Author Archives: David Evans

After careful evaluation of the latest science, European officials have proposed lowering the safe daily dose of bisphenol-A, or BPA, by a factor of 100,000.

The same agency had already dropped their recommended exposure limit in 2015, down 12-fold from where they set it in 2006. “It’s almost like the limbo stick: How low can we go?” Cheryl Rosenfeld, a biologist at the University of Missouri, told EHN.

Whether it’s lead, phthalates, per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS), or BPA, nearly every time scientists assess chemicals, they lower the thresholds for safety. Doses that were previously thought innocuous, we find, turn out harmful. Why does that happen? And why does it seem to be happening yet again with BPA?

The answer: science is not static. Scientific advances constantly improve our ability to identify harmful effects, as well as help us to know where to look. “We haven’t just gotten better at measuring the pollutants in our bodies and in the environment, we’ve also gotten so much better at being able to measure their impact on people,” Laura Vandenberg, a professor at University of Massachusetts Amherst School of Public Health & Health Sciences, told EHN.

“Looking at groups of toxic chemicals decade by decade by decade, we recognize that less and less and less of these chemicals are safe for human exposure,” said Vandenberg.

For example, as blood lead levels declined in children over the decades—in response to more and more stringent regulations on the uses of lead—scientists continued to find detrimental impacts at lower and lower levels. They continued to ratchet down the limit of what they deemed safe before ultimately realizing that there was no safe level of lead exposure for children. But it wasn’t that kids in the 1970s were any less vulnerable to lead.

With the latest scientific opinion from the European Food Safety Authority, a similar storyline appears to be playing out for BPA, the plastic additive commonly used in everything from food can linings to cash register receipts. Again, it’s not that kids in the 1990s were any less vulnerable to BPA. “There’s really no safe dose for this chemical,” Pat Hunt, geneticist at Washington State University in Pullman, Wash., told EHN. Her research, and the research of others, consistently links very low doses of BPA to a host of health problems, including cancer, diabetes, reproductive impacts, and behavioral problems.

“But the way our regulatory system works, we are not erring on the side of caution,” said Hunt. “So, the more data we get, the more we have to keep dropping down and dropping down—which can’t inspire confidence on the part of the general public.”

“In the case of BPA, it is clear that the toxicity is a problem” 

(Credit: Cheryl Rosenfeld)
EFSA’s recommendation only applies to food and beverage contact materials, which are likely the greatest route of BPA exposure. Once finalized, it will inform decisions taken by European Union risk managers in the European Commission, European Parliament and member states—including the amount of BPA they allow in certain products.Experts predict that the proposed daily dose all but ensures that BPA would need to be eliminated from these products. They also suggest that it will spur action in the U.S. If the proposed limit is upheld, that new safe level of BPA for Europe would fall to more than a million times lower than what U.S. regulators currently say is safe.Two factors generally drive drops over time in accepted levels of a chemical in products: changes in the estimated exposure, or dose, and changes in our understanding of the toxicity. It could be that exposures in people have increased to exceed the safe dose, or that more information is available about the toxicity of the chemical, Maricel V. Maffini, a consultant to the Environmental Defense Fund, told EHN.“In the case of BPA, it is clear that the toxicity is a problem,” said Maffini, who, along with other health researchers, last month petitioned the FDA to re-examine BPA’s safety in light of the European draft changes.Many scientific assumptions have changed over time, noted Vandenberg. She highlighted our evolved understanding about exposures in study animals compared to humans—a critical comparison when translating findings from lab research into public health policy. It had been a long-held belief that a large animal—say, a human—can tolerate more exposure than a smaller animal. But, in fact, the smaller you are, oftentimes the faster you metabolize chemicals, Vandenberg explained. “You actually have to give mice a bigger dose in order to see the same level that’s circulating in their bodies,” she said. “And EFSA finally appreciated that when they did their analyses of the studies to determine what’s a safe dose.”Our understanding of the myriad ways a chemical can wreak havoc on our biology is also constantly changing. For example, scientists have gained more knowledge over the last two decades in how BPA interferes with the normal function of hormones in the body—even in tiny amounts. Experts suggest a major shift came in the 1990s, with mounting recognition of endocrine disruption and its impacts on our health. BPA is just one of many chemicals with this hormone-mimicking potential. Notably, its chemical cousins—bisphenol-S, or BPS, and bisphenol-F, or BPF—can do the same.

Regulating chemicals as classes, not individually 

The European proposal would only affect BPA and not these related chemicals, which are also already widely used in commerce. Thomas
Zoeller, an emeritus professor of biology at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, points out that industry had voluntarily eliminated BPA from sippy cups and baby bottles before the U.S. FDA banned such uses in 2012. “Industry saw this coming,” Zoeller told EHN. “They were already replacing BPA with BPS and BPF.”

He fears the same scenario may be happening with EFSA’s decision. “Products are being protected, not people,” said Zoeller. Does that mean we have to go through the same long-term ratchetting down of what is considered a “safe level” for each replacement?

The regrettable substitution problem has triggered a growing push for the regulation of chemicals as classes, rather than individually. Vandenberg is among the champions of this movement. “Here we have a decision on BPA, but nothing on BPS. And that’s unacceptable,” said Vandenberg.

The same goes for several other toxic chemicals that are following this same pattern of dropping limits and regrettable substitutions. “Do we really need to study all 1,000 or 5,000 PFAS chemicals?” said Vandenberg. “We’re creating problems, they’re going to have to be cleaned up at some point. And the longer we wait, the bigger the problem gets.”

Of course, conducting a risk assessment based on a group of chemicals naturally increases the chance that an exposure limit for any individual chemical would need to be lowered. The challenges mount. But there is a way off this toxic treadmill: ideally, starting
“at the beginning before a chemical goes into commerce and determine whether it has any adverse effects,” said Hunt. “Let’s decide if we should even let this stuff loose.”

Green chemistry 

More than a thousand new chemicals are introduced onto the market each year. Most come into our homes having never been tested for potential harm. “That has to change,” said Zoeller. “Before a chemical gets into the public domain, there should be an earnest attempt to ensure its safety. If those chemicals had been tested for their ability to interfere with hormone action, then we could have engineered those chemicals to be without those properties.”The process Zoeller referred to often goes by the term green chemistry. Vandenberg suggested it is a “good place to start.”“We can’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good,” she said. “So, finding less hazardous chemicals is the place to start instead of insisting that everything has no hazard. But we always need to be moving toward innovative chemicals that have the features that we want them to have without the adverse health effects.”Another part of the solution: maybe we don’t need chemicals for everything. “I do think we need to have a little bit of a societal reckoning: are we creating chemicals to solve problems that are not really problems? Do I need to be able to eat a pastrami sandwich with mustard on my sofa?” said Vandenberg, referring to a commercial for furniture that could be hosed down thanks to its chemical treatment. “That is a solution to a problem that did not exist.”Zoeller shared one promising effort in his home city of Indianapolis, where local elementary schools have long been serving student lunches in plastic dishes. “Some of the plastics are reusable, so they put them in industrial dishwashers. You couldn’t create a worse situation,” said Zoeller.A local pediatrician, Manasa Mantravadi, had the idea to replace those potential hormone-disrupting dishes with stainless steel versions. The new dishes were designed to be the same size and shape as the plastic dishes used by the schools—and can fit in the same dishwashers. “So, there are ways of doing this,” said Zoeller. “We just need to be smart about it.”Other experts anticipate that the EFSA move will promote yet more positive change: “We need a revolution food packaging, and I think this is going to push it,” said Hunt.EFSA is accepting public comments on the draft proposal until February 22.

Banner photo: From left—Dr. Carlos Sonnenschein, Dr. Ana Soto, and Dr. Silva Krause looking at mammary glands of a BPA experiment. (Credit: Ana Soto, Tufts University)

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Collectors have gone out to look for rare pieces like washed-up octopuses and green dragons.
Lego Lost At Sea Via Facebook

Along the beaches of Cornwall, England’s southwestern peninsula, locals and tourists alike have been finding more than just seashells along the seashore. Colorful ocean-themed Legos of octopuses with twisting tentacles, miscellaneous scuba gear, boxy whales, and other plastic pieces have been washing ashore for the last 25 years—a grim reminder of the lasting impacts of plastic pollution.

On February 13, 1997, about five million Legos were lost at sea when a rogue wave tipped a massive cargo ship dubbed the Tokio Express. Ironically, many of the kits were sea creature themed. The event, known as the Great Lego Spill, is the worst toy-related environmental disaster of all time, and beachcombers still uncover the shipwrecked plastic treasures today, reports Mindy Weisberger for Live Science.

Arnold gathered a total of 240 Lego diver’s flippers during the beach clean-up event in 2017.

Rob Arnold

The Lego pieces aboard the Tokio Express were among 62 shipping containers that tumbled off the vessel. The ship was en route to New York after it loaded its cargo in Rotterdam, the Netherlands, when an unpredictable 28-foot wave smashed into a cargo ship 20 miles off the mainland, reports Jackie Butler for Cornwall Live. Other items swept to sea included 10,000 disposable lighters, superglue, and other hazardous chemicals. 

Ever since, collectors have gone out to look for “rare” pieces like octopuses and green dragons. Tracey Williams—a Cornwall local, beachcomber, and environmental campaigner—has documented the Lego spill for years on “Lego Lost at Sea” social media pages via Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. More recently, she published Adrift: The Curious Tale of Lego Lost at Sea, a book detailing the Lego incident.Though the wayward novelties may inspire wonder, the tiny bricks highlight plastic pollution’s impact on oceans. Out of the 4,756,940 Lego pieces on board, about 3,178,807 were light enough to float and are what is commonly found across 40 beaches in Cornwall, eported Mario Cacciottolo for the BBC in 2014. For example, small plastic flowers and mini diver’s flippers are regularly seen along the shores.

“What we’re finding now are the pieces that sank as well as the pieces that floated,” Williams tells Live Science. “It’s providing us with an insight into what happens to plastic in the ocean, how far it drifts — both on the surface of the ocean but also along the seabed — and what happens to it as it breaks down.” 

Small plastic flowers and mini diver’s flippers are regularly seen along the shores.

Rob Arnold

In 2017, Rob Arnold, a local of Cornwall, and 12 other volunteers collected about six million pieces of microplastics from a beach near his home, reported Inverse’s Nick Lucchesi at the time. The volunteers found plenty of Lego bits among other plastic pieces, including 240 Lego divers’ flippers, on beaches two decades after the cargo ship tipped. 

Plastic can take centuries to degrade in the ocean, and as it deteriorates, it releases chemicals that can disrupt the reproductive systems of animals, Live Science reports. Future generations will likely continue to experience the aftermath of the Great Lego Spill. A study published in Environmental Pollution in 2020 found that after analyzing the structure of Legos with X-ray fluorescence, it would take about 1,300 years for the 1997 castaway Legos to degrade fully.

According to the IUCN, at least 14 million tons of plastic end up in the oceans every year and make up 80 percent of all marine debris found in deep-sea sediments and drifting on surface waters.

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Spend an hour at any airport, mall, theme park or sporting event and you’ll find sandwiches double-wrapped in plastic, salads dressed up in styrofoam and the ubiquitous disposable forks and knives. These items contribute to the 350 million tons of petroleum-based plastic produced worldwide each year, much of which ends up in our oceans, our landfills and our bodies. Viable substitutes have remained elusive — few materials are as easy and cheap to produce. But as the number of cities and countries enacting bans on single-use plastic grows, so does the pressure — and the potential profits — involved in finding a more sustainable alternative.  In Northeastern Germany, workers are putting the finishing touches on a 22,000-square-foot factory that Eduardo Gordillo believes could manufacture this alternative. “We want to make single-use plastic unnecessary worldwide,” says the CEO of the clean-tech startup Bio-Lutions. Starting this month, his factory will begin producing sustainable food packaging made of agricultural waste.Starting this month, Gordillo’s factory will begin producing sustainable food packaging made of agricultural waste. Credit: Bio-LutionsBased in Schwedt, a small city in the historic Uckermark region near the Polish border, Gordillo’s factory will process wheat straw, rape stalks, tomato stems and other fiber-rich ag-waste discarded by local farmers, as well as hemp waste from a nearby hemp fiber factory. “Everything in a radius of less than 100 miles so the transport does not kill our CO2 balance,” Gordillo says. Workers in the new factory will wash and shred the ag-waste, and feed the fibers through shoulder-high steel machines that resemble wood chippers. Through a patented mechanical process that uses no toxic chemicals, the waste is split into self-binding fibers that the workers then mold into various shapes. Via Zoom, Gordillo shows bowls filled with shreds of wheat and straw, and then the finished products: clay-colored flower pots, plates and trays that feel like stiff cardboard. (To protect his proprietary process, he won’t disclose details about the patent or let journalists visit the new facility without signing a non-disclosure agreement.)Bio-Lutions has been developing the novel process with Zelfo Technology, a Schwedt-based engineering firm that produces sustainable self-binding fibers. Last year, the companies won the Brandenburg Innovation Award for ingenuity. “We are going to start with containers for fruit, vegetables and meat,” Gordillo says. By autumn, he plans to add disposable cutlery and to-go cup lids to his roster — exactly the kind of products for which companies are scrambling to find plastic-free alternatives. (A caveat: the material wouldn’t be suitable for hot beverages or food because it would disintegrate.) Getting beyond greenwashingThere are countless instances of greenwashed  “biodegradable” and “bioplastic” products that take advantage of the fact that these terms are not clearly defined. What’s more, even true bioplastics have well-documented problems — many require precious resources, chemicals, GMO bacteria, or vast amounts of energy, and often only degrade in the high temperatures of industrial composting facilities. But Gordillo claims that his products are truly compostable and that his manufacturing process only requires four liters of water per kilogram of finished product, though his claims are impossible to verify until his packaging hits the European market. “You can actually bury them in your yard, and after about four months, they will have disintegrated,” he says. If an animal or even a human were to digest his material, he says, it wouldn’t harm them. Varieties of fibers used by Bio-Lutions to create eco-friendly packaging. Credit: Bio-LutionsGordillo’s product is entering the market at a pivotal moment. As cities and countries around the world grapple with at-capacity landfills and stalled recycling systems, laws against single-use plastics are proliferating. Rwanda, Kenya, Taiwan and several Indian states were early adopters of full or partial single-use plastic bans. Now, an array of other cities and countries are poised to join them. The European Union has pledged to phase out single-use plastics in the coming years, and since July 2021 has banned items such as plastic plates, cutlery, q-tips, drinking straws, balloons and styrofoam cups. In Germany, suppliers are allowed to use up their existing stocks of these items, but are already prohibited from buying or producing more. Canada will implement a ban on a half-dozen common single-use plastic items this year. China banned plastic bags and utensils in major cities in 2020, and major chains are coming into compliance, though mom-and-pop stores lag behind. Even in the US, the world’s largest producer and user of plastics, lawmakers have attempted to enact national single-use plastic bans, but so far with no success.Crushed by negative news? Sign up for the Reasons to be Cheerful newsletter.Companies, too, have begun lobbying customers to bring their own reusable containers, though most still offer the option of disposables. The need to find alternatives is urgent — and complex. Which eco-friendly container will keep apples from getting smashed in transport? How do you keep fresh meat from spoiling without plastic?Bagasse, the fibrous waste product left behind after squeezing sugar cane, wood and bamboo, have emerged as alternatives to plastic, but the products have been criticized by consumer agencies for its often murky origins and resource-intensive processing. For instance, when a German lab tested twelve bamboo cups that were marketed as sustainable, the researchers found synthetic components and toxic chemicals such as formaldehyde. It concluded that the cups were mislabeled and did not qualify as sustainable under the new law.  An emerging marketGordillo moved from Colombia to Hamburg, Germany, to marry the love of his life. At the start of his career, he designed standup displays for jewelry and cosmetics that were often discarded after one season. The birth of his daughter led him to question his career. “What kind of planet am I leaving her?” he asked himself. He decided to put his industrial design skills to work for sustainability. In 2017, he built his first production facility for compostable packaging in Bangalore, India, using similar technology as for the new one in Germany. At the time, the South Indian state government had announced a ban on single-use plastics; Gordillo was euphoric about his market prospects and planned to produce up to 20,000 tons of packaging per year. Buying coconut shells and banana stalks from nearby farmers would create a win-win situation, he had hoped, “because this is ag waste they have to discard and now it provides them additional income.”But his first year exposed the challenges of trying to transform an entrenched system. “The Indian government did not enforce the ban,” he says. “You practically see no difference in India; there is plastic trash everywhere.” Then the pandemic emerged, and with it, a rapid increase in single-use plastics worldwide.Through a patented mechanical process that uses no toxic chemicals, the waste is split into self-binding fibers that the workers then mold into various shapes. Credit: Bio-LutionsHe has reason to believe that Germany will learn from these lapses because the ban has already taken effect there. “The European Union will enforce the new laws!” he says with conviction. “The big chains are urgently looking for alternative packaging.” He aims to produce 3,000 tons of compostable packaging this year, and sell it to food delivery services, food producers and supermarkets. Companies such as Delivery Hero and several food packaging outfits have already invested in his German facility.Another reason his product did not gain a bigger market share in India is the price: His material is slightly more expensive than plastic, and this will hold true at the new factory, too. “In Europe, a plastic container for vegetables costs about five cents; ours is about six or seven cents.” This makes policy all the more important – for products like Gordillo’s to succeed, single-use plastics must be phased out.This is the story of an ecological innovation that bears the marks of a true solution: a compostable, upcycled product that is locally sourced and produced with minimal resources. And yet, it is also a lesson about the challenges posed by a bigger problem: As long as the world chooses the cheapest solution, plastic wins. Even though it costs us more in the long run.This February, nations will come together at the UN Environment Assembly in Nairobi to discuss a global treaty for plastics. Recognizing that the issue has become as urgent and widespread as the climate crisis, the United Nations will seek to reach an international agreement to limit, for the first time, plastic production worldwide, similar to the Paris Climate Agreement. Joe Biden has signaled his support and seems to see a window of opportunity to tackle the issue. “Our goal is to create a tool that we can use to protect our oceans and all of the life that they sustain from growing global harms of plastic pollution,” Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in Nairobi in November. “It’s crucial that the agreement call on countries to develop and enforce strong national action plans to address this problem at its source.”

Plastic pollution floating in Hinnavaru Harbour in the Maldives. (Getty)Every year, more than eight million tons of plastic end up in the oceans, threatening life around the world, but could biodegradable ‘bioplastic’ offer a solution?A Chinese research team has found a new method for producing bioplastics made from proteins which are biodegradable and biocompatible as well as being easily processed.The research was published in the journal Angewandte Chemie.There’s a great deal of interest in ‘bioplastics’ but so far, bioplastics based on natural materials like starch, or synthetic biomaterials like polylactic acid, have failed to deliver, showing off inadequate durability, biocompatibility, and/or biodegradability in most cases.Creating some bioplastics often require complex, energy-intensive processing methods and toxic chemicals.Read more: Why economists worry that reversing climate change is hopelessA team led by Jingjing Li and Yawei Liu (Chinese Academy of Sciences, Changchun, China), as well as Bo Wei (First Medical Center of PLA General Hospital) have created new bioplastics whose properties can be ‘tweaked’ as needed.The researchers developed two lysine-rich proteins and produced them in bacterial cultures, creating bioplastics which can either be soft or hard.The team also used wet spinning to produce biofibres that are as strong as some biotechnological spider silks.The researchers believe it could be possible to make toys with this new, nontoxic bioplastic that can be dyed with food coloring.This material could also be used to seal wounds, the researchers believe.Plastic pollution now affects almost all species in the world’s oceans, and is set to quadruple by 2050, a report by wildlife group WWF found last week.The report found that 88% of marine species, from plankton to whales are affected by contamination.Pollution hotspots such as the Mediterranean, the East China and Yellow Seas, and the Arctic sea ice are already exceeding dangerous thresholds of microplastics.The report commissioned by the WWF reviewed 2,590 studies and found that by the end of the century marine areas more than two and a half times the size of Greenland could exceed ecologically dangerous thresholds of microplastic concentration.The amount of marine microplastic could increase 50-fold by then, the wildlife charity warned.Read more: Melting snow in Himalayas drives growth of green sea slime visible from spaceThis is based on projections that plastic production is expected to more than double by 2040 resulting in plastic debris in the ocean quadrupling by 2050.Heike Vesper, director marine programme of WWF Germany, said: “All evidence suggests that plastic contamination of the ocean is irreversible. Once distributed in the ocean, plastic waste is almost impossible to retrieve.“It steadily degrades and so the concentration of micro- and nanoplastics will continue to increase for decades. Targeting the causes of plastic pollution is far more effective than cleaning up afterwards.“If governments, industry and society act in unison now, they can still limit the plastic crisis.”The researchers warn that threatened species could be pushed towards extinction by plastic pollution.Watch: Big brands call for global pact to stop plastic pollution

You’ve probably been hearing a lot lately about the negative environmental and human health impacts of plastics. And for good reason – its global production is expected to more than triple between now and 2050.
According to industry projections, we will create more plastics in the next 25 years than have been produced in the history of the world so far.

While plastics touch nearly every aspect of the market, they are especially ubiquitous in our buildings. The building and construction industry is the second largest use sector for plastics after packaging. Plastic production relies on a variety of hazardous chemicals and contributes to greenhouse gas emissions at every stage of the lifecycle. And while there is a lot of talk about recycling, the truth is that virtually no plastic building products are recycled into equal use materials today.

Given this info, we believe the best way to avoid hazardous chemicals and support a circular economy in the building industry is to avoid plastic building materials altogether.

But we also believe in the power of the market to drive innovation. So, let’s consider what would need to happen for plastic building products to be considered truly sustainable. Can the plastics industry do better?

What would be defined as a sustainable plastic?

Healthy Building Network recently developed a pair of case studies for the international Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) as part of the Inter-Organization Programme for the Sound Management of Chemicals (IOMC). The studies created a framework for evaluating what a truly sustainable plastic product would look like. While they use flooring and insulation as examples, the framework can be applied to any durable plastic product.
These goals are lofty, and currently no existing plastic building materials meet these criteria. However, they provide a pathway towards truly sustainable products.
To be considered a sustainable plastic, a product would have to enhance human and environmental health and safety across the entire product life cycle. It would have to be managed within a sustainable materials management system, and would have to meet the following goals:
Must be inherently low hazard. Hazardous substances are eliminated.Transparency exists in terms of content and emissions at every step of the supply chain.Full hazard assessments are available on all chemicals.Must have a confirmed commercial afterlife.Products are designed for durability, reclamation, reuse, and recycling.Infrastructure exists to support reclamation, reuse, and recycling.Materials can undergo multiple cycles of recycling.Must generate no waste.Manufacturing scrap is eliminated at every step of the production process.Scrap from installation is eliminated.Must use rapidly renewable resources or waste-derived materials.

How do contemporary plastics perform against these proposed goals?

The OECD case studies detail chemical considerations for different flooring and insulation plastic product types at all life-cycle stages.For the flooring category, Healthy Building Network reviewed vinyl sheet and tile (polyvinyl chloride – PVC), wood plastic composite (WPC), and polyethylene terephthalate (PET or non-pvc resilient) products. In one example analysis from the case study, Healthy Building Network looked at the goal of “must be inherently low hazard” specifically during product manufacturing. PVC and WPC products require the use of additives that can be hazardous. PET flooring inherently does not require the use of most additives but can contain a residual chemical of concern.For the insulation category, Healthy Building Network reviewed expanded polystyrene (EPS), extruded polystyrene (XPS), polyisocyanurate (polyiso), and spray polyurethane foam (SPF). In one example analysis from the case study, Healthy Building Network looked at the goal of “must have a commercial afterlife.” Currently, nearly all insulation materials are landfilled. SPF and polyiso are thermoset materials, meaning that they cannot be melted down and remade into new materials. However, both XPS and EPS are technically recyclable as thermoplastic materials, though lack the technology and infrastructure today to do it at scale. This means that XPS and EPS could, theoretically, have a commercial afterlife, while SPF and polyiso could not.

Opportunities for improvement

The analysis highlights opportunities to avoid hazardous chemical impacts, for example, through product design, material choices, different manufacturing processes, and implementation of policy instruments that could reduce the negative impacts of the product throughout the life cycle. It also explores trade-offs that exist between different material choices.
For a flooring example, a product that is designed to use adhesive to install is typically thinner than one that uses a click tile system to install. These thinner products use less material per square foot and therefore have less chemical impacts associated with manufacturing and less waste at the end of life. However, adhesives may add hazardous substances to the product installation stage. By moving from a click tile product to a glue down product, chemical exposure burdens shift from manufacturing and end of life to the installation stage and use phase.
For an insulation example, a product that is designed to chemically react at the build site, such as spray polyurethane foam (SPF), can allow the insulation to form an air-sealed custom fit. However, SPF is not recyclable, and adherence of that insulation to surrounding materials may also make those materials more difficult to reclaim or recycle. Moving from XPS, EPS or polyiso to SPF may reduce the ability of other surrounding materials to “have a commercial afterlife” in the pursuit of an added performance feature.
Building awareness around these trade-offs enables stakeholders to make informed choices.

Back to reality

Now, back to reality after crafting the characteristics of a theoretical sustainable plastic. The bottom line is that there are no truly sustainable plastics that exist today, and we are a long way off from that day. Today, project teams need to prioritize which sustainability goals are most important and how to deal with real and significant gaps in understanding and/or data.The case studies compared only product types made of plastic, but in reality, project teams have a wider variety of materials to choose from in any given product category. In project design, the biggest leaps towards more sustainable products from a chemicals perspective often requires consideration of vastly different materials versus making incremental improvements in chemistry for a particular product type. For example, this could mean moving from vinyl to linoleum flooring versus attempting to select the least bad vinyl option.Healthy Building Network’s Product Guidance considers the most commonly used product types within a product category and ranks those product types relative to one another from a chemical hazard perspective. Product types made of plant-based materials or minerals tend to rank higher than plastic products. You can apply the same sustainability goals proposed in this article to non-plastic products.Check out the full flooring and insulation case studies for examples of how to use these goals to consider and choose the variety of plastic product types you will inevitably be specifying for your next project. Alternatively, challenge yourself to skip the plastics whenever possible. Even selecting one non-plastic product makes a meaningful difference and is cause for celebration!

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Last October, the Hong Kong government announced a cobbled-together plan to reduce the city’s climate-changing levels of pollution and reach net-zero carbon emissions by 2050. As one prominent feature of that plan, it declared its intent to “regulate disposable plastic tableware in phases from 2025 onwards.” 

While some might understandably see this as embarrassing evidence of the government’s derisory policies on climate change, it at least shows that officials are very slowly waking up to the scourge of plastic that blights the environment.

Researchers modeled the journey of microplastics released in wastewater treatment plant effluent into rivers of different sizes and flow speeds, focusing on the smallest microplastic fragments — less than 100 microns across, or the width of a single human hair.The study found that in slow-flowing stream headwaters — often located in remote, biodiverse regions — microplastics accumulated quicker and stayed longer than in faster flowing stretches of river.Microplastic accumulation in sediments could be the ‘missing plastic’ not found in comparisons of stream pollution levels with those found in oceans. Trapped particles may be released during storms and flood events, causing a lag between environmental contamination and release to the sea.A few hours in stream sediments can start to change plastics chemically, and microbes can grow on their surfaces. Most toxicity studies of microplastics use virgin plastics, so these environmentally transformed plastics pose an unknown risk to biodiversity and health. Tiny fragments of plastic can linger for years in slow flowing streams and rivers, according to the results of a computer modeling study published in Science Advances last month.
As tributaries and rivers flow from source to estuary, through rural, urban and industrial landscapes, they have lots of opportunities to pick up plastic fragments and carry them to the ocean, but we still know relatively little about what happens along the way, how long this turbulent journey might take, or what the environmental impacts may be.
“There are a lot of physical processes that take place in a stream,” said lead author Jennifer Drummond, a research fellow at the University of Birmingham, UK.
Plastic bags litter a river bank in Europe. Photo credit: Ivan Radic on VisualHunt.com
Models of microplastic transport that take into account gravitational forces alone predict that very small particles will stay afloat and be carried swiftly to the ocean. But small fragments can also be influenced by the dynamics of water movement at the interface between flowing water and sediment, called the ‘hyporheic’ zone. Plastic particles can be carried downwards from the surface by turbulence, while small variations in pressure can force water into the sediments, depositing microplastics there. These exchanges between flowing water and river sediments are “the piece that was missing,” from previous explanations of microplastic transport, Drummond explained.
The researchers modeled the journey of microplastics released from wastewater treatment into rivers of different sizes and flow rates, focusing on the smallest microplastic fragments — less than 100 microns across, or the width of a single human hair — which are most strongly influenced by pressure differences between the surface water and the hyporheic zone. They found that heretofore ignored hyporheic exchange processes can draw microplastics into the sediments at rate of 5% per kilometer (8% per mile) on average.
“This kind of exchange hadn’t been modeled and accounted for previously, and it seems to be an important one,” said Sherri Mason, Director of Sustainability at Penn State Erie in Pennsylvania, U.S., who was not involved in the study. A deeper understanding of hyporheic processes, “moves us closer to having better global accounting of where all of the plastic is,” she added.
Particles embedded in sediments will remain trapped as long as the river flow stays relatively low, and the model showed that for a 10 kilometer stretch of river, they could spend 30 hours on average, and up to 3 years in the sediments. Slower-moving streams and headwaters captured more microplastics and for longer: 8% of plastic particles entered these river sediments per kilometer and low-flow conditions could keep them there for up to 7 years. This suggests that storms and flood events, which are becoming more severe and more frequent as a result of climate change, could trigger the release of millions of accumulated fragments of microplastic from river sediments.
Microplastics range in size from 5mm to tens of microns across. The smallest fragments, less than 100 microns, were thought to pass along rivers quickly to the sea because of their buoyancy. But modeling shows that small scale water dynamics can drive these particles into sediments and trap them there for long periods of time. Image credit: Oregon State University on VisualHunt.
Remobilized microplastics might end up deposited on flood plains as storm waters retreat or be carried onwards downstream to the ocean. “The time in between [floods] will really determine how much [plastic] is remobilized versus how much can stay and accumulate,” explained Drummond.
The team noted that the rate of microplastic accumulation in the model agreed closely with a published dataset from the Roter Main River in Germany. Sediment cores collected downstream of a wastewater plant there contained between 4,500 and 30,000 plastic fragments smaller than 50 microns across for every kilogram of dried sediment, close to the model’s prediction of 10,000 – 50,000 particles per kilogram.
“This is an important and sophisticated piece of research that helps us understand the processes involved in the accumulation of microplastics on riverbeds,” said Jamie Woodward, professor of physical geography at the University of Manchester in the UK. He praised the study’s focus on microplastics smaller than 100 microns, explaining that “the finest microplastics may pose the most serious ecological risk.”
Microplastics originate in a variety of sources, including degrading plastic bottles and other packaging, fragments from synthetic clothing, as well as industrial effluent and agricultural waste that make their way through wastewater treatment plants or via runoff to tributaries, rivers, and eventually the ocean. Image credit: Ivan Radic on Visualhunt.com.
Finding the missing plastic
Sediment-bound microplastics could be the source of so-called ‘missing plastic’ identified in comparisons of the rate of plastic release from known sources with measurements of microplastic contamination in the oceans. “It’s been postulated that some of that missing plastic is probably in sediments,” said Mason, and this study confirms that hyporheic exchange is a mechanism that can pull very small microplastic fragments into the sediment and hold them there for hours or days.
Even a few hours in the sediment can fundamentally change a plastic particle: chemical processes can start to break them into smaller fragments or convert them into gases, and they can become food or territory for living organisms. “Many different chemicals and microbes can attach to these plastic particles,” explained Drummond, and the smaller the particle, the larger the surface area for microbes and chemicals to attach.
To insects and fishes living in and around the rivers, microbe- and chemical-laden plastic particles can look like an appetizing snack. “The channel bed is a critical part of the riverine ecosystem where many creatures live, feed and reproduce,” said Woodward. “If the riverbed is contaminated with microplastics, there is a high chance that some of those microplastic particles will enter the food chain.”
The Roter Main River in southern Germany is a major Rhine tributary. Sediment cores collected downstream of a wastewater plant contain 4,500 – 30,000 microplastic fragments per kilogram, agreeing closely with the present study’s modeled predictions. Image credit: Public domain by GertGrer on Wikimedia.
Wastewater treatment plants, like this one in Moscow, Russia, are a major source of microplastic pollution flowing into rivers because many particles are too small to be filtered out. The researchers modeled the journey of microplastic particles from these consistent sources to understand how small scale water dynamics affected microparticle movement. Image credit: A.Savin on Wikimedia Commons.
But how much that might impact wildlife or people is uncertain. Much of our understanding of how microplastics affect living organisms comes from laboratory studies of virgin plastic that hasn’t undergone these chemical and biological changes. “By the time they reach the ocean, [the plastic particles] are different,” said Drummond, and “it’s these environmentally transformed plastics,” that are lingering in freshwater ecosystems and eventually being carried to the ocean, posing an unknown risk to freshwater and marine biodiversity.
Headwaters are often in more remote, high biodiversity regions, but their slow-flowing waters are more likely to drive microplastics into the sediment and keep them there for longer. This means “there’s more time for these particles to really incorporate into the environmental matrix,” said Drummond, with potential knock-on effects for the entire food chain.
“The quality of the riverbed environment affects the whole riverine ecosystem,” remarked Woodward. “The longer these particles are stored in this environment, the greater the risk.”
Plastics can take hundreds of years to fully decompose. The United Nations is meeting this month to begin developing a global plastics waste treaty. Ivan Radic on Visualhunt.com.
Plastic pollution has helped push us over a planetary boundary
Globally, our indulgent use and disposal of plastics has now exceeded safe levels, helping to push us past a planetary boundary for chemical pollution and potentially setting the Earth life support system on a path towards a new, less habitable state.
In addition, it’s believed that overshooting one planetary boundary can destabilize another, like a line of falling dominoes: Escalating climate change — an already infringed planetary boundary — is bringing with it more severe and frequent extreme weather events, which could have complex effects on microplastic transport and retention in rivers. More intense and frequent droughts will reduce stream flows, depositing more microplastic fragments into sediments where they can make their way into the food chain, with potentially unforeseen consequences for the biodiversity planetary boundary. Conversely, increasingly common and severe storms and floods can remobilize those trapped fragments — and any microbes or chemicals attached to their surface — allowing them to be carried to the ocean, where they may impact marine life.
Sediment-trapped microplastics will continue to extend the lag between environmental contamination in rivers and release of pollutants into the ocean, which could slow clean-up efforts. “If we were to stop all plastic production today, how much longer are we going to be seeing this stuff leaching into the environment?” Mason questioned. “There’s always a delayed reaction when it comes to the environment.”
“It really makes you think,” said Drummond, “Every time you’re using plastic, it very likely ends up in your rivers and it’ll be there for a very, very long time.”
Citation:
Drummond, J. D., Schneidewind, U., Li, A., Hoellein, T. J., Krause, S., & Packman, A. I. (2022). Microplastic accumulation in riverbed sediment via hyporheic exchange from headwaters to mainstems. Science advances, 8(2), eabi9305. DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.abi9305.
Banner image: Plastic waste has become ubiquitous in the global environment since the years following World War II. Photo credit: Ivan Radic on VisualHunt.com
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Headwaters of Pennsylvania’s Lehigh River in the U.S. Headwaters are often found in remote and biodiverse regions, but the study’s model suggests they are particularly vulnerable to accumulating microplastics because of their low flow conditions — with unknown impacts on life there. Image credit: Nicholas_T on Flickr.

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In October 2021, a Belgian environmental inspector opened a container at the port of Antwerp that, according to its manifest, was supposed to contain bales of mixed paper waste from Canada.It was one of 20 containers from the Saint-Michel recycling centre in Montreal that were destined for India. “Oh it really stinks!” said Marc de Strooper, taken aback by the stench of garbage. As he looked closer, de Strooper found a mess of broken glass, old clothes, metal debris, broken toys and used medical masks. He also saw paper bales that contained a large quantity of difficult-to-recycle plastic bags. “Canada is known as a beautiful country with lots of nature lovers. I don’t understand how they can produce garbage like this,” de Strooper said. He stopped the containers from moving on to their destination and they still sit at the port. Canada has become one of the biggest exporters of recyclable paper to India — with Quebec and the city of Montreal sending much of their mixed paper waste to that country. An investigation by Radio-Canada’s Enquête shows that much of what is supposed to be paper actually contains tonnes of plastic bags, some of which litter the Indian landscape, and are often burned as a source of fuel. A wrapper from a package of soft drinks sold in Canada has made its way to India.

If a scientific opinion recently proposed by European officials is upheld, the recommended daily dose of bisphenol-A, or BPA, in Europe will be more than a million-fold lower than what U.S. regulators say is safe.And the change in accepted exposure would all but ensure the chemical cannot be used in any food contact products. “There’s nothing different about the physiology of an American compared to a European,” Laura Vandenberg, a professor at University of Massachusetts Amherst School of Public Health & Health Sciences, told EHN. “So, if it’s hazardous in Europe, it’s hazardous for us.”A significant gap already existed between the European Union and the U.S. in what regulators considered a safe dose of the plastic additive commonly used in everything from can linings to plastic water bottles. The draft opinion, released in December by the European Food Safety Authority, or EFSA, is “just moving it all the way to the left,” said Vandenberg. She added that their conclusion is “very solidly backed up by science,” and, in fact, has been now for at least a decade.“And it’s really different compared to the FDA [U.S. Food and Drug Administration],” she said.BPA is an endocrine disruptor, meaning it alters the proper functioning of our hormones, and is linked to a host of health problems, including cancer, diabetes, obesity, reproductive, nervous and immune system impacts, and behavioral problems. Scientists like Vandenberg have published studies on such health effects for decades.So, that begs the question: How can two major regulatory bodies look at the science and come to such vastly different conclusions? Where is the disconnect?

Different approaches to testing BPA impacts

BPA testing in the lab of Cheryl Rosenfeld, a University of Missouri researcher. (Credit: Cheryl Rosenfeld)

Historically, the U.S. FDA has leaned almost exclusively on so-called “guideline” studies in determining what amount of exposure to traditional toxics—whether that’s lead or PFAS (perfluoroalkyl and polyfluoroalkyl substances) or BPA—is safe for people. These studies are typically done by government scientists and follow a prescription for everything from the type of animal to use to how long the animal is exposed. There is also a standard set of endpoints such as the weight of the organs.

This prescription was based on assumptions made decades ago about how toxic chemicals affect the body. Not all of these assumptions have stood the test of time, including the idea that a chemical’s toxicity is always proportional to the dose of exposure. In fact, research finds that sometimes a relatively high dose of some hormone-mimicking chemicals can prove innocuous for a given endpoint while a far lower dose wreaks havoc on the body.

Academic scientists tend to take a different, more investigative approach. They might look at changes in specific regions of the brain, or for alterations in behavior. All told, academics have published thousands of peer-reviewed studies, many of which have found negative health effects of BPA¾even at very low doses.

In their assessment of BPA, EFSA went beyond guideline studies and considered evidence from academics, including many epidemiological studies and other laboratory-based studies that didn’t follow the standardized formula. Edward Bray, a spokesperson for the agency, noted that the key study driving their decision was published in 2016 by a team of academic scientists in China. That data linked BPA exposure in lab mice to an increase in the number of a type of immune cell, which can lead to the development of allergic lung inflammation.

“We need to acknowledge that if another agency has looked at these data and is drawing a conclusion that’s intended to protect public health, then we’re the ones who are behind,” said Vandenberg. “We’re the ones who aren’t being protective enough in the U.S.”

Many U.S. health professionals want to change that: last month, a group of scientists, doctors, and environmental and health organizations petitioned the FDA to review the safety of BPA and to remove or restrict approvals for the chemical in light of the European recommendations.

Maricel V. Maffini, a consultant to the Environmental Defense Fund, was among the signees of the petition. The agency is obligated to respond to the petition within 180 days, she told EHN. If they deny the petition, “they have to explain themselves,” said Maffini.

“Clarity” on BPA elusive in U.S. 

The ripple effects of EFSA’s move could be great. Many U.S. manufacturers produce products to be sold worldwide. If they want to keep the European market, and the proposal goes through, they will need to meet the new, more stringent limits. Experts also believe that this move could lead to tighter regulations in the U.S. “I think this is going to put enormous pressure on the FDA. It’s about time,” Pat Hunt, a geneticist at Washington State University in Pullman, Wash., told EHN. In an emailed statement to EHN, the FDA said that their “regulatory decisions remain grounded in the robust evaluation of the totality of the available science on the use of food additives, including substances used in food packaging.” The agency noted that they had yet to complete their review of EFSA’s draft proposal.Jennifer Garfinkel, director of product communications for the American Chemistry Council, which represents chemical manufacturers, told EHN that they, too, are currently analyzing the draft.“BPA is one of the most widely studied chemicals used today,” she added in an emailed statement. “In 2018, the [FDA] published its findings from the Clarity Core Study, the largest study ever conducted on BPA. This study along with many others confirmed that BPA is safe at the very low levels to which consumers are exposed.”Importantly, the study that Garfinkel referenced was part of a larger collaboration on the health effects of BPA: the Consortium Linking Academic and Regulatory Insights on BPA Toxicity, or Clarity. The unprecedented multimillion-dollar project was the subject of a four-part series published in November 2019 by EHN that found the FDA stacked the deck against such findings from independent scientists studying BPA – as well as many compounds used in “BPA-free” products. Clarity aimed to synthesize a traditional regulatory study from the government and investigational studies from academics. The “core study” was the government’s contribution. Meanwhile, the studies published by academics showed health consequences—such as mammary gland cancer, kidney damage, increased body weight, and altered gene expression in the brain—after exposures to exceptionally low doses BPA. And when Vandenberg and her colleagues, all not involved in Clarity, took a close look at the government’s core study results, they identified 41 endpoints with statistically significant effects, too. A final 122-page “compendium of published findings” was released by the government in October, which summarized and collated all of the government and academic findings. It did not attempt to integrate or interpret those findings.However, when the draft of the Clarity Core Study was published in 2018, the FDA released a statement highlighting the agency’s interpretations: they wrote that the study supported their ongoing stance that “currently authorized uses of BPA continue to be safe for consumers.” The statement made no mention of significant findings of effects at low doses of BPA in both the Core Study and in the peer-reviewed studies from academic collaborators that had been published by that time.

BPA alternatives excluded 

Among the hazard endpoints identified by EFSA is actually one from the Clarity Core Report. Still, most of the information they used came from academic studies, noted Maffini. “They used everything they could get their hands on,” she said. “So, the spectrum of information was very different from what the FDA usually looks at.”Bray confirmed that EFSA considered all the Clarity studies, including the academic contributions, in coming to their conclusion. Also, while EFSA’s mandate was to look solely at BPA, Bray added that, moving forward, the agency did recommend the collection of data on the use of BPS—a BPA alternative that has been linked to similar health impacts—in plastic food contact material, as well as its presence in and migration into food.The European rule would only apply to food and beverage contact materials, and not the other uses of BPA such as in-store receipts and dental sealants. It also would not apply to a growing list of replacements, such as bisphenol-S (BPS). Many such chemical cousins are now regularly used in popular products labeled as BPA-free.“The rest of them are just as bad, some are even worse,” said Hunt. “This is insidious business.”EFSA is accepting public comments on the draft proposal until February 22. Once finalized, the assessment will inform decisions taken by EU risk managers in the European Commission, European Parliament and member states.Banner photo credit: Guillaume Périgois/Unsplash

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