Consequences of using plastics

[kassy]

Microplastic in Atlantic Ocean 'could weigh 21 million tonnes'


There are 12-21 million tonnes of tiny plastic fragments floating in the Atlantic Ocean, scientists have found.

A study, led by the UK's National Oceanography Centre, scooped through layers of the upper 200m (650ft) of the ocean during a research expedition through the middle of the Atlantic.

Such an amount of plastic - 21 million tonnes - would be enough to fully load almost 1,000 container ships.

The findings are published in the journal Nature Communications.

Dr Katsia Pabortsava, from the National Oceanography Centre, who led the study, said by measuring the mass of very small plastic particles in the top 5% of the ocean, she and her colleagues could estimate "the load of plastic in the entire Atlantic" which is "much larger" than the previous figure.

"Previously, we haven't been able to balance the amount of plastic we found in the ocean with the amount we thought we had put in," she said.

"That's because we weren't measuring the very smallest particles."

https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-53786555

Almost as invisble as CO2 but this is more preventable dirt our children and grandchildren etc have to bath in.

[vox_mundi]

Rubber Debris Litters Miles of Puyallup River After Artificial Turf Was Used In Dam Project Without Permit
https://phys.org/news/2020-08-rubber-debris-litters-miles-puyallup.html



... According to the consultant's report, the company, as part of its work on a bypass channel at the dam, placed 2,409 square yards of FieldTurf—each piece about the size of a fat coffee ground—on the channel between July 20 and 27. The turf was intended to function as an underlayment for a plastic liner put on top of it. The company then diverted the river into the bypass channel to create a dry area to continue ongoing work at its dam.

The night of July 29, the diverted river—well known for its rock-chucking high flows—ripped pieces of the liner and turf loose, sending hunks of artificial turf and a torrent of loose black crumb rubber downriver.

The consultant estimated the rate of travel in the water at 2 mph. The rubber probably reached Orting within nine hours, and Tacoma and Commencement Bay within 20 hours. The river would have deposited crumb rubber all along the way, a distance of some 40 miles, in channel margins, in deep pools, in coves and river bends, and continued redistributing it ever since. Rubber debris already is likely more than 40 miles downriver in Puget Sound.



... On a visit to the river Thursday with The Seattle Times, Sylvia Miller, vice chairwoman of the Puyallup Tribal council, said she was sick at heart because of the spill.

"I feel anger, so much anger," Miller said. "It hurts to see how much damage they are doing to our lands and waters, everyone's lands and waters."

Everywhere he looked for it along the river, Russ Ladley, resource protection manager for the Puyallup Tribe, saw crumbs of black rubber. Immediately downstream of the dam, it lay in streaks of black on the beach. Fourteen miles down river, there it was again, in black nubby necklaces around rocks, in bands along the shore, in heaps on the river's sandy bank.

... For Bill Sterud, chairman of the Puyallup Tribe, the rubber spill is personally painful.

"To me, my church is the river. It is the sound. It is the mountain. It is the forest. And when I see this degrading take place it affects me internally. It hurts."



... The question now is how to clean up the mess, just weeks before adult chinook salmon listed for protection under the federal Endangered Species Act are expected to arrive on their homeward journey

This was not the first trouble at Electron Dam.

Fish and Wildlife reported a fish kill on the river the same day, as Electron Hydro dewatered a stretch of the river during routine maintenance at its dam, causing what the department described as "a large fish kill, resulting in the loss of ESA-listed species, including Chinook, and bull trout, along with coho, rainbow trout, cutthroat trout, and sculpin."

... The Puyallup originates in glaciers along the slopes of Mount Rainier in the Cascades. It flows about 65 miles to Commencement Bay and forms the third largest tributary to Puget Sound.

The river flows through the reservation of the Puyallup Tribe, which has fished and lived along its waters since time immemorial. The river is home to eight ocean-migrating fish populations, including chinook, coho, chum, pink and sockeye salmon, steelhead trout, bull trout and sea-run cutthroat trout.

Historically the river supported as many as 42,000 chinook. The run is greatly diminished today to a little more than 1,000 fish and was listed for protection in 1999 under the ESA.

Chinook from the river are critical to endangered southern resident killer whales, which primarily feed on chinook.

[kassy]

Mysterious marine ecosystem could be threatened by plastic cleanups

Little is known about the neuston, but marine biologists fear this community of organisms living on the ocean surface could be decimated as nets sweep up plastic pollution.

...

The neuston, from the Greek word for swimming, refers to a group of animals, plants and microorganisms that spend all or large parts of their life floating in the top few centimeters of the ocean.

It's a mysterious world that even experts still know little about. But recently, it has been the source of tensions between a project trying to clean up the sea by skimming plastic trash off its surface, and marine biologists who say this could destroy the neuston.

A world between worlds
The neuston comprises a multitude of weird and wonderful creatures.

Many, like the Portuguese man-of-war, which paralyzes its prey with venomous tentacles up to 30 meters long, are colored an electric shade of blue, possibly to protect themselves against the sun's UV rays, or as camouflages against predators.

There are also by-the-wind sailors, flattish creatures that raise chitin shields from the water like sails; slugs known as sea dragons that cling to the water's surface from below with webbed appendages; barnacles that build bubble rafts as big as dinner plates; and the world's only marine insects, a relation of the pond skater.

They live "between the worlds" of the sea and sky, as Federico Betti, a marine biologist at the University of Genoa, puts it. From below, predators lurk. From above, the sun burns. Winds and waves toss them about. Depending on the weather, their environment may be warm or cool, salty or less so.

...

But now, they face another — manmade — threat from nets designed to catch trash. A project called The Ocean Cleanup, run by Dutch inventor Boyan Slat, has raised millions of dollars in donations and sponsorship to deploy long barriers with nets that will drift across the ocean in open loops to sweep up floating garbage.

Plastic and marine life are moved by currents
"Plastic could outweigh fish in the oceans by 2050. To us, that future is unacceptable," The Ocean Cleanup declares on its website.

But Rebecca Helm, a marine biologist at the University of North Carolina Asheville, and one of the few scientists to study this ecosystem, fears that The Ocean Cleanup's proposal to remove 90% of the plastic trash from the water could also virtually wipe out the neuston.

One focus of Helm's studies is where these organisms congregate. "There are places that are very, very concentrated and areas of little concentration, and we're trying to figure out why," says Helm.

One factor is that the neuston floats with ocean currents, and Helm worries that it might collect in the exact same spots as marine plastic pollution. "Our initial data show that regions with high concentrations of plastic are also regions with high concentrations of life."

For details:
https://www.dw.com/en/environment-conservation-plastic-oceans/a-54436603

[kassy]

14 million tonnes of microplastics on sea floor: Australian study

The world's sea floor is littered with an estimated 14 million tonnes of microplastics, broken down from the masses of rubbish entering the oceans every year, according to Australia's national science agency.

The quantity of the tiny pollutants was 25 times greater than previous localised studies had shown, the agency said, calling it the first global estimate of sea-floor microplastics.

Researchers at the agency, known as CSIRO, used a robotic submarine to collect samples from sites up to 3,000 metres (9,850 feet) deep, off the South Australian coast.

"Our research found that the deep ocean is a sink for microplastics," principal research scientist Denise Hardesty said.

"We were surprised to observe high microplastic loads in such a remote location.

...

https://phys.org/news/2020-10-million-tonnes-microplastics-sea-floor.html

[be cause]

my neighbour has burned so much plastic this year that my 'organic' apples have been stained by the smoke . His internet sales are done at the price of degradation of the local environment . Smoke is stinking me from my workplace again today . b.c.

[kassy]

New study reveals United States a top source of plastic pollution in coastal environments

Years of exporting plastic waste abroad masked actual US contribution to plastic pollution crisis

A study published today in the journal Science Advances has revealed that the United States ranks as high as third among countries contributing to coastal plastic pollution when taking into account its scrap plastic exports as well as the latest figures on illegal dumping and littering in the country. The new research challenges the once-held assumption that the United States is adequately "managing" -- that is, collecting and properly landfilling, recycling or otherwise containing -- its plastic waste. A previous study using 2010 data that did not account for plastic scrap exports had ranked the United States 20th, globally, in its contribution to ocean plastic pollution from mismanaged waste.

Using plastic waste generation data from 2016 -- the latest available global numbers -- scientists from Sea Education Association, DSM Environmental Services, University of Georgia, and Ocean Conservancy calculated that more than half of all plastics collected for recycling (1.99 million metric tons of 3.91 million metric tons collected) in the United States were shipped abroad. Of this, 88% of exports went to countries struggling to effectively manage, recycle, or dispose of plastics; and between 15-25% was low-value or contaminated, meaning it was effectively unrecyclable. Taking these factors into account, the researchers estimated that up to 1 million metric tons of U.S.-generated plastic waste ended up polluting the environment beyond its own borders.

"For years, so much of the plastic we have put into the blue bin has been exported for recycling to countries that struggle to manage their own waste, let alone the vast amounts delivered from the United States," said lead author Dr. Kara Lavender Law, research professor of oceanography at Sea Education Association. "And when you consider how much of our plastic waste isn't actually recyclable because it is low-value, contaminated or difficult to process, it's not surprising that a lot of it ends up polluting the environment."

Using 2016 data, the paper also estimated that 2-3% of all plastic waste generated in the U.S. -- between 0.91 and 1.25 million metric tons -- was either littered or illegally dumped into the environment domestically. Combined with waste exports, this means the United States contributed up to 2.25 million metric tons of plastics into the environment. Of this, up to 1.5 million metric tons of plastics ended up in coastal environments (within 50 km of a coastline), where proximity to the shore increases the likelihood of plastics entering the ocean by wind or through waterways. This ranks the United States as high as third globally in contributing to coastal plastic pollution.

...

The study noted that although the United States accounted for just 4% of the global population in 2016, it generated 17% of all plastic waste. On average, Americans generated nearly twice as much plastic waste per capita as residents of the EU.

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/10/201030142125.htm

[be cause]

considering Hershey's sell 25 billion individually plastic wrapped 'kisses' a year , littering of the USA and the oceans will continue a little longer ...
 

[Tom_Mazanec]

I thought those were foil wrapped?

[kassy]

Mangrove forests act as plastic sinks

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Mangroves in the Red Sea. Credit: KAUST
A new study highlights the heavy lifting marine ecosystems do in combatting environmental issues, finding that mangrove forests efficiently capture and store microplastics in their sediments.

An international team, led by King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST) in Saudi Arabia, collected nine core samples from mangrove forests in the Red Sea and Arabian Gulf, finding that their sediments had a higher plastic concentration than surface waters.

“Our research brings light to the mystery of missing marine plastic to reveal that mangroves, Blue Carbon habitats, are hugely efficient at trapping plastics and burying them in their soils where they cannot harm vulnerable marine life or human consumers,” says project supervisor Carlos Duarte.

The samples also revealed a pattern of plastic sedimentation that aligns closely with the history of the global production of plastics, the researchers note in a paper in the journal Science Advances.

“The burial of plastic in mangrove sediments has increased at a pace similar to the global plastic production, indicating that the plastic that was sequestered by mangrove sediments since the 1950s has persisted there for decades,” says lead author Cecilia Martin.

...

However, mangroves are being cleared at a rate faster than tropical forests, meaning that much like the carbon that is locked away, microplastics can be re-released back into the environment.

...

https://cosmosmagazine.com/earth/sciences/mangrove-forests-act-as-plastic-sinks/

[kassy]

Plastics and rising CO2 levels could pose combined threat to marine environment

The combined environmental threat of plastic pollution and ocean acidification are having significant impacts on species living in our oceans, according to new research.

An international team of scientists found that after three weeks of being submerged in the ocean, the bacterial diversity on plastic bottles was twice as great as on samples collected from the surrounding seawater.

However, in areas of elevated carbon dioxide, a large number of taxonomic groups - including bacteria that play an important role in carbon cycling - were negatively impacted.

Conversely, other species - including those have previously been shown to thrive in areas of high ocean plastics and to potentially cause disease on coral reefs - were enriched by it.

The research also showed that while many groups of bacteria were shared between plastic, free-living and particle-associated samples, almost 350 were found uniquely on plastics.

Writing in the journal Marine Pollution Bulletin, researchers say the study adds to growing evidence that the increasing presence of plastic marine debris is providing a novel habitat for bacteria.

more on:
https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2020-11/uop-par110520.php

[kassy]

China’s plastic import ban increases prospects of environmental impact mitigation of plastic waste trade flow worldwide

Abstract
Since the late 1990s, the trend of plastic waste shipment from developed to developing countries has been increasing. In 2017, China announced an unprecedented ban on its import of most plastic waste, resulting in a sharp decline in global plastic waste trade flow and changes in the treatment structure of countries, whose impacts on global environmental sustainability are enormous but yet unexamined. Here, through the life cycle assessment (LCA) method, we quantified the environmental impacts of changes in the flow patterns and treatment methods of 6 types of plastic waste in 18 countries subsequent to the ban. In the short term, the ban significantly improved four midpoint indicators of environmental impact, albeit contributed to global warming. An annual saving of about 2.35 billion euros of eco-cost was realized, which is equivalent to 56% of plastic waste global trade value in 2017. To achieve global environmental sustainability in the long run, countries should gradually realize the transition from export to domestic management, and from landfill to recycling, which would realize eco-costs savings of about 1.54–3.20 billion euros.

https://tc.copernicus.org/preprints/tc-2020-186/