I wonder what kind of hellish thing we will find out 50 years from now, that we think is completely safe.
My grandson in 2070: "Damn, Grandpa, did you really use Wifi? In your HOMES? How did you even survive? How come no one told you it was giving you *insert serious illness."
Microplastics, social media, and overwork will be some of the new ones. But with all the deregulation we'll get to experience all the old ones again as well!
They act like folks with permanent injuries can just get any old job, but at this point every store works like the dollar stores where stockers are cashiers and somehow the store thinks it's better to have them walking around constantly rather than 2 people doing the work.
Microplastics are always the popular answer to this question, but I'd argue we have enough data at this point to put a cap on the effect size of microplastic exposure. It's basically PM2.5 exposure at worst. That's not nothing, but it's not the sort of thing we look back on like lead exposure and certainly not like Polonium exposure!
That's not to say we should ignore the impact. A subtle effect like increasing odds of heart attack by 2% won't impact individuals in a meaningful way, but from a population perspective we're talking about millions of extra heart attacks worldwide despite the fact that the impact of the microplastics pale in comparison to the rest of the factors ... for example, lack of exercise is 10-15x more impact than hypothetical 2% increase in risk associated (again, hypothetically) with microplastic exposure.
The real answer is sugar. It's at least 20x more dangerous than microplastics.
Edit: Also another fun fact: it took a worker in 1970 earning a median wage ~5k hrs of work to purchase a median value house. In 2025 it took over 10k.
Yes, but the average home size in 1970 was about 1,200 sq. ft. The average home size in 2025 is about 2,300 sq. ft. Not to mention all of the appliances, upgrades and such that come with houses today.
Awesome! Also, structures are a depreciating asset while land is a finite resource. Median lot size has shrank from .32 acres to a record low of .19! So now your money that goes half as far gets you half the land! Neat!
Yes but the median is still important here. If half the houses are available below 2x the median home in the 70s and half are available over 2x the median in the 70s that still means it's very difficult to buy a home regardless of size relative to the 70s.
Said another way, and I don't have the data admittedly, but let's say that means that only 25% are available at 1x the median from the 70s. That's a lot of people trying to get the a home paid for by the same working hours as the 70s.
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u/Iluvatar-Great 1d ago
I wonder what kind of hellish thing we will find out 50 years from now, that we think is completely safe.
My grandson in 2070: "Damn, Grandpa, did you really use Wifi? In your HOMES? How did you even survive? How come no one told you it was giving you *insert serious illness."