Tag: Plastic Waste

There’s some good news about the Environment for a Change. Plastic microparticles may not be a health danger after all!

Everyday it seems as if we hear another news story about how all the pollutants and trash that we’re dumping into the environment are coming back to do us harm. If it isn’t climate change it’s harmful chemicals in the air or water. One possible threat that’s been in the news recently is plastic microparticles.

Just a small part of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. Most of this muck is plastic! (Credit: The Brag)

What are plastic microparticles? Well you see, all those millions of tons of plastic we keep throwing away may be chemically inert but ultra-violet light from the Sun combined with mechanical action from ocean waves or weather can break it down into particles less than 5mm in diameter.

Waste Plastic doesn’t decay in the environment but it does break down into small pieces the smallest of which are microparticles (Credit: Lifegate)

Environmental researchers are finding plastic microparticles nearly everywhere. In the oceans they have been discovered in both the artic regions as well as the bottom of the Mariannas trench, the deepest part of the ocean. Scientists in both France and Colorado have even found plastic fibers in rainwater while in Norway they’ve been found in snow. I suppose we’ll have to stop using the phrase ‘Pure as the driven Snow’. With plastic microparticles everywhere we are certainly going to be ingesting some as we eat and drink so the question is. Can they get from our stomach into our bodies and if so what harm will they do there?

Plastic bags have even been found at the bottom of the deepest part of the Oceans (Credit: Science Alert)

Researchers have begun to study this possibility with the intent of determining the health threat posed by plastic microparticles. A leading scientist at the Center for Organismal Studies at the University of Heidelberg, Doctor Thomas Braunbeck has been investigating whether or not plastic microparticles can pass easily through the lining of the intestines of vertebrate animals. In other words if we ingest these particles will they get into us?

Professor Doctor Thomas Braunbeck of Heidelberg University (Credit: Researchgate)

The test animal Dr. Braunbeck choose for his work are the well known fresh water aquarium fish the zebra danio (Danio rerio) because he could study many animals at once quite easily. Also, the zebrafish’s growth rate is so high if plastic microparticles can be absorbed a lot would be absorbed in a short time making detection more certain.

Logo of the Center for Organismal Studies (COS) showing a Zebra Danio , the fish used in the stidy of plastic microparticles (Credit: COS Heidelberg)

To carry out his experiment Dr. Braunbeck used microparticles that were coated with a phosphorescent chemical that made them easier to track and the particle size he choose was around 10μm. First the particles were fed to a kind of small crustacean that is also well known to tropical fish hobbyists as brine shrimp. Once he was certain that the shrimp had indeed absorbed the microparticles he then fed the shrimp to his zebrafish.  

Now here’s the good news. When Dr. Braunbeck checked the fish for signs that plastic microparticles had been absorbed he found none. The particles had been unable to pass through the lining of the zebrafish’s intestine. Instead the microparticles had simply passed all the way through the fish’s digestive system and out the back end.

Since this is one of the first experiments to determine if plastic microparticles can be absorbed through the intestine of a vertebrate the negative result is good news. Before you start celebrating however remember I mentioned above that the particles used in the study were 10μm in diameter. Dr. Braunbeck cautions that smaller particles might still be able to get through. Nevertheless it is nice to hear a little hopeful news about pollution for a change.

Of course just because plastic microparticles may not be a very big health risk certainly doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t be concerned about the millions of tones of plastic waste that’s just turning our planet into a trash dump. Fortunately there are more and more people who are trying to find solutions to the problem. Earlier this year, see my post of 9 January 2019, I wrote about the young man from Holland named Boyan Slat who had invented a 700m long ‘U’ shaped boom to sweep up the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. The first test of Slat’s invention ran into some problems but the upgrades are in progress and a second test is coming soon!

The 700m floating boom used to remove plastic from the ocean still has some bugs to work out. (Credit: Twitter)

While Boyan Slat’s boom is intended to remove large pieces plastic from the Ocean a teenager from Ireland has developed a technique for eliminating up to 88% of plastic microparticles from water. The teenager’s name is Fionn Ferreira and his project won him the Grand Prize in Google’s annual science fair. The native of the town of Ballydehob is planning on using his $50,000 to pay for his further education in college. Fionn’s technique for collecting the plastic microparticles in water involves attracting and removing the particles with a magnet.

Fionn Ferrerira, the winner of this years Google science prize for his technique to remove plastic microparticles from water. (Credit: ABC News)

Wait a minute, you say. Plastic isn’t magnetic. You can’t attract plastic with a magnet. That’s true, however in water plastic microparticles are attracted to ferrofluids, mixtures of oils and iron based magnetite. The oil in the ferrofluid clumps with the microplasic and the magnetite can then be lifted out with a magnet carrying the oil and plastic with it.

If this sounds almost too good to be true you could be right. The biggest technical problem as I see it will be to scale up the whole process, there’s a lot of plastic microparticles out there to be collected. In particular separating the ferrofluid from the plastic so that it can be used again and again could prove difficult. Of course the real problem will be the cost, nobody is going to be making a profit off of this you know.

And that’s the real problem with cleaning up the environment in general, the cost. There are many things we could do to clean up the mess we’re making of this planet of ours. The question is, who’s going to pay for it?

Attempts to Cleanup the Great Pacific Garbage Patch run into Problems. Well, We sort of knew this wasn’t going to be Easy!

The Great Pacific Garbage Patch doesn’t get very much press coverage so you may not have heard about it. Simply put; the trash we are continuously dumping into the world’s oceans is drifting along in the currents and finally accumulating in calm areas generating massive trash heaps just floating out there. See images below for some close up views of the situation.

A Sample of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch (Credit: National Geographic)

The Rubbish looks even worse from Beneath (Credit: Padi)

The present size of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch is estimated at an area greater than that of the nation of Germany but it is only the largest of many the trash dumps that are growing near of the middle of every ocean. In fact the Atlantic and Pacific oceans both have two, one each in the northern and southern hemispheres. See image below.

Worldwide Distribution of Garbage Patches (Credit: St. Louis Earth Day)

Now the vast majority of the waste filling up the Great Pacific Garbage Patch is plastic simply because plastic floats quite nicely and because it is so inert that it can easily float in the ocean for decades, or even longer, slowly building up more and more trash. Seriously, the amount of plastic products that human beings just toss away in monumental. For example every day the human race simply tosses away about one and a half billion plastic straws and plastic bags, each! And it isn’t just straws and bags; plastic items from pill bottles to huge commercial fishing nets are a large part of the problem as well.

So isn’t it a good thing then that all of that rubbish is gathering by itself into empty regions of the oceans? Where we don’t have to worry about it.

Well of course the creatures of the oceans who live there have to worry, or rather simply die because of our refusal to clean up our own mess. The images below show just a few of the millions of animals who die every year by plastic. However the biggest problem is one you can’t easily see because as this layer of plastic floats on the ocean surface it prevents oxygen from getting into the water beneath, turning a large part of the ocean into a lifeless desert!

Even If I didn’t like Turtles This Picture would be Heartrending (Credit: Stefan Leijon)

Another Victim of our Careless Disposing of Plastic Waste (Credit: Mashable.com)

Still thinking that doesn’t bother you! Well how about this. While plastic is very inert chemically, as I said above it can float in the ocean for decades, that doesn’t mean that it can’t be mechanically broken down into smaller pieces. Research has shown that after 5, 10, 20 years in the ocean wave action can turn a plastic bag into thousands of plastic micro-particles just the right size to get mixed in with the algae that is the food for small fish like sardines and anchovies. Those small fish get the micro-particles into them and then they are eaten by bigger fish like salmon and tuna. The upshot of all this is that if you like seafood you probably already have some plastic micro-particles inside of you!

So what can we do about these mountains of plastic trash that are suffocating the oceans. Well a young inventor named Boyan Slat came up with an interesting idea about 7 years ago when he was just 17. Organizing a non-profit called ‘The Ocean Cleanup’ Slat succeeded in raising enough money to get his invention built. Slat’s invention was towed out of San Francisco back in September and deployed into the area of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. See image below.

Boyan Slat’s Ocean Cleanup Barrier Being Towed out of San Francisco (Credit: Scuba News)

Basically the cleanup device consists of a 700-meter long barrier made of plastic tubes shaped like a big “U” see image below. The idea is for the barrier to float in the currents gathering the plastic trash into its mouth. Whenever the U becomes full a ship is dispatched to remove the rubbish so that it can be disposed of properly.

How The Ocean Cleanup Barrier is intended to Work (Credit: BBC)

Even if the invention worked perfectly it still wasn’t the total solution. While Slat maintained that sealife would be able to swim under the barrier to escape ocean biologists feel that many of the smallest creatures, like the algae I mentioned above, will be killed. Also it would take thousands of such barriers to have any real impact, along with the ships needed to empty them and all that will cost a lot!

And of course the prototype is having some problems, I know from experience that prototypes usually do. For one thing the U simply isn’t gathering up as much trash as was hoped, Slat feels that the barrier isn’t moving fast enough through the water to keep the plastic inside the U. He is already working on improvements to increase the speed. Then just this past week a 20-meter long section of the barrier broke off requiring major repair. Which may actually allow time for some of the upgrades to be installed!

So Slat’s barrier has some way to go before it can really show what it can do. I wish him good luck and hope his invention will prove to be a part of the solution to this growing problem.

Still Slat’s barrier is only treating the symptoms of our disposable society’s love affair with plastic! We need a more fundamental approach to just using less plastic along with reusing more of what we do produce!

So how about this. The next time you’re at a restaurant and you order a soda tell the waitress you don’t need a straw, oh and get yourself a nice cloth bag and take it with you the next time you go shopping for groceries!