30 Of The Scariest Science Facts People Don’t Seem To Know

Let's dissect some of these scary facts. Like the microplastic one. Why are there no control groups to test its effects on? The problem with microplastics is that they're everywhere: in the water, in the earth, and in the air. But what's more concerning is that it is in living tissues, too. 

The fact that there are nano and microplastics in our blood, placenta, heart, liver, and bowels alone is enough to scare us. But that's also the reason why scientists can't properly study its effects – there is no place (even in the human body) where they are not present, so we can no longer make comparisons.

What are the potential dangers of having microplastics in our organs? It's possible they make us more susceptible to cancer, heart disease, kidney disease, and Alzheimer's disease, and they might even affect our fertility. There is a study where researchers found that microplastics in the brain might correlate with autism-like traits in mice.

Declining insect population rates are also bad news for us. We often think of insects as nuisances: annoying flies, bloodsuckering mosquitoes, and disgusting roaches. But the reality is that insects, no matter how gross, are extremely important to ecosystems.

Reuters reports that a 2020 study found how Earth has lost 5% to 10% of its insect populations in the last 150 years. That's between 250,000 and 500,000 species total. Another study found that we're losing insect populations at a rate of 1% to 2% per year.

Which species are the most affected? Out of the gross ones, only the beetles, including dung beetles. The insects that have the worst numbers are bees, moths and butterflies, aquatic insects, and those insects that eat other insects, like certain species of ladybugs and ants.

So, what's causing the poor guys to become extinct? Besides the abundance of pesticides, climate change is a big factor. It causes temperature changes and alters seasonal timing.

As temperatures rise, insects may no longer have cooler environments to migrate to. Droughts reduce food availability, and heavy rainfall might even drown them. Extreme weather events might be dangerous directly or destroy their habitats.

What exactly would happen in a world without insects? Environmental writer Oliver Milman told Boston public radio WBUR that it might be worse than we think. "It would be an extremely dire place to live in – and certainly not something we should ever aim for."

"You would certainly have mass starvation [and] societal unrest… It'd be a place where there would be rotting feces and corpses everywhere because dung beetles and other insects that break down those materials would be gone."

Pollinators would be perhaps the biggest loss. Pollinating crops by hand is an enormously labor-intensive operation, as China's Sichuan province has already learned. Their project to hand-pollinate orchards only yielded short-term results, prompting the discussion that we need to protect our pollinators even further.