You're missing a couple points yourself. For example, the article is talking about phthalates. These are additives added to plastics. These leech from microplastics. So your rant about how plastics are inert shows you didnt even understand the article yourself tbh.

There is plenty of evidence that these compounds are harmful and affect the biology. See the section on wikipedia on phthalates. What there isnt is much evidence and experimentation showing theyre NOT harmful.

"The question of what this would do in the human body, which is full of polymers with very sensitively evolved mechanical properties, was obvious - yet it was not asked in a funded capacity until we had been letting it accumulate in our kids for decades"

which the article I linked supports, people come out of the woodwork to argue we need "more evidence/an exact biochemical pathway" when we dont have the understanding/technology to actually do that.

There's plenty of evidence we're increasingly fucking with our bodies, again see the rising rates of cancer in youth. Yes, there are likely many causes for that. You'd have to be criminally negligent to argue a class of chemicals like phthalates is in the clear. Yes, the details are complicated. Yes, the dose makes the poison. Yes.

I believe we're smart enough to find a way to have/eat out cake, but smart people are arguing in this classic way about details that miss the main point people should care about, downplaying the issue in a way that laypeople cant understand the nuance of. So we keep following the $$$ and likely poisoning ourselves.

But sure, you might be more right on the basics of the biochemistry.

I guess I'm just frustrated about the state of the world - im not a degrowth person I just want a better balance.

There seems to be plenty of evidence for, for example, their role in endocrine disruption.

Like, go drink from a cup of pthalates if youre so ok with it being in your brain, balls, ovaries, etc. No ones arguing we need to ban plastics, but maybe coating the world in single use water bottles without considering the effects is suboptimal. Shouldnt the onus be on proving its safe before spreading it everywhere, rather than proving its dangerous?

https://ethz.ch/en/news-and-events/eth-news/news/2021/06/wor...

Theyll call me extreme/ignorant/naive, but maybe a society where we have to poison ourselves to sustain "growth" isnt worth sustaining.

Not to mention the constant alarm bells about rising GI cancers in younger people. "OH BuT YOU HAVNEnT staTIstiCALLY prOved A cAusAL AssOCiaTION".

https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.12.22.423967v1

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yQDfVJzEymI

Yeahhh, the bodyguard for the Jewish guy is a Nazi! (Note grayzone is HEAVILY russian biased.)

Fuck it, I'm jewish and I'd rather be interrogated by the Ukranians than the Russians any day: https://twitter.com/olex_scherba/status/1570779528196399104

Is your argument women just shouldn't have sex?

Besides the point I agree, but goes to show since this argument was introduced by you as blow back against vaccines and the politics of the current conservatives, that maybe 'their' political rhetoric is a bit wonky. That's the asymmetry I was pointing out in my original comment.

You can't just 'both sides' everything blindly.

It's unfair to women for a bunch of nerdy guys to rhetorically equate the two. And by going after abortion, looks like GOP might have made a rod for THEIR own back. We'll see.

The sides are a construct largely pushed by media, and somewhat by people in power as a convenient device for keeping power. But Q-Anon and all that shit - the rich eat babies, etc. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xwdkng6ZGp8) - isn't a side for me, it's an illness, and it makes sense that the FBI wants to monitor it. I'm for it.

I read it that way too at first but it makes no sense in light of your OP.