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kassy

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Re: Consequences of using plastics
« Reply #50 on: August 19, 2020, 03:23:01 PM »
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.
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vox_mundi

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Re: Consequences of using plastics
« Reply #51 on: August 31, 2020, 11:28:21 PM »
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.
« Last Edit: August 31, 2020, 11:48:40 PM by vox_mundi »
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kassy

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Re: Consequences of using plastics
« Reply #52 on: September 24, 2020, 02:48:29 PM »
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
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kassy

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Re: Consequences of using plastics
« Reply #53 on: October 07, 2020, 11:49:41 AM »
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
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be cause

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Re: Consequences of using plastics
« Reply #54 on: October 07, 2020, 12:03:30 PM »
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.
Conflict is the root of all evil , for being blind it does not see whom it attacks . Yet it always attacks the Son Of God , and the Son of God is you .

kassy

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Re: Consequences of using plastics
« Reply #55 on: October 31, 2020, 02:16:53 PM »
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
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be cause

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Re: Consequences of using plastics
« Reply #56 on: October 31, 2020, 05:18:58 PM »
considering Hershey's sell 25 billion individually plastic wrapped 'kisses' a year , littering of the USA and the oceans will continue a little longer ...
 
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Tom_Mazanec

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Re: Consequences of using plastics
« Reply #57 on: October 31, 2020, 09:23:12 PM »
I thought those were foil wrapped?

kassy

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Re: Consequences of using plastics
« Reply #58 on: November 06, 2020, 02:25:49 PM »
Mangrove forests act as plastic sinks

Tweet

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/
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kassy

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Re: Consequences of using plastics
« Reply #59 on: November 08, 2020, 08:58:39 PM »
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
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kassy

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Re: Consequences of using plastics
« Reply #60 on: January 18, 2021, 03:12:45 PM »
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/
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kassy

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Re: Consequences of using plastics
« Reply #61 on: February 27, 2021, 03:53:36 PM »
Potentially harmful chemicals found in plastic toys

It has long been known that several chemicals used in plastic toys in different parts of the world can be harmful to human health. However, it is difficult for parents to figure out how to avoid plastic toys containing chemicals that may cause possible health risks to their children.
...

Researchers from DTU and the University of Michigan together with UN Environment have looked into this important issue, analyzed data on chemical functions and amounts found in plastic toys, and quantified related children exposure and potential health risks. They ranked the chemicals according to their health risk and compared these results with existing priority substances lists from around the world. The study has been published with open access in the journal Environment International.

"Out of 419 chemicals found in hard, soft and foam plastic materials used in children toys, we identified 126 substances that can potentially harm children's health either via cancer or non-cancer effects, including 31 plasticizers, 18 flame retardants, and 8 fragrances. Being harmful in our study means that for these chemicals, estimated exposure doses exceed regulatory Reference Doses (RfD) or cancer risks exceed regulatory risk thresholds. These substances should be prioritized for phase-out in toy materials and replaced with safer and more sustainable alternatives," says Peter Fantke, Professor at DTU Management and the study's principle investigator.

...

The researchers find that children in Western countries have on average about 18 kilograms of plastic toys, which underlines the large amounts of plastic that children are surrounded by on a daily basis.

...

Chemicals that the researchers identified to be of possible concern for children's health include, for example, widely known phthalates and brominated flame retardants but also the two plasticizers butyrate TXIB and citrate ATBC, which are used as alternatives to some regulated phthalates.

"These alternatives showed indications for high non-cancer risk potentials in exposed children and should be further assessed to avoid 'regrettable substitutions', where one harmful chemical is replaced with a similarly harmful alternative. Overall, soft plastics cause higher exposure to certain harmful chemicals, and inhalation exposure dominates overall children exposure, because children potentially inhale chemicals diffusing out of all toys in the room, while usually only touching one toy at the time," Peter Fantke explains.

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2021/02/210222124552.htm
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vox_mundi

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Re: Consequences of using plastics
« Reply #62 on: March 02, 2021, 05:04:04 PM »
“There are three classes of people: those who see. Those who see when they are shown. Those who do not see.” ― anonymous

Insensible before the wave so soon released by callous fate. Affected most, they understand the least, and understanding, when it comes, invariably arrives too late

kassy

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Re: Consequences of using plastics
« Reply #63 on: March 24, 2021, 12:28:38 PM »
Does Another Plastics Plant in Louisiana’s ‘Cancer Alley’ Make Sense? A New Report Says No

The Taiwanese Formosa Plastics Group faces slowing demand for plastics, more competition from China and bans on single-use plastic products, a pro-renewables think tank has found.

A massive new plastics plant planned for Louisiana’s St. James Parish in that state’s chemical corridor faces the same challenging economic headwinds that have stalled the construction of petrochemical plants in Appalachia, according to a new analysis by the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis.

The 46-page report lists a series of economic risks and concludes that the Formosa plant project along the Mississippi River should be abandoned. At the same time, Formosa faces a new dynamic in Washington, with the Biden administration pledging an all-of-government focus on environmental justice and the president himself provocatively referring to the area along the Mississippi between Baton Rouge and New Orleans as “Cancer Alley.”

The report found that:

— The plastics market is unlikely to grow fast enough to absorb the products the plant would produce amid a global oversupply of ethylene, a plastics building block, and other chemicals.

— With China adding to its own plastics manufacturing capabilities, the outlook for exports from the United States is not promising.

— Rising construction costs will diminish the plant’s profitability.

— Long-term demand for virgin plastic production will likely decline as recycling and bans on single-use plastics increase and new ways to make plastics are developed.

— A credit rating service had recently downgraded Taiwanese Formosa Plastics Group from AA to AA-minus due to weak demand, lower profits and uncertain oil prices, while noting that the estimated cost of the plant in Louisiana had risen 24 percent, from $9.4 billion to $12 billion.

“If you had just one risk factor, that would be manageable,” said Tom Sanzillo, director of financial analysis for IEEFA, a nonprofit think tank that supports a clean energy transition. “But this involves multiple risk factors.”

On top of those risks, Sanzillo noted that the company faces new regulatory hurdles in the courts, with Formosa suffering setbacks with two key air and water permits and new scrutiny from the Biden administration.

...

https://insideclimatenews.org/news/24032021/formosa-petrochemical-plant-cancer-alley-louisiana-report/
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Ethan13

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Re: Consequences of using plastics
« Reply #64 on: March 30, 2021, 09:26:33 PM »
I have seen several projects that suggest making fuels from recycled plastic. This won't solve the whole problem, but it seems like a good idea. Of course, if we can use such fuel in civil aviation in significant quantities, it could really reduce the amount of plastic waste.

kassy

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Re: Consequences of using plastics
« Reply #65 on: June 07, 2021, 02:24:18 PM »
Salt marshes trap microplastics in their sediments, creating record of human plastic use

...

New research from scientists at the Marine Biological Laboratory (MBL) Ecosystems Center found that some of that plastic waste has been accumulating in salt marshes for decades. The study was published in Environmental Advances.

Salt marshes are the link between the land and open ocean ecosystems, and -- in a way --between urban environments and the wild ocean. Microplastics (plastic particles smaller than 5 millimeters) tend to float on the water surface, but salt marshes fill and empty with the tides, so particles that would normally float get trapped within branches and roots and settle into the marsh soil.

Sediments accumulate in the salt marsh layer after layer, like tree rings, keeping an historical record of sedimentation within the ecosystem. "By accumulating sediments, they are keeping a record in time," says Javier Lloret, MBL research scientist and co-first author on the paper.

Globally, scientists estimate that about 8 million tons of plastic enter the ocean each year. But until now, there's been no estimation of the amount of that plastic that gets trapped in salt marsh ecosystems.

By taking core samples of the marsh sediment at six different estuaries in the Waquoit Bay system on Cape Cod, as well as New Bedford, Mass., harbor, the researchers were able to trace the abundance of microplastics dating back decades in areas with very contrasted degrees of land use.

"As you go into the past, the amount of microplastics you find decreases clearly," says Lloret. "The amount of microplastics you find in sediments is related to the population numbers... but also the amount of plastic that people use."

"Waquoit Bay is the perfect salt marsh system to study plastic pollution because we can contrast one area that is almost pristine... with another area that is highly impacted by human activity," says Rut Pedrosa-Pàmies, also an MBL research scientist and co-first author on the paper. "We found a broad range of plastic pollution."

The researchers focused on two types of microplastic pollution: fragments (from the breakdown of larger plastic pieces) and fibers (thread-like plastics which tend to shed from clothing and fishing gear). They found that fragment pollution increased both through time and with urbanization. The more populated the area surrounding the collection site, the more plastic fragments the researchers observed.

One surprise in the data was that microplastic concentration in the sediments wasn't linear as urbanization grew. Up to 50% development, the concentration of microplastic fragments was relatively unchanged, but once the land was occupied at 50%, the number of microplastics grew exponentially.

"Just a few people in the surrounding area is not going to change much, but when urban uses occupy more than 50% of the land, the number of microplastics goes crazy," says Lloret.

The microplastic fibers didn't have the same relationship with urbanization. "Even in the more pristine areas that don't have urbanization, we find fiber plastic pollution" says Pedrosa-Pàmies.

The researchers believe the fragments have a local origin (people using and disposing of plastics where they live) whereas fibers can be transported long distances by air or by water from large-scale urban areas.

...

https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2021-06/mbl-smt060321.php
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kassy

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Re: Consequences of using plastics
« Reply #66 on: June 12, 2021, 06:43:21 PM »
Plastic pollution: take-out food is littering the oceans

Plastic from take-out and convenience food is littering rivers and oceans - but straws are not the worst offenders, according to a new study.

Scientists analysed global inventories cataloguing more than 12 million pieces of litter found in and around rivers, oceans, shorelines and the seafloor.

They found eight out of 10 items listed were made of plastic.

And 44% of this plastic litter related to take-out food and drinks.

Single-use bottles, food containers and wrappers, and plastic bags made up the biggest share.

"It was shocking to find out that bags, bottles, food containers and cutlery together with wrappers account for almost half of the human-made objects on a global scale," said study leader Dr Carmen Morales of the University of Cadiz, Spain.

...

The study also highlighted the problem of litter from fishing gear, such as plastic nets and ropes, which was the biggest problem in the open ocean. Dumped and discarded nets and lines can be deadly for marine wildlife.

A second study by the University of Cadiz looked at litter released into the ocean from rivers in Europe alone.

Its estimates suggest between 307 and 925 million items of floating litter travel along European rivers to the sea each year.

Plastic made up about 80% of this, dominated by bits of plastic as well as single-use plastics such as bottles, food packaging and bags.

...

https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-57436143
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kassy

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Re: Consequences of using plastics
« Reply #67 on: June 12, 2021, 06:49:54 PM »
And some needed good news:  :)

Bold single-use plastic ban kicks Europe’s plastic purge into high gear

In Europe, beachgoers have grown accustomed to the dispiriting sight of plastic garbage strewn along shorelines. Indeed, 85 percent of the continent’s saltwater beaches and seas exceed pollution standards on marine litter.

...

a ban comes into effect July 3 that halts the sale in EU markets of the 10 plastic products that most commonly wash up on the continent’s shores. These include, among other items, plastic bottle caps, cutlery, straws and plates, as well as Styrofoam food and beverage containers.

The ban is the most visible sign of Europe’s efforts to curtail plastics pollution by creating the world’s first-ever circular plastics regime. By the end of this decade, this will lead to a ban on throwaway plastics, the creation of a comprehensive reuse system for all other plastics, and the establishment of an expansive and potentially lucrative European market for recycled plastics.

...

All plastic packaging on the EU market must be recyclable by 2030, and the use of microplastics circumscribed.

The measures are the toughest in the world and have already pushed plastic packaging recycling rates in the EU to an all-time high of 41.5 percent — three times that of the United States. The EU has set a target for recycling 50 percent of plastic packaging by 2025, a goal that now looks within reach. And in 2025, a separate collection target of 77 percent will be in place for plastic bottles, increasing to 90 percent by 2029.

...

And as of this year, EU companies may no longer unload plastic waste on countries in the developing world such as Malaysia, Vietnam, India and Indonesia. By exporting plastic waste, the EU had essentially been fobbing off the scourge — about 1.7 million U.S. tons of it a year — a sizeable quantity of which was burned in the open air, dumped in landfills, or simply tossed into the sea. Now, Europe is forced to tackle the entirety of the waste burden itself.

and much more:
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/science/bold-single-use-plastic-ban-kicks-europes-plastic-purge-into-high-gear

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morganism

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Re: Consequences of using plastics
« Reply #68 on: June 12, 2021, 09:34:36 PM »
xpost

https://phys.org/news/2021-06-vegan-spider-silk-sustainable-alternative.html

The material is home compostable, whereas other types of bioplastics require industrial composting facilities to degrade. In addition, the Cambridge-developed material requires no chemical modifications to its natural building blocks, so that it can safely degrade in most natural environments.

The new product will be commercialized by Xampla, a University of Cambridge spin-out company developing replacements for single-use plastic and microplastics.

Any replacement for plastic requires another polymer—the two in nature that exist in abundance are polysaccharides and polypeptides. Cellulose and nanocellulose are polysaccharides and have been used for a range of applications, but often require some form of cross-linking to form strong materials. Proteins self-assemble and can form strong materials like silk without any chemical modifications, but they are much harder to work with.

The researchers used soy protein isolate (SPI) as their test plant protein, since it is readily available as a by-product of soybean oil production. Plant proteins such as SPI are poorly soluble in water, making it hard to control their self-assembly into ordered structures.

The new technique uses an environmentally friendly mixture of acetic acid and water, combined with ultrasonication and high temperatures, to improve the solubility of the SPI. This method produces protein structures with enhanced inter-molecular interactions guided by the hydrogen bond formation. In a second step the solvent is removed, which results in a water-insoluble film."

This didn't come up when i searched, so xposted.

kassy

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Re: Consequences of using plastics
« Reply #69 on: July 10, 2021, 09:36:03 PM »
Is global plastic pollution nearing an irreversible tipping point?

Current rates of plastic emissions globally may trigger effects that we will not be able to reverse, argues a new study. According to the authors, plastic pollution is a global threat, and actions to drastically reduce emissions of plastic to the environment are 'the rational policy response.'


Current rates of plastic emissions globally may trigger effects that we will not be able to reverse, argues a new study by researchers from Sweden, Norway and Germany published on July 2nd in Science. According to the authors, plastic pollution is a global threat, and actions to drastically reduce emissions of plastic to the environment are "the rational policy response."

Plastic is found everywhere on the planet: from deserts and mountaintops to deep oceans and Arctic snow. As of 2016, estimates of global emissions of plastic to the world's lakes, rivers and oceans ranged from 9 to 23 million metric tons per year, with a similar amount emitted onto land yearly. These estimates are expected to almost double by 2025 if business-as-usual scenarios apply.
...

The world promotes technological solutions for recycling and to remove plastic from the environment. As consumers, we believe that when we properly separate our plastic trash, all of it will magically be recycled. Technologically, recycling of plastic has many limitations, and countries that have good infrastructures have been exporting their plastic waste to countries with worse facilities. Reducing emissions requires drastic actions, like capping the production of virgin plastic to increase the value of recycled plastic, and banning export of plastic waste unless it is to a country with better recycling" says Tekman.

A poorly reversible pollutant of remote areas of the environment

Plastic accumulates in the environment when amounts emitted exceed those that are removed by cleanup initiatives and natural environmental processes, which occurs by a multi-step process known as weathering.

"Weathering of plastic happens because of many different processes, and we have come a long way in understanding them. But weathering is constantly changing the properties of plastic pollution, which opens new doors to more questions," says Hans Peter Arp, researcher at the Norwegian Geotechnical Institute (NGI) and Professor at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU) who has also co-authored the study. "Degradation is very slow and not effective in stopping accumulation, so exposure to weathered plastic will only increase," says Arp. Plastic is therefore a "poorly reversible pollutant," both because of its continuous emissions and environmental persistence.

...

A potential tipping point of irreversible environmental damage

On top of the environmental damage that plastic pollution can cause on its own by entanglement of animals and toxic effects, it could also act in conjunction with other environmental stressors in remote areas to trigger wide-ranging or even global effects. The new study lays out a number of hypothetical examples of possible effects, including exacerbation of climate change because of disruption of the global carbon pump, and biodiversity loss in the ocean where plastic pollution acts as additional stressor to overfishing, ongoing habitat loss caused by changes in water temperatures, nutrient supply and chemical exposure.

Taken all together, the authors view the threat that plastic being emitted today may trigger global-scale, poorly reversible impacts in the future as "compelling motivation" for tailored actions to strongly reduce emissions.

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2021/07/210701140931.htm
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interstitial

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Re: Consequences of using plastics
« Reply #70 on: July 11, 2021, 05:15:31 AM »
lately I have been seeing bags made from silicone? silicon? which are reusable. Are we just trading one piece of trash for another? or does this make sense environmentally?

kassy

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Re: Consequences of using plastics
« Reply #71 on: July 11, 2021, 01:34:59 PM »
It is not biodegradable so it is just more trash.
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kassy

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Re: Consequences of using plastics
« Reply #72 on: August 28, 2021, 08:50:04 AM »
Government to ban single-use plastic cutlery

The government has announced plans to ban single-use plastic cutlery, plates and polystyrene cups in England as part of what it calls a "war on plastic".

...

Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland already have plans to ban single-use plastic cutlery, and the European Union brought in a similar ban in July - putting ministers in England under pressure to take similar action.

...

But the ban may take over a year to become law, with legislation needing to go through Parliament, and it is understood it could be April 2023 before it comes into force.

https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-58360064
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kassy

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Re: Consequences of using plastics
« Reply #73 on: September 21, 2021, 02:17:00 PM »
Scooping Plastic Out of the Ocean Is a Losing Game

Open ocean cleanups won’t solve the marine plastics crisis. To really make a difference, here’s what we should do instead.

...

eight million tonnes of plastic does end up in the ocean every year—the equivalent of a garbage truck’s–worth every minute. And the rate is increasing. If nothing changes, the amount of plastic sloshing around the ocean could double in 10 years. By 2050, that mass of plastic could exceed the weight of all the fish in the sea

https://www.hakaimagazine.com/features/scooping-plastic-out-of-the-ocean-is-a-losing-game/

The articles discusses several clean up methods and their limitations. The most important solution is to use less plastics because we can´t clean up as much as we throw away and any microparticles are forever out of reach.
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Neven

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Re: Consequences of using plastics
« Reply #74 on: September 21, 2021, 03:58:29 PM »
But then Boyan Slat will have to find another job and actually work for a living!  ;D
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Re: Consequences of using plastics
« Reply #75 on: October 09, 2021, 12:59:49 AM »
Common Chemicals In Electronics and Baby Products Harm Brain Development
https://medicalxpress.com/news/2021-10-common-chemicals-electronics-baby-products.html

Chemicals increasingly used as flame retardants and plasticizers pose a larger risk to children's brain development than previously thought, according to a commentary published today in Environmental Health Perspectives. The research team reviewed dozens of human, animal, and cell-based studies and concluded that exposure to even low levels of the chemicals—called organophosphate esters—may harm IQ, attention, and memory in children in ways not yet looked at by regulators.

The neurotoxicity of organophosphate esters used as nerve agents and pesticides is widely recognized, but the neurotoxicity of those used as flame retardants and plasticizers has been assumed to be low. As a result, they are widely used as replacements for some phased-out or banned halogenated flame retardants in electronics, car seats and other baby products, furniture, and building materials. However, the authors' analysis revealed that these chemicals are also neurotoxic, but through different mechanisms of action.

Organophosphate esters continuously migrate out of products into air and dust. Contaminated dust gets on our hands and is then inadvertently ingested when we eat. That's why these chemicals have been detected in virtually everyone tested. Children are particularly exposed from hand-to-mouth behavior. Babies and young children consequently have much higher concentrations of these chemicals in their bodies during the most vulnerable windows of brain development.

The authors call for a stop to unnecessary uses of all organophosphate esters. This includes their use as flame retardants to meet ineffective flammability standards in consumer products, vehicles, and building materials.

"Organophosphate esters in many products serve no essential function while posing a serious risk, especially to our children," said Carol Kwiatkowski, co-author and Science and Policy Senior Associate at the Green Science Policy Institute. "It's urgent that product manufacturers critically reevaluate the uses of organophosphate ester flame retardants and plasticizers—many may be doing more harm than good."

Beyond Cholinesterase Inhibition: Developmental Neurotoxicity of Organophosphate Ester Flame Retardants and Plasticizers, Environmental Health Perspectives (2021)
https://ehp.niehs.nih.gov/doi/10.1289/EHP9285
“There are three classes of people: those who see. Those who see when they are shown. Those who do not see.” ― anonymous

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kassy

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Re: Consequences of using plastics
« Reply #76 on: October 09, 2021, 06:18:35 PM »
Quote
the neurotoxicity of those used as flame retardants and plasticizers has been assumed to be low

And there is no need to prove it because lobbyists wrote the laws.
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phelan

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Re: Consequences of using plastics
« Reply #77 on: October 20, 2021, 05:45:47 PM »
Quote
the neurotoxicity of those used as flame retardants and plasticizers has been assumed to be low

And there is no need to prove it because lobbyists wrote the laws.

What, GRAS (generally regarded as safe) is not a scientific-enough standard for you?   ::)

This one gets me riled up!  Why are children testing grounds for unproven chemicals?

Followed a link below the article about these flame retardants to a study of car seats for babies done in 2018. 

https://phys.org/news/2018-12-toxic-flame-retardants-children-car.html

Quote
Of the 18 children's car seats tested, 15 contained new or traditional hazardous flame retardant chemicals.

Quote
For the first time, two cyclic phosphonate esters (PMMMPs) were measured at high levels in North America, suggesting their use as a replacement flame retardant for compounds that are known to be harmful. PMMMPs were found in 34 of the 36 car seat sampled at levels much higher than those of traditional flame retardants. Little is known about their health effects.

All of this, and we aren't even allowed to find out which car seats DO NOT contain this crap.  I briefly looked into this, and there are a few companies now making car seats without flame retardants.  As you would expect, these are pretty expensive - class warfare in action.

https://naturalbabymama.com/the-best-non-toxic-car-seats-without-flame-retardants/

vox_mundi

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Re: Consequences of using plastics
« Reply #78 on: October 20, 2021, 08:03:30 PM »
Here's the problem.

A CAS Registry® number has been assigned to every unique chemical substance described in scientific literature from 1957 to present day, as well as additional substances dating as far back as the early 1900s.

As of 2020, the CAS Registry® contained over 159 million unique chemical substances, as well as about 70 million protein and nucleic acid sequences. In April 2021, CAS announced it had registered its 250 millionth unique chemical substance.

To be generous, about 10,000 of those 250,000,000 chemicals have had complete toxicology workups. Things like acute and chronic exposure; long term and short term effects; synergistic effects; minimum and maximum dose.

Then you have genetic variations in metabolism. Humans have 57 genes and more than 59 pseudogenes divided among 18 families of cytochrome P450 genes and 43 subfamilies. That means different people have different responses to each chemical.

Each of these chemicals may also have several unique metabolites with their own toxicology profiles.

And then there's the absence of validated, standardized methods which makes it difficult to compare results.

We're all guinea pigs. ...

“There are three classes of people: those who see. Those who see when they are shown. Those who do not see.” ― anonymous

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kassy

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Re: Consequences of using plastics
« Reply #79 on: October 22, 2021, 06:48:41 PM »
Good to see it is on more peoples radars.

To celebrate Consequences of using plastics finally ending up in Consequences we have this joyful news.  ::)

Plastic industry’s contribution to climate change to outpace coal by 2030


In a collaboration between Bennington College and Beyond Plastics, the report found that as fossil fuel companies seek to recoup falling profits, they are increasing plastics production, cancelling out the greenhouse gas reductions gained from closures of coal-fired power plants in the US.

The report analysed data of ten stages of plastics production, usage and disposal and found that the US plastics industry is releasing at least 232 million tons of greenhouse gases each year - the equivalent of 116 average-sized coal-fired power plants.

In 2020, the plastics industry’s reported emissions increased by 10 million tons of greenhouse gas emissions over 2019 and construction is currently underway on another 12 plastics facilities with an additional 15 in the planning stages.

“The fossil fuel industry is losing money from its traditional markets of power generation and transportation. They are building new plastics facilities at a staggering clip so they can dump their petrochemicals into plastics. This petrochemical buildout is cancelling out other global efforts to slow climate change,” said Judith Enck, former EPA regional administrator and president of Beyond Plastics.

The report also found that the pollution from the sector disproportionately impacted less well-off communities; 90 per cent of the pollution emitted by the sector occurs in just 18 communities where residents earn 28 per cent less than the average US household and are 67 per cent more likely to be people of colour.

“This report represents the floor, not the ceiling, of the US plastics industry’s climate impact,” said the report’s author Jim Vallette.

“Federal agencies do not yet count many releases because current regulations do not require the industry to report them. For example, no agency tracks how much greenhouse gas is released when plastic trash is burned in cement kilns, nor when methane leaks from a gas processing plant, nor when fracked gas is exported from Texas to make single-use plastics in India.”

...

https://eandt.theiet.org/content/articles/2021/10/plastic-industry-s-contribution-to-climate-change-to-outpace-coal-by-2030/

PS and as an added bonus there was a congress on microplastics in the Netherlands which featured a paper showing microplastics in the blood of cows and pigs (or some other common farm animal). Very tiny fragments so not big pieces that get chewed down but small particles allready in the environment.

What the possible damage of that level is is of yet unknown. See the comic above.
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interstitial

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Re: Consequences of using plastics
« Reply #80 on: October 23, 2021, 05:17:26 AM »

I wonder if they mean in the US or Globally. I think they mean just in the US as globally coal is not expected to shrink by many predictions or maybe by a small amount. In the US it shrink by 50% or more depending on who you ask and what actually happen. I mention this because I think it is more likely that coal shrinks to smaller source and plastic grows some by 2030. If true it brings a different perspective though plastic is a problem either way.

kassy

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Re: Consequences of using plastics
« Reply #81 on: October 23, 2021, 12:09:25 PM »
With the timeline it must be US only. The industry needs to be regulated.

The fossil fuel use is one facet but the other big problem is the microplastics being found everywhere. The higher these levels go the more likely they are to trigger health problems (these have been shown in mice but not that much is known for other organisms).
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kassy

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Re: Consequences of using plastics
« Reply #82 on: October 24, 2021, 11:13:51 AM »
Scientists part of team that points to strong connection between climate change, plastics pollution

At the root of global climate change and the worldwide plastics problem are two related carbon-based fuels -- oil and natural gas. Not only are the two among the key drivers of climate change, they are instrumental in the manufacturing of plastics. As storms intensify and become more frequent, the movement of trash from land to our oceans and, and vice versa, is only going to get worse.

...

At the root of global climate change and the worldwide plastics pollution problem are two related carbon-based fuels -- oil and natural gas. Not only are the two among the key drivers of climate change, they are instrumental in the manufacturing of plastics. As storms intensify and become more frequent, the movement of trash from land to our oceans, and vice versa, is only going to get worse.

Now URI colleagues Davies, associate professor of biological sciences, and Suckling, assistant professor of sustainable aquaculture, are part of an international team of researchers including those from the Zoological Society London and Bangor University in Wales examining an often overlooked phenomenon, the compounding effect of climate change and plastics.

The team identified three significant ways in which the climate crisis and plastics pollution are connected, with the first being how plastic contributes to global greenhouse gases from production through disposal. The second demonstrates how extreme weather, like hurricanes and floods, will disperse and worsen pollution. The third is the effect that climate change and plastics pollution can have on marine species and ecosystems that are vulnerable to both.

The study was led by Helen Ford, a Ph.D. student at Bangor University, who worked with Davies and Suckling when they were at Bangor. The team published its results in a September article in the journal, Science of the Total Environment. Professor Heather Koldewey, senior technical specialist at the Zoological Society London, was the lead author.

...

Davies said Ford organized the international team that conducted the study. "The premise of the paper addresses the fact that so many people view plastics pollution and climate change as separate things when they are not," Davies said. "They arise from the same principal material, oil.

"Climate change and plastic pollution have many similarities, including how we need to address them. We need international collaborations to address this problem, which essentially stems from the over-consumption of finite resources."

A key issue, according to Suckling, is the transport of plastics and microplastics over vast distances. She said that the Japan earthquake and resulting tsunami of 2011 transported materials all the way to Hawaii. The same thing happens with storms, she said.

Suckling had witnessed Storm Emma when she was in North Wales, which ripped apart one of the marinas during 2018.

"The whole area was flooded with floating white polystyrene particles. The storm had split apart the walkway floating platforms in this marina and spilled out the polystyrene contents, posing a pollution risk," Suckling said. "This was at a site where an invasive species was being controlled, but plastics which spread from the site could increase the risk of transporting this invasive species."

Suckling said scientists are researching the ability of plastics to transport invasive species hundreds of miles.

"Since Hurricanes Henri and Ida, we have been looking at storm-induced transport of plastics," Davies said. "We sent our students out to collect samples from Narragansett Bay before and after the storms so we could start seeing what the impact would be. We are working on that data now. We want to see what the impact of these storms is on plastics in our oceans.

"The great thing about Narragansett Bay is it is so well studied. We are building on 60 years of research at URI or even longer," Davies said.

Davies also said the state's expertise in this area, including its universities and administrative agencies, make Rhode Island an ideal place to do the work.

"We have a wide range of disciplines, a relatively small number of stakeholders and a wide range of habitats," he said.

Since coming to URI, Suckling has published two papers on the impact of microplastics on marine life, particularly sea urchins. One of them, which addresses how sea urchins with different diet habits respond to eating microplastics, was published in the September 2020 online edition of Science of the Total Environment.

...

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2021/10/211021175150.htm
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gerontocrat

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Re: Consequences of using plastics
« Reply #83 on: October 24, 2021, 03:39:07 PM »
Those consequences are set to grow - substantially

https://www.motherjones.com/environment/2021/10/plastics-industry-emissions-worse-coal-climate-change-cop26-study/
Quote
Plastics Destined to Create More Emissions Than Coal in the US, Study Finds
Besides tainting food and waterways, the industry is a growing contributor to warming.

Quote
Plastics are everywhere. From the stomachs of deep-sea fish to human feces, Arctic snow to gusts of wind in the remote wilderness, the oil and gas byproduct has, barely a century after it was first synthesized in a laboratory, become a ubiquitous feature of virtually every ecosystem on Earth and every aspect of modern life.

It’s also playing a key role in permanently changing the climate of the planet it has come to dominate.

Plastics already produce 3.8 percent of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions throughout their lifecycle, roughly double the planet-heating pollution spewed by airplanes. By the end of this decade, the plastics industry in the United States alone is on pace to eclipse the carbon footprint of the country’s remaining coal-fired power plants, according to a new analysis from Bennington College’s Beyond Plastics think tank.

Newly compiled data on the 10 stages of plastic production, usage and disposal show the U.S. plastics industry is releasing at least 232 million tons of greenhouse gases per year, equivalent to 116 average-sized coal-fired power plants.

Roughly 65 percent of the country’s active coal-fired plants retired over the past decade, yet the stupendous growth of the U.S. plastics industry threatens to offset whatever climate progress the world’s largest historical emitter has made at a moment when the nation is struggling to codify its transition from fossil fuels into law.

While emissions from power plants, transportation, and industry are expected to take center stage at next month’s United Nations climate summit in Scotland, plastics are virtually absent from the global climate agenda. And despite attention paid to the crisis of plastic trash piling up on buildings and killing aquatic wildlife, the Biden administration’s proposal to decarbonize the U.S. economy similarly overlooks the industry’s carbon footprint.

“When most people think of the plastic problem, they think of water pollution and the fact that plastic recycling has been such a failure. They don’t think about climate change,” said Judith Enck, the president of Beyond Plastics who previously spent eight years as a regional administrator at the Environmental Protection Agency. “But this is a significant and growing source of greenhouse gas emissions.”

Across the country, particularly in states where hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, has made the fossil fuel raw materials for plastics production cheap and readily available, the industry and its emissions have grown rapidly. In 2020, plastics emissions increased by 10 million tons compared to the previous year, even as the world’s output of climate-changing gases overall temporarily decreased as the pandemic lockdowns idled cars and factories.

Another 12 plastics facilities are currently under construction, with 15 more in the works, likely adding another 40 million tons of greenhouse gas pollution each year by 2025.

Heat-trapping carbon is hardly the only pollutant these plants spew. Air pollution near cracker plants ― the type of facility where gas is heated to a high enough temperature to break the fuels into smaller molecules, a main feedstock, or baseline ingredient, for plastics ― contains more than 100 chemicals including cancer-causing benzene, toluene and xylene. Communities in which these facilities are built experience such disproportionate rates of lung cancer, asthma and organ diseases that Louisiana’s infamously dense petrochemical corridor is known internationally as “Cancer Alley.”

More than 90 percent of the carbon emissions the plastics industry reports to the Environmental Protection Agency pollutes just 18 communities, primarily along the coasts of Louisiana and Texas, the report found. Residents there are more likely to be poor and nonwhite. Those living within three miles of these petrochemical clusters earn 28 percent less than the average U.S. household and are 67 percent more likely to be people of color, according to the report.

To conduct the research, Beyond Plastics enlisted the Maine-based environmental research firm Material Research to collect the public emissions data plastics companies submit to the EPA, the Department of Commerce and the Department of Energy. The industry-reported data showed 114 million tons of greenhouse gases in 2020 alone.

But that offered only a narrow view of plastics’ carbon footprint. After collating the regulatory data, researchers then calculated emissions from plastic imports and exports and pipelines carrying the feedstock fuels. By doing so, they identified another 118 million tons of greenhouse gas pollution just last year.

In reality, the actual number is likely even higher. That estimate does not include, for example, gases that plastic waste deteriorating in the ocean releases. Sarah-Jeanne Royer, a research scientist at Hawai’i Pacific University’s Center for Marine Debris Research who has studied emissions from plastics, said public understanding of how quickly plastics deteriorate and emit gases has not yet caught up to recent findings.

“Whether it’s plastic pollution or plastic that is basically in use, it will be producing different types of greenhouse gases,” said Royer, who was not involved in the report but reviewed its findings for HuffPost. “We very often think about emissions from the production process or maybe from the end-of-life recycling facilities. But we don’t yet have a number for the total amount for when plastic is exposed in the environment.”

Adding to that crisis, she said, is the fact that as plastic waste breaks apart in the ocean or in landfills, it expands the exposed surface area and increases emissions from each piece of trash over time. “If anything,” she said of the Beyond Plastics report, “this is an underestimate.”

Among the more worrying trends the report documents is the rise of a nascent sector known as chemical recycling. Sometimes called “advanced recycling,” the process involves melting solid plastics down in high-heat furnaces. The resulting liquid feedstocks―rather than becoming new plastics, as the term “recycling” implies―are, in many cases, sold as fuel oil.

The chemical recycling industry, though still emerging, is littered with failures, including the collapse of projects across three continents, a Reuters investigation published in July found. Of the 35 chemical recycling projects the EPA assessed last December, just six were operating at commercial or demonstration scale, while several ended in lawsuits and settlements for unpaid services and two resulted in the chief executives facing multi-million-dollar fraud judgements.

Still, states across the country are enacting legislation to spur the industry on by exempting chemical recycling plants from local environmental regulations. If all the country’s proposed chemical recyclers are built, the plants and the burning of their resulting fuel could emit another 18 million tons of greenhouse gases per year, the Beyond Plastics report found.

“As countries finally begin to eliminate the burning of fossil fuels for power and transportation, the demand for fossil fuels is falling. In desperation, the fossil fuel industry is looking to plastics as a replacement market, as this report details,” Enck wrote in the introduction to the report. “Plastics is the fossil fuel industry’s Plan B. But there is no Plan B for the rest of us.”

The Report...
https://static1.squarespace.com/static/5eda91260bbb7e7a4bf528d8/t/616ef29221985319611a64e0/1634661022294/REPORT_The_New-Coal_Plastics_and_Climate-Change_10-21-2021.pdf
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El Cid

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Re: Consequences of using plastics
« Reply #84 on: October 27, 2021, 12:16:49 PM »
Two  graphs on plastic use and recycling in the EU

kassy

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Re: Consequences of using plastics
« Reply #85 on: October 28, 2021, 04:53:24 PM »
Twenty-four trillion pieces of microplastics in the ocean and counting

Based on a total of 8,218 pelagic microplastic samples from the world's oceans collected between 2000 and 2019, a team of scientists has developed a publicly available dataset for assessing the abundance of microplastics and their long-term trend in the world's upper oceans. The team found 24.4 trillion pieces (82,000--578,000 tons) of microplastics in the world's oceans, but the actual amount is likely to be much greater.

...

"Although the observation of microplastics dates back to the 1970s, standardized data spanning the globe is still limited," explains Atsuhiko Isobe, professor at Kyushu University's Research Institute for Applied Mechanics and leader of the study.

"Our dataset provides realistic amounts of microplastics in the wild to help researchers trying to assess the true impact they are having on aquatic organisms and the environment."

Categorized as small pieces of degraded plastic less than five millimeters in size, microplastics can travel thousands of miles in the open sea and, depending on their degradation, remain at various depths of the ocean surface.

While numerous surveys in the last 50 years have set out to measure the amount of microplastics in the ocean, the combining and archiving of data has been slow and faces many challenges related to differences in collection methods and conditions, such as ocean turbulence, and counting and analysis protocols.

To create the new dataset, which was published in the journal Microplastics and Nanoplastics, the researchers collected, calibrated, and gridded data from a total of 8,218 pelagic microplastic samples taken from oceans around the world between 2000 and 2019.

"We collected published and unpublished data on microplastic distribution from around the world and calibrated to account for differences such as in collection method and wave height to create standardized, state-of-the-art 2D maps of microplastic abundance," explains Isobe.

The team estimates there are 24.4 trillion pieces of microplastics in the world's upper oceans, with a combined weight of 82,000 to 578,000 tons -- or the equivalent of roughly 30 billion 500-ml plastic water bottles.

"While this work improves our grasp of the actual situation, the total amount of microplastics is still likely to be much greater since this is just what we can estimate on the surface," states Isobe. "For us to get a clearer picture, we must develop 3D maps probing the depths of the oceans and continue to fill the gaps within our dataset."

One gap is the lack of microplastic data for the Indian Ocean and the seas around Southeast Asia, including the South China Sea. Moreover, data is missing for microplastics less than 300 micrometers in size or even on the nano scale. This is due to the lack of field survey protocols for such plastics and limitations in equipment and the mesh size of nets used in the field.

...

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2021/10/211027122120.htm

Those large scale gaps will have lots more microplastics...and the small scales too.
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morganism

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Re: Consequences of using plastics
« Reply #86 on: December 02, 2021, 09:38:19 AM »
Study links high cholesterol, cardiovascular disease to plastics

UC Riverside-led mouse study finds a receptor greatly contributes to the harmful effects of plastic-associated chemicals

In a mouse study, the researchers found a phthalate — a chemical used to make plastics more durable — led to increased plasma cholesterol levels.

“We found dicyclohexyl phthalate, or DCHP, strongly binds to a receptor called pregnane X receptor, or PXR,” said Zhou, who is a professor in the UCR School of Medicine. “DCHP ‘turns on’ PXR in the gut, inducing the expression of key proteins required for cholesterol absorption and transport. Our experiments show that DCHP elicits high cholesterol by targeting intestinal PXR signaling.”

DCHP, a widely used phthalate plasticizer, has recently been proposed by the Environmental Protection Agency as a high-priority substance for risk evaluation. Not much is known yet about DCHP’s adverse effects in humans."

https://news.ucr.edu/articles/2021/11/30/study-links-high-cholesterol-cardiovascular-disease-plastics

kassy

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Re: Consequences of using plastics
« Reply #87 on: December 03, 2021, 08:20:38 PM »
Coastal species are setting up shop in the open ocean on the back of islands of plastic waste

Our junk is creating new, potentially dangerous ecosystems in the ocean

Coastal species of plants and animals are colonizing the open ocean on the backs of plastic debris, researchers report. This is creating whole new, and previously impossible, communities on the surface of the open ocean. The findings put into perspective just how much of an impact pollution can have on the environments around us, and showcase how the oceans, specifically, are changing due to human activity.

...

Researchers have termed these communities “neopelagic” — roughly meaning ‘new oceanic’. They develop around patches (or ‘gyres’) of garbage that form in areas where oceanic currents push plastic pollution from coastal regions. Here, veritable islands of plastic float over thousands of square miles of ocean surface. Although they do not lack in large pieces of plastic, a large part of the material that makes up these islands consists of microplastic particles, which are too small to be seen by the naked eye. Other debris like fishing nets, buoys, and bottles help to hold everything together. The single largest such patch today sits in the North Pacific Subtropical Gyre and contains an estimated 79,000 metric tons of trash.

....

During 2020, the Ocean Voyages Institute team collected 103 tons of plastic and associated debris from the North Pacific Subtropical Gyre. Some of this was sent to SERC’s Marine Invasions Lab, where Haram and her team looked at the species that colonized them. Among these samples, they found several coastal species including anemones, hydroids, and shrimp-like amphipods which were not merely surviving, but seemed to thrive. This represents a very significant shift in the ecology of the open ocean.

“The open ocean has not been habitable for coastal organisms until now,” said SERC senior scientist Greg Ruiz, who heads the Marine Invasions Lab where Haram worked. “Partly because of habitat limitation—there wasn’t plastic there in the past—and partly, we thought, because it was a food desert.”

For now, the findings show that plastic build-up in the ocean is providing a platform for coastal species to use as a habitat, but where exactly they are finding food is still up for debate. Further research will be needed to determine the details of these novel ecosystems. Two possibilities are that ocean gyres already act as hotbeds for biologic activity, and these species are capitalizing on existing food sources, or that the plastic bodies themselves are attracting organisms, which coastal species then consume.

https://www.zmescience.com/science/coastal-species-plastic-island-ecosystem-9246246245/
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kassy

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Re: Consequences of using plastics
« Reply #88 on: December 06, 2021, 09:54:17 PM »
Plastic has a far bigger carbon footprint than previously believed


The problem of plastic pollution in the world’s oceans is well-known - but a new study has shown that plastic has a far worse carbon footprint than previously believed.

The problem is that plastic is often made in coal-based newly industrialised countries such as China, India, Indonesia and South Africa.

The energy and process heat for the production of plastics in these countries comes primarily from the combustion of coal.

The researchers say that the global carbon footprint of plastics has doubled since 1995, reaching 2 billion tonnes of CO2 equivalent (CO2e) in 2015.

This represents more than 4.5 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions, and is more than previously thought.

Over the same period, the global health footprint of plastics from fine particulate air pollution has increased by 70 percent.

...

The researchers looked at the greenhouse gas emissions generated across the life cycle of plastics - from fossil resource extraction, to processing into product classes and use, through to end of life, including recycling, incineration and landfill.

The production phase of plastics is responsible for the vast majority - 96% - of the carbon footprint of plastics.

Livia Cabernard, a doctoral student at the Institute of Science, Technology and Policy (ISTP) at ETH Zurich, says, "So far, the simplistic assumption has been that the production of plastic requires roughly the same amount of fossil fuel as is contained in the raw materials in plastic — above all petroleum," says.

"The plastics-related carbon footprint of China's transport sector, Indonesia's electronics industry and India's construction industry has increased more than 50-fold since 1995.”

https://uk.news.yahoo.com/plastic-has-a-far-bigger-carbon-footprint-than-previously-believed-165607930.html

and linked in there:

The United States is by far the world's biggest plastic polluter, according to a study released Wednesday.

It generated 42 million tons of waste in 2016, more than twice as much as China and more than all the countries of the European Union combined, says the study by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine.

The US accounts for less than five percent of the world's people.

https://uk.finance.yahoo.com/news/texas-bears-brunt-us-plastic-013905204.html
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kassy

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Re: Consequences of using plastics
« Reply #89 on: December 07, 2021, 10:51:32 AM »
The U.S. Has a Leading Role to Play in Reducing Ocean Plastic

...

On a per capita basis, the U.S. produces an order of magnitude more plastic waste than China – a nation often vilified over pollution-related issues. These findings build off a study published in 2020 that concluded that the U.S. is the largest global source of plastic waste, including plastics shipped to other countries that later are mismanaged.

And only a small fraction of plastic in U.S. household waste streams is recycled. The study calls current U.S. recycling systems “grossly insufficient to manage the diversity, complexity and quantity of plastic waste.”

As scientists who study the effects of plastic pollution on marine ecosystems, we view this report as an important first step on a long road to reducing ocean plastic pollution. While it’s important to make clear how the U.S. is contributing to ocean plastic waste, we see a need for specific, actionable goals and recommendations to mitigate the plastic pollution crisis, and would have liked to see the report go further in that direction.

...

For example, it strongly recommends developing a national marine debris monitoring program, led by the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration’s Marine Debris Program. We agree with this proposal, but the report does not address what to monitor, how to do it or what the specific goals of monitoring should be.

Ideally, we believe the federal government should create a coalition of relevant agencies, such as NOAA, the Environmental Protection Agency and the National Institutes of Health, to tackle plastic pollution. Agencies have done this in the past in response to acute pollution events, such as the 2010 BP Deepwater Horizon oil spill, but not for chronic problems like marine debris. The report proposes a cross-government effort as well but does not provide specifics.

An underfunded problem

Actions to detect, track and remove plastic waste from the ocean will require substantial financial support. But there’s little federal funding for marine debris research and cleanup. In 2020, for example, NOAA’s Marine Debris Program budget request was $US7 million, which represents 0.1% of NOAA’s $5.65B 2020 budget. Proposed funding for the Marine Debris Program increased by $9 million for fiscal 2022, which is a step in the right direction.

...

The private sector also has a crucial role to play in reducing plastic use and waste. We would have liked to see more discussion in the report of how businesses and industries contribute to the accumulation of ocean plastic waste and their role in solutions.

The report correctly notes that plastic pollution is an environmental justice issue. Minority and low-income communities are disproportionately affected by many activities that produce plastic waste, from oil drilling emissions to toxic chemicals released during the production or incineration of plastics. Some proposals in the report, such as better waste management and increased recycling, may benefit these communities – but only if they are directly involved in planning and carrying them out.

The study also highlights the need to produce less plastic and scale up effective plastic recycling. More public and private funding for solutions like reusable and refillable containers, reduced packaging and standardized plastic recycling processes would increase opportunities for consumers to shift away from single-use disposable products.

...

https://maritime-executive.com/editorials/the-u-s-has-a-leading-role-to-play-in-reducing-ocean-plastic
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kassy

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Re: Consequences of using plastics
« Reply #90 on: December 16, 2021, 10:45:00 AM »
‘Forever chemicals’ latch onto sea spray to become airborne

...

They're now found worldwide, including in the oceans, where they've been expected to diffuse enough to not be a major concern. However, with previous laboratory experiments, Bo Sha, Jana Johansson, Ian Cousins, Matthew Salter and colleagues showed that when bubbles containing PFAAs burst at the surface of saltwater, these compounds are ejected as aerosols -- extremely small airborne particles. Their findings indicated that sea spray aerosols could be an important way that these contaminants are transported long distances. So, as the next step, the team wanted to conduct field observations to find out whether this was the case in the real world.

At two coastal locations in Norway, the researchers collected over 100 air samples between 2018 and 2020. They analyzed the microscopic particles in the samples for 11 PFAAs, including the possible carcinogens perfluorooctanoic acid and perfluorooctane sulfonic acid, as well as sodium ions, which are an indicator of sea spray aerosols. The researchers detected the contaminants in all of the air samples collected. When the team compared the levels of individual PFAAs to sodium ions, many of them were strongly related, especially perfluorooctanoic acid, which they say indicates that these compounds leave the ocean with sea spray and could be blown inland. Finally, using the field measurements, the researchers estimated that for eight of the PFAAs, there could be 284 to 756 U.S. tons released globally from the oceans to the air each year, a higher amount than in previous estimates. Based on their field measurements, the researchers conclude that sea spray is an important source of this class of PFASs to coastal communities. They add that because sea spray can travel far distances inland, this is also likely to be a route for PFASs to be transported, and potentially return, to terrestrial regions from the ocean.

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2021/12/211215082014.htm
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kassy

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Re: Consequences of using plastics
« Reply #91 on: December 16, 2021, 10:50:20 AM »
Microbes All Over the World are Evolving to Eat Plastics: Can They Solve Waste Pollution?

The study looked at more than 200 million genes identified in environmental DNA samples and discovered 30,000 distinct enzymes capable of degrading 10 different forms of plastic.

The research is the first large-scale worldwide assessment of bacteria's plastic-degrading capacity, and it discovered that one out of every four species examined has a relevant enzyme. According to the researchers, the quantity and kind of enzymes revealed matched the amount and type of plastic pollution in various sites.

According to the researchers, the findings "give evidence of a quantifiable influence of plastic pollution on the global microbial ecosystem."

...

Prof Aleksej Zelezniak of Chalmers University of Technology in Sweden said, "We found multiple lines of evidence supporting the fact that the global microbiome's plastic-degrading potential correlates strongly with measurements of environmental plastic pollution - a significant demonstration of how the environment is responding to the pressures we are putting on it."

"We did not anticipate to uncover such a big number of enzymes across so many distinct bacteria and environmental settings," said Jan Zrimec, also of Chalmers University. This is a startling revelation that highlights the scope of the problem."

Microbes Evolving
According to the researchers, microbes have evolved to deal with plastic because of the rapid increase in plastic manufacturing during the last 70 years, from 2 million to 380 million tons per year. The study, published in the journal Microbial Ecology, began by creating a database of 95 microbial enzymes previously known to digest plastic, commonly found in bacteria in landfills and other areas where plastic is abundant.

Comparing Samples
The researchers then sought comparable enzymes in environmental DNA samples collected from 236 other places throughout the world by other researchers. Notably, the researchers ruled out any false positives by comparing the enzymes initially found with enzymes from the human gut, which does not have any known plastic-degrading enzymes.

About 12,000 novel enzymes were discovered in seawater samples collected from 67 sites and three depths. The results indicated that more profound levels of degrading enzymes were consistently greater, corresponding to larger quantities of plastic pollution known to occur at lower depths.

The 18,000 plastic-degrading enzymes were found in soil samples collected from 169 locations in 38 nations and 11 distinct ecosystems. Soils have more phthalate-added plastics than seas, and researchers discovered more enzymes that destroy these compounds in land samples.

According to the researchers, over 60% of the novel enzymes did not fit into any recognized enzyme classes, implying that these compounds destroy plastics in previously unknown ways.

https://www.natureworldnews.com/articles/48578/20211215/microbes-all-over-the-world-are-evolving-to-eat-plastics.htm

open access:
Plastic Degrading Potential across the Global Microbiome Correlates with Recent Pollution Trends
https://journals.asm.org/doi/10.1128/mBio.02155-21
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kassy

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Re: Consequences of using plastics
« Reply #92 on: January 01, 2022, 03:55:44 PM »
French ban on plastic packaging for fruit and vegetables begins

A new law banning plastic packaging on most fruit and vegetables comes into effect in France from New Year's day.

Cucumbers, lemons and oranges are among the 30 varieties banned from being wrapped in plastic.

Larger packs as well as chopped or processed fruit will be exempt.

President Emmanuel Macron called the ban "a real revolution" and said it showed the country's commitment to phase out single use plastics by 2040.

More than a third of fruit and vegetable products in France are thought to be sold in plastic wrapping, and government officials believe that the ban could prevent a billion items of single use plastics being used every year.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-59843697
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El Cid

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Re: Consequences of using plastics
« Reply #93 on: January 01, 2022, 10:29:46 PM »
Good news. Way to go!

vox_mundi

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Re: Consequences of using plastics
« Reply #94 on: January 14, 2022, 07:24:57 PM »
Elephants Dying from Eating Plastic Waste In Sri Lankan Dump
https://apnews.com/article/health-environment-and-nature-animals-wildlife-sri-lanka-af9c9e843c518bcbc02af760fb84ee33



PALLAKKADU, Sri Lanka (AP) — Conservationists and veterinarians are warning that plastic waste in an open landfill in eastern Sri Lanka is killing elephants in the region, after two more were found dead over the weekend.

Around 20 elephants have died over the last eight years after consuming plastic trash in the dump in Pallakkadu village in Ampara district, about 210 kilometers (130 miles) east of the capital, Colombo.

Examinations of the dead animals showed they had swallowed large amounts of nondegradable plastic that is found in the garbage dump, wildlife veterinarian Nihal Pushpakumara said.

“Polythene, food wrappers, plastic, other non-digestibles and water were the only things we could see in the post mortems. The normal food that elephants eat and digest was not evident,” he said.

“There are three classes of people: those who see. Those who see when they are shown. Those who do not see.” ― anonymous

Insensible before the wave so soon released by callous fate. Affected most, they understand the least, and understanding, when it comes, invariably arrives too late

kassy

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Re: Consequences of using plastics
« Reply #95 on: January 14, 2022, 11:27:41 PM »
Who has elephants on a landfill anyway? Yeah ok, there is no budget for fences so that is a problem.

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morganism

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Re: Consequences of using plastics
« Reply #96 on: January 15, 2022, 06:46:01 AM »
fences don't keep em out, but bee's do. thats why they are using drones in other countries, they sound like a bee swarm.

morganism

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Re: Consequences of using plastics
« Reply #97 on: January 18, 2022, 11:08:27 AM »
 Safe planetary boundary for pollutants, including plastics, exceeded, researchers say

First assessment published of planetary boundary related to “novel entities”

For the first time, an international team of researchers has assessed the impact on the stability of the Earth system of the cocktail of synthetic chemicals and other “novel entities” flooding the environment. The 14 scientists conclude in the scientific journal Science and Technology that humanity has exceeded a planetary boundary related to environmental pollutants including plastics.

“There has been a 50-fold increase in the production of chemicals since 1950. This is projected to triple again by 2050,” says co-author Patricia Villarubia-Gómez from the Stockholm Resilience Centre, Stockholm University. Plastic production alone increased 79% between 2000 and 2015, the team reports.

“The pace that societies are producing and releasing new chemicals and other novel entities into the environment is not consistent with staying within a safe operating space for humanity,” says Villarubia Gómez.

There are an estimated 350,000 different types of manufactured chemicals on the global market. These include plastics, pesticides, industrial chemicals, chemicals in consumer products, antibiotics and other pharmaceuticals. These are all wholly novel entities, created by human activities with largely unknown effects on the Earth system.  Significant volumes of these novel entities enter the environment each year. 

“The rate at which these pollutants are appearing in the environment far exceeds the capacity of governments to assess global and regional risks, let alone control any potential problems,”

https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/940188

Environmental Science & Technology
DOI

10.1021/acs.est.1c04158


The updated Planetary Boundaries framework (2022) showing 5 boundaries transgressed, now including "novel entities".

https://www.eurekalert.org/multimedia/814366

kassy

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Re: Consequences of using plastics
« Reply #98 on: January 18, 2022, 12:35:25 PM »
Plastic crisis needs binding treaty, report says

Pollution from plastics is a global emergency in need of a robust UN treaty, according to a report.

The Environmental Investigation Agency (EIA) says there's a cascade of evidence of harm from plastics.

It argues that the plastic pollution threat is almost equivalent to climate change.

The air we breathe now contains plastic micro particles, there’s plastic in Arctic snow, plastic in soils and plastic in our food.

...

"If this tidal wave of pollution continues unchecked, the anticipated plastics in the seas by 2040 could exceed the collective weight of all fish in the ocean."

The United Nations has identified three existential environmental threats - climate change, biodiversity loss and pollution - and concluded that they must be addressed together.

Multilateral agreements on biodiversity loss and climate have existed for nearly 30 years (although they have failed to halt CO2 emissions or protect the natural world).

The idea of a dedicated plastics treaty has been opposed by some nations in recent years.

But more than 100 countries, including the UK, are said to favour a treaty being proposed at the next UN Environment Assembly in February and March.

Sources say outright opposition is weakening, although there's a dispute as to how strict the treaty should be, and whether it should be legally binding or voluntary.

US President Joe Biden has announced that the US now supports a global agreement, previously resisted by former President Donald Trump.

It’s not clear, though, whether he can win approval from Congress, as most plastics are made from oil and gas - and they're both produced in the US.

Japan is said to be trying to diminish the ambition of the treaty. The Arab Gulf states and China have been silent so far. China produces most "virgin plastic", although the US and UK are said to be the biggest producers of waste per person.

Launching the EIA report, Mr Gammage said: "The visible nature of plastic pollution has generated huge public concern but the vast majority of plastic pollution impacts are invisible.

"The damage done by rampant overproduction of virgin plastics and their lifecycle is irreversible - this is a threat to human civilisation and the planet’s basic ability to maintain a habitable environment. It’s becoming almost as serious as the threat from climate change."

Prof Richard Thompson from Plymouth University, an authority on plastics, told BBC News a UN treaty should focus on the full life-cycle analysis of plastics.

He said: "The underlying cause of the problem is rooted in unsustainable levels of production and consumption.

"Advocating policies that merely promote the use of plastics that are 'recyclable' won’t be effective unless there’s a local infrastructure to collect, separate, and viably recycle those plastics.

"Polices to promote the use of 'compostable' plastics will only be effective if there is appropriate local infrastructure to handle that waste stream."

...

Hans Peter Arp, chemistry professor at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology, agreed there are many unknowns, but he maintained that plastic pollution was already breaching what’s known as a planetary boundary - a threshold that should not be crossed because of the risk to humankind.

He told BBC News: "My colleagues and I have argued that plastic pollution fills the three criteria of a planetary boundary threat: 1) increasing exposure, 2) irreversible presence in the global ecosystem, 3) evidence that it is causing ecological harm, and that this harm will increase with plastic emissions.

"The rational response to the global threat posed by accumulating and poorly reversible plastic pollution is to rapidly reduce consumption of virgin plastic materials, along with internationally coordinated strategies for waste management."

...

https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-60026748
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vox_mundi

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Re: Consequences of using plastics
« Reply #99 on: January 29, 2022, 11:00:21 PM »
Toxic 'Forever Chemicals' Found In Michigan Farm's Beef
https://phys.org/news/2022-01-toxic-chemicals-michigan-farm-beef.html

Beef produced at a small Michigan farm was found to contain toxic "forever chemicals" after the cattle were fed crops grown with fertilizer made from contaminated wastewater biosolids, state officials said Friday.

A consumption advisory issued by state agencies stopped short of a recall, noting there are no government standards for the substances in beef.

But it said buyers should know that meat from Grostic Cattle Co. in Livingston County may contain one of the chemicals known collectively as per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, or PFAS. The particular compound in the beef is known as perfluorooctane sulfonic acid, or PFOS.

... Grostic Cattle Co. has cooperated with the state's investigation, according to the Michigan PFAS Action Response Team. The company is notifying customers and removing its beef and affected cattle from the market. The state is providing financial help to reimburse buyers.

"Needless to say, I and my family are surprised to find ourselves and our beloved farm in the middle of a PFAS contamination issue," owner Jason Grostic said in an email. "Our family farm has been serving the state of Michigan for 100 years. It is because of that commitment that we intend to cooperate with all city, state, county and federal agencies to determine who is responsible for this unfortunate situation."

The 300-acre operation, which has about 120 cows, sells primarily to individual customers at farm markets and elsewhere, said Scott Dean, spokesman for the state Department of the Environment, Great Lakes and Energy.
“There are three classes of people: those who see. Those who see when they are shown. Those who do not see.” ― anonymous

Insensible before the wave so soon released by callous fate. Affected most, they understand the least, and understanding, when it comes, invariably arrives too late