It's flattering that you think I'm responsible for "degrading" Hacker News, but when you say things as deeply silly as "The question is whether environmental micro plastic is any more harmful than the micro quartz crystals we've been digesting and expelling since the dawn of time" you should expect a negative reaction.

The hey I'm going to reason from first principles and show that the so-called experts aren't so smart! attitude you've exhibited is perhaps a little more emblematic of message board silliness, although I would not go nearly so far as to call it "degrading." If you honestly want to know about why microplastics in the environment are increasingly alarming to scientists, use google, PLOS, Nature, arxiv, etc. (and if you find a mainstream scientific paper that actually supports the idea that the risk of microplastics is being highly overblown, or that organisms and microorganisms in the environment are mitigating all that risk for us, please do share the article)