october 18, 2025 — incremental harm
I bought a protein shaker a couple days ago, and when I opened it, a paper instruction fell out of it. Out of idle curiosity, I started reading it: add liquid first and protein powder second, hand wash with warm water, replace every six months. Wait, what? Are you supposed to frequently replace your food grade plastic utensils? I looked it up, and indeed, depending on what you use the plastic thing for, it is to be replaced every 1-2 years. The reason is that plastic has an expiration date, after which it can start leeching chemicals and microparticles into the food. But I never heard about that instruction before. Every family I know uses the same set of ikea plastic kitchenware they bought decades ago. Is it just me or that instruction isn't communicated well enough?
That got me thinking — how many everyday household objects have instructions that aren't made clear to the users. Most people don't know that you have to apply almost a teaspoon of sunscreen on your face for it to be effective — the level of protection is linearly dependent on the thickness of the physical barrier. It seems to me that a lot of people aren't aware that you can't pour hot liquids into most of the plasticware, because I see people doing that all of the time. I guess it's just impossible to deliver the extensive list of best practices and precautions for every tiny thing — it would be too overwhelming. The modern world is already too complex for an average person.
And I guess it's a broader human tendency to overlook cumulative harm. We take sudden and obvious damage seriously but overlook slow, incremental — even if the end result is the same. Ironically, me worrying about incremental damage is probably more harmful than the damage itself. I've probably hurt myself more by stressing over long-term harm than I ever would from decades of eating food with microplastics.