Microplastics are in "dolphin breath."
Climate change and pollution affect the sex of sea turtles.
"Green sea turtles are producing more females in response to a warming climate — and human-caused pollution is helping fuel the surge, a recent analysis suggests.
Writing in Frontiers in Marine Science, researchers say ocean contaminants are contributing to a surge of female green sea turtles.
Like many other reptiles, sea turtles’ sex development is influenced by the temperature of their nests. Green sea turtles incubate in large clutches of eggs their migratory mothers bury in the sand on nesting beaches. Over the course of about two months, they develop from embryos into tiny turtles, with warmer sands producing more females and cooler sands producing more males.
* * *
Turtles born with higher concentrations of ... metals such as chromium, lead and cadmium and industrial byproducts like polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) — were likelier to be female."
— Pollution fueling a sex imbalance among endangered green sea turtles (subscriber gift link). Erin Blakemore. Washington Post. November 26, 2023.
Many people who claim to be "concerned" about the sex development of children are working to make transgender life illegal, inaccessible, or generally unworkable or untenable. If they are truly concerned about children's bodies, and if they think of themselves as so grounded in "biology" and "reality," they should think more about climate change and pollution. That would be good work they could do.
Or they could think about other environmental inputs and health effects, like:
New Cancer Cases Are Expected to Pass 2 Million This Year. What Does That Mean for All of Us?: An American Cancer Society report predicts a record-breaking number of cases in the US. BU oncologist Naomi Y. Ko discusses why cases are going up, particularly among younger people, and how to reduce your cancer risk. Alene Bouranova. Boston University. January 30, 2024.
What affects sea turtles could indicate something that might affect humans too.
This book argues that chemical exposures affect sperm counts: Count Down: How Our Modern World Is Threatening Sperm Counts, Altering Male and Female Reproductive Development, and Imperiling the Future of the Human Race. Shanna H. Swan. Simon & Schuster, 2021.
Oh, and by the way: "On the podcast this week [March 2024], we talk about how hackers are exploiting electronic prescription systems to order mountains of drugs..." (404 Media) if you're worried about exploitation of prescription drugs, you should be worried about large-scale fraud, theft, and addiction — not a trans kid.
"Toxic plastic chemicals number in the thousands, most are unregulated, report finds," Sandee LaMotte, CNN, March 14, 2024
"Sex is real. So is global warming. To believe in their reality is an indispensable precondition for making normative claims about them... the belief that we have a moral duty to accept reality just because it is real is, I think, a fine definition of nihilism. ...[This right comes] from a broader ideal of biological justice, from which there also flows the right to abortion, the right to nutritious food and clean water, and, crucially, the right to health care." — Andrea Long Chu, "Freedom of Sex: The moral case for letting trans kids change their bodies," New York Intelligencer, March 11, 2024
"Why do we trust the scientists who predict eclipses but doubt those who warn us about climate change? ... Perhaps the answer lies not in the science but in ourselves. Embracing the full spectrum of scientific discoveries requires intellectual acceptance and emotional and practical engagement. It demands that we move beyond viewing science as a series of disconnected events and see it as a narrative of life history—a narrative that we are not merely observing but actively shaping." — The Paradox of Selective Scientific Trust, Dr. Pine, The New Climate, April 18, 2024
"Microplastics are in human testicles. It’s still not clear how they got there." People eat, drink, and breathe in tiny pieces of plastics — but what they do inside the body is still unknown. Joseph Winters, Grist, May 23, 2024
ProPublica on PFOS compounds (May 24, 2024):
It started this way: "For decades, the company [3M] had used chemicals that break down into PFOS in its top-selling fabric coating, Scotchgard, and in a grease-proof coating for food packaging. It also sold PFOS and firefighting foam that contained it." Then, "a handful of 3M scientists and lawyers had learned in the 1970s that the chemical PFOS had seeped into the blood of people around the country and that company experiments around that time had shown that PFOS was toxic." In fact: "3M had conducted animal studies on PFOS in the 1970s and that those tests had shown PFOS was toxic." In those 1970s studies:
"Jim Johnson, Hansen’s former boss, said in an interview that he knew 'within 20 minutes' that PFOS wouldn’t break down in nature and that he had identified the chemical in a sample he obtained from a blood bank in the 1970s. He also determined back then that the chemical binds to proteins in the body, causing it to accumulate, and found it in the livers of animals that were exposed to the company’s products. Yet he didn’t disclose this information to Hansen before he gave her the assignment that led her to find PFOS in the blood of the general public almost 20 years later. Johnson told Lerner that he knew that Hansen would discover — and thoroughly document — the presence of PFOS in the blood of the general public. 'It was time,' he said."
"In the late 1990s, 3M chemist Kris Hansen tested samples from dozens of blood banks around the country and found PFOS in every sample." So: "In 1999, Hansen was invited to present her PFOS research to top 3M executives," and after she did, another scientist was appointed to lead the research she had been doing. And yet, after learning that it was toxic to humans, 3M produced "tens of millions of pounds of PFOS and related compounds" and "kept making the compound until 2000." This was the message: "The company’s medical director told The New York Times in May 2000 that the presence of the chemical in human blood 'isn't a health issue now, and it won’t be a health issue.' 3M stopped making PFOS by 2002 but replaced it with PFBS, another forever chemical that persists in the environment and accumulates in people."
"In 2022, 3M said that it would stop making the broader group of forever chemicals known as PFAS and would “work to discontinue the use of PFAS across its product portfolio” by the end of 2025. (PFOS and PFBS are PFAS compounds.)"
In 2023, someone with inside knowledge of 3M revealed what happened. "In April [2024], the Environmental Protection Agency set drinking water limits for six forever chemicals, including PFOS and PFBS. The agency noted that PFOS is “likely to cause cancer” and that no level of the chemical is considered safe." (See EPA site)
See how small a microplastic is: "The Plastics We Breathe: Every time you take a breath, you could be inhaling microplastics. Scroll to see how tiny and dangerously invasive they can be." Simon Ducroquet and Shannon Osaka, Washington Post, June 10, 2024
"Microplastic discovery in penises raises erectile dysfunction questions: The contaminants have also recently been found in testes and semen amid concerns about falling male fertility," Damian Carrington, Guardian, June 19, 2024
The Plan To Make America Hazardous Again: Trump’s EPA could stop states from warning people about potentially dangerous chemicals sprayed on their food. Lever News, Mar 3, 2025
Scientists discovered microplastics in human semen and follicular fluid, Kristen Rogers, CNN, July 1, 2025
If you're skipping over this article about the effect that environmental inputs like pollution have on children's sex development, maybe you're not really worried about children's sex development after all. Maybe you're just worried about trans people existing.
When I say you don’t have to worry about microplastics in your brain I mean that there is much stronger evidence that you should be worrying about other things that you don’t ever think about, like the draining of peatlands for agriculture, and things that you think about all the time, like fascism.
— Hank Green (@hankgreen.bsky.social) April 13, 2025 at 10:50 AM
More And More People Suffer From 'Chemophobia' — And MAHA Is Partly To Blame: The fear tactic strikes a nerve with both conservatives and liberals alike. Here’s what you need to know. Jillian Wilson, HuffPost, Sep 1, 2025
The health risks from plastics almost nobody knows about: Phthalates, chemicals found in plastics, are linked to an array of problems, especially in pregnancy. (Washington Post, 2025)
This is part of it: they are building energy-guzzling data centers for "AI" that lies about trans people. Read: Trump Sacrifices Alaska Wilderness to Help AI Companies: Trump’s approval of the 211-mile Ambler Road Project through Gates of the Arctic National Park hinges on winning an “AI arms race.” Gavin Feek, October 8 2025
"At the Environmental Protection Agency, Lee Zeldin announced 31 “historic actions” in what he called 'the greatest day of deregulation our nation has seen,' driving what he called 'a dagger through the heart of climate-change religion.'" (Josh Powell, Dec 28, 2025)
Men in their 50s may be aging faster than women due to toxic ‘forever chemicals’, Sandee LaMotte, CNN, Feb 26, 2026
Carbon dioxide levels are higher than humans have ever experienced. It could be changing our blood chemistry, Laura Paddison, CNN, March 19, 2026
What should we ask the plastic doctor?
I'm interviewing her tomorrow!
Emily Atkin, HEATED, Apr 09, 2026
The FDA won’t tell Americans where their generic drugs are made, so ProPublica did it instead.
Use information from your prescription label to locate the factory and see if the plant has a history of inspection violations.
[image or embed]
— ProPublica (@propublica.org) May 14, 2026 at 9:45 PM
Greenpeace Raises Alarm After Microplastics Found in Top Companies’ Baby Food Pouches
“Plastic pollution is not just wrecking our environment, it’s entering our bodies, starting from infancy,” said one campaigner. “How our food is packaged is designed for profit, not for people’s health.”
Jessica Corbett, Common Dreams, May 21, 2026
'Why Aren't We Inspecting The Shrimp?': GOP Senator Revives Wild Under-The-Sea Concerns: Sen. John Kennedy tried to net answers from a top Trump official about seafood from abroad. Ben Blanchet, HuffPost, Jul 22, 2026
"EVERY SINGLE English water body is polluted with toxic chemicals"
I knew things were bad, but this beggars belief
@andyburnham.bsky.social you must take swift and immediate action to tackle this latest assault on English nature
www.theguardian.com/environment/...
[image or embed]
— Prof Bill McGuire (@profbillmcguire.bsky.social) August 6, 2026 at 7:56 AM
Keep an eye on Iowa. The Republicans are not just fighting Trump headwinds but also have some local issues haunting them especially the state's exploding polluted waterways/ cancer problem.
thefern.org/2026/07/how-...
[image or embed]
— @NewsJennifer (Jennifer Schulze) (@newsjennifer.bsky.social) September 18, 2026 at 12:37 PM
