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this post was submitted on 23 Jun 2025
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All those chemicals are slightly different length hydrocarbon chains. Functionally, they are nearly identical.
Sucrose and cellulose are different-length chains of sugars, but that doesn't mean they're the same. Also, all of the additives in the many different types of melted-together plastic would beg to differ with your assessment.
There isn't a biologically significant difference between clothing made from various grades of nylon, polyester, polypropylene, spandex, Lycra, acrylonitrile, etc. You probably wear clothing made from each of these families or similar, related materials, each comprised of dozens of "chemicals".
But you'll turn up your nose at the thought of several of these materials combined into a single pellet?
After it's been exposed to use and light for who knows how long, and after being melted together at high temperatures, inevitably higher than the decomposition temperatures of at least a few of the dyes and additives in there, because precisely zero effort has been put in to purify it before being slagged? Yes I will turn my nose up, and you should too. No self-respecting chemist sniffs chemical cocktails of unknown provenance.
ETA: Also, your clothing note is a completely false equivalence, because the chemical at issue here is polyethylene, which has a far greater range and prevalence of additives than those polymers you named for use in clothing.