Microplastic particles are captured for research purposes

Article by Blaine Friedlander, Cornell Chronicle, April 12, 2021

PHOTO — A blue microplastic bead sits on a filter under a microscope, surrounded by dust, minerals and charcoal captured from a park in Idaho. At the 2 o’clock position from the bead is puffy yellow piece of pollen.

Vast watery parcels of plastic – made of soda bottle flotsam and shopping bag jetsam – appear in our oceans as large floating islands. On roadways, plastic is often tossed, broken down into smaller pieces and churned until it is microscopic, at which point it is swept into the atmosphere and travels the world.

By sea or by land, these tiny shards of plastic are more ubiquitous than science had known, according to a new study led by researchers at Cornell and Utah State University. The research was published April 12 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science.

Natalie Mahowald, Cornell’s Irving Porter Church Professor in Engineering, and lead author Janice Brahney, Utah State University assistant professor of natural resources, have found that plastics cycle through the oceans and roadways and, if tiny enough, can become microplastic aerosols, which ride the jet stream across continents.

“We found a lot of legacy plastic pollution everywhere we looked; it travels in the atmosphere and it deposits all over the world,” Brahney said. “This plastic is not new from this year. It’s from what we’ve already dumped into the environment over several decades.”

Results from their study, “Constraining the Atmospheric Limb of the Plastic Cycle,” suggest that atmospheric microplastics in the western United States are primarily derived from secondary re-emission sources.

From December 2017 to January 2019, researchers collected atmospheric microplastic data from the western U.S., where 84% of microscopic shards came from road dust – cars and trucks agitating the plastic. About 11% entered the atmosphere from sea spray, and 5% was derived from agricultural soil dust.

As large clusters of refuse plastic merge into pods of plastic islands on the oceans, the oceanic action grinds them into mere micron-size particles, where the winds ferry them into the atmosphere – for as little as an hour, or as long as six days.

In the process of conducting other scientific research, Brahney had discovered bits of microplastic everywhere she went. Marje Prank, a postdoctoral fellow who worked with Mahowald, developed a microplastic transport model to determine the tiny plastics’ origins. Together, they used the model to deduce the sources of these microplastics.

“We did the modeling to find out the sources, not knowing what the sources might be,” said Mahowald, a fellow at the Cornell Atkinson Center for Sustainability. “It’s amazing that this much plastic is in the atmosphere at that level, and unfortunately accumulating in the oceans and on land and just recirculating and moving everywhere, including remote places.

“Using our best estimate of plastic sources and modeled transport pathways, most continents are net importers of microplastics from the marine environment,” she said. “This underscores the cumulative role of legacy pollution in the atmospheric burden of plastic.”

Microplastics are landing and accumulating in all sorts of places, Mahowald said. “It’s not just in the cities or the oceans,” she said. “ We’re finding microplastics in national parks.”

In addition to Mahowald, Brahney and Prank, who is now with the Finnish Meteorological Institute, Helsinki, Finland, the other authors include Gavin Cornwell, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, Richland, Washington; Zbigniew Klimont, International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis, Laxenburg, Austria; Hitoshi Matsui, Nagoya University, Nagoya, Japan; and Kim Prather, University of California, San Diego.

The research was supported by the National Science Foundation and its National Center for Atmospheric Research Computing facilities; the U.S. Department of Agriculture Forest Service; and Cornell Atkinson.

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See also: “PLASTICS NOW SPIRAL AROUND THE GLOBE — A trio of discoveries about microplastics is just breathtakingly grim for the planet” — April 12, 2021

MICROPLASTICS can be thought of as litter that never, ever goes away. New research into this seemingly invisible pollution shows just how durable they can be as they go from land to sea to air and back again. Every day, microplastics — often smaller than the head of a sewing needle — infiltrate our oceans, our seafood, and even our own bodies. Now, scientists say the problem is more extreme than previously realized.

ACP Path in Augusta County VA

From an Article by Bob Stuart, The News Virginian, Waynesboro, VA, September 29, 2018

While the builders of the Atlantic Coast Pipeline are waiting for final approval of erosion and sediment plans from Virginia’s Department of Environmental Quality to start Virginia construction, the local farm bureau has stated its opposition.

Last Monday, members of the Augusta County Farm Bureau voted by a more than two-to-one margin for a resolution to oppose the pipeline, which would include more than 55 miles of Augusta County land in its 600-mile path.

The resolution states opposition based on the potential adverse effect on “groundwater, crop production, livestock health, public safety, our agricultural heritage, and common natural treasures.” The resolution also speaks to eminent domain, saying pipelines “should be allowed to cross farm lands only with the freely-given consent of the landowners.”

The underground pipeline, when built, would stretch from West Virginia through Virginia to North Carolina. Dominion Energy Spokesman Aaron Ruby said pipeline construction has been happening for months in North Carolina and West Virginia.

While the project is far along in its development and construction on some phases has happened in neighboring states, Mount Sidney sheep farmer Leo Tammi said the pipeline is not a done deal.

“I’ve become much more optimistic we really can stop this thing,” said Tammi, who was one of the farm bureau members to support the resolution. Tammi said he remembers Augusta County opposition to a dam on the Middle River in the 1970s. He said a community outcry helped stall that project. “When the community does rise up it makes a difference,” he said.

Tammi calls the pipeline project “another wrong turn as we confront our future in a warming climate.” He also is against large corporate interests using farm land for a for-profit venture.

Bill Francisco has 200-acre farm in southern Augusta County where he grows Christmas trees, and has crops and pasture land. He also supported the resolution at Monday’s meeting. Francisco is concerned that the pipeline could impact Augusta County’s groundwater. Francisco also believes the vote by the farm bureau to protect farmland “indicates that more and more people are realizing there is little or no public need for this pipeline, so using eminent domain for it seems especially unfair.”

Tammi said he wishes the resources being devoted to the pipeline would instead be spent on renewable energy. “There are several reasons why this is wrong,” he said.

What to do after we bite the apple? Tom Bond

Essay by S. Tom Bond, Retired Chemist & Resident Farmer, Lewis County, WV

It is remarkable how few of us realize (in more than an academic way) our human dependence on nature. Preagrocultural people lived closer to nature and were more familiar with ups and downs due to weather, crop disease, climate change, invasive species and a host of effects we know about, but seldom have to worry about.

Groups of tribal people were often caused to go extinct. One thinks about the drying of the Sahara early in the movement of modern humans out of Africa, and the near extinction of the Solutrean people in Europe, who narrowly missed becoming extinct in the Ice Age. At one time the entire human population was reduced to 2500 breeding pairs, according to DNA evidence.

The development of agriculture, first cultivation of cereal grains, then other crops and domestic animals, allowed storage and transportation of food and hierarchical government. From 6000 years ago more and more people have been freed from producing food, until today only about 1% of the population is engaged in it. All in advanced society are relatively food secure. Unfortunately, they are intellectually disengaged and emotionally unaware.

Only the poor have to worry about food, mostly those in underdeveloped places and the economically disadvantaged in the developed world, including one-third of United States citizens. Hunger here is a political problem, not an environmental problem.

Our education is poor in this respect. Our individual drive for money and comfort, not to mention social leadership, has lead us to abandon learning about vast areas of the reality of the world we live in. Our ultimate dependence on living matter is lost in the hustle and bustle of the 12, 16, 20 or more years of education we receive. The connection to the rest of the living world is ignored.

We even have a new form of Christianity, invented in the last half-century, which actively emphasizes Genesis 1:26, which mentions “dominion.” It is not in the other creation story in Genesis, but it is attractive to those who want strong leadership, because it justifies social control, too.

The highly developed agriculture of our era is not a permanent fix. Population expansion and resource degradation are on an accelerating course. Many times in the past whole societies have been wiped out or drastically collapsed by soil depletion, extended drought, rise in sea level, volcanoes, and other “acts of Nature.” Sometimes these occur in combination.

Today, we humans have much greater capacity to influence the living world. We now require over 20% of the carbon fixed each year by photosynthesis in part on land and other carbon fixed in the sea. Another authoritative study finds the percent of utilization doubled from 1900 to 2000. This is in spite of the 4-fold increase in human population. Increases of production of food, particularly, but also wood and fiber are due to increased crop yields, and to a much smaller extent decreased use per capita due to substitution of fossil fuels for biofuels. The cost has been degradation of soils, environmental damage, and conversion (loss) of farmland to developed areas.

The Earth is finite. We humans possess the ability to affect the environment of the living world with our modern industry based on vast amounts of energy from fossil fuels. Global warming, transfer of farm land to other uses, contamination of land and water, and most of all, ignorance of our situation all threaten the living world. If we wait until the most successful among us begin to hurt, there is little chance to prevent a collapse of society, and perhaps extinction of humanity and other life forms.

Doddridge County, WV (2014)

Marcellus energy development could pave over an area bigger than Delaware

From an Article by Kate Sheppard,  The Huffington Post, February 26, 2014

Development of natural gas and wind resources in the Marcellus shale region could cover up nearly 1.3 million acres of land, an area bigger than the state of Delaware, with cement, asphalt, and other impervious surfaces, according to a paper published this month in the scientific journal PLOS One.

The study, conducted by two scientists from the conservation organization The Nature Conservancy, predicts that 106,004 new gas wells will be drilled in the Marcellus region, based on current trends in natural gas development. The region includes parts of New York, Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Ohio, and Virginia.

Gas development entails the well sites themselves, as well as new roads leading to drill sites, pipelines to transport the gas and other related infrastructure. Each well pad, the researchers found, has a total direct or indirect impact on approximately 50 acres of land.

The study also projects that 10,798 new wind turbines will be built in the region, which will have a footprint as well, albeit much smaller. Each turbine has a direct or indirect impact on approximately 15 acres of land, the study found.

The development will also affect 1.1 million acres of forest. “[M]itigating the impacts of energy development,” the paper concludes, “will be one of the major challenges in the coming decades.”

Covering up surfaces and clearing forests changes how landscapes absorb and transport water, which in turn affects the local watersheds. The presence of pavement and infrastructure also breaks up landscapes into fragmented sections, which can affect local biodiversity and water systems.

The study predicts that Marcellus energy development will affect the quality and availability of drinking water for up to 22 million people.

“The way development is happening is that it’s being developed on a lease-by-lease basis,” said Joseph Kiesecker, a lead scientist for The Nature Conservancy’s conservation lands team and the paper’s coauthor. He noted that those leases are often developed by different companies without any coordination on siting or infrastructure. And environmental analysis for those wells is conducted separately — usually without anyone looking at the broader environmental effects of having multiple wells in an area.

The Marcellus shale region has been booming with development in the past decade, following the discovery of larger reserves of gas than previously estimated. That development, and the use of a drilling technique known as hydraulic fracturing, has raised concerns from people who live in the region, many of whom are worried that fracking and other development methods could cause air pollution and potential contamination of groundwater. This latest paper instead considers an aspect of Marcellus development that is guaranteed to have environmental repercussions.

The fact that development has ramped up so quickly in the region is what prompted the study, Kiesecker said. He thinks that development could be done in a way that takes environmental factors into account.

“My biggest concern or frustration is I think we have the ability to do this better,” he said. “We can get the energy people need, but in a way that provides balance and doesn’t come at the expense of natural systems.”

www.WVHostFarms.org

Letter to the Western Livestock Journal

RE: Marcellus Shale Gas Development, Horizontal Drilling and Hydraulic Fracking in WV

Experience here in the Marcellus and elsewhere shows property damage to private individuals and to public property is a major issue with shale drilling, often called fracking. Well pads require 3 to 5 acres which are essentially removed from biological production forever. Pits large enough to park 40 tanker trucks are dug for fracking solutions.

Working areas are graded to subsoil and loaded with 12 to 18 inches of crushed stone to carry heavy trucks in all weather. Add pipelines which remove land from production for one hundred years, land for roads to well pads, damage due to drainage from platforms, and various factory like structures across the country side to remove liquids, pump the gas down the pipeline and serve other uses.

The surface is never paid for. The leases assume the right to take gas and liquids out for free. Only the gas is paid for, sometimes not even the liquids which are very valuable. If you own enough land this can be neglected, is neglected, for the royalty. If you do not own the minerals, it is worse than a natural disaster. The smaller your holding the worse a well pad damages your interest. Full development of a field will require about one pad and attendant facilities per square mile, plus large pipelines to carry the product to market.

Pits that are dug to accommodate waste frequently contaminate land, spills are frequent, and casing often lacks integrity so water is contaminated. Huge amounts of water are taken from God-knows-where and pumped underground and returns contaminated in such a way as to cause huge disposal problems for the driller and the public.

There is no regard for public health, convenience, wildlife, alternate uses, or pleasing appearance of the countryside. Taxes pay for use and destruction of roads, extra cost for courthouse record rooms and the inevitable additional law enforcement required. In our experience, trucks hauling water often move on public roads without license or inspection, with drivers working up to 20 hours a day. Accidents with them seem routine in our hills. Roads are sometimes obstructed up to a day at a time.

Shale wells are known to decline rapidly. Two thirds of total production may be removed in two years. Recovery of the available gas is usually less than 10%, perhaps the lowest in the petroleum industry. It now appears that much of the gas will be exported, rather than used in the United States. Historically, the development will be over in two or three decades, but the damage will last centuries, essentially forever.

Although observers are unwelcomed by drillers, landowners can provide access and point to most important observations. WVHostFarms.org can provide access, tours and free accommodation for individuals and small groups. Hundreds of pictures are available at Marcellus-shale.us. There are now more than 200 sites on the web trying to limit or stop shale drilling all over the nation and in many foreign countries.

S. Thomas Bond, 1779 Jesse Run Road, Jane Lew, WV 26378
Phone: (304) 884-7352, Email: stombond@lhfwv.com

Tom Bond is a retired chemistry teacher. He lives on and maintains a 500 acre farm near Jane Lew (Lewis County, WV) producing Red Angus Certified feeder calves.

Garrett College in McHenry, on the north shore of Deep Creek Lake in Maryland, was the site of two meeting on the 20th of August for persons interested in Marcellus shale drilling.

At present there is a moratorium on shale drilling in Maryland to investigate the problems, as set up by the Governor, Martin O’Malley. The FIRST MEETING was an informational meeting arranged by Citizens for Marcellus. The SECOND MEETING of the afternoon was a public meeting of a Commission to take input from the public on their concerns and suggestions about shale drilling.

The speakers for the first meeting were John M. Smith, a lawyer from Canonsburg, Pennsylvania and S. Thomas Bond of Jane Lew, West Virginia, who represented Guardians of the West Fork, an environmental group from Clarksburg, West Virginia. Mr. Smith discussed cases he is pursuing for clients who have been damaged by shale drilling in Pennsylvania and by provisions of Act 13, which extensively revises the Oil and Gas Act of 1984. Dr. Bond’s topic was damage from shale drilling he has observed in other states in the Marcellus area where drilling has occurred.

Mr. Smith talked about cases involving leaking frack ponds and health issues by his clients, and the restraints imposed by Act 13 on doctor-patient and doctor-doctor relations. Dr. Bond showed pictures from Doddridge and Harrison Counties in West Virginia and from Ohio and Pennsylvania. These involved the extent and nature of damage to property. He concluded by pointing out the large number of citizens groups seeking to restrict shale drilling which form everywhere it is tried, now in something like thirty states and twelve other countries.

The Commission’s public meeting was held in a larger room. First were statements by various officials about the nature of shale drilling and the result of their investigation. Then individuals from the public were allowed three minutes to make a verbal statement to the audience. Approximately sixty individuals made such statements. About three-fourths expressed interest in continuing the research, or waiting until drilling methods were improved, or skepticism that the industry will ever be able to live up to reasonable standards.

The other forth wanted drilling now. It included two or three people hoping for jobs, but mostly consisted of large landholders and their organization, the Farm Bureau. Garrett county is unique in that about three percent of the people own something like 96 percent of the land.

Recreation is big business in Garrett while occupying small space. These businesses include tourism, second homes which are frequently very elaborate, a wildlife museum, hunting and fishing. skiing and other winter sports, golf, horseback riding, and dog sledding, white water canoeing and rafting. There are many supporting services like marinas, stores and excellent restaurants. The real estate business is usually brisk.

The contrast is stark. Land owners with space to spare are hoping for a bonanza. Recreation businesses realize the unsightliness, the heavy truck traffic, the greasy, sweaty atmosphere, and the related contamination is inconsistent with the county’s distinctive businesses. As one speaker said, “Shale drilling and recreation won’t mix.”

S. Tom Bond, Jane Lew, Lewis County, WV

The Energize West Virginia with Natural Gas town hall meeting at the Morgantown Ramada Inn Tuesday evening, July 10th, must have been amusing to anyone aware of plays with words. The world consists of an exterior reality, which we try to duplicate with words to communicate with others.

The dissonance between the shale gas industry and the people who experience shale gas drilling is preposterous. That is to say absurd, ridiculous, ludicrous, unbelievable. The industry is top down, like an army, or some churches, with “reality” emanating from the head. The people who experience shale drilling are diverse, disconnected from one another, seeing only what is in their area, and mad as “hades” at their losses.

When one draws back and looks at the matter, it is clear what is going on. Our (the world’s) reliance on a single source of energy, hydrocarbons, is reaching a limit. Where the bulk of our energy comes from can be written in two equations understandable to a high school chemistry student. Any kind of mining always takes the easy stuff first. By now the easy hydrocarbon stuff is gone. To get hydrocarbons, more and more difficult deposits must be exploited.

Voiceless people all over the world have been trounced on for oil, now it is time for the home folks. Listen here rural folks, you’re now it! If you hear people talking about the damage they sustain, there is no doubt about their pain. Diminished health, diminished values of property, diminished enjoyment of life, diminished prospects for their children.

Probably most people are still more or less indifferent, it is not their ox in the ditch. As long as they can enjoy plenty of food, security, air conditioning, amusement, it really doesn’t mean too much one way or the other. It only comes home to those who are affected.

When the long, hot summer is over and the crops don’t come in, we’ll hear a different story. Each hot week without significant rain makes global warming converts. When you can’t grow corn, many people are hurt. We live within a delicate shell on a planet too small for all its many people.

Next winter, even if it is warm, will be interesting, too. Maybe someone will come up with a way to eat the extra hydrocarbons.

S. Tom Bond, Farmer, Citizen, Lewis County, WV