Set against other wrapping pollution at scale how bad is this? And, set against the impact on human life of not making masks ubiquitously available, how much worse would it have been to let e.g. 14 million people die? How do we even know the QALYS without decent epidemiology and demography studies?
I applaud a newspaper giving us understanding of the downside costs of things done, but we don't have time machines, and suggesting (as I am sure many will do) this would have been better avoided by not doing masks is contentious.
> Taking into account the total amount of single-use face masks produced during the height of the pandemic, the researchers estimated they led to the release of 128-214kg of bisphenol B into the environment.
Distributed worldwide, as opposed to the product of the massive plastics factories, also distributed worldwide, mostly in low compliance economies...
I think some moral relativism has to come to the conversation. We should deal with the mask waste stream problem. We should also understand it, set against other problems.
ggm•5mo ago
I applaud a newspaper giving us understanding of the downside costs of things done, but we don't have time machines, and suggesting (as I am sure many will do) this would have been better avoided by not doing masks is contentious.
> Taking into account the total amount of single-use face masks produced during the height of the pandemic, the researchers estimated they led to the release of 128-214kg of bisphenol B into the environment.
Distributed worldwide, as opposed to the product of the massive plastics factories, also distributed worldwide, mostly in low compliance economies...
I think some moral relativism has to come to the conversation. We should deal with the mask waste stream problem. We should also understand it, set against other problems.