them didn't choose car-centric life out of free will.

  2. No bigotry or hate. Racism, transphobia, misogyny, ableism, homophobia, chauvinism, fat-shaming, body-shaming, stigmatization of people experiencing homeless or substance users, etc. are not tolerated. Don't use slurs. You can laugh at someone's fragile masculinity without associating it with their body. The correlation between car-culture and body weight is not an excuse for fat-shaming.

  3. Stay on-topic. Submissions should be on-topic to the externalities of car culture in urban development and communities globally. Posting about alternatives to cars and car culture is fine. Don't post literal car fucking.

  4. No traffic violence. Do not post depictions of traffic violence. NSFW or NSFL posts are not allowed. Gawking at crashes is not allowed. Be respectful to people who are a victim of traffic violence or otherwise traumatized by it. News articles about crashes and statistics about traffic violence are allowed. Glorifying traffic violence will get you banned.

  5. No reposts. Before sharing, check if your post isn't a repost. Reposts that add something new are fine. Reposts that are sharing content from somewhere else are fine too.

  6. No misinformation. Masks and vaccines save lives during a pandemic, climate change is real and anthropogenic - and denial of these and other established facts will get you banned. False or highly speculative titles will get your post deleted.

  7. No harassment. Posts that (may) cause harassment, dogpiling or brigading, intentionally or not, will be removed. Please do not post screenshots containing uncensored usernames. Actual harassment, dogpiling or brigading is a bannable offence.

Please report posts and comments that violate our rules.

founded 3 years ago
MODERATORS
 

Are microplastics from car tyres contributing to heart disease?

"Add one more likely culprit to the long list of known cardiovascular risk factors including red meat, butter, smoking and stress: microplastics.

"In a study released Wednesday in the New England Journal of Medicine, an international team of physicians and researchers showed that surgical patients who had a build-up of micro and nanoplastics in their arterial plaque had a 2.1 times greater risk of nonfatal heart attack, nonfatal stroke or death from any cause in the three years post surgery than those who did not."

https://www.latimes.com/environment/story/2024-03-07/microplastics-may-be-risk-factor-for-cardiovascular-disease

The research is particularly noteworthy, given that one of the biggest sources of microplastic pollution is the synthetic rubber in car tyres: https://aus.social/@ajsadauskas/112015017609398126

So it's not just the sedentary lifestyles that car-dependent planning encourages that's causing health issues.

And it's not just exhaust fumes either.

There's also the health impacts of microplastics, including from car tyres.

Worth noting as well that internal documents from the big oil companies show that they knew since the 1970s that recycling wasn't going to solve the problem of plastic pollution. They promoted it anyway: https://aus.social/@ajsadauskas/112064312364853769

#tyres #tyre #car #microplastic #microplastics #pollution #environment @fuck_cars #fuckcars

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] Simplicator@federate.social 6 points 8 months ago (2 children)

@NarrativeBear @ajsadauskas What environmentalists really don’t want to talk about is that sustainability means slowing down, traveling less, more manual effort, fewer chemical conveniences. B/c it seems politically impossible.

[–] NarrativeBear@lemmy.world 5 points 8 months ago

And it goes against "sustained economic growth", though I always found infinite growth is both unsustainable and environmentally detrimental.

[–] Simplicator@federate.social 1 points 8 months ago (1 children)

@NarrativeBear @ajsadauskas Meanwhile there’s an over-abundance of shovel-ready jobs cleaning up human impacts & restoring nature, just waiting for us to prioritize it over billionaires’ & $100M-aires’ insatiable greed & lust for power

[–] ajsadauskas@aus.social 2 points 8 months ago

@Simplicator @NarrativeBear Our whole economy is geared towards disposable consumerism.

Yeah, we could make sturdy wooden chairs like the ones your grandma had at her dining table for 50-odd years.

Or we could get new plastic chairs every five years or so from IKEA.

The way things are set up, making 10 disposable chairs that last five years is far better for the economy than making one chair that lasts 50.

There are plenty of things that could be user serviceable, repairable, repurposable or upgradable that aren't because our economy is geared towards disposable consumerism.

Even look at the economic measuring stick we use: GDP.

If using economic activity as the measure of the health of your economy, then it's far better to manufacture 10 chairs instead of one.

But what if we were to use a different set of economic measurements? For example, the utility we gain from our goods, and many natural resources it takes to achieve that level of utility?

By that measurement, manufacturing 10 chairs over 50 years instead of one for the same utility (sitting down during dinner) is a monumental waste.