Perils of Microplastics

While the world focuses on environmental damage we can see and feel directly – heat, floods and storms from global climate change or massive accumulations of garbage on the land and in the sea – there is another massive pollution source that isn’t so visible but carries lots of health threats too: microplastics. We are just beginning to explore the impact of these particles, many of which are so small that they find their way in our drinking water, even after filtration. Or show up in our food chain. In short, most of us are walking around with significant deposits of microplastics in our bodies. Because there are a variety of such tiny pollutants, there is no uniform medical reaction to them. While much of those microplastics pass through the human (and animal) body, it is equally clear that some of these particles simply remain and accumulate.

“Microplastics are commonly defined as plastic particles smaller than 5 millimeters and classified into five general categories: foam; ‘spheres or pellets,’ such as microbeads; jagged ‘fragments’ from larger plastic debris; ‘film,’ such as broken-down plastic bags and wraps; and ‘fibers,’ from the likes of textiles, fishing gear and even cigarette filters. Rubber is also considered plastic, both natural (isoprene) and synthetic (styrene butadiene)…

“Once plastic enters the environment, it breaks down into smaller and smaller pieces but never goes away. The tiny particles make their way into the ocean and the stomachs of marine animals, and ultimately the food and water that people consume.

“A recent UC Davis study sampled seafood sold at markets in Half Moon Bay, Calif., and found that one-quarter of the fish and one-third of the shellfish contained plastic debris. A survey comparing 150 tap-water samples from five continents found synthetic microfibers in almost every sample — 94% in the United States.

“Microplastics have been found in Lake Tahoe, in the deep, deep ocean — even in the Arctic, one of the most remote regions in the world. A scientific review of 52 studies recently concluded that humans on average consume a credit card’s worth of microplastic each week. The European Union is trying to classify microplastics as a contaminant that is unsafe at any level of discharge.” Los Angeles Times, October 3^rd.

Scientists have noted some additional risks generated by this form of plastics pollution: “While plastic products entering the ocean represent a range of varied polymers and plasticizers, many absorb (taking in) and adsorb (sticking to) other persistent organic pollutants and metals lost to the environment, resulting in a long list of toxicants associated with plastic debris. Gas stations will sometimes use giant mesh socks full of polyethylene pellets draped around storm drains to absorb hazardous chemicals before they reach the watershed. In the aquatic environment, plastic behaves similarly, mopping up chemicals in surrounding water. Several persistent organic pollutants (POPs) bind to plastic as it is transported through the watershed, buried in sediment, or floating in the ocean. A single pellet may attract up to one million times the concentration of some pollutants in ambient seawater, and these chemicals may be available to marine life upon ingestion.

“The chemistry of plastic in consumer products raises human health as well as ecological concerns. For example, they include polyfluorinated compounds (‘PFCs’) and the pesticide/sanitizer triclosan, also used in over-the-counter drugs, antimicrobial hand soaps and some toothpaste brands, flame retardants, particularly PBDEs [polybrominated diphenyl ethers, often used as such flame retardants], and nonylphenols. Bisphenol A (BPA), the building block of polycarbonates, and phthalates – the plastic additive that turns hardened PVC into pliable vinyl − are both known endocrine disruptors.” From Microplastics: What Are the Solutions? by Marcus Eriksen, Martin Thiel, Matt Prindiville and Tim Kiessling, published in the Handbook of Environmental Chemistry (HEC, Vol 58), July 21, 2017. In short, these nasties are not good for plants, animals, and that includes human beings. 

So, what do we do? Going after the massive plastics polluting gyres in the ocean, like containing the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, are at the heart of the conversation. But this pollution comes from so many sources, some that we never ever think about: “Driving is not just an air pollution and climate change problem — turns out, it just might be the largest contributor of microplastics in California coastal waters.

“That is one of many new findings, released Wednesday [9/2], from the most comprehensive study to date on microplastics in California. Rainfall washes more than 7 trillion pieces of microplastics, much of it tire particles left behind on streets, into San Francisco Bay each year — an amount 300 times greater than what comes from microfibers washing off polyester clothes, microbeads from beauty products and the many other plastics washing down our sinks, sewers and storm drains.” LA Times.

The solutions are wildly expensive and difficult to measure… but they are necessary as the European Union considers regulations to regulate this outflow as “hazardous materials.” Except at the state and local level in the U.S., it clear that the potential of federal intervention and regulation under the Trump administration is nil. Time is not on our side, and nature does not care if we self-destruct. How do we even approach a solution?

“Doing no more harm requires upstream intervention. The further upstream mitigation occurs, the greater the opportunity to collect more plastic with less degradation and fragmentation and identifying sources before environmental impacts occur. For most scientists and policymakers, ocean cleanup is not economically or logistically feasible, moving the debate to upstream efforts, like zero waste strategies, improving waste recovery, and management and mitigating point and nonpoint sources of microplastic creation and loss to the environment…

“There is wide agreement that microplastic at sea is a case of the tragedy of the commons, whereby its abundance in international waters and untraceability makes it nearly impossible to source to the company or country of origin. In terrestrial environments, identification to source is easier due to less degradation, but capturing and quantifying microplastics in any environment is difficult and can easily be contaminated or misidentified, and in inland waterways there is the challenge of sorting debris from large amounts of biomass. In the United States provisions under the Clean Water Act and state TMDLs (Total Max Daily Loads) direct environmental agencies to regulate plastic waste in waterways, like California’s TMDLs, though they are often limited to >5 mm and miss microplastic entirely.” Microplastics: What Are the Solutions? Too difficult to deal with? How bad do health and environmental problems from such pollutants have to get before we care enough to deal with this?

              I’m Peter Dekom, but at a minimum, we can live a little bit smaller, think about what we are throwing away and what we are discharging down the drain… and care.