Microplastics range from 5 mm down to micron sizes

From an Article by Emmie Halter, Cavalier Daily, Univ. of Virginia, November 28, 2021

Microplastic waste has become a serious threat to the ecosystem — plastic pollution in particular has grown exponentially in the past decade within Virginia, leading to disruption of the Chesapeake Bay and other large bodies of water. University researchers explain the significant harm that microplastics can have on the environment, particularly in the Chesapeake Bay, and discuss plans of action to combat this detrimental effect.

Microplastics are categorized as plastic particles less than 5 millimeters in size. These often enter the ocean through sewage systems and infiltrate soil and the air we breathe. Initially, researchers only knew of microplastics as the microscopic particles formed by larger plastic waste that was broken down by the sun. However, new findings have confirmed that microplastics come from the synthetic fibers in clothing and microbeads from cosmetic products, such as face exfoliants.

Research on microplastics is minimal, and as a result, researchers do not know the specific effects microplastics have on the environment. For other environmental issues such as landfill waste, pollution and the lack of fossil fuels, researchers have come up with timelines and proposed action plans — this has not yet been developed for microplastics, however.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration of the U.S. Department of Commerce has voiced concerns about the lack of a large-scale and long-term collective database that contains visual survey information of microplastics along coasts and in the open ocean in order to support microplastic research. As a solution, the NOAA’s National Centers for Environmental Information created the Marine Microplastic Database this year, a publicly accessible and regularly updated collection of global microplastic data from researchers around the world.

Virginia Governor Ralph Northam signed Executive Order 77 in March, which outlines a plan to phase out single-use plastics and reduce solid waste at state agencies. In response to the order, the University created a single-use plastic reduction policy, which began with eliminating plastic waste in dining halls and replacing single-use plastic with sustainable and reusable takeaway containers and compostable silverware. The University is also looking into expanding their composting facilities and minimizing plastic bag use under this initiative.

Similar initiatives have been implemented throughout the nation, and environmental concerns based on plastic pollution have pushed retailers to provide more sustainable bag options, pilot the trend of reusable containers and make plastic straws a rarity. Environmentally-conscious consumers have even boycotted stores that utilize single-use plastics.

Large plastics make their way into the ocean frequently and are easier to remove from the water compared to microplastics, which must be either filtered out of the ocean or entirely prevented from entering the ocean. The existence of plastics in large bodies of water results in a multitude of issues — notably, the disruption of the ecosystem when animals ingest plastics and release toxic gas and foods containing tiny plastics.

Asst. Engineering Prof. Lindsay Ivey-Burden has conducted research in environmental engineering — specifically engineering for a more sustainable future. Ivey-Burden explained further how these unsustainable materials end up in our environment. “When anything with synthetic fibers and polyester goes in the washer, the fibers sort of come out and they form very small micro [and] nano-plastics,” Ivey-Burden said. “And so then that goes into the wastewater system and back into the environment.”

Another way microplastics enter our oceans is through cosmetic products, especially those labeled as exfoliants. Exfoliants contain microbeads, which produce an abrasion towards the skin that removes dead skin cells from the surface of the face. These microbeads easily pass through household water filter systems and travel to large bodies of water.

In Virginia specifically, this affects the coast and its marine life. One of the most common ways microplastics damage the coastal system is through the oysters in the Chesapeake Bay. “Microplastics in the water make it much harder for [the oysters] to filter the water — which they’re supposed to do because they’re trying to eat all the algae — and they end up eating a bunch of plastic instead of algae,” Ivey-Burden said.

This leads the oysters to be put under an immense amount of stress. In order to fulfill their nutritional needs, they must filter through much more water in order to consume enough algae due to the alarming algae-plastic ratio present in the bay.

Certain areas of the Chesapeake Bay also serve as hot spots for microplastics, acting as breeding grounds for chemicals and diseases that are picked up by microplastics and transported into the bay. Shorelines and underwater grass beds are the most common hot spots because it is easy for microplastics to settle in these areas. The black sea bass — a local fish commonly served at restaurants in coastal Virginia — is just one of the marine animals that feed near these hotspots and ingest the microplastics.

While studies show that most microplastics do not move to the muscle tissue of fish — the part consumed by humans — scientists are still concerned with the effect of microplastics on human health. It is difficult to determine the individual impacts of these plastics on consumers as we are constantly in contact with microplastics, from bottled and tap water to clothing. Additionally, researchers know very little about the levels of toxicity that can hurt humans as well as how food chain processes may affect the toxicity of plastics.

Environmental and material scientists have been researching the toxicity of plastic materials and the solutions needed to decrease this toxicity to people and the environment. Researchers have explored solutions to microplastic waste, but some of these solutions are costly and may cause further destruction to the environment. Water filtration systems, for example, are one of the most discussed solutions. Filtration systems utilizing magnets, tiny nets and vacuums have all been tested by different researchers, but it is nearly impossible to filter out such small pieces of plastic without filtering out very crucial marine organisms as well.

Robert Hale, microplastic expert and head researcher at the Virginia Institute for Marine Science, explained that implementing a filtration system is not realistic. “There are not just microplastics in the ocean, there are other organisms — especially floating organisms — that will get weeded out too,” Hale said. “There is just no way for these filters to sort effectively.”

Other solutions, such as creating more sustainable clothing, eliminating single-use plastics and establishing filtration systems in washing machines are all viable and would have a large impact on microplastic waste. However, from a cost standpoint, the likelihood that the general public will react favorably to increased taxes as a way to fund initiatives that stop plastic waste is very low. “The cost efficiency of plastic ends up feeding the monster and makes it very difficult for big corporations to increase production costs in order to be more environmentally friendly,” Hale said.

In order to eliminate microplastics, scientists agree that toxic additives that are in plastic waste must first be removed. Assoc. Engineering Prof. David Green has been studying plastic waste for much of his career, specifically plastic as a material and the microscopic properties associated with it. “By trying to remove certain additives that have proven to be toxic — things like car plasticizers, stabilizers and pigments — and making this plastic particle, but trying to design it so that when it gets wet and it gets into the landfill, that it doesn’t degrade off,” Green said.

Green also agreed that general reduction of plastics would help to eliminate microplastics. The elimination of single-use plastics at the University is a plan that, if modeled at other universities across the country, could make a big difference.

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See Also: Chesapeake Quarterly : Volume 19, Number 2 : Rona Kobell, Hazards, Large and Small, Dec. 2020

Scientists are looking closely at these tiny microplastic hazards and trying to assess their harm and reduce their numbers. Neither is an easy task. In this issue, we explore these dangers invisible to most of us. We’ll also talk about how Maryland Sea Grant is working with high school teachers to help them identify microplastics in labs with their students.

Trash island in the Caribbean

From the Report of Minderoo Foundation, May 18, 2021

The contribution of individual plastic producers to the plastic waste crisis has been exposed for the first time, as a new report shows that just 20 companies produce over 50 per cent of all single-use plastic. Top financial institutions enabling plastic waste generation were also identified.

Analysis released today reveals the source and true scale of the global plastic waste crisis. It shows just 20 companies – supported by a small group of financial backers – are responsible for producing over 50 per cent of ‘throwaway’ single-use plastic that ends up as waste worldwide1. Published by Minderoo Foundation, the ‘Plastic Waste Makers Index’ has been developed with partners including Wood Mackenzie, and experts from the London School of Economics and Stockholm Environment Institute among others.

Made almost exclusively from fossil fuels, single-use plastics are the most commonly discarded type of plastic, too frequently becoming pollution. Environmental campaigners have previously placed the blame for plastic waste at the feet of packaged goods brands such as PepsiCo and Coca-Cola.

But now a small group of petrochemical companies who manufacture ‘polymers’ – the building block of plastics – is revealed as the source of the crisis:
>>> Twenty companies are the source of half of all single-use plastic thrown away globally.
>>> ExxonMobil tops the list – contributing 5.9 million tonnes to global plastic waste – closely followed by US chemicals company Dow and China’s Sinopec.
>>> One hundred companies are behind 90 per cent of global single-use plastic production.

Close to 60 per cent of the commercial finance funding single-use production comes from just 20 global banks. A total of US$30 billion of loans from these institutions – including Barclays, HSBC and Bank of America among others – has gone to the sector since 2011.

Twenty asset managers – led by US companies Vanguard Group, BlackRock and Capital Group – hold over US$300 billion worth of shares in the parent companies of single-use plastic polymer producers. Of this, US$10 billion is directly linked to single-use polymer production.

“The plastification of our oceans and the warming of our planet are amongst the greatest threats humanity and nature have ever confronted,” explains Dr Andrew Forrest AO, Chairman and Co-Founder, Minderoo Foundation. “Global efforts will not be enough to reverse this crisis unless government, business and financial leaders act in our children’s and grandchildren’s interests.

“This means: stop making new plastic and start using recycled plastic waste, it means re-allocate capital from virgin producers to those using recycled materials, and importantly, it means redesign plastic so it does no harm and is compostable, so like every other element, it returns to its original molecules, not nano-plastics. And we must act now. Because while we bicker, the oceans are getting trashed with plastic and the environment is getting destroyed by global warming,” Dr Forrest said.

“Tracing the root causes of the plastic waste crisis empowers us to help solve it,” adds Al Gore, former US Vice President. “The trajectories of the climate crisis and the plastic waste crisis are strikingly similar and increasingly intertwined. As awareness of the toll of plastic pollution has grown, the petrochemical industry has told us it’s our own fault and has directed attention toward behavior change from end-users of these products, rather than addressing the problem at its source.”

Minderoo Foundation, author of the report, is calling for:
>>> Petrochemicals companies to be required to disclose their ‘plastic waste footprint’ and commit to transitioning away from fossil fuels towards circular models of plastic production;
>>> Banks and investors to shift capital, investments and finance away from companies producing new fossil-fuel-based virgin plastic production, to companies using recycled plastic feedstocks.

Scale of Inaction and Growing Crisis — The report also lays bare the scale of inaction by plastic producers and how they are compounding the existing throwaway plastic waste crisis:
>>> A 30 per cent increase in global throwaway plastic production is projected over the next five years;
>>> This growth in production will lead to an extra three trillion items of throwaway plastic waste by 2025 alone;
>>> Recycled plastic or feedstocks account for no more than 2 per cent of global single-use plastic production, meaning 98 per cent of these plastics are produced from fuels;
>>> Plastic producers score woefully in a best practice assessment of the move to circular-based forms of production necessary in addressing the crisis;
>>> The global economic downturn caused by the coronavirus pandemic pushed down the price of oil, making fossil-fuel-based single-use plastics even more financially attractive.

“Our reliance on oil and gas is not only fuelling climate change, but as the primary material used in the production of throwaway plastics is also devastating our oceans,” explains Sam Fankhauser, Professor of Climate Change Economics and Policy at the Smith School, University of Oxford and Former Director, Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment, London School of Economics.

“It is critically important petrochemical companies move towards circular-economy-based alternatives if we are going to successfully tackle these interlinked crises. The benefits on offer are transformative and hugely beneficial not only for our environment and ecosystems, but also the communities living with the realities of plastic pollution.”

“This is the first-time the financial and material flows of single-use plastic production have been mapped globally and traced back to their source,” said Toby Gardner, Senior Research Fellow, Stockholm Environment Institute. “Revealing the sheer scale of the global crisis we have on our hands, its critical we break the pattern of inaction. You can’t manage what you can’t measure. Building on the analysis published today, this is why it is so important the small group of companies and banks that dominate global production of throwaway plastics begin to disclose their own data.”

More than 130 million metric tonnes of single-use plastic ended up as waste in 2019 – almost all of which is burned, buried in landfill, or discarded directly into the environment. Nineteen pre cent of this waste – some 25 million metric tonnes – became pollution, dumped in oceans or on land3. This is equivalent to the weight of over 23,000 blue whales, signifying the scale of the crisis, which is already having devastating ecological, social and environmental consequences.

Waste Per Person — The analysis shows which countries are the biggest contributors to the throwaway plastics crisis. Australia and the United States respectively produce the greatest amounts of single-use plastic waste per head of pollution, at more than 50 kg per person per year. In comparison, the average person in China – the largest producer of single-use plastic by volume – produces 18 kg of single-use plastic waste per year; in India that figure is as low as 4 kg per year.

The Plastic Waste-Makers Index is a project of Minderoo Foundation’s No Plastic Waste initiative, which aims to create a world without plastic pollution – a truly circular plastics economy, where fossil fuels are no longer used to produce plastics.

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.

Toxic chemicals are part of plastic products

From an Article by Olivia Murray, Morgantown Dominion Post, April 11, 2021

PHOTO in ARTICLE — Just as plastic waste fills our oceans and landfills with pollutants, it can have the same effect on bodies — ours and other living creatures’.

According to West Virginia University professor Michael McCawley, the insidiousness of plastic lies largely within. Because just as plastic waste fills our oceans and landfills with pollutants, it can have the same effect on bodies — ours and other living creatures’. And, there is no perfect way to rid ourselves, or our planet, of plastic once it’s there.

McCawley, a clinical associate professor with WVU’s Department of Occupational and Environmental Health Sciences, explained the science behind why plastic’s breakdown can cause problems. He said plastics can take only a few months to be broken down into microplastics, which are easily scattered, but can take thousands of years to fully degrade into chemical compounds.

McCawley said as plastic breaks down, it releases chemicals and reacts with living things in harmful ways. Some of the hydrogen and carbon compounds found in plastic make up carcinogens, which he described as “chemicals that cause cancer.”

“Otherwise, they can cause all sorts of other problems in the body. They can interfere with the normal chemical function of the cell in the body, and that will cause something that’s known as inflammation, and inflammation is that reaction that a cell has to something that irritates it,” McCawley said.

He said inflammation can lead to other health issues, including the majority of chronic diseases, such as arthritis and Alzheimer’s disease, as well as heart problems.

“If [plastic] gets into the environment, whether it be aquatic or the terrestrial environment, you have all sorts of living things exposed to it and potentially undergoing changes. It can be some very toxic kinds of things. Plastic just seems benign … but in fact it has the possibility, as it starts to break down, of undergoing chemical change,” McCawley said.

Rachael Hood, a master’s student in the WVU geography department and a WVU campus organizer for the Post-Landfill Action Network, agreed. She said some known effects of plastic production and leaching have been linked to cancer and reproductive health issues in humans.

“Because plastics have really increased exponentially, it’s unclear what the long-term health consequences are of consuming plastics. One can assume that they’re not great, but it’s scary to think about these unknown consequences of plastics, which are so ubiquitous in our lives,” Hood said.

PHOTO in ARTICLE — Plastic garbage mixes with other debris behind the Morgantown Lock and Dam along Don Knotts Boulevard.

Microplastics are present in seawater, which means they are also found in sea life, and can end up in human bodies through consumption of seafood.

Microplastics aren’t the only waste found in the ocean, however. There is a mass of solid waste roughly twice the size of Texas floating in the Pacific Ocean, and that makes up only a fraction of the plastic waste found in water or discarded as litter.

“The plastic waste input … is about 8 million tons of plastic, going into just the ocean, and there’s about 270 million metric tons of total plastic waste being produced annually,” McCawley said.

And the Sierra Club says nearly eight million metric tons of plastic finds its way into the oceans every year — “the equivalent of a garbage truck full of plastic being dumped into the ocean every single minute, every day of the year. There are 500 times more pieces of plastic in the ocean than there are stars in our galaxy.”

McCawley said recycling is not an easy process, as polymers — material included in the composition of plastics — are not “infinitely” recyclable; over time, they lose the ability to be recycled or reformed into new products. “Eventually, it becomes waste, and that’s the difficulty in doing recycling, particularly for plastics,” McCawley said.

Though he said recycling is still a preferable alternative to immediately creating large accumulations of waste in landfills, McCawley said products we make must be created with recycling in mind in order for the process to be successful — otherwise, even products that were intended to be recyclable eventually end up in a landfill.

McCawley recommended the questions: “Do we need this? Do we have to have that product?” be asked in regard to plastic products.Questioning the necessity of a plastic product can reduce plastic usage in the first place, thereby reducing the amount of plastic waste.

“It’s a complex problem that we don’t have a perfect solution for, and that everybody is still working for,” McCawley said.

Coming this Month in the Morgantown Dominion Post:

April 18: Morgantown and Mon County officials talk about limiting waste by reducing, reusing and recycling in city and county offices and facilities; and a look at what some area businesses are doing to be more environmentally friendly.

April 25: What WVU does to reduce, reuse and recycle on campus; and WVU students talk about how they do the same.

Increasing plastic pollution is at a dangerous level in our oceans

From an Article by Tiffany Duong, EcoWatch & Oceans, January 22, 2021

This month, a new era began in the fight against plastic pollution.

In 2019, 187 nations within the United Nations amended the 1989 Basel Convention, which governs trade in hazardous materials, to include plastic waste. The historic treaty created a legally binding framework to make global trade in plastic waste more transparent and better regulated, the UN Environment Program (UNEP) said in a press release.

The amendment to the Basel Convention, which went into effect on Jan. 1, 2021, will result in a cleaner ocean within five years and allow developing nations like Vietnam and Malaysia to refuse low-quality and difficult-to-recycle waste before it ever gets shipped, a UN transboundary waste chief told The Guardian.

“It is my optimistic view that, in five years, we will see results,” Rolph Payet, the executive director of the Basel Convention, told The Guardian. “People on the frontline are going to be telling us whether there is a decrease of plastic in the ocean. I don’t see that happening in the next two to three years, but on the horizon of five years. This amendment is just the beginning.”

“Pollution from plastic waste, acknowledged as a major environmental problem of global concern, has reached epidemic proportions with an estimated 100 million tons of plastic now found in the oceans, 80-90 percent of which comes from land-based sources,” the UNEP release noted, explaining a primary rationale behind the amendment’s passage.

Once in the oceans, plastic continues to cause harm. It degrades into microplastics, which end up in our seafood and ultimately us. A recent study also found that plastic pollution increases ocean acidification.

The amendment now requires “prior notice and consent” in writing from importing and transit countries before shipping plastic waste for recycling, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)explained. Exporting countries must detail whether a shipment is mixed or contaminated. If permission isn’t granted to receive the goods, they must remain in their country of origin.

The new international rule aims to level the playing field between wealthy nations that dump contaminated plastic waste and poorer ones that have traditionally received it. According to The Guardian, before the new rule, shipments containing contaminated, non-recyclable and low-quality plastics were often sold to developing nations for recycling. After China refused to continue accepting contaminated waste in 2018, the onus fell on other developing nations to accept it, a 2020 Greenpeace report found. Once received, the waste was often illegally burned or dumped in landfills and waterways because it was unusable and unrecyclable.

Heng Kiah Chun, a Greenpeace Malaysia campaigner, called the impact from illegally dumping plastic waste from more than 19 countries worldwide “an indelible mark” left throughout Southeast Asia, the report added.

According to the EPA, the Basel Convention made an exception for pre-sorted, clean, uncontaminated and recycling-bound plastic scrap: it will not be subject to informed consent requirements. The idea is to encourage exports of commercially viable plastics for recycling rather than the unrestricted dumping of plastic trash that previously occurred.

In Dec. 2020, the European Union passed additional regulationsthat are even stricter than the Basel Convention amendment, including a ban on sending unsorted plastic waste, which is harder to recycle, to poorer countries.

Despite leading the world in plastic waste, the U.S. did not agree to the amendment in 2019. However, the amendment still applies to the U.S. anytime it tries to trade plastic waste with another of the 187 participating countries, CNN reported.

Rather than framing the plastic problem as an issue between developed and developing nations, some critics would rather see commercial producers take responsibility. Others, noting that recycling models, especially in the U.S., aren’t working, are encouraging a cultural shift away from using plastics, stemming the problem of plastic pollution at the source.

Nevertheless, the convention is a “crucial first step towards stopping the use of developing countries as a dumping ground for the world’s plastic waste, especially those coming from rich nations,” Von Hernandez, Break Free From Plastic global coordinator, told CNN.

“Countries at the receiving end of mixed and unsorted plastic waste from foreign sources now have the right to refuse these problematic shipments, in turn compelling source countries to ensure exports of clean, recyclable plastics only,” Hernandez added. “Recycling will not be enough, however. Ultimately, production of plastics has to be significantly curtailed to effectively resolve the plastic pollution crisis.”

Plastics are spreading in the environment and in the human body

From a Presentation by Charles Rolsky, American Chemical Society, August 18, 2020

Plastic pollution of land, water and air is a global problem. Even when plastic bags or water bottles break down to the point at which they are no longer an eyesore, tiny fragments can still contaminate the environment. Animals and humans can ingest the particles, with uncertain health consequences. Now, scientists report that they are among the first to examine micro- and nanoplastics in human organs and tissues.

The researchers will present their results today at the American Chemical Society (ACS) Fall 2020 Virtual Meeting & Expo. ACS is holding the meeting through Thursday. It features more than 6,000 presentations on a wide range of science topics.

“You can find plastics contaminating the environment at virtually every location on the globe, and in a few short decades, we’ve gone from seeing plastic as a wonderful benefit to considering it a threat,” says Charles Rolsky, who is presenting the work at the meeting. “There’s evidence that plastic is making its way into our bodies, but very few studies have looked for it there. And at this point, we don’t know whether this plastic is just a nuisance or whether it represents a human health hazard.”

Scientists define microplastics as plastic fragments less than 5 mm, or about 0.2 inches, in diameter. Nanoplastics are even smaller, with diameters less than 0.001 mm. Research in wildlife and animal models has linked micro- and nanoplastic exposure to infertility, inflammation and cancer, but health outcomes in people are currently unknown.

Previous studies have shown that plastics can pass through the human gastrointestinal tract, but Rolsky and Varun Kelkar, who is also presenting the research at the meeting, wondered if the tiny particles accumulate in human organs. Rolsky and Kelkar are graduate students in the lab of Rolf Halden, Ph.D., at Arizona State University.

To find out, the researchers collaborated with Diego Mastroeni, Ph.D., to obtain samples from a large repository of brain and body tissues that was established to study neurodegenerative diseases, such as Alzheimer’s. The 47 samples were taken from lungs, liver, spleen and kidneys –– four organs likely to be exposed to, filter or collect microplastics. The team developed a procedure to extract plastics from the samples and analyze them by μ-Raman spectrometry.

The researchers also created a computer program that converted information on plastic particle count into units of mass and surface area. They plan to share the tool online so that other researchers can report their results in a standardized manner. “This shared resource will help build a plastic exposure database so that we can compare exposures in organs and groups of people over time and geographic space,” Halden says.

The method allows the researchers to detect dozens of types of plastic components within human tissues, including polycarbonate (PC), polyethylene terephthalate (PET) and polyethylene (PE). When paired with a previously developed mass spectrometry assay, plastic contamination was detected in every sample. Bisphenol A (BPA), still used in many food containers despite health concerns, was found in all 47 human samples.

To the researchers’ knowledge, their study is the first to examine micro- and nanoplastic occurrence in human organs from individuals with a known history of environmental exposure. “The tissue donors provided detailed information on their lifestyle, diet and occupational exposures,” Halden says. “Because these donors have such well-defined histories, our study provides the first clues on potential micro- and nanoplastic exposure sources and routes.”

Should people be concerned about the high detection frequency of plastic components in human tissues? “We never want to be alarmist, but it is concerning that these non-biodegradable materials that are present everywhere can enter and accumulate in human tissues, and we don’t know the possible health effects,” Kelkar says. “Once we get a better idea of what’s in the tissues, we can conduct epidemiological studies to assess human health outcomes. That way, we can start to understand the potential health risks, if any.”

Reference: Presented at the American Chemical Society Fall 2020 Virtual Meeting & Expo, Aug. 17, 2020

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See also: Study finds pieces of plastic in every sample of popular seafood | KYR News, Lorena Steele, August 18, 2020

A recent Australian study found plastic in all samples of popularly consumed seafood. The study recently published in Environmental Science & Technology discussed how small pieces of plastic contribute to pollution all over the planet, including the sea, where these microplastics are eaten by marine creatures and then entered into human diets through seafood consumption, according to the study’s news release.

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See also: Microplastics are in the sea, the rain, and in the atmosphere | World Economic Forum, Sean Fleming, July 31, 2020

Microplastics have been found on the seabed and in Arctic sea ice. They are in rivers and lakes, on top of mountains, in desert sand dunes, and maybe even in the food chain. In 2019, researchers found fibres and microplastics on eight Spanish beaches that have special protection status under the EU Habitats Directive and Birds Directive.

WE ALL NEED TO REDUCE OUR PLASTICS USAGE A.S.A.P.

From an Article by Kevin Loria, Consumer Reports, June 2020 Issue, Volume 85, No. 6, pp. 26 – 35

Six (6) Ways to Use Less Plastic

While it’s practically impossible to eliminate plastic from modern life, there are a number of steps you can take right now to cut back.

1. Do: Drink tap water.
Don’t: Rely on bottled water.

Water from plastic bottles has about double the microplastic level of tap water on average, according to a 2018 study published in the journal Frontiers in Chemistry. So unless your tap water is contaminated with unsafe elements, such as lead, it’s probably best to drink tap. Fill up a metal reusable bottle for when you go out. You can always filter your tap water. Depending on the filter, that may further reduce microplastic levels. (Check CR’s ratings of water filters.)

2. Do: Heat food in or on the stove, or by microwaving in glass.
Don’t: Microwave in plastic.

Some heated plastics have long been known to leach chemicals into food. So if you’re warming up food, use a pan in the oven or on the stove, or if you’re microwaving, use a glass container. Also, avoid putting plastics in the dishwasher because of the high heat involved in cleaning.

3. Do: Buy and store food in glass, silicone, or foil containers.
Don’t: Store food in plastic, especially plastic that may contain harmful chemicals.

The American Academy of Pediatrics has said that plastic food containers with the recycling codes 3, 6, and 7 may contain potentially harmful chemicals, unless they’re labeled “biobased” or “greenware.” Don’t store food in these types of containers. Instead, use containers made of glass or silicone, or wrap your food in aluminum foil. If you’re storing food in or eating food out of plastic containers, know that plastics with recycling codes 1 and 2 are more likely to be recyclable—though they are usually recycled into lower-quality plastics. And there still may be harmful or unknown chemicals in any type of plastic.

4. Do: Eat fresh food as much as possible.
Don’t: Rely on processed food wrapped in plastic.

The more processed or packaged a food is, the higher the risk that it contains worrisome chemicals. Food cans are often lined with bisphenol A (or similar compounds). Buy fresh food from the supermarket, and—as much as possible—try to use refillable containers if your market allows. (Of course, with shopping made difficult by the coronavirus pandemic, prioritize your health and shop however is most feasible and safest.) Certain markets let you fill up cardboard or reusable containers with bulk items and weigh them, or you can use your own mesh bags for produce. Raw meat and fish need to be kept separate for safety reasons, but ask the store fishmonger or butcher to wrap these foods in wax paper instead of plastic. Take cloth—not plastic—reusable bags to the store to take your groceries home.

5. Do: Vacuum regularly.
Don’t: Allow household surfaces to get dusty.

The dust in your house could be loaded with microplastics and chemicals that are found in plastic, such as phthalates. Cleaning up dust may help reduce the amount of plastics you inhale, especially if you are stuck inside for long periods of time during a period of social distancing. CR recommends vacuuming regularly with a HEPA filter, which is best for trapping dust. (Check CR’s ratings of vacuums.)

6. Do: Work with your community.
Don’t: Assume your impact is limited to what you do in your personal life.

Legislation to limit the use of single-use plastics and plastic production may pull the biggest levers, but joining forces with community-level recycling groups can truly make a difference. Look for so-called zero-waste groups, which can offer guidelines for how to recycle or compost all your garbage—and which lobby for local rules that can restrict throwaway items. When possible, shop at markets that source goods locally, so they don’t require as much packaging and shipping. Seek out groups such as Upstream, a nonprofit working to create reusable takeout packaging for restaurants. And when possible, educate yourself about and support any city, county, and state legislation limiting single-use plastics.

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See also: Many Simple Ways to Reduce Your Plastic Use Everyday | Two Wandering Soles, Katie Diederichs, June 17, 2018

We are eating a nominal 5 grams of plastics each and every week, uugghh!

From an Article by Kevin Loria, Consumer Reports, April 30, 2020

The Menace of Microplastics

Any plastic item—bag or bottle, toy or chair—starts to come apart with use and time, breaking down into tinier and tinier fragments. Most of the plastic produced hasn’t been recycled (see “What’s Gone Wrong With Recycling”). But it’s not just old plastic that has disintegrated into particles that make their way into lakes, rivers, and oceans. Cracking open a brand-new plastic bottle or tearing a wrapper off a sandwich releases fragments of plastic that we might end up ingesting. Household dust can be full of microplastics—and it’s possible that you might kick this up into the air from your carpet and breathe it in. Plastic fibers even wash off clothes into our water supplies.

Fragments of plastic smaller than 5 millimeters in length are known as “microplastics,” and scientists have started to refer to even more microscopic fragments—generally smaller than 1,000 nanometers—as “nanoplastics.” In a 2019 report, the World Health Organization found that we’ve unknowingly ingested microplastics for decades without clear negative consequences, saying that research into potential health effects is needed. While there’s much we don’t yet know, we have learned that micro- and nanoplastics are everywhere. Snow in the Arctic carries substantial amounts of microplastic, according to a 2019 study in the journal Science Advances, and even more has been detected in the Alps. Microplastics can even be found in the seemingly pristine sand of Hawaiian beaches.

Given this, researchers are concerned that these plastics can make their way into the tissues of our bodies, according to Linda Birnbaum, Ph.D., the recently retired director of the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS) and the National Toxicology Program. “Nanoplastics can easily cross all kinds of barriers, whether it’s the blood-brain barrier or the placental barrier, and get into our tissues,” Birnbaum has said. Breathing in nanoplastics might introduce them into our cardiovascular system and bloodstream, for example.

It’s also possible that nanoplastic particles might create a systemic inflammatory response, according to Phoebe Stapleton, Ph.D., an assistant professor of pharmacology and toxicology at Rutgers University in New Brunswick, N.J. Her research has previously shown that inhaled metal particles can harm the cardiovascular health of a developing fetus. And her animal research has also confirmed that when a mother breathes in nanoplastics, the particles can be found in many places inside the fetus. “We know that after exposure, the plastic particles are everywhere we look,” Stapleton says. “We don’t know yet what those particles are doing once they’re deposited there.” Other researchers, like Myers at Environmental Health Sciences, are concerned that nanoplastics could possibly release harmful chemicals (such as BPA) into our bodies.

Another area of inquiry focuses on the fact that microplastics act like magnets for additional toxins, picking up pollutants such as polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), chemicals now banned from manufacture in the U.S. but still present in the environment. According to Linda Birnbaum, formerly at the NIEHS, if we later ingest or inhale contaminated microplastics, they may release these substances they’ve picked up into our blood or organs, along with whatever chemicals are also in the plastic itself.

See my finger, see these tiny plastics — some are very much smaller still ...

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See also: Environmental toxicologist wants to understand how microplastics affect human health,
Stephanie Wright, Chemical & Engineering News, Volume 98, Issue 15, April 19, 2020

We are studying air particles that are a so-called health-relevant size that can enter the central and distal parts of the human lung. We are also investigating whether we can detect microplastics in human lung tissue and whether we can find any links to health outcomes.

Additionally, we are doing some in vitro studies to examine the toxicology of these particles. The big question is the relative importance of microplastics. Humans are obviously exposed to thousands, if not hundreds of thousands or millions, of particles in a cubic meter of air, so it’s vital to understand the relative proportion of microplastics within those particles and their relative potency.

Plastic credit cards represent 5 grams of pollutants

From the Cover Story of Consumer Reports Magazine, Volume 85, Number 6, June 2020, pp. 26 – 35.

The first company to ever sell fully synthetic plastic—the Bakelite Corp., established in 1922—advertised it as “The Material of a Thousand Uses.”

It had that right: Today, beyond the plates we eat from, the straws we drink through, the furniture we sit on, and the toys our kids play with, there is plastic in the clothes we wear, in the cars we drive, even in the lifesaving medical equipment in our hospitals. And—more than anywhere else—plastic is in our packaging, encasing everything from laundry detergent to prescription pills, from the food we eat to the beverages we drink.

In fact, the world has produced more than 10 billion tons of the stuff, mostly since the 1950s, and we just keep making more. In 2018, manufacturers created almost 400 million tons of new plastic, and production is expected to almost quadruple by 2050. The vast majority of that plastic eventually ends up piled up around the planet. Some of it may last for hundreds of years, and when it does break down, it can become small particles of plastic—microplastics—that spread farther across the planet, entering our water and food supply.

Why is this a problem? After all, manufacturers and certain regulatory agencies have long assured us that plastics are safe for human health. “In the U.S., we have a robust system that looks at materials that are in contact with food, and that includes plastics, managed by the [Food and Drug Administration],” says Karyn Schmidt, senior director of regulatory and technical affairs at the American Chemistry Council, an industry group that represents plastics and chemical manufacturers. “Consumers should feel very confident using any plastic coming into contact with food that they would buy in a grocery store.”

MORE ON ENVIRONMENTAL HEALTH

And yet there’s growing concern. It’s not just the photos of whales, albatrosses, and sea turtles washing ashore, stomachs clogged with the stuff, or the stories about swirling ocean vortexes collecting litter from around the globe—although these are sobering. Reliable research now shows that tiny bits of plastic are in our food, drinking water, the air we breathe, and, yes, inside our bodies.

“This credit card here, this is how much plastic you are consuming every week,” Sen. Tom Udall, D-N.M., holding up a Visa card, said when announcing legislation meant to reduce plastic pollution this past February. He was referencing a preliminary estimate by some scientists that the plastic the average person may be eating and drinking totals as much as 5 grams per week. One research review published in 2019 calculated that the average American eats, drinks, and breathes in more than 74,000 microplastic particles every year.

Some scientists say it’s likely that ingesting these tiny bits of plastic could expose us to harmful chemicals. “There cannot be no effect,” says Pete Myers, Ph.D., founder and chief scientist of the nonprofit Environmental Health Sciences and an adjunct professor of chemistry at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh.

“People have this idea that plastic is clean,” a sterile object that doesn’t come apart, says Sherri Mason, Ph.D., sustainability coordinator at Penn State Behrend in Erie, Pa., and a chemist who has studied the presence of plastic in tap water, beer, sea salt, and bottled water.

But, in fact, the raw materials of plastic are created from fossil fuels including oil and natural gas. And thousands of chemicals, depending on the product, are used to make it harder, softer, or more flexible. These chemicals include bisphenols, such as bisphenol A (BPA), and phthalates, which can flow or leach into the foods touched by plastic, especially when that plastic is warmed.

“It’s ironic that as public attention to this issue is really growing, global plastic production is increasing,” says Judith Enck, a former regional administrator for the Environmental Protection Agency, now a visiting professor at Bennington College in Vermont and president of Beyond Plastics, a nonprofit focused on ending plastics pollution. And as more plastic is produced and discarded, contaminating our water, food, and air, exposure levels for the average person will continue to rise.

Shopping bags disintegrate into microplastics, potentially entering our food supply and, eventually, our bodies. (To be continued.)

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See also: Scientists Discover Highest Concentration of Deep-Sea Microplastics to Date, Olivia Rosane, EcoWatch.com, May 01, 2020

Scientists have discovered the highest concentration of microplastics ever recorded on the seafloor—1.9 million pieces in one square meter (approximately 11 square feet) of the Mediterranean.

But the finding, published in Science on Thursday, suggests a much broader problem as deep-sea currents carry plastics to microplastic “hotspots” that may well also be deep-sea ecosystems rich in biodiversity. For study coauthor professor Elda Miramontes of the University of Bremen, Germany, the results are alarming.

Some 90% of Sea Salt Is Contaminated With Microplastics

From an Article by Julia Conley, Common Dreams, EcoWatch.com, October 18, 2018

A year after researchers at a New York university discovered microplastics present in sea salt thanks to widespread plastic pollution, researchers in South Korea set out to find out how pervasive the problem is—and found that 90 percent of salt brands commonly used in homes around the world contain the tiny pieces of plastic.

The new research, published in the journal Environmental Science & Technology, suggests that the average adult ingests about 2,000 microplastics per year due to the presence of plastics in the world’s oceans and lakes.

Examining 39 brands sold in 21 countries, researchers at Incheon National University and Greenpeace East Asia found microplastics in 36 of them. The three table salts that did not contain the substance were sold in France, Taiwan and China—but Asia overall was the site of some of the worst plastic pollution.

The study “shows us that microplastics are ubiquitous,” Sherri Mason, who conducted last year’s salt study at the State University of New York at Fredonia, told National Geographic. “It’s not a matter of if you are buying sea salt in England, you are safe.”

Greenpeace East Asia found a strong link between the level of plastic pollution in a given part of the world and the amount of microplastics people in those regions are inadvertently ingesting each year.

“The findings suggest that human ingestion of microplastics via marine products is strongly related to emissions in a given region,” Seung-Kyu Kim, a co-author of the study, told National Geographic.

Nat Geo Travel put it succinctly:

Indonesia, it was found in an unrelated 2015 study, has the world’s second-highest level of plastic pollution. The researchers in South Korea discovered that the country’s table salt brands also contain the most microplastics.

“That fact that they found higher counts in Asia is interesting. While not surprising, you still have to have the data,” Mason said. “The earlier studies found traces of microplastics in salt products sold in those countries, but we haven’t known how much.”

Erik Solheim, the executive director of the United Nations Environmental Program, called the study “more evidence of the frightening proliferation of plastic pollution”—and expressed hope that studies like this one would encourage more governments and companies around the world to sharply reduce their use of plastics.