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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.”Today, On Point: Microplastics and your health.GuestsErica Cirino, communications manager at the Plastic Pollution Coalition. Author of Thicker Than Water: The Quest for Solutions to the Plastic Crisis. (@erica_cirino)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 FeaturedMary Kosuth, researcher at the University of Minnesota’s School of Public Health.Book ExcerptExcerpt from Thicker Than Water: The Quest for Solutions to the Plastic Crisis By Erica Cirino. Copyright © 2021, Published by Island Press. All rights reserved.Transcript: Microplastics, The Bloodstream and Your HealthMEGHNA 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.

Karen Gdula lives in the house she grew up in, a modest home on a pretty street in rural western Pennsylvania. Ivy Lane, in her view, is someplace special. “There’s a warmth and a caring,” she said. “We look out for each other.” The street never needed those bonds more than on September 10, 2018.
Retired and newly married, Gdula was asleep when, just before 5 a.m., an explosion shook her home. The roar was so loud that some of her neighbors thought it was a plane crash. But when she and her husband saw a fireball stretching above the tops of the towering pine trees across the street, they knew exactly what had happened.
The Revolution Pipeline, running right behind Ivy Lane in Center Township, about 25 miles northwest of Pittsburgh, had come into service only days before, carrying gas from the fracking wells that are everywhere in the region. No one was hurt, but the explosion flattened a home three doors down from Gdula’s and toppled six giant electrical transmission towers.
Now, Revolution is back in service, and another pipeline has come to Ivy Lane, too. It’s called Line N, and it feeds gas to the vast, $6 billion petrochemical plant Shell is building five miles away in Monaca, right on the Ohio River. That plant, called an “ethane cracker,” will soon turn ethane — a byproduct of fracking — into 1.6 million tons of raw plastic a year.

The Ohio River Valley is wrestling with whether to tie its fortunes to another toxic, boom-and-bust industry.

Five years ago, the flood of ethane coming from the Ohio River Valley’s fracking wells got the plastic industry — petrochemical firms that are often subsidiaries of big fossil fuel producers — dreaming about a new generation of massive plants in the region. Companies envisioned building as many as four more ethane crackers like Shell’s in Appalachia, and state and local officials from both parties embraced the idea.
That vision is now foundering. Obstacles including global overproduction of plastic, local opposition to pipelines that feed such facilities, and public concern about the tidal wave of waste choking oceans and landscapes mean that even the region’s second proposed ethane cracker may never materialize. Additional plants look even less likely. The question mark over the industry’s once-grand hopes for Appalachia reflects larger doubts about its plans for dramatically increasing worldwide plastic production.

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Free wooden bellyboard hire scheme aims to cut plastic pollutionSurf Wood for Good aims to tackle waste caused by polystyrene bodyboards by lending beachgoers UK-made wooden boards A new initiative is offering free bellyboard hire across England, Wales and Northern Ireland to discourage the use of polluting plastic boards.Surf Wood for Good aims to tackle the waste caused by polystyrene bodyboards, which are usually imported and single-use, by lending beachgoers British-made wooden boards.The environmentally friendly alternatives will be available to borrow free of charge from stockists in 24 coastal sites until October, including in Bournemouth, Cornwall and Grimsby.It is estimated that more than 16,000 polystyrene bodyboards are left on UK beaches each year, according to environmental charity Keep Britain Tidy.The low-quality boards are said to last as little as a few hours before they are often discarded across seafronts, and can release thousands of tiny polystyrene balls into the coastal ecosystem.Jamie Johnstone, founder of Surf Wood for Good, was prompted to act after seeing the volume of broken polystyrene bodyboards left at his local beach in Newquay daily last summer.“We hope that the scheme will inspire people to think about what they are riding in the waves and promote a positive change away from disposable plastic in general,” Johnstone said.“I love the idea that each board handed out represents the potential for a cheap alternative to be saved from landfill.”Environmental charity Surfers Against Sewage added: “Plastic pollution is a huge issue, with 8m pieces of plastic entering the ocean every single day. Not only is Surf Wood For Good kinder to our planet, it provides endless fun in the water, where you can use the board over and over again.”Last year, a ban on sales of single-use bodyboard sales was introduced in North Devon to eliminate waste.A list of participating sites can be found at a dedicated website.TopicsPlasticsMarine lifenewsReuse this content

A new industrial precinct in Darwin Harbour could cause “significant adverse impacts to human health”, according to an environmental report released by the Northern Territory government.Key points:The environmental report identified potential risks to threatened species and the health of Palmerston residents The NT government says planning is underway to help protect the environment from its proposed industrial worksThe Deputy Prime Minister did not give a timeline for the delivery of $1.5 billion of federal funding in port infrastructure to support the new precinctThe NT government is spearheading plans to develop a manufacturing and minerals precinct in Middle Arm, south of Darwin.The proposal includes a petrochemicals manufacturing facility, which would convert natural gas into products like plastics and paint.The federal budget promised $1.5 billion for a new wharf and offloading facility in the area, however the funding has not been allocated over the forward estimates period.The NT government said the precinct would also include carbon capture and storage technologies, as well as hydrogen and mineral exports, deeming it a low emissions precinct that will create 20,000 jobs.The potential threat to human health was flagged in a risk assessment the government was required to submit under the environmental approvals process, which noted its proximity to residential Palmerston and ranked the risk as “uncertain”.But environmental advocates have labelled the report an “incredibly concerning” warning.”You’re talking about ammonia, methanol, hydrogen and gas liquids processing in Middle Arm, which is actually a petroleum refinery,” Jason Fowler from the Environment Centre NT said.”This is all occurring within three kilometres of the suburb of Palmerston.”If you look anywhere around the globe, you’re not finding massive petrochemical refineries right next to suburbia.”

Here’s a secret about single-use foodware: brands and manufacturers don’t have to tell what’s in it, and in some cases, they don’t even know.

This presents a challenge for safety-conscious consumers of takeout containers, disposable cups, and similar materials who are hoping to avoid chemicals like per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS), bisphenols, phthalates, and other less high-profile compounds.

But the nonprofit organizations Clean Production Action, based in Massachusetts, and Center for Environmental Health, based in California, both advocates of chemical safety in consumer products, believe they have a solution: the first-ever independent, third-party chemical screening and certification program for disposable foodware. Private consumers and institutional buyers can use the program to inform purchasing decisions.

Launched last November, the GreenScreen Certified Standard for Food Service Ware is a subset of the larger GreenScreen brand, operated by Clean Production Action since 2007. The brand also includes certifications for firefighting foams, textiles, furniture, fabrics, cleaners, and degreasers.

Manufacturers of single-use foodware seeking certification can apply at one of three levels, with increasingly fewer chemicals allowed and individual chemicals assessed with stricter criteria at each level. Even at the lowest level, Silver, full disclosure to GreenScreen of all intentionally added ingredients is required, and more than 2,000 chemicals of concern are prohibited. These include endocrine-disrupting chemicals such as bisphenols, phthalates, parabens, and organotin compounds; chemical classes including PFAS, organohalogens, and polycyclic aromatic amines; compounds of cadmium, hexavalent chromium, lead, and mercury; and antimicrobials and nanomaterials.

Certified foodware must also undergo product-level testing at an approved lab for a variety of chemicals and classes including fluorine, an indicator of PFAS. There is mounting evidence that many products are unintentionally contaminated with PFAS during manufacturing, even if the chemicals are not meant to go into the product.

These standards are more stringent than those enforced by any government agency or regulatory body in the world—but they still keep consumers in the dark as to which chemicals are actually being used.

Industry secrecy 

GreenScreen’s track record and name recognition likely helped it succeed in launching a third-party foodware certification program where other attempts have stalled. An ongoing effort to ban PFAS in food packaging in Washington, for example, was delayed in 2020 when the state was unable to obtain details from brands and manufacturers about what they were using instead of PFAS, Clean Production Action Executive Director Mark Rossi told EHN. These chemicals impart grease and water resistance to porous materials like paper and molded fiber in foodware; if eliminated, other chemicals must be used in their place, or the entire product must be redesigned.

This raises the possibility of manufacturers employing so-called regrettable substitutes—alternative chemicals that turn out to be similarly harmful, most famously illustrated by the replacement of bisphenol A (BPA) with BPS, BPF, and other endocrine-disrupting bisphenols in many products.

Knowing that a given product is PFAS-free may not be enough, but moving from there to a surer assurance of safety can be stymied by secrecy from raw material suppliers, Rossi said. “The company that puts their brand name on that product often doesn’t know what is being used as the alternative to PFAS,” he said. “They don’t know the alternative chemistries because, oftentimes, the [supplier] will claim it’s proprietary.”

The workaround offered by GreenScreen is a non-disclosure agreement with suppliers in exchange for complete accounting of intentionally added chemicals down to the parts per million level. If a raw-material supplier is unwilling to be fully transparent with GreenScreen about the original formulation, then the final product cannot be certified.

This impulse for privacy within the industry is so strong, in fact, that rollout of the new certification program was delayed for nearly a year by difficulties in gaining access to proprietary information, Rossi said. Clean Production Action and the Center for Environmental Health held off on formally launching the program until they were able to successfully usher a couple initialproducts all the way through the certification process.

Certified products 

The program is still in its early stages, but to date two materials have been certified. One is a line of molded-fiber plates, bowls, and clamshell packages certified Silver, from a company called Eco-Products that sells both business-to-business and direct to consumers. Eco-Products plans to add the GreenScreen logo to its packaging to advertise the certification, Director of Marketing Nicole Tariku told EHN.The other is a raw material: plastic beads from a company called NatureWorks made of plant-derived polylactic acid (PLA) that are used in the production of single-use plastics. These are certified Platinum, the program’s highest level, but any final product using the beads, such as a clear-plastic cup or a PLA-lined paper plate, will need to be screened and certified separately.Jane Muncke, managing director of the Zurich, Switzerland-based Food Packaging Forum, a nonprofit organization that performs and communicates science about food packaging and health, provided input for the new program during its development. “It’s good to raise awareness for hazardous chemicals in food-contact materials, and the certification helps with this,” she said.Muncke commends GreenScreen for excluding recycled paper, which is often loaded with harmful chemicals despite its appearance as a sustainable choice.But she is concerned by the program’s allowance of up to 100 parts per million for some unintentionally added chemicals, even at the Platinum level. “That is way too high in my opinion,” she said.

Confidentiality about chemical replacements  

After declining to bare all for Washington state’s program, Minneapolis-based NatureWorks worked with GreenScreen once the offer of a non-disclosure agreement was on the table, said lead applications engineer Nicole Whiteman. “The information needed in order to go through that toxicology evaluation required revealing a lot of confidential business information,” she told EHN. “A lot of the very minute ingredients, such as the catalyst for bringing together the polymerization, are closely held trade secrets, or confidential information to a company. And the beauty [with GreenScreen] is that we can have a fairly standard confidentiality agreement with the toxicology firm.”

NatureWorks can now market its plastic beads to consumer-facing manufacturers of disposable food-service products as certified safe according to the strictest standards available anywhere.

And even at the Silver level, the Eco-Products certification could serve the company well as it competes in the expanding global market for PFAS-free molded-fiber foodware, and as consumer and regulatory awareness of the issue continues to grow.
Tariku says GreenScreen’s assurances of privacy were key to the company’s ability to participate. When pressed by EHNto comment on the nature of its new formulation, even in general terms, she replied, “We can’t discuss details of the alternative material. That’s one reason why Eco-Products sought third-party certification through GreenScreen: to protect our innovative process while also being as transparent as feasible about the material.”Follow our PFAS testing project with Mamavationat the series landing page.Want to know more about PFAS? Check out our comprehensive guide.Have something you want tested for PFAS? Let us know and write us at feedback@ehn.org.Banner photo credit: Clair/UnsplashFrom Your Site ArticlesRelated Articles Around the Web

The environmental beat can be a real downer and we often focus on the problems—but there are signs of progress in our fight against climate change and pollution.
From renewable projects to plastic treaties, here are some dashes of hope for our planet.

Changing energy winds 

More than a decade ago the North American environmental movement threw much of its limited clout against a single project. The Keystone XL pipeline would expedite delivery of oil from Canada’s tarsands to U.S. refineries along the Gulf Coast and make Canada a petro-state.

Enter an army of writers, hellraisers, tribes, farmers, and lawyers who objected to the path, if not the very idea, of Keystone XL. President Biden finally stuck a fork in the project by revoking a crucial permit on his first day in office
Other oil and gas pipeline projects saw similar citizen uprisings. Expansion of the Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL) from North Dakota’s shale fields to southern Illinois prompted massive protests and allegations of violence perpetrated by police and DAPL-hired security guards. Plans for a pipeline from Alberta to Canada’s east coast were abandoned. Fuel pipeline proposals fell in Pennsylvania, Virginia, and elsewhere.

The nonprofit Investigate West recently looked at the billion-dollar potential for wind and solar jobs on tribal lands throughout the Western U.S.

In March, a U.S. government lease sale for offshore wind rights shattered records and expectations, drawing $4.37 billion in winning bids. Two major oil companies, European-based Total and Shell, were among the top bidders. U.S.-based oil giants were much less enthusiastic.

The Yellowstone’s of the sea

Last year Australia added to a global trend by declaring two massive new marine parks in the Indian Ocean. Surrounding the Cocos and Christmas Islands, the parks curtail commercial activities from other nations. Previous parks and reserves have been set by multiple nations in the Atlantic, Pacific, and Indian Oceans as well as the Southern Ocean encircling Antarctica.

Beacon of hope

The Empire State Building now runs completely on windpower (Not exactly. The realty trust that owns the building still buys its juice from the conventional grid, but it then buys the same amount from Green Mountain Energy’s clean energy program.)

Solar … in West Virginia?

Of course, the decline of Big Coal in the U.S. is at best a mixed bag without some economic hope in coal country. Last week in West Virginia, developers unveiled plans for the largest solar farm in the state in a sprawling former coalfield.

Ocean plastics

It’s an issue where despair prevails, but even here we can see a glimmer. In March, a United Nations conference mandated the creation of a global treaty on plastics pollution.

And more glimmers of hope

There are more issues—both problems and solutions—identified by scientists, activists, and others and brought to light by journalists like my colleagues here at EHN. Political challenges like environmental justice dot the global landscape, while environmental health phenomena break out of the lab and into our lives. Discoveries on the impacts of endocrine disruptors, “forever” chemicals like PFAS, and herbicides once thought benign like glyphosate may not be classic “good news” stories, but there’s plenty of good in these problems being brought to light. Had enough? I doubt it. EHN and Daily Climate have a free weekly Good News newsletter. Subscribe here. You’re welcome.Peter Dykstra is our weekend editor and columnist and can be reached at pdykstra@ehn.org or @pdykstra.His views do not necessarily represent those of Environmental Health News, The Daily Climate, or publisher Environmental Health Sciences.Banner photo credit: Andre Hunter/UnsplashFrom Your Site ArticlesRelated Articles Around the Web

Cleaning products are comprised of more than 90% water. So why are we buying new plastic hand soaps and cleaning sprays every time?
[Photo: Graham Pollack/courtesy Blueland]
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A small shoal of blue fish, seemingly flying through the air, has left walkers bemused on a North Wales beach. Perched on tall metal rods, they swivel and move with the wind. The 12 blue fish have appeared on the shoreline at Penmaenmawr, Conwy. Attached to a wooden sea defence groyn, they form a sculpture …

Continue reading “Strange 'flying' fish appear on North Wales beach”

“All spheres” of the Arctic, from seafloors to rivers to remote areas of ice and snow, are now littered with “high concentrations” of waste plastics, scientists have said – and the situation is worsening.Large quantities of plastic waste and microplastic particles are now being transported to the Arctic by oceans, rivers, shipping and air, according to the research team from the Alfred Wegener Institute (AWI) in Bremerhaven, Germany.The huge quantity of plastic entering the world’s oceans and eventually ending up in the most remote places not only directly impacts ecosystems, but it could also exacerbate the climate crisis in the Arctic, the scientists said.This is because dark-coloured plastic particles could absorb more heat than snow and ice, and any suspended microplastics in the air could cause condensation – which then may cause additional rain, melting ice and snow.The research team said the Arctic Ocean has become a major plastic repository. Despite making up one per cent of the total volume of the world’s oceans, it receives more than 10 per cent of the global discharge from the world’s rivers, which carry plastic into the ocean.Today, virtually all marine organisms investigated, from plankton to sperm whales, come into contact with plastic debris and microplastics. And this applies to all areas of the world’s oceans, from tropical beaches to the deepest oceanic trenches.“The Arctic is still assumed to be a largely untouched wilderness,” says AWI expert Dr Melanie Bergmann.“In our review, which we jointly conducted with colleagues from Norway, Canada and the Netherlands, we show that this perception no longer reflects the reality.“Our northernmost ecosystems are already particularly hard hit by climate change. This is now exacerbated by plastic pollution. And our own research has shown that the pollution continues to worsen.”The researchers said their findings “paint a grim picture”. Although the Arctic is sparsely populated, in virtually all habitats – from beaches and the water column, to the seafloor – it shows a similar level of plastic pollution as densely populated regions around the globe.As well as rivers flowing into the Arctic Ocean, the pollution also stems from ocean currents from the Atlantic and the North Sea, and from the North Pacific over the Bering Strait. Tiny microplastic particles are also carried northward by wind.The plastics are then caught and swirled around the top of the globe. When seawater off the coast of Siberia freezes in the autumn, suspended microplastics become trapped in the ice. The Transpolar Drift current then transports the ice floes to Fram Strait between Greenland and Svalbard, where it melts in the summer, releasing its plastic cargo.The scientists said some of the biggest local sources of pollution are municipal waste and wastewater from Arctic communities and plastic debris from ships, especially fishing vessels, whose nets and ropes pose a serious problem. Either intentionally dumped in the ocean or unintentionally lost, they account for a large share of the plastic debris in the European sector of the Arctic: on one beach on Svalbard, almost 100 per cent of the plastic mass washed ashore came from fisheries, according to an AWI study.“Unfortunately, there are very few studies on the effects of the plastic on marine organisms in the Arctic,” said Dr Bergmann.“But there is evidence that the consequences there are similar to those in better-studied regions: in the Arctic, too, many animals – polar bears, seals, reindeer and seabirds – become entangled in plastic and die.“In the Arctic, too, unintentionally ingested microplastics likely lead to reduced growth and reproduction, to physiological stress and inflammations in the tissues of marine animals, and even runs in the blood of humans.”Speaking about the potential feedback loop which plastic debris could cause, and thereby exacerbate the climate crisis, the team said research remains “particularly thin”.“Here, there is an urgent need for further research,” said Dr Bergmann.“Initial studies indicate that trapped microplastics change the characteristics of sea ice and snow.”As well as absorbing heat and altering precipitation, the researchers said throughout their lifecycle, plastics are currently responsible for 4.5 per cent of global greenhouse-gas emissions.“Our review shows that the levels of plastic pollution in the Arctic match those of other regions around the world. This concurs with model simulations that predict an additional accumulation zone in the Arctic,” said Dr Bergmann.“But the consequences might be even more serious. As climate change progresses, the Arctic is warming three times faster than the rest of the world. Consequently, the plastic flood is hitting ecosystems that are already seriously strained.“The resolution for a global plastic treaty, passed at the UN Environment Assembly this February, is an important first step. In the course of the negotiations over the next two years, effective, legally binding measures must be adopted, including reduction targets in plastic production.”The team also called on European countries to slash their levels of plastic waste, and called for stronger controls on fishing gear entering oceans.The research is published in the journal Nature Reviews Earth & Environment.

“Plastic pollution is very present in all spheres of the Arctic—no nice, white wilderness anymore.”
[Photos: Citizen of the Planet/Education Images/Universal Images Group/Getty Images, Nathan Yough/Unsplash]
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