You have to look close – on-your-hands-and-knees close. Once you start to see them, you may not think of this, or any beach, the same way again.
Mark McReynolds is trying to bring these tiny preproduction plastic pellets known as nurdles into focus. They’ve been escaping factories, container ships, trains, trucks – and public notice – for decades. They accumulate where water inevitably takes them, and they’ve been found on shorelines of every continent.
Why We Wrote This
How do you curb a problem that’s hidden in plain sight? Mark McReynolds’ nurdle hunters scour the sands for a tiny pollutant most beachgoers don’t even know exists.
Dr. McReynolds and his citizen scientist volunteers are part of a global movement studying the nurdle trail into the environment. He conducts a complex monthly microplastic sampling and a twice-annual nurdle hunt. Charting the count, noting tide, current, and weather conditions will show if amounts are increasing, and perhaps at what rate and why.
“Knowledge opens your eyes,” he says. So he explains the science of nurdles and microplastics to curious beachwalkers while keeping an eye on volunteers troweling sand into 5-gallon buckets.
In the six months the Monitor has observed the beach surveys, the universal parting response from passersby is a variation of “Thank you for what you’re doing.”
Crystal Cove State Park, Calif.
This 3-mile stretch of sand and tide pools beneath a fortress of 80-foot bluffs is a California tourism poster if there ever was one. Nothing disturbs the pristine, sunny view, except – once you’re aware of them – the nurdles.
But you have to look close – on-your-hands-and-knees close – to see one. And once you do, you see another and another – so many that you may not think of this, or any beach, the same way again.
Mark McReynolds is trying to bring into focus these tiny preproduction plastic pellets that manufacturers melt down to mold everything from car bumpers to toothpaste caps. They’ve been escaping factories, container ships, trains, trucks – and public notice – for decades.
Why We Wrote This
How do you curb a problem that’s hidden in plain sight? Mark McReynolds’ nurdle hunters scour the sands for a tiny pollutant most beachgoers don’t even know exists.
Dr. McReynolds is an environmental scientist with the Christian conservation nonprofit A Rocha International who’d never heard of nurdles three years ago. He’s now joined a global movement studying their trail into the environment. Some – like the Great Nurdle Hunt and the Nurdle Patrol – map nurdles through informal online reporting by citizen scientists around the globe.
“Knowledge opens your eyes. You don’t see plastic bags blowing around [on this beach] because people pick them up,” says Dr. McReynolds. “But, they’re not picking up the stuff that’s 3 millimeters [because] they don’t even know it’s there.”
At the beginning of last year, 187 countries took steps to limit the export of plastic trash from wealthy to developing countries. It’s not working as well as they hoped.
According to an analysis of global trade data by the nonprofit Basel Action Network, or BAN, violations of a U.N. agreement regulating the international plastic waste trade have been “rampant” over the past year. Since January 1, 2021, when new new rules were supposed to begin clamping down on countries that ship their plastic refuse abroad, the U.S., Canada, and the European Union have offloaded hundreds of millions of tons of plastic to other countries, where much of it may be landfilled, burned, or littered into the environment.
“Toxic pollution and its burden on communities and ecosystems in importing countries continues as a direct result of these multiple violations,” BAN wrote in its analysis.
The regulations in question are part of the Basel Convention, a framework designed to control the international movement of waste that is designated “hazardous.” In the years after it was first adopted in 1989, the convention covered substances such as mercury and pesticides. But in 2019, signatories to the convention agreed to add new guidance for scrapped plastic, limiting its movement between nations except under specific circumstances, effective at the beginning of 2021. For example, the convention now bans the export of unmixed, contaminated plastic waste without importing countries’ notification and consent, as well as the assurance that it will be managed in an “environmentally sound” way.
These requirements — which were put in place to help protect communities and the environment from the planet’s growing glut of plastic waste — are stringent, and they have contributed to overall declines in the flow of plastic waste to the developing world since 2020. But the international plastic waste trade is far from being snuffed out, and BAN says that its ongoing scale indicates widespread Basel Convention violations.
For example, the U.S., which is one of only eight countries that has not yet ratified the Basel Convention, sent more than 800 million pounds of plastic waste to Mexico, Malaysia, India, Vietnam, and other Basel parties last year — activity that likely violates the convention’s plastic amendments, since they stipulate that party countries cannot trade regulated plastics with non-parties. According to BAN, the only way this would be legal is if all of the plastic shipped by the brokers who contract with U.S. waste collectors were “almost free from contamination” and sorted into single polymers, such as PET, the type of plastic water bottles are made from.
This is a standard that the U.S. has been unable to meet even for its domestic recycling industry. “We’re not able to separate plastic economically to a level where it’s isolated polymers and not contaminated with at least 5 percent or more of other stuff,” said Jim Puckett, BAN’s founder and executive director. The economic and technological barriers are simply too great for American recyclers to adequately sort and handle the plastic they receive, forcing them to send most of it to landfills.
Plastic trash accumulates along the Pasig River in the Philippines, a big plastic importer. Arur Widak / NurPhoto via Getty Images
If the U.S. can’t even sort its own plastic waste, Puckett asked rhetorically, then how can it be sorting hundreds of millions of pounds of it for export? “It just isn’t happening,” he said.
BAN also suspects Europe of noncompliance with the Basel Convention, including violations of a ban on the export of unsorted, contaminated plastic waste from the E.U. to countries outside the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. Throughout 2021, Indonesia, Vietnam, Malaysia, and other developing countries continued to receive much of Europe’s plastic trash — especially from the Netherlands, whose plastic exports to developing countries increased dramatically last year, from an average of 18.3 million pounds per month in 2020 to 41 million pounds in 2021.
Because enforcement of the Basel Convention falls mostly on individual member countries, BAN said there isn’t much that the international community can do to crack down on plastic waste trade violations. Plastic importers may hesitate to strictly enforce the Basel Convention because they receive payments from exporting countries to do so, and because some plastic waste can be repurposed into new products for industry and manufacturing. In the immediate term, BAN has called on party members to implement tougher port inspections for illegal imports and exports of plastic waste, and for governments to place high penalties on companies that violate the convention.
A longer-term solution should look upstream, Puckett told Grist, and consider ways to limit the creation of plastic in the first place. He pointed to a recent pledge from the U.N. to negotiate a global, binding treaty covering plastic’s full life cycle by 2024. Although the final agreement will have to contend with the political power of the fossil fuel and plastics industries, a strong treaty could in theory do much more than the Basel Convention to curb the export of waste to the developing world.
“We don’t have illusions that it’s going to be easy,” Puckett said, “but we have to get a grip on the amount of plastic we’re producing if we want to impact plastic waste.”
At the beginning of last year, 187 countries took steps to limit the export of plastic trash from wealthy to developing countries. It’s not working as well as they hoped.
According to an analysis of global trade data by the nonprofit Basel Action Network, or BAN, violations of a U.N. agreement regulating the international plastic waste trade have been “rampant” over the past year. Since January 1, 2021, when new new rules were supposed to begin clamping down on countries that ship their plastic refuse abroad, the U.S., Canada, and the European Union have offloaded hundreds of millions of tons of plastic to other countries, where much of it may be landfilled, burned, or littered into the environment.
“Toxic pollution and its burden on communities and ecosystems in importing countries continues as a direct result of these multiple violations,” BAN wrote in its analysis.
The regulations in question are part of the Basel Convention, a framework designed to control the international movement of waste that is designated “hazardous.” In the years after it was first adopted in 1989, the convention covered substances such as mercury and pesticides. But in 2019, signatories to the convention agreed to add new guidance for scrapped plastic, limiting its movement between nations except under specific circumstances, effective at the beginning of 2021. For example, the convention now bans the export of unmixed, contaminated plastic waste without importing countries’ notification and consent, as well as the assurance that it will be managed in an “environmentally sound” way.
These requirements — which were put in place to help protect communities and the environment from the planet’s growing glut of plastic waste — are stringent, and they have contributed to overall declines in the flow of plastic waste to the developing world since 2020. But the international plastic waste trade is far from being snuffed out, and BAN says that its ongoing scale indicates widespread Basel Convention violations.
For example, the U.S., which is one of only eight countries that has not yet ratified the Basel Convention, sent more than 800 million pounds of plastic waste to Mexico, Malaysia, India, Vietnam, and other Basel parties last year — activity that likely violates the convention’s plastic amendments, since they stipulate that party countries cannot trade regulated plastics with non-parties. According to BAN, the only way this would be legal is if all of the plastic shipped by the brokers who contract with U.S. waste collectors were “almost free from contamination” and sorted into single polymers, such as PET, the type of plastic water bottles are made from.
This is a standard that the U.S. has been unable to meet even for its domestic recycling industry. “We’re not able to separate plastic economically to a level where it’s isolated polymers and not contaminated with at least 5 percent or more of other stuff,” said Jim Puckett, BAN’s founder and executive director. The economic and technological barriers are simply too great for American recyclers to adequately sort and handle the plastic they receive, forcing them to send most of it to landfills.
Plastic trash accumulates along the Pasig River in the Philippines, a big plastic importer. Arur Widak / NurPhoto via Getty Images
If the U.S. can’t even sort its own plastic waste, Puckett asked rhetorically, then how can it be sorting hundreds of millions of pounds of it for export? “It just isn’t happening,” he said.
BAN also suspects Europe of noncompliance with the Basel Convention, including violations of a ban on the export of unsorted, contaminated plastic waste from the E.U. to countries outside the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. Throughout 2021, Indonesia, Vietnam, Malaysia, and other developing countries continued to receive much of Europe’s plastic trash — especially from the Netherlands, whose plastic exports to developing countries increased dramatically last year, from an average of 18.3 million pounds per month in 2020 to 41 million pounds in 2021.
Because enforcement of the Basel Convention falls mostly on individual member countries, BAN said there isn’t much that the international community can do to crack down on plastic waste trade violations. Plastic importers may hesitate to strictly enforce the Basel Convention because they receive payments from exporting countries to do so, and because some plastic waste can be repurposed into new products for industry and manufacturing. In the immediate term, BAN has called on party members to implement tougher port inspections for illegal imports and exports of plastic waste, and for governments to place high penalties on companies that violate the convention.
A longer-term solution should look upstream, Puckett told Grist, and consider ways to limit the creation of plastic in the first place. He pointed to a recent pledge from the U.N. to negotiate a global, binding treaty covering plastic’s full life cycle by 2024. Although the final agreement will have to contend with the political power of the fossil fuel and plastics industries, a strong treaty could in theory do much more than the Basel Convention to curb the export of waste to the developing world.
“We don’t have illusions that it’s going to be easy,” Puckett said, “but we have to get a grip on the amount of plastic we’re producing if we want to impact plastic waste.”
In a small remote town in the outback, a multi-million-dollar mega facility shipped in from America will soon turn potentially toxic drinking water into some of the cleanest in Australia.
Key points:
US activist Erin Brockovich says PFAS contamination in her country is shaping up as a historic issue
After major delays, Katherine’s $24-million facility will be switched on in the middle of the year
Experts say more treatment plants will be needed to clean up PFAS contaminated water across Australia
It is the largest to be built so far and one of the first, but experts and activists say many more will be needed as Australia begins to deal with PFAS contamination.
A few years ago, residents of Katherine received the alarming news that the water they had been using was contaminated by a group of human-made chemicals known as PFAS, which some experts say are linked to cancers and other serious health concerns.
Between 1988 and 2004, during firefighting training at the Tindal RAAF Base, PFAS leached into the Katherine River and spread kilometres through the highly connected aquifer below.
The government advised against eating fish caught from the river, the local swimming pool was closed, bore-reliant properties surrounding the base were delivered bottled water by Defence and residents lined up for blood tests.
Liam Early says the plant will be open for business in the second half of the year.(ABC Katherine: Roxanne Fitzgerald)
Since then, residents have been clinging to the promise Australia’s largest PFAS water treatment plant would be built and after years of delays it has been confirmed the facility will be completed by August at the latest.
Senior project manager at Power and Water Corporation Liam Early said it would deliver “very high-quality water,” and agreed it would likely be the first of many needed across Australia as the nation began to grapple with the enormity of PFAS contamination.
“PFAS is a problem around Australia in a multitude of places,” he said.
Suzie Reichman says more PFAS water treatment plants will be needed if more contaminated sites are found.(Supplied: Suzie Reichman)
‘The more we look, the more we’re finding’
Associate professor Suzie Reichman, an expert in pollution science at the University of Melbourne, said the sticky substances were known as “forever chemicals” because of their persistence in the environment and could be found in hundreds of everyday products like cosmetics, sunscreens and non-stick pans.
“Evidence is mounting that high concentrations can have a number of health impacts, including cancer,” Dr Reichman said.
“We haven’t definitively proven that in humans, but we also don’t know what concentrations cause [cancers].
“The Australian government has taken a very precautionary approach and we have very low thresholds for PFAS in the environment, including in drinking water.
“But because it wasn’t on people’s radars as a contaminant for so long, we’re now seeing it has gotten out into the environment … the more we look the more we’re finding.”
With an already high reliance on groundwater projected to rise across Australia as surface resources become less available due to climate change and droughts, Dr Reichman said treatment plants, despite their expense, would offer a good solution.
“We have already contaminated the environment with PFAS, and if it’s the only source of water, the solution to keep it safe for people and stock … is to clean it up,” she said.
Erin Brockovich says PFAS is shaping up as the most pressing groundwater contamination and food supply chain issue ever seen.(Triple J: Timothy Swanston)
Issue unprecedented, Brockovich says
Erin Brockovich said filtration systems were being installed across the US, where PFAS had turned up in the water supplies of communities across the country.
“I’m currently working on this issue in Maine where we’re looking at all of the organic farming being destroyed,” she said.
“It’s in the cattle, it’s in the chicken eggs, it’s in the aquifer, it’s in people’s [bore] wells.
“It’s happening here in California, it’s already happened to Alabama — it’s happening everywhere in Michigan.
PFAS chemicals were used in firefighting foams at Defence bases until the early 2000s.(ABC News: Jon Daly)
Ms Brockovich said a massive effort at local, state, and federal levels had begun to address PFAS including installing filtration systems on bore wells.
She said, after a slow start, the US was finally taking note of science and research that showed PFAS was widespread and dangerous.
She warned Australia needed to be prepared and proactive.
“We are seeing and making associations of this chemical with reproductive issues, in particular,” Ms Brockovich said.
“We’re seeing testicular cancers, we’re seeing health implications with firemen and military men who are directly exposed to this chemical.
“So let’s start being prepared, let’s start looking at where the contamination is, let’s start getting all the municipalities with filtration systems.
“We’re not kidding when we say this is going to be the largest emerging groundwater contamination and food supply chain [issue] that we have ever seen.
Microplastics made of resin act like magnets inside the massive pressure vessels brought in from the US.(ABC Katherine: Roxanne Fitzgerald)
How will Katherine’s facility work?
The water treatment plant was delayed by a design process that took 24 months, as well as COVID and supply issues, Mr Early said.
When it is turned on it will be able to process 15 megalitres of water every day — more than enough for Katherine, which in the height of the dry season uses a maximum of 12 megalitres.
After water is sucked up from the groundwater through a bore, it is processed through the pressure vessels.
The new facility will be able to clean 15 megalitres of water a day.(ABC Katherine: Roxanne Fitzgerald)
Microplastics made of resin called “media” capture the PFAS and remove it from the water.
“Then what we have is a back-flushing process,” Mr Early said.
“The concentration [of toxic contaminants] gets flushed out and disposed of in an evaporation pond.”
When enough solids had built up in the evaporation pond, Mr Early said, it would be dug out and “disposed of at a suitable waste disposal site”.
GP Peter Spafford welcomes the plant, but questions how sustainable the water supply really is.(ABC Katherine: Roxanne Fitzgerald)
While Defence continues to filter contaminated water and pump it back into aquifers at Katherine, Oakey and Williamtown, ongoing droughts and lingering health concerns are far from over for residents.
Peter Spafford, Katherine’s sole GP during the peak of the PFAS scare, said long-term health issues were still a worry for residents despite a major study finding no conclusive evidence of increased risk of cancer or disease in the three towns.
Amid over-pumping, drought, and the steady influence of climate change, he said the treatment plant was a “bandaid measure”.
“It’s tapping into underground water supplies, which, certainly with decreased rainfall and the increased usage due to fracking, [are] not necessarily sustainable,” Dr Spafford said.
California voters in November will decide if they want to ban single-use plastics and polystyrene food containers. And it’s heating into a battle that may line industry lobbyists behind a bill they once found repugnant but hope will cancel the ballot measure.
The California Recycling and Plastic Pollution Reduction Act, if passed by voters, would mandate that all single-use plastic packaging and foodware, such as disposable spoons and forks, be recyclable, reusable, refillable or compostable. It would also mandate that single-use plastic production be reduced by a quarter — both by 2030, according to Los Angeles Times reporter Susanne Rust.
After years of seeing legislation with similar goals fail, the ballot measure’s proponents decided to take it straight to voters. Now lobbyists who fought against legislation are joining efforts to craft a bill that would convince those behind the ballot measure to drop it before the vote.
The Nature Conservancy says 11 million tons of plastics find their way into the ocean each year — and that plastic has also shown up in drinking water, rain and in humans. In California, “you are eating and breathing plastic every day,” the group says.
Its Stand Up to Plastic campaign says half of all plastic produced today is single-use.
The Oceana Plastic Pollution Survey of California’s registered voters found that 58% are very concerned about plastic pollution and the impact on the environment and oceans, while 34% are somewhat concerned. And nearly two-thirds (64%) of the registered voters said they are very concerned about single-use plastic products, while 28% are somewhat concerned. The vast majority said they want to know the products they buy don’t hurt ocean animals.
Rust found that “businesses and trade groups that produce or distribute single-use plastic items, however, are overwhelmingly opposed” to the ballot initiative.
“The way the law is written gives unfettered authority to CalRecycle to tax other recyclable products including glass, cardboard, etc., to meet the goals of the ballot measure,” Michael Bustamante, spokesman for the “No on Plastics Tax” campaign told the LA Times. The group has produced a list of 51 items that would be subject to the fee, assessed at almost a penny an item.
If the California legislature by late June passes a law that meets their approval, those pushing the ballot initiative could withdraw it. So opponents find themselves backing a bill that has twice been defeated in part because they lobbied against it. Some are now working with lawmakers to craft a version both sides could embrace.
Californians aren’t the only ones considering the impact of plastic.
The Break Free From Plastic Pollution Act before Congress sets requirements and incentives to decrease how much plastic is produced and bolsters efforts “to collect, recycle, or compost products and materials.” Some of the costs would be borne by the producers of the products, including food service products, single-use products and plastic packaging.
The Seattle Times recently reported that “only 9% of all plastic waste ever generated has been recycled. It’s in our rivers, oceans and bodies. As plastic breaks up into increasingly smaller pieces, it becomes microplastics and nanoplastics, invisible to the naked eye. Salmon — a cornerstone species in the Salish Sea — and aquatic life eat plastic, mistaking it for phytoplankton. These salmon are eaten by our resident orcas, eagles and us. A recent study by the University of Newcastle, Australia, estimates the average person may ingest the equivalent of a credit card’s worth of microplastic particles every week.”
The article also noted inequality in the harm produced. Low-income and communities of color are among the most impacted by plastic pollution.
But not everyone sees the benefit-harm balance the same. In a guest editorial in the Examiner-Enterprise in early April, Sen. James M. Inhofe, R-Oklahoma, called that bill “radical legislation” and said it would do “unprecedented damage to consumer choice and would stifle recycling technology innovation by American businesses.”
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Plaintiffs and their lawyers gather outside U.S. District Court in Rutland after a hearing on a PFOA class action lawsuit on Monday, April 18, 2022. Photo by Glenn Russell/VTDigger
” data-medium-file=”https://vtdigger.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/PFOA-hearing-1-20220418-300×200.jpg” data-large-file=”https://vtdigger.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/PFOA-hearing-1-20220418-610×406.jpg” width=”2000″ height=”1331″ src=”https://vtdigger.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/PFOA-hearing-1-20220418.jpg” alt class=”wp-image-390803″ srcset=”https://vtdigger.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/PFOA-hearing-1-20220418.jpg 2000w, https://vtdigger.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/PFOA-hearing-1-20220418-300×200.jpg 300w, https://vtdigger.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/PFOA-hearing-1-20220418-610×406.jpg 610w, https://vtdigger.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/PFOA-hearing-1-20220418-125×83.jpg 125w, https://vtdigger.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/PFOA-hearing-1-20220418-768×511.jpg 768w, https://vtdigger.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/PFOA-hearing-1-20220418-1536×1022.jpg 1536w” sizes=”(max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px”><img data-attachment-id="390803" data-permalink="https://vtdigger.org/pfoa-hearing-1-20220418/" data-orig-file="https://vtdigger.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/PFOA-hearing-1-20220418.jpg" data-orig-size="2000,1331" data-comments-opened="0" data-image-meta="{"aperture":"11","credit":"Glenn Russell","camera":"NIKON D750","caption":"Plaintiffs and their lawyers gather outside U.S. District Court in Rutland after a hearing on a PFOA class action lawsuit on Monday, April 18, 2022. Photo by Glenn Russell/VTDigger","created_timestamp":"1650279639","copyright":"Glenn Russell","focal_length":"24","iso":"900","shutter_speed":"0.001","title":"PFOA-hearing-1 20220418","orientation":"1"}" data-image-title="PFOA-hearing-1 20220418" data-image-description data-image-caption="
Plaintiffs and their lawyers gather outside U.S. District Court in Rutland after a hearing on a PFOA class action lawsuit on Monday, April 18, 2022. Photo by Glenn Russell/VTDigger
” data-medium-file=”https://vtdigger.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/PFOA-hearing-1-20220418-300×200.jpg” data-large-file=”https://vtdigger.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/PFOA-hearing-1-20220418-610×406.jpg” width=”2000″ height=”1331″ src=”https://vtdigger.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/PFOA-hearing-1-20220418.jpg” alt class=”lazyload wp-image-390803″ data-sizes=”(max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px” srcset=”https://vtdigger.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/PFOA-hearing-1-20220418.jpg 2000w, https://vtdigger.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/PFOA-hearing-1-20220418-300×200.jpg 300w, https://vtdigger.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/PFOA-hearing-1-20220418-610×406.jpg 610w, https://vtdigger.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/PFOA-hearing-1-20220418-125×83.jpg 125w, https://vtdigger.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/PFOA-hearing-1-20220418-768×511.jpg 768w, https://vtdigger.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/PFOA-hearing-1-20220418-1536×1022.jpg 1536w”>Plaintiffs and their lawyers gather outside the U.S. District Court in Rutland after the final approval hearing in their PFOA class-action lawsuit on Monday, April 18, 2022. Photo by Glenn Russell/VTDigger
RUTLAND — After the end of a half-hour hearing in federal court on Monday, the presiding judge removed his black robe, stepped down from the bench and chatted with the attorneys and the plaintiffs who were present.
After nearly six years, U.S. District Court Chief Judge Geoffrey Crawford said he wanted to personally say goodbye to the people involved in the high-profile case, which had just finally been resolved.
Indeed, the hearing made it official: Bennington-area residents who sued a multinational plastics company for contaminating their soil and water will receive financial compensation and medical monitoring.
On Monday morning, Crawford approved the $34 million settlement agreement that the complainants and Saint-Gobain Performance Plastics Corporation reached in November. The final approval came three weeks before the class-action suit’s sixth anniversary.
“There were times in the past six years when it felt that today would never come,” Marie-Pierre Huguet, the widow of one of the plaintiffs, Sandy Sumner, said at the hearing in Rutland.
“I am very grateful that today finally came. That both parties managed to come to an agreement. Not a perfect one, I’ll grant you that, but an agreement all the same,” she said. “Today will allow us to move forward.”
The settlement calls for Saint-Gobain to pay $26.2 million to eligible property owners affected by PFOA contamination. PFOA, or perfluorooctanoic acid, was used to coat fiberglass fabrics at its shuttered factories in Bennington and North Bennington.
The French multinational will also spend up to $6 million to screen for certain diseases among residents adversely exposed to PFOA, a variant of the PFAS group of chemicals that has been linked to harmful health outcomes. The rest of the money would cover a portion of the attorneys’ fees.
Bennington-area residents alleged that the factories — previously owned by ChemFab — emitted PFOA through their smokestacks, thereby contaminating drinking water, groundwater and soil in the surrounding areas. They believe the contamination affected nearly 2,400 properties and an estimated 8,000 residents in the towns of Bennington and Shaftsbury, and in the village of North Bennington.
Saint-Gobain denies the accusations and any wrongdoing under the case settlement.
Crawford commended the plaintiffs for their “perseverance” as the litigation played out for more than half a decade. He said it was evident from the beginning that the residents pursued the lawsuit out of “civic duty” to their neighbors and their community.
Crawford also highlighted the work of Burlington-based mediator John Schraven, whom the judge described as “tireless in his devotion to the process of compromise.” He thanked Schraven for “bringing the ship into the dock.”
Crawford told the seven attorneys involved in the lawsuit that he enjoyed working with them and acknowledged their keeping the court out of the more contentious moments in the civil case.
Five of the eight plaintiffs attended: Linda Crawford and her husband, Ted Crawford; Gordon Garrison; Bill Knight; and Jim Sullivan, who has served as the group’s spokesperson.
Sumner died in August of a rare and aggressive cancer. Huguet, his widow, said Sumner believed his illness was due to PFOA exposure, though there is currently no data or science to support his claim.
One of Saint-Gobain’s lawyers said the company is glad that the lawsuit has come to an end. “This is something they are pleased to put behind,” New York-based attorney Mark Cheffo told the court. “They are not in the litigation business.”
Now that the settlement agreement has cleared the court, plaintiff attorney Emily Joselson told VTDigger she is hoping approved claims could be paid starting in May and medical monitoring can begin this fall.
Claims under settlement
Property owners within the “zone of concern” are eligible to claim compensation if they meet the qualifications: They either owned residential real estate within the zone as of March 14, 2016, or after this date bought property that was later added to the zone.
Some 2,365 households have been notified of the settlement and none chose to be excluded, said plaintiff attorney Gary Davis, of the North Carolina-based firm Davis and Whitlock.
The payment amounts will vary depending on the property, said plaintiff attorney David Silver. That includes at least $4,000 for owners of property in the zone that were already hooked up to the Bennington municipal water system. Payments of at least $30,000 will be paid to property owners whose water wells have PFOA levels beyond 20 parts per billion and who had no way to connect to the town water system.
Medical monitoring will be available to residents who ingested PFOA-contaminated water and who have more than 2.1 parts per billion of PFOA in their blood. The median blood concentration of PFOA for the U.S. general population is 2.08 parts per billion, according to one study.
The free monitoring service will be run by Southwestern Vermont Medical Center, the hospital in Bennington.Arrangements would also be made for eligible claimants who have moved away from the area.
The Saint-Gobain factories, which closed in 2002, became famous for fiberglass fabrics used on structures such as sports stadium domes. These products were coated in Teflon, which was manufactured using PFOA.
In 2016, many Bennington-area residents learned that their drinking water wells were contaminated with PFOA. Some have discovered elevated levels of the industrial chemical in their blood and are not sure whether to connect an array of illnesses to the contamination.
PFAS, or perfluoroalkyl and polyfluoroalkyl substances, are often described as “forever chemicals” because they are believed capable of lingering indefinitely in the environment.
In 2017 and 2019, the state reached separate agreements with Saint-Gobain, in which the company would pay for access to municipal drinking water for residents with contaminated properties.
That process wrapped up in October, with 445 homes in Bennington, North Bennington and Shaftsbury having been connected to the Bennington town water system.
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Boots to stop selling plastic-based wet wipes in UK
Pharmacy joins other retail chains in committing to end sales of plastic wipes by end of this year
The high street chemist Boots is joining the ranks of retailers vowing to stop selling all wet wipes that contain plastic fibres, as part of efforts to cut non-biodegradable waste.
The retailer said it was committing to stop selling all wet wipes containing plastic by the end of the year and would replace them with plant-based alternatives.
Wipes are often flushed down the toilet by consumers, causing environmental damage by blocking sewers and waterways.
Boots said it is one of the biggest sellers of wet wipes in the UK, having sold more than 800m over the last year online and in its 2,200 stores, from 140 product lines across its skincare, baby, tissue and health care ranges. It said its sales represented about 15% of all beauty face wipes sold in the UK.
The move follows Boots’ earlier decision to reformulate its own-brand ranges of wipes. It has written to its suppliers in the UK and Ireland to ask them to follow suit.
The company, which is owned by the US health group Walgreens Boots Alliance, is joining other retailers including Tesco and the health food chain Holland & Barrett in banning the sale of plastic-based wipes. The Body Shop beauty chain has also phased out all face wipes from its shops.
Steve Ager, the chief customer and commercial officer at Boots UK, said its customers were becoming more aware of their impact on the environment: “They are actively looking to brands and retailers to help them lead more sustainable lives.
“We removed plastics from our own-brand and No7 wet wipe ranges in 2021, and now we are calling on other brands and retailers across the UK to follow suit in eliminating all plastic-based wet wipes.”
It is estimated that as many as 11bn wet wipes are used in the UK each year, with the majority containing some form of plastic, many of which are flushed away after use. In recent months, MPs have heard evidence about wet wipes forming islands within rivers, causing the waterways to change shape as the products pile up.
They are also a significant component of the fatbergs that form in sewers, leading to blockages that require complex interventions to remove.
Microplastic pollution – often found in plastic packaging, pipes and some bottles – poses a serious threat to marine animals, and has recently been discovered lodged deep in the lungs of living people.
Boots said its own-brand wipes would be labelled as “do not flush”, while those developed for intimate use would be formulated to meet flushability standards.
The retailer said it had also expanded its ranges of reusable and refillable products over the last two years, and was working to remove plastic from product packaging and from its online deliveries.
Plastic pollution has become an alarming problem worldwide. A 2015 study published in Science Magazine projected that by 2025, around 100–250 million metric tons of plastic waste could enter our oceans every year.
However, even if all drastic measures were put in place to stop plastic production tomorrow, we would still have around 5 billion tons of plastic waste in landfills and the environment.
Research has shown that plastic can disintegrate into microplastic—particles ranging from 1 nanometer (nm) to less than 5 micrometers (mm)—with various shapes, densities, and mechanical and chemical properties.
For decades, scientists have been looking to nature for our fight against the plastic problem. Combined with global strategic action to slow down plastic production, we could prevent future plastic disasters.
Microalgae, for instance, are the most promising nature-based candidate capable of destroying microplastics. It is a unicellular species that exists individually or in chains or groups. Depending on the species, their size can range from a few millimeters to hundreds of micrometers.
Cultivating microalgae is simple because it does not require fertile land, large quantities of freshwater, and pesticides compared to other aquaculture crops.
Microalgae are also capable of growing rapidly. Open pond cultivation has been one of the oldest and simplest ways to cultivate microalgae on a large scale. Some people also use photobioreactors—bioreactors used in an enclosed system to increase microalgae cultivation.
How microalgae works
Interaction between microalgae and plastic can significantly change the properties of plastic, including its biodegradation, the alteration of plastic density, and sinking behavior. Moreover, microalgae may take control, gather, and stick to microplastics on their surface, regardless of their size.
There are four stages of plastic biodegradation. First is the attachment of microalgae to plastic surfaces. This starts the biodegradation process and alters surface properties.
The second is biodeterioration. Microalgae will secrete specific enzymes, which are pivotal for plastic biodegradation.
The third is the biofragmentation process. In this stage, the plastic material loses its mechanical stability and becomes fragile.
The last stage is the assimilation process, where microbial filaments and water start to penetrate plastics, which results in the decomposition and utilization of plastic by microorganisms.
Studies have reported success stories of algae-based plastic biodegradation, particularly for polyethylene (commonly used in fibers for clothing or bottle), low-density polyethylene or LDPE (used in plastic bags) and bisphenol A or BPA (chemicals to harden plastic). One of those studies calculated a 58.9% decrease of carbon composition in their LDPE sample.
Microalgae could be a viable solution to tackle the plastic problem in Indonesia—the world’s second-largest ocean plastic polluter, according to a 2015 study.
More research is vital to deepen analyses of microalgae and microplastics’ interactions and their effects to support this initiative. So far, studies on microalgae in Indonesia only focus on its potential as a green energy resource or its capacity to become a substitute material for plastic.
To prevent plastic disasters, we also need improvements in plastic recycling and reusing strategies. Regulation and policies should be in line with the 2018–2015 National Action Plan on Marine Debris which highlights Indonesia’s waste management, reduction or substitution of plastic usage, redesign of plastic products and packaging, doubling plastic waste collection rates, and expansion of waste disposal facilities.
Citation:
Why algae can be our next secret weapon to combat plastic pollution (2022, April 14)
retrieved 18 April 2022
from https://techxplore.com/news/2022-04-algae-secret-weapon-combat-plastic.html
This document is subject to copyright. Apart from any fair dealing for the purpose of private study or research, no
part may be reproduced without the written permission. The content is provided for information purposes only.
Plastic pollution has become an alarming problem worldwide. A 2015 study published in Science Magazine projected that by 2025, around 100–250 million metric tons of plastic waste could enter our oceans every year.
However, even if all drastic measures were put in place to stop plastic production tomorrow, we would still have around 5 billion tons of plastic waste in landfills and the environment.
Research has shown that plastic can disintegrate into microplastic—particles ranging from 1 nanometer (nm) to less than 5 micrometers (mm)—with various shapes, densities, and mechanical and chemical properties.
For decades, scientists have been looking to nature for our fight against the plastic problem. Combined with global strategic action to slow down plastic production, we could prevent future plastic disasters.
Microalgae, for instance, are the most promising nature-based candidate capable of destroying microplastics. It is a unicellular species that exists individually or in chains or groups. Depending on the species, their size can range from a few millimeters to hundreds of micrometers.
Cultivating microalgae is simple because it does not require fertile land, large quantities of freshwater, and pesticides compared to other aquaculture crops.
Microalgae are also capable of growing rapidly. Open pond cultivation has been one of the oldest and simplest ways to cultivate microalgae on a large scale. Some people also use photobioreactors—bioreactors used in an enclosed system to increase microalgae cultivation.
How microalgae works
Interaction between microalgae and plastic can significantly change the properties of plastic, including its biodegradation, the alteration of plastic density, and sinking behavior. Moreover, microalgae may take control, gather, and stick to microplastics on their surface, regardless of their size.
There are four stages of plastic biodegradation. First is the attachment of microalgae to plastic surfaces. This starts the biodegradation process and alters surface properties.
The second is biodeterioration. Microalgae will secrete specific enzymes, which are pivotal for plastic biodegradation.
The third is the biofragmentation process. In this stage, the plastic material loses its mechanical stability and becomes fragile.
The last stage is the assimilation process, where microbial filaments and water start to penetrate plastics, which results in the decomposition and utilization of plastic by microorganisms.
Studies have reported success stories of algae-based plastic biodegradation, particularly for polyethylene (commonly used in fibers for clothing or bottle), low-density polyethylene or LDPE (used in plastic bags) and bisphenol A or BPA (chemicals to harden plastic). One of those studies calculated a 58.9% decrease of carbon composition in their LDPE sample.
Microalgae could be a viable solution to tackle the plastic problem in Indonesia—the world’s second-largest ocean plastic polluter, according to a 2015 study.
More research is vital to deepen analyses of microalgae and microplastics’ interactions and their effects to support this initiative. So far, studies on microalgae in Indonesia only focus on its potential as a green energy resource or its capacity to become a substitute material for plastic.
To prevent plastic disasters, we also need improvements in plastic recycling and reusing strategies. Regulation and policies should be in line with the 2018–2015 National Action Plan on Marine Debris which highlights Indonesia’s waste management, reduction or substitution of plastic usage, redesign of plastic products and packaging, doubling plastic waste collection rates, and expansion of waste disposal facilities.
Citation:
Why algae can be our next secret weapon to combat plastic pollution (2022, April 14)
retrieved 18 April 2022
from https://techxplore.com/news/2022-04-algae-secret-weapon-combat-plastic.html
This document is subject to copyright. Apart from any fair dealing for the purpose of private study or research, no
part may be reproduced without the written permission. The content is provided for information purposes only.
Water bottles. Shopping bags. Computers. Medical equipment. Food containers. And on and on and on.
Plastics. They never go away. And even if we can’t see them — they’re everywhere.
“They are carried in the atmosphere, they are raining down on us. They’ve been found in the Himalayan mountains,” Erica Cirino says. “So right now we are immersed in a microplastics and nanoplastics soup.”
But are those microplastics inside of us?
“About five years ago was when scientists first began questioning, Are there plastics inside our bodies? And indeed there are,” Cirino adds.
For the first time, microplastics have been found in living humans — their lungs and blood.
“I don’t like it at all that plastic waste is in the river of life. One thing is clear that we are exposed,” Heather Leslie says. “Do they actually cause adverse health outcomes? That’s a question that takes many years to answer.”
Heather Leslie, she established the microplastics lab at the Free University of Amsterdam. Lead author of a new study which found microplastics and nanoplastics in human blood.
Also Featured
Mary Kosuth, researcher at the University of Minnesota’s School of Public Health.
Transcript: Microplastics, The Bloodstream and Your Health
MEGHNA CHAKRABARTI: Joining us now from Amsterdam in the Netherlands is Heather Leslie. She established the Microplastics Lab at the Free University of Amsterdam. Heather, welcome to the program.
HEATHER LESLIE: Thank you very much.
CHAKRABARTI: So you and your team have also found evidence of micro and nanoplastics in living human bodies. Where did you find them?
LESLIE: Yes, we looked in the human bloodstream and we found out that micro and nanoplastics are actually very close to our hearts. We expected that plastics would be circulating in our bodies, but now we know they are. We have the first evidence for that.
CHAKRABARTI: How did you find it?
LESLIE: It took a lot of trial and error to develop a method that’s sensitive enough. And of course, just like your studio, our lab has a lot of plastic in it. And we have to be extremely careful about the quality control of the analysis. I think this was the most difficult analysis I’ve ever tried in my entire career. And so it took us a long time to get our analysis sensitive enough. And to make sure we weren’t introducing any background contamination from our lab or from all the stuff that we use in order to do the analysis.
CHAKRABARTI: Heather, in the reading and thinking that we’ve been doing about this hour, I have to admit it didn’t even occur to me the high chance of cross-contamination because of the ubiquity of plastics, even just in scientific laboratory equipment. Wow. OK, but you overcame that challenge and were able to come up with some kind of assay that detected these micro and nanoplastics in blood samples. Where did you get the samples from? Obviously, we don’t have to identify the individual people, but … where did they come from?
LESLIE: Yeah. So we had 22 anonymous donors, that our university also has a university hospital. So I worked together with an immunologist and doctor there, and we were able to access these samples from there. It was a little bit difficult because we were doing that during the first lockdowns and the immunologists were working on COVID research and this had a little bit less priority at the time. But we managed to finish up our short one year pilot project, which had, of course, a lot of work done before that, before we were ready for the samples.
But yeah, we were ready for the samples and we managed to do 22 people, which gives us a good indication of concentration ranges to expect and to see if we could find anything at all. Because really, you know, if you find something in the air or in the food chain, that tells you a lot about what we are encountering. But it doesn’t tell you what’s being absorbed in your body. And so by looking in the bloodstream, you’re actually doing that extra step to find out what is the absorbable fraction.
CHAKRABARTI: OK, so we’re going to talk about what you actually found in the blood in a second here. But were the samples from adults or was there a range of ages?
LESLIE: Oh yes, they were all adults over 18.
CHAKRABARTI: Because we’re going to want to talk about the impact on children a little bit later. Or maybe the questions we should ask to understand what the potential impact on kids can be. OK, so what concentrations of micro and nanoplastics did you find in these blood samples?
LESLIE: … Plastic is a whole range of different substances, let’s say. So we looked at, with our method, we weren’t looking at counting the particles like some other studies, but we were actually measuring the mass of each type of plastic individually. So we found things like PET, which you make water bottles out of. And polystyrene, a type of polymers and polyethylene and these kinds of plastics. And some people are just interested in the whole sum of all the plastics.
So we also in our article, reported the sum. And when you add up all of the plastics that we find in one sample, we came to an average of 1.6 micrograms in a milliliter of blood. And that sounds like a very small amount. But if that blood sample is representative for the whole body, then we’re talking milligrams in a single human body just circulating in the bloodstream. At the time that we were sampling.
CHAKRABARTI: I’m trying to think of what a visual equivalent of a of a milligram, would be like a quarter teaspoon or something. Maybe that’s still too much.
LESLIE: Oh, it’s very, very, very small. … Plastic is very light, you know, it’s not a very heavy material. So a microgram, it’s like around a microgram in a milliliter of blood. A milliliter of blood, that’s well, I think there’s 15 milliliters in a teaspoon or something like that. So it’s a small amount of blood, but it’s also a very small amount of plastic in the blood.
CHAKRABARTI: OK, so Erica Cirino, what’s your thoughts when you first heard about Heather and her team’s research, essentially confirming that there are, even if a small amount, discernibly different types of micro and nanoplastics circulating in living human bodies?
ERICA CIRINO: Well, like most people, probably my first reaction was, oh, no. But I also know in the context of the research I did when writing my book Thicker Than Water, to tell the story of the plastic crisis that actually research showing plastics and plastic particles in our environment were published as early as the 1960s and 1970s. And recently, you know, this research has kind of accelerated and there’s been a push to look inside the human body.
And finally, we’re getting there and research is evolving rapidly now. But there has been a long understanding, I think, in the scientific community that plastic exists all around us on Earth. But the ubiquity and the true understanding that we live in a time where actually we change the geological nature of our planet and are living in a plasticine of sorts is not surprising, to know that we are also becoming plastic.
CHAKRABARTI: Well, so, Heather, I this actually links back to why finding it in the blood is particularly eye opening. Because blood is everywhere in the human body. It has, you know, as you’ve said before, it’s the river of life. Its purpose is transport, right? To transport nutrients, oxygen to every cell in the body, to transport waste away from those cells. So does this mean that essentially every part of the human body is being exposed? Even if it’s to a small amount being exposed to these micro and nanoplastics?
LESLIE: Yes, this is why I really wanted to focus on blood and in the first place. There have been some studies about feces, and I was thinking, Well, that’s more of a problem for the sewage treatment plants, you know, and it’s going right through our bodies. But the blood, if it’s absorbed into the blood, as you said just now, the blood bathes all of our cells of our body, and it needs to do that on a very regular basis. And so anything that is in our bloodstream can reach our organs.
And in toxicology, we’re interested in what gets close to what we call sites of toxic action. So if it’s outside your body, it’s not interacting with the biology. But when it’s inside your body and it gets close to some area of your body that’s doing its thing, that’s functioning as it normally does in nature, then you can have an opportunity to cause toxicity. If that particle knows how to cause toxicity. It needs to be close to that or close to that area where it can cause the damage. So that’s why it’s important to look at blood.
CHAKRABARTI: OK, so because there we have basically an exposure pathway to every organ system, every system in the human body through blood. But you know, on the other hand, of course, everyone wants to know like, Oh my gosh, so what impact does this have on human health? And we don’t have the answers to those questions yet, right? Because the research is still very new in confirming the presence of plastics inside living bodies.
But I am thinking, you know, in modern life we’re exposed to a lot of things every day. We breathe them in, we eat them in. And I’m not saying that they’re inert, but perhaps they are absorbed into our bodies at such low levels that it doesn’t actually cause some kind of deleterious effect on human health. Could that be possible, Heather?
LESLIE: I always say we have to not really jump the gun and claim that it’s safe or it’s not safe. We should just say we don’t know until we collect enough evidence to make those kinds of claims. So it’s a very difficult situation to be in to say, I don’t know. Because everybody wants an answer. We do have half of the answer because a risk to human health is built up from the exposure, and from knowledge about which exposure level is sort of a threshold for the toxicity.
So above a certain level, you can expect toxicity. Below a certain level, you don’t expect it. It’s like the very, very 500-year-old knowledge that the dose makes the poison. So the most important part to know is, Is there any poison there or potential poison? And we know that if the dose gets high enough, we probably will see effects, even if it’s table salt or even if you drink too much water.
So there is a certain point where it will be toxic. So it’s very important to know what the dose is. And there’s a lot of research going on now, and I think one of the main areas to really look at is the immuno-toxicological side. So what effect does this have on our immune systems? And I think that’s a good place to really look.
