Well... many things we do, eat, and drink are known to kill individual cells. That’s not conclusive proof of significant harm to the body.
I’m all for studying it. But plastics have been integral to our society for at least the past 75 years. I suspect if the problems caused were truly significant, we’d have seen it by now. Instead, we’ve seen life expectancy increasing, partly because of the sanitary benefits of plastic use.
I do strongly suspect that some of these additives, or food additives, or chemicals in our medicines are responsible of the decline in male fertility. RFK, jr is right about that: Our bodies are bombarded with new chemicals from MANY sources, not just plastics.
When I read stories like that first one, I’m reminded of a story I read long ago in a San Diego newspaper. It was a lengthy story a dead whale that was found, washed ashore on a beach. Researchers were astounded to find 500lb of plastic in the whale’s belly. The article went on and on about the harmful effects of that. Then, in the last paragraph, they mentioned: the cause of death was severe wounds from an Orca attack.
Real cause matters.
That is all true. On the other hand, there are undeniably problems that are truly significant and getting worse like the increase in certain cancers, infertility, autism etc. that we don’t know are related to plastics or other environmental pollutants because we haven’t been looking. RFK Jr has been all about vaccines and autism for instance with very little to show for it while the first study of BPA does show a possible (albeit modest) link in children with preexisting genetic vulnerability. How to solve it is a different matter.
https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/common-plastic-additive-linked-autism-adhd
Correlation is not causation, neither with declining this nor increasing that. If we take this article very seriously, then we could conclude that longevity has increased since the advent of plastics! And with longevity comes the wisdom that this (latest fear) too shall pass:-)