Plastic debris and microplastic particles have already polluted the oceans

From an Article by CAROL ROIG, River Reporter, February 12, 2020

By now, most New Yorkers are aware that a ban on single-use plastic bags will go into effect on Sunday, March 1, 2020. While there has been some criticism of the bill’s numerous exemptions, it’s a good start to reducing the 23 billion single-use bags state residents use each year; that amounts to more than 1,000 per person according to the NYS Department of Environmental Conservation.

Building on the regulatory trend, NY Gov. Andrew Cuomo recently proposed limits on another significant source of plastic pollution: single-use food containers and packing peanuts made from expanded polystyrene, commonly known as Styrofoam.

The full picture of plastic pollution is pretty horrifying, not only because of the sheer volume of plastic we discard every year but also the health impacts of the material’s life cycle. Much of this litter makes its way to the oceans, spoiling beaches and clogging waterways around the world. Whales, fish, birds, turtles and other wildlife die each year after ingesting or becoming entangled in plastic waste.

Plastic never biodegrades—it just keeps breaking down into increasingly smaller pieces called microplastics that absorb a range of chemical pollutants, travel up the food chain to our plates and our drinking water, and accumulate in our bodies.

A new study published in Environmental Science & Technology, the journal of the American Chemical Society, synthesized data from 26 separate studies to calculate that the average American’s annual microplastics consumption ranges from 74,000 to 121,000 particles each year. Americans who drink bottled water for most of their daily intake may be ingesting an additional 90,000 microplastic particles annually. The study’s authors believe these values are likely underestimated.

Plastic & Health, a study published under the auspices of a consortium led by the Center for International Environmental Law (CIEL), provides a comprehensive analysis of the health impacts of the full life cycle of plastics: from the 170-plus chemicals used in fracking to produce fossil fuel feedstocks; through the refining process, exposures to consumers and toxins released as plastic waste is processed and managed; and the long term effects on air, soil, water and human health.

The study documents impacts such as cancer, neurotoxicity, reproductive and developmental problems, immune system impairment, damage to the skin and eyes, and respiratory and gastrointestinal problems, all especially intense for workers in the industry and people who live near plastics facilities.

The climate impact of plastics has received less attention, but CIEL’s companion study, Plastic & Climate, tracks greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from every stage of plastic production, use and disposal, including waste to energy. The report points out that “chemical manufacturing is profoundly energy-intensive, and the production of plastic feedstocks and resins is the most energy-intensive sub-sector of the chemical industry.” The authors estimate that the production and incineration of plastic over the past year alone will add more than 850 million metric tons of GHG to the atmosphere, equal to the emissions from 189 500-megawatt coal power plants.

Given the industry’s plans for expansion, the report estimates that by 2050, GHG emissions from the plastic lifecycle could reach over 56 gigatons. This is equivalent to 10 to 13 percent of the entire remaining carbon budget available if we are to maintain global warming below the below 1.5°C degrees threshold.

The International Energy Agency’s 2018 report, The Future of Petrochemicals, calls this expansion “one of the key ‘blind spots’ in the global energy debate… Petrochemicals are rapidly becoming the largest driver of global oil consumption. They are set to account for more than a third of the growth in oil demand to 2030, and nearly half to 2050. Petrochemicals are also poised to consume an additional 56 billion cubic meters of natural gas by 2030, equivalent to about half of Canada’s total gas consumption today.”

Facing a decline in the use of oil and natural gas for energy generation and transportation because of progress with renewables and electric vehicles, the industry is looking to petrochemicals to perpetuate their profits, and they’ve invested more than $200 billion in the sector over the past decade, according to the American Chemistry Council.

Ethane, a by-product of natural gas, is a plastics feedstock that the industry is particularly keen to exploit, given its plenitude because of the fracking boom. Long centered in Texas and Louisiana, the industry is moving aggressively into the Ohio River corridor to create a plastics hub that will exploit the Marcellus Shale; it’s being hailed as “the new coal.” Royal Dutch Shell’s new polymers plant, under construction near Pittsburgh, is the first of several ethane crackers planned for Pennsylvania, Ohio and West Virginia.

These multi-billion dollar facilities will turn ethane into ethylene and polyethylene pellets, the raw material for most plastics and, according to climate experts, they could also wipe out much of the GHG reduction gains we have achieved in recent years. The US Department of Energy is spearheading $1.9 billion in loan guarantees to develop underground storage of ethane, and Pennsylvania provided roughly $1.65 billion in tax incentives for the Shell facility.

That is the bigger picture. Despite admirable local and state efforts, we are going down the wrong road with plastic production:

1. We need to eliminate single-use plastics and all non-essential plastics throughout the economy.

2. We need to make producers fully responsible for the full life cycle of the material.

3. We should stop making virgin plastic altogether, and invest in innovative recycling technologies to make essential items like medical devices.

4. We should ban incineration of all plastic waste, including waste to energy, because the GHG impact and toxic exposures for host neighborhoods are just too damaging.

5. We should include workers’ health risks in our cost/benefit analyses before awarding giant subsidies to the plastic industry.

We grew up with plastic, but we need to face the environmental damage that comes with throwaway convenience.

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See also: How Is Plastic Totally Ruining The Oceans In The Worst Way Possible? From Marine Insight, January 3, 2020

As is commonly known, plastic isn’t biodegradable, which accentuates the threat of lingering waste plastic for years and for generations to come. According to estimates, people around the world throw away almost four million tons of trash every day, of which 12.8% is plastic, polluting land, air and water. While plastic thrown into landfills contaminates the soil and groundwater with harmful chemicals and microorganisms, the effects of marine pollution caused by plastic are immeasurable.

Just like on land, even in the oceanic areas, the effects of plastic on marine life has started to be felt. The studies reveal that around 12.7 million tonnes of plastic waste are washed into the ocean every year. The United Nations Environment Programme estimates there could be as many as 51 trillion microplastic particles in the oceans already.

Various chemical facilities cause pollution

Chemical Plant Boom Spurred by Fracking Will Bring Smog, Plastic Glut and Risks to Workers’ Health

From an Article by Sharon Kelly, DeSmog Blog News, 2/14/2017

On the heels of the shale gas rush that’s swept the U.S. for the past decade, another wave of fossil fuel-based projects is coming — a plastic and petrochemical manufacturing rush that environmentalists warn could make smog worse in communities already breathing air pollution from fracking, sicken workers, and expand the plastic trash gyres in the world’s oceans.

“Thanks to abundant supplies of natural gas, the U.S. chemical industry is investing in new facilities and expanded production capacity, which tends to attract downstream industries that rely on petrochemical products,” the American Chemistry Council’s President and CEO, Cal Dooley, said in a January press release. “As of this month, 281 chemical industry projects valued at $170 billion have been announced, about half of which are completed or under construction.”

A new Food and Water Watch report, How Fracking Supports the Plastic Industry, calls attention to the dark side of those plans, warning of air and water pollution and the risk to people’s health, especially for those taking jobs in the plastics industry.

The Pollution and Health Risks of Petrochemical Plants

“The petrochemical boom does more than generate plastic that is overfilling our landfills and spilling into the oceans; the manufacturing process itself releases numerous pollutants into our air, water and land,” the report finds. “On top of that, many of the proposed new ethane cracker projects are co-located with fracking and drilling operations, potentially compounding the pollution problems that residents already endure.”

Converting ethane, a by-product of shale gas drilling, to plastic requires ethane “crackers” – massive plants that use heat or steam to “crack” the ethane gas into ethylene, which is then converted to polyethylene, generally sold in plastic pellets.

Shell plans to start construction of one of the nation’s largest ethane crackers this year in Pennsylvania, home to the Marcellus shale drilling rush. “It is the first new facility of its type to be constructed outside of the Gulf Coast in two decades,” the report points out.

“Although the cracker plant will bring pollution to the region, the industry, its supporters and Pennsylvania Governor Tom Wolf all tout that it will bring jobs,” the report adds. “What they fail to mention is that these jobs are potentially dangerous and hazardous to health.”

Petrochemical plant workers suffer from higher rates of brain cancer than workers in other industry, the report says, noting that workers are exposed to known carcinogens and neurotoxins like benzene, toluene, and xylene and may have an elevated risk of liver disease and other ailments.

Emissions from petrochemical plants have also been linked to elevated levels of toxins in the blood of people living nearby. Allen LeBlanc, a resident of Mossville, Louisiana, with high levels of dioxin in his blood — which researchers traced to nearby petrochemical plants and refineries — described his disabling health problems to the Intercept in 2015.

“Living here has messed me up,” he said. “If I could have another life, I’d take it.”

In Louisiana, the Food and Water Watch report notes, 13 petrochemical plants released 4.9 million pounds of toxic materials into the environment in 2015, according to Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) records. But that’s nothing compared to Texas, where the state’s 28 petrochemical plants reported over 13.8 million pounds of toxic releases the same year to the EPA.

The air pollution from the plants can make breathing more difficult for people living nearby, the report adds, and increase their chances of developing cancer. “Several studies have demonstrated that people’s exposure to petrochemical facility pollutants is associated with heightened cancer risks, acute irritative symptoms (such as nausea and eye and throat irritation) and respiratory-related illnesses, especially for children,” the report says.

From Fracking Boom to Cracking Boom

The shale gas targeted by drillers is mostly made of methane gas — the fuel purchased by power plants and used for home heating and cooking, which is also a powerful greenhouse gas. However, what comes out of a gas well isn’t pure methane, but a blend that also includes chemicals like butane, propane, and ethane — and ethane is a key building block for plastics.

Since the shale rush began, U.S. ethane production numbers have soared, with the Energy Information Administration now projecting production of over 1.7 million barrels of ethane a day in 2018, up from less than a million barrels a day just five years earlier. North Dakota’s Bakken shale formation is so ethane-rich that leaks and venting from drilling and fracking there was responsible for a spike in ethane levels in the Earth’s atmosphere, researchers concluded last year.

Twenty new or expanded ethane cracker projects have been proposed since the shale rush started, the new Food and Water Watch report says.

“The proposed cracker projects could conceivably boost polyethylene production by as much as 50 percent, taking it to more than 42 billion pounds a year,” On Earth reported in 2014 — when just 10 new plants had been proposed. “That’s fully six pounds of this one particular form of plastic for every man, woman, and child on earth.”

The Glut of Cheap Plastic to Come

Cheap new plastic discourages recycling — which means more trash winds up in landfills or contaminating the seas. For years, scientists have warned that the world’s oceans are becoming a plastic soup, with ocean gyres where plastic and other debris build up (also known as “garbage patches“) covering a quarter of the earth’s surface. By 2050, the world’s oceans are predicted to contain more plastic than fish (by weight), an Ellen MacArthur Foundation report concluded last year.

“The fracking-driven industry expansion will likely generate even more ocean plastics as more ethane crackers come online and produce more plastic resins,” the Food and Water Watch report concludes.

Making all that plastic also creates enormous amounts of smog, the report points out. “In 1999, when Houston’s ozone levels were the highest in the nation, the state of Texas conducted several studies that found large industrial leaks,” the report notes. “The worst originated from cracker plants producing ethylene and propylene.”

“In addition to asthma, long-term exposure to smog has been connected to premature deaths in adults and to low birth weight in babies,” it adds.

That’s a particular problem in states that already suffer from smog problems. Shell’s ethane cracker will be built about 30 miles outside Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. It’s projected to emit 522 tons of volatile organic compounds [VOCs] — precursors to smog — which would mean that it would be western Pennsylvania’s largest source of VOCs.

Nonetheless, Shell’s ethane cracker was granted multiple tax breaks — including the largest tax break in state history, worth $1.65 billion over 25 years — by state officials who argue that the economic benefits to the region make it all worthwhile. Shell predicts that the plant will employ 600 workers — a powerful message in a swing state where a thirst for job creation is often cited as a key reason that Donald Trump won Pennsylvania’s 20 electoral college votes in November.

For its part, Food and Water Watch argues that fracking has already harmed the state’s drinking water, air quality, and increased the speed of climate change. “The last thing that Pennsylvanians need is another way for the oil and gas industry to capitalize on shale at the expense of their health and well-being,” the report concludes.

SHARON KELLY –Sharon Kelly is an attorney and freelance writer based in Philadelphia. She has reported for The New York Times, The Nation, National Wildlife, Earth Island Journal and a variety of other publications. Prior to beginning freelance writing, she worked as a law clerk for the ACLU of Delaware.

WV citizens groups wary of cracker plant proposal(s)

Based on Article by Ken Ward Jr., Charleston Gazette, November 16, 2013

Citizens groups aren’t rushing to flatly oppose a possible ethane cracker project in Wood county WV, but they said they want to see more details about the sort of plant the Brazilian firm Odebrecht would build, and hope the company and the state will start taking steps to discuss potential environmental impacts early in the process.

Don Garvin, West Virginia Environmental Council, said his organization has not yet taken a position on the matter but that potential concerns are fairly obvious. “As with any large industrial facility, we are concerned about likely increases in air and water pollution,” Garvin said. “The administration will say, of course, that any such facility will have to go through the permitting process. However, the end result is always the release of more tons of pollution into our air and water.”

Citizens groups also said last week they remain concerned that the state is overly focused on the natural gas boom to the detriment of cleaner economic development and energy projects, and that it isn’t doing enough to ensure that gas drilling is done in a way that doesn’t harm the environment or surface landowners.

When word leaked of Thursday’s announcement, though, it set off a media frenzy and sent state and local officials running to declare a major economic development victory.

The cracker project would have to obtain a variety of state Department of Environmental Protection permits, likely including those to cover water and air pollution discharges. One potential hurdle appears to have been removed in September, when the EPA agreed with state officials that the Wood County area now meets federal air-quality standards. Previously, state officials had noted that the area violated standards for fine-particle pollution, a designation that could have made it more difficult for a large, new facility to obtain a state air permit.       

While state business leaders frequently complain that the permitting process takes too much time and is overly burdensome, an official from Odebrecht expressed no such concerns when asked about environmental matters during a news conference last week.

“One of the things we are committed to is a sustainable philosophy,” said David Peebles, vice president of business development for the company. “Permitting is a very, very fundamental part of this process. “And the permitting process is positive,” Peebles said. “You hear some complaints about permitting, but we have clean air, we have clean water, we have safety rules in place because of best practices, and we are going to follow these best practices.”

However, Vivian Stockman, a spokeswoman for the Ohio Valley Environmental Coalition, said her group’s concerns about the Marcellus boom and any related proposals for a cracker plant are more fundamental. “While Governor Tomblin is calling this possible plant a ‘game changer,’ for West Virginia, he and most other state politicians seem to be playing the same old poisonous fossil-fuel game: Rush headlong into tax giveaways and look the other way while public health and well-being suffer,” Stockman said.

Two years ago, West Virginia lawmakers passed a law they said would toughen regulation of modern, horizontal natural gas drilling. However, the final version was significantly weakened during talks between Tomblin’s office and industry lobbyists.

Studies released since that law was passed have raised questions about the adequacy of the law’s provisions for buffer zones between drilling and homes, limiting air emissions and controlling the flow of wastewater from drilling operations. So far, neither Tomblin nor legislative leaders have announced plans for additional legislation on those issues. “State officials have been ignoring the outcry from folks whose lives have been upended by Marcellus Shale drilling and waste disposal activities,” Stockman said.

Stockmen noted that many residents in the Wood County area and downstream have already seen their drinking water supplies polluted by toxic chemicals from the nearby DuPont Co. plant’s longtime production of Teflon materials.

“Considering these folks would be a game-changer,” Stockman said. “Acknowledging climate change, as well as the state’s troubles with water quality and quantity would be a game-changer. Working to bring cleaner, renewable energy jobs and manufacturing here would be a game-changer. Embracing a highly-polluting industry without thinking about all the hidden costs is just more of the same, sad old game.”

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Shell rethinking its Pennsylvania cracker plans

From an Article by Linda Harris, State Journal, November 15, 2013

Royal Dutch Shell is rethinking its plans for an ethane cracker in Western PA and two other cash-intensive projects, leaving business leaders in the Mountain State to wonder if the spin-off economic growth they’ve been anticipating is ever going to come.

Shell CEO Peter Voser told analysts the company can’t afford to do the cracker in Pennsylvania plus a gas-to-liquids plant in Louisiana and a liquid natural gas plant in Canada. Voser said in the near future, the company will have to decide which of the three signature projects to give the green light. “We cannot afford to take all three together at once and if we could, I am not sure we have the engineers and the project managers to do so,” Voser said during a recent conference call discussing 3Q earnings. “So we will need to make choices (about) which go forward.”

Shell announced in March 2012 it had selected an industrial property in Monaca, Pa., for the cracker plant, which would convert ethane from shale deposits to ethylene, a compound used in manufacturing plastics. Monaca is located just minutes from the West Virginia state line.

Pat Ford, executive director of the Business Development Corporation of the Northern WV Panhandle, said there’s no question the group would be disappointed if the Monaca cracker goes on the back burner, “but we’re optimistic there will still be opportunities for other crackers to be built in West Virginia.”

“Obviously, there’s going to be a much more direct benefit on the Northern Panhandle if the one in Monaca is built,” he said. “The infrastructure and land are both available to support any spinoff industries associated with the cracker, but as we speak there are opportunities; they do exist for other crackers to be constructed in West Virginia in general and the Northern Panhandle in particular. ”So either way, I’m confident we’re going to see direct economic impact from some type of cracker being built.”

Shell isn’t saying which project or projects have the edge. “We have an embarrassment of riches of high quality opportunities for new LNG, gas-to-liquids and the downstream gas-to-chemicals,” Shell CFO Simon Henry told the investment community. “We can’t do all of (them).