Tag: plastic

New Study Finds Even More Microplastics in Your Body

Leave a comment

The more experts learn about microplastics and their impact on human bodies, the worse it seems to get. Just this week researchers at the Medical University of Vienna published a new study in the journal Exposure and Health that summarizes all the current knowledge about micro- and nanoplastic particles (MNPs), and how they end up in our gut.

Spoiler alert — it’s almost 100,000 particles per year if you drink from plastic bottles.

MNPs are small, but they aren’t all the same. According to a press blurb about the study published on the school’s website, microplastics are 0.001 to 5 millimeters in size and can sometimes be invisible to the naked eye, while nanoplastics are defined as being less than 0.001 millimeters in size…

Professor and study co-author Lukas Kenner told the university’s press office there’s no shortage of ill effects from consuming microplastics, but that it’s even worse for people who already struggle with chronic disease.

RTFA and the first critical change you’ll learn is bringing a halt to consuming water from plastic bottles. The worst you’ll learn is that science and technology haven’t been charged to keep this stuff out of our systems and we haven’t yet a clear idea how to remove the stuff already in our systems, yet.

I would suggest being more careful and doing your best to keep from polluting your chemistry set in the first place.

Plastic packaging for most fruit and veggies banned in France

Leave a comment

The ban came into effect on Saturday under new regulations that French President Emmanuel Macron’s government says are meant to phase out single-use plastics as pollution worsens globally.

Under the new rules, leeks and carrots, tomatoes and potatoes, apples and pears and about 30 other items can no longer be sold in plastic. Instead, they should be wrapped in recyclable materials…Plastic will still be allowed for more fragile fruits such as berries and peaches, but is to be gradually phased out in the coming years…

France’s packaging industry meanwhile said it was dismayed by the new rules, particularly a ban on the use of recycled plastics.

My response is mixed – at a minimum. Though it appears that producers of cardboard – easily recycled – are gearing up to pickup the changeover. In the same vein, I would expect paper which can be made translucent to become a replacement, as well.

Ocean of plastic

5 Comments


Click to enlarge

❝ Globally, public awareness is growing about the harm being done by plastic, which hurts marine life and instead of biodegrading breaks down into ubiquitous micro-plastics. According to science writer Mike Berners-Lee, of the 9 billion tons of plastic ever produced, 5.4 billion has been dumped onto land or into the sea — enough to shrink-wrap the entire planet.

Please RTFA. Look at these photos. Heartbreaking to an old geek like me who grew up subsistence fishing the New England coast.

The world is ready to regulate the export of plastic waste

Leave a comment


Click to enlarge – Reuters/Mukoya

❝ Countries are nearing agreement to tighten controls on trade in plastic waste, which would make it harder for leading exporter the United States to ship unsorted plastic to emerging Asian economies for disposal…Global public outrage has grown at marine pollution, sparking demands for more recycling and better waste management…

❝ There is an estimated 100 million tonnes of plastic in the world’s seas, with 8 million tonnes added annually, the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) says.

Officials from 187 countries taking part in UNEP negotiations are considering legally-binding amendments to the Basel Convention on waste that would regulate trade in discarded plastic.

❝ The United States has not ratified the 30-year-old pact.

“Overdue” is way too polite!

Reality of human society and pollution – in one Photo

3 Comments


Click to enlarge — Justin Hofman

❝ Justin Hofman was leading an expedition through Borneo when a small group broke off for some impromptu snorkeling near the town of Sumbawa Besar. “The reef was actually in surprisingly good shape. It was devoid of big fish though the corals were thriving,” Hofman says. “After about an hour or so of bobbing around the tide started to turn. My good friend and expert wildlife spotter Richard White found this tiny sea horse drifting near the surface.”

❝ Seahorses ride the ocean currents by grasping floating objects with their tails. What began as amusement watching the tiny fish grasping bits of sea grass coming in with the tide turned to anger as plastic and other unnatural debris began to overtake the scene. Although a rising wind splashed polluted water in his snorkel and caused both camera and seahorse to bob around, Hofman stayed with it, capturing this image along with several others.

❝ “It’s a photo that I wish didn’t exist but now that it does I want everyone to see it,” he wrote on Instagram. “What started as an opportunity to photograph a cute little sea horse turned into one of frustration and sadness as the incoming tide brought with it countless pieces of trash and sewage. This photo serves as an allegory for the current and future state of our oceans.”

An amazing number of politicians around this little ball of mud we live and die upon would see nothing wrong in this photo.

Our plastic crap ends up in the Arctic

5 Comments


BURP! — Wildest Arctic

❝ Of course, all our plastic crap ends up in the Arctic.

It isn’t freaking Narnia!

❝ The Arctic, in our popular imagination, is a frozen expanse teetering figuratively and literally on the edges of human culture. It remains primal and wild and unsullied by human contagions…

The Arctic, as a physical place, is directly connected to the same ecosystems that we humans are polluting closer to home. It’s foolish to think that harming one part of a connected ecosystem doesn’t harm the others, as a study released on Wednesday in the journal Science Advances makes clear. The study found that even in the remote Arctic we can’t escape the megatons of plastic waste humanity unleashes upon the world…

❝ Plastic in the world’s oceans has been a growing concern since at least 1997 when Charles Moore stumbled across the Great Pacific Garbage patch as he crossed the Pacific after competing in the Transpacific Yacht Race. Today we know that there are at least six main garbage patches filled with plastic plaguing the seas. By some estimates as much as 300,000 tons of plastics are in the world’s oceans…

❝ Plastic in the ocean isn’t just unsightly. In fact, the plastic debris that we see is less of a problem than the plastic that is too small to see easily. That’s because plastic never biodegrades. It doesn’t revert back to its molecular elements the way other materials do.

Given enough time a leaf laying on the soil floor will be eaten by bugs and microbes to become soil that once again provides the tree with nourishment. Given enough time plastic will become a smaller piece of plastic. That’s it – this stuff never goes away. Eventually, after being buffeted about by sun and salt water, it becomes small enough that sea animals confuse it with morsels of food such as seaweed, or plankton. A 2015 study found that roughly 20 percent of small fish have plastic in their bellies. Researchers have also found that some northern fulmar’s, a sea bird that hangs out mostly in the subarctic, have elevated levels of ingested plastic. Plastic it seems, is not just an occasional snack, but a steady part of their diets. Tasty.

Most societies, most governments – which you might think would know better – still think of oceans as an open sewer. You can throw any of your society’s debris in and it will somehow disappear.

Wrong.

Seabirds are eating plastic because it smells like food

1 Comment

❝ Plastic pollution in the sea gives off a smell that attracts foraging birds, scientists have found…The discovery could explain why seabirds such as the albatross swallow plastic, causing injury or death.

The smell, similar to the odour of rotting seaweed, is caused by the breakdown of plankton that sticks to floating bits of plastic…About 90% of seabirds have eaten plastic and may keep some in their bellies, putting their health at risk…

❝ Scientists think seabirds associate the smell of plastic with food – and are tricked into swallowing plastic waste…

“We found a chemical on plastic that these birds typically associate with food, but now it’s being associated with plastic…And so these birds might be very confused – and tricked into consuming plastic as food.”…

❝ The chemical – dimethyl sulfide – has a characteristic sulphurous odour associated with boiling cabbage or decaying seaweed…It is also produced in the oceans through the breakdown of microscopic algae or phytoplankton, which collects on plastic.

Seabirds with a keen sense of smell, including albatrosses, petrels and shearwaters, can detect this odour, which they associate with food.

What a species we are. Most critters are smart enough not to crap in their own nest. But, the world is our whole nest, folks. We need to require those who despoil our oceans and continents to take responsibility for their mess. And, better yet, stop them from making a mess in the first place.

Great Pacific Garbage Patch is worse than researchers expected

4 Comments

❝ The Ocean Cleanup, the Dutch foundation developing advanced technologies to rid the oceans of plastic…presented the initial findings of its Aerial Expedition — a series of low-speed, low-altitude flights across the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, the plastic accumulation zone between Hawaii and California. Using a modified C-130 Hercules aircraft, expert spotters, and an experimental array of plastic scanning equipment, the expedition aims to accurately measure the biggest and most harmful debris in the ocean. This is an essential milestone in preparation for the cleanup of the patch, scheduled to begin before the end of the decade.

❝ This first-ever aerial survey of floating ocean plastic provided confirmation of the abundance of plastic debris sized 0.5 m/1.5′ and up. While the flight plan took us along the Northern boundary of the patch, more debris was recorded than what is expected to be found in the heart of the accumulation zone. Initial estimates of the experienced observer crew indicate that in a span of 2.5hours, over a thousand items were counted.

❝ For the development of a cleanup technology, it is essential to understand the problem, specifically the dimensions of the individual objects and the plastic accumulation as a whole. The nature and amount of the debris determine the design of cleanup systems, the logistics of hauling plastic back to shore, the methods for recycling plastic, and the costs of the cleanup.

❝ The quest to answer this question started in August 2015, when The Ocean Cleanup’s fleet of about 30 vessels crossed the patch simultaneously in an operation named the Mega Expedition. On their crossing wide range of debris sizes were sampled, producing the first high-resolution map of the patch. By using sampling nets that were 80x larger than conventional scientific measurement tools, it was discovered that the amount of large debris was heavily underestimated…

Once all exploration flights are finalized later this week, the results from the Aerial Expedition will be combined with the data collected during the 2015 Mega Expedition in a peer-reviewed scientific paper expected to be published early 2017…

❝ Instead of going after plastic debris with vessels and nets – which would take many thousands of years and billions of dollars to complete – The Ocean Cleanup is designing a network of extremely long floating barriers that will remain stationary in the water, enabling the ocean to concentrate the plastic using its own currents.

We won’t know if that experimental measure works until the group moves to a pilot plant stage. As important as questions of plastic pollution in our oceans appear to be – it might be nice if nation-states and governments provided some regulation and oversight along the way to solutions.