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The More I Learn About Mosquitoes, The More I Hate Them
Mosquitoes are the world's deadliest creature? Now I've heard everything. Oh, you're serious. They even suck at looking deadly.
06.20.14
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The average American knows 600 people, according to a recent study by The New York Times. Now, you may have 900 "friends" on Facebook, but you probably don't "know" all of them.
Another study found that the average American adult has 16 friends. They have "three friends for life, five people they really like and would hang out with one-on-one, and eight people they like but don't spend time with one-on-one or seek out."
Now, there are all different kinds of friends. There are those that you see just to have a good time. There are those that you go out with on couples' dates. And there are those you may share a hobby or interest with, but the relationship doesn't go much further than that.
What sets acquaintances, friends, and best friends apart is how comfortable we feel around them. Two ways to judge how they make you feel is whether you spending a lot of time together and if they can be trusted.
Author Ross McCammon created a simple test to gain some clarity about the level of comfort he feels about someone, he calls it the "Two Beers and a Puppy Test."
The test is: To find out how you actually feel about someone, ask yourself: "Would I have two beers with this person?" And: "Would I allow this person to look after my puppy over a weekend?"
Some people are no and no. These people are to be avoided at all costs. Some people are yes and no. These people are to be cautiously trusted. Some people are no and yes. These people are no fun but they make the world a better place — for puppies, especially. And some people are yes and yes. These people are wonderful people and your life and work are better for having them in your life. Seek them out. Collaborate with them. Enjoy their company.
No, No — This is probably someone who shouldn't be in your life. You don't enjoy their company and they're not someone that you can rely on when you need someone to lend a hand.
No, Yes — Unfortunately, this person isn't that great of a hang, but they can be relied upon in a pinch. These are great people to have as neighbors.
Yes, No — These people are a lot of fun, but you can't depend on them to be there when you really need them. These are like drinking buddies.
Yes, Yes — These are the golden people that you should work to keep in your life.
The test is a great way to evaluate people in your life but it's also a way to look at ourselves. How would you rate yourself as a friend?
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Another fun way to evaluate people is a test I developed based on a quote by Oscar Wilde, the legendary 19th-century Irish poet, playwright, and author of "The Picture of Dorian Gray."
"It is absurd to divide people into good and bad. People are either charming or tedious," Wilde once said.
Now, this test is more for those who aren't shopping around from someone to watch their puppy but want to find people who are the most enjoyable to spend time around. I picture it as a spectrum with charming on one side and tedious on the other.
Charming < ------------------------- > Tedious
Someone can have a great sense of humor and make you laugh (charming) but at the same time like to complain a whole lot (tedious). So they'd fall in the middle.
There are others who are nothing but a joy to be around and are self-aware enough not to impose their drama or neurotic tendencies on you. These people would fall on the charming end of the spectrum.
Then they are those people who bring little to the table in terms of good humor and likeability but have a whole lot of baggage. These people would be ranked further down the tedious scale.
To put things even more simply, as Wilde once said, "Some cause happiness wherever they go; others whenever they go."
This article originally appeared on 12.21.20
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Columbia University researchers tested bottled water for nanoplastics and found hundreds of thousands of them.
Evian, Fiji, Voss, SmartWater, Aquafina, Dasani—it's impressive how many brands we have for something humans have been consuming for millennia. Despite years of studies showing that bottled water is no safer to drink than tap water, Americans are more consuming more bottled water than ever, to the tune of billions of dollars in bottled water sales.
People cite convenience and taste in addition to perceived safety for reasons they prefer bottle to tap, but the fear factor surrounding tap water is still a driving force. It doesn't help when emergencies like floods cause tap water contamination or when investigations reveal issues with lead pipes in some communities, but municipal water supplies are tested regularly, and in the vast majority of the U.S., you can safely grab a glass of water from a tap.
And now, a new study on nanoplastics found in three popular bottled water brands is throwing more data into the bottled vs. tap water choice
Researchers from Columbia University used a new laser-guided technology to detect nanoplastics that had previously evaded detection due to their miniscule size.
The new technology can detect, count and analyze and chemical structure of nanoparticles, and they found seven different major types of plastic: polyamide, polypropylene, polyethylene, polymethyl methacrylate, polyvinyl chloride, polystyrene, and polyethylene terephthalate.
In contrast to a 2018 study that found around 300 plastic particles in an average liter of bottled water, the study published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences in January of 2024 found 240,000 nanoplastic particles per liter bottle on average between the three brands studied. (The name of the brands were not indicated in the study.)
As opposed to microplastics, nanoplastics are too small to be seen by microscope. Their size is exactly why experts are concerned about them, as they are small enough to invade human cells and potentially disrupt cellular processes.
“Micro and nanoplastics have been found in the human placenta at this point. They’ve been found in human lung tissues. They’ve been found in human feces; they’ve been found in human blood,” study coauthor Phoebe Stapleton, associate professor of pharmacology and toxicology at Rutgers University’s Ernest Mario School of Pharmacy told CNN Health,
We know that nanoplastics are making their way into our bodies. We just don't have enough research yet on what that means for our health, and we still have more questions than answers. How many nanoplastics does it take to do damage and/or cause disease? What kinds of damage or disease might they cause? Is whatever effect they might have cumulative? We simply don't have answers to these questions yet.
That's not to say there's no cause for concern.
We do know that certain levels of microplastic exposure have been shown to adversely affect the viability of cells. Nanoplastics are even smaller—does that mean they are more likely to cause cellular damage? Science is still working that out.
According to Dr. Sara Benedé of the Spanish National Research Council’s Institute of Food Science Research, it's not just the plastics themselves that might cause damage, but what they may bring along with them. “[Microparticles and nanoparticles] have the ability to bind all kinds of compounds when they come into contact with fluids, thus acting as carriers of all kinds of substances including environmental pollutants, toxins, antibiotics, or microorganisms,” Dr. Benedé told Medical News Today.
water plastic bottle on seashorePhoto by Brian Yurasits on UnsplashWhere is this plastic in water coming from?
This study focused on bottled water, which is almost always packaged in plastic. The filters used to filter the water before bottling are also frequently made from plastic.
Is it possible that some of these nanoplastics were already present in the water from their original sources? Again, research is always evolving on this front, but microplastics have been detected in lakes, streams and other freshwater sources, so it's not a big stretch to imagine that nanoplastics may be making their way into freshwater ecosystems as well. However, microplastics are found at much higher levels in bottled water than tap water, so it's also not a stretch to assume that most of the nanoplastics are likely coming from the bottling process and packaging rather than from freshwater sources.
assorted bottled waters on shelfPhoto by Giuseppe Famiani on UnsplashThe reality is, though, we simply don't know yet.
“Based on other studies we expected most of the microplastics in bottled water would come from leakage of the plastic bottle itself, which is typically made of PET (polyethylene terephthalate) plastic,” lead author Naixin Qian, a doctoral student in chemistry at Columbia University, told CNN Health. “However, we found there’s actually many diverse types of plastics in a bottle of water, and that different plastic types have different size distributions. The PET particles were larger, while others were down to 200 nanometers, which is much, much smaller.”
We need to drink water, and we need to drink safe water. At this point, we have plenty of environmental reasons for avoiding bottled water unless absolutely necessary and opting for tap water instead. Even if there's still more research to be done, the presence of hundreds of thousands of nanoplastics in bottled water might just be another reason to make the switch.
This article originally appeared on 2.2.24