Plastics plastics everywhere – and not at all good to eat

Physicians and public health officials this week renewed calls for policies that rid microplastics from our bodies and the environment, after new science confirmed the risks of plastic pollution to human health.


The new report, from Environment & Human Health, Inc., a nonprofit coalition of physicians and public health professionals, concludes no other pollutant is likely as abundant as microplastics or so widely distributed in the global environment.

They are found in fruits, vegetables, water, beer and even our salt.

All the people on the Earth

About 380 million tons of plastic are produced each year, a similar weight to all the people on Earth. An estimated 60% of that production gets landfilled, burned, or recycled. The rest – 152 million tons of plastic annually – ends up somewhere in the environment.

“Almost 500 scientific studies were reviewed in the writing of this report, and they show that each of us ingests and inhales millions of microscopic plastic particles each year,” said Gaboury Benoit, a professor of environmental chemistry at Yale University and report author.

“Microplastics carry chemical additives and coatings as well as potentially pathogenic microbes. Disturbingly, their impact on human health is not yet known.”

Plastics & BPA

Plastics recommendations

The report calls for sweeping policy initiatives that need to be enacted by international, federal, state, and city governments, as well as calling on corporations to better protect the public from harmful plastic and microplastic exposures. Among the recommendations:

  • Ban future permits for proposed plastic manufacturing plants.
  • Test municipal drinking water for microplastics and retrofit treatment to eliminate them in drinking water.
  • Expand the federal Microbead-Free Waters Act of 2015 to ban manufactured microbeads in all consumer products, not just cosmetics and over-the-counter pharmaceuticals.

“We need to stop plastic production at its source. This will take international agreements between nations, regulations in the United States at all levels of governments, and include the cooperation of industry and the efforts of individual citizens,” said Nancy Alderman, president of Environment and Human Health, Inc.

Read the full report here

Banner photo credit: Steve Depolo/Parley.tv

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Fish growth slowed by high temperatures and plastic chemical BPA, research shows

Fish growth slowed by high temperatures and plastic chemical BPA, research shows

Scientists at University of Sydney find that fish exposed to industrial chemical BPA in warmer waters need more food to reach a given size

A huge school of anchovies under the California oil rigs, Southern California.

Fish grow slower when exposed to higher temperatures and a common chemical in plastic, according to new research. It suggests that a combination of plastic pollution and global heating could have concerning impacts on marine populations.

Scientists at the University of Sydney have found that fish exposed to the industrial chemical bisphenol A – commonly known as BPA – require more energy to grow in high-temperature waters.

BPA is a common chemical used in plastics manufacturing and is known to disrupt hormone signalling, with impacts in marine animals on metabolism and growth. In humans, it has also been linked to reproductive and developmental dysfunction. Millions of tonnes of the compound are produced globally each year.

The researchers exposed zebrafish to a level of BPA commonly found in waterways.

They discovered that the chemical decreased the amount of energy the fish needed to grow at 24C, but hampered growth for those in 30C water – a temperature the animals would be likely to experience more often in their natural habitat under global heating.

The study’s corresponding author, Frank Seebacher, a professor of biology at the University of Sydney, said the finding urgently highlighted the need for both climate change mitigation and plastic waste reduction.

“The combination of high temperatures and BPA increases the energetic cost of growth – how much food animals have to eat to produce a given amount of biomass,” he said, adding the problem would be more pronounced for larger fish and predator species.

“Because there’s a trophic cascade … [higher up the food chain] you’d expect to find fewer and smaller animals,” he said. “There’s a potential problem for sustainability in catch rates, if that combination [of warming and BPA] results in reduced stock.”

Seebacher said BPA was released into the marine environment from manufacturing effluent as well as from plastics breaking down.

“Wherever you have lots of manufacturing plants, lots of plastic pollution, you will find reasonably high levels of BPA,” he said, estimating such concentrations to be four to five times higher than the level used in their study.

The researchers also modelled the risk of warming and plastic pollution in coastal areas in combination with current fishing intensity.

Their analysis predicted that south-east Asia had the highest risk of decreased fish biomass as a result of warming and pollution.

“Southern North America and northern South America [are also] going to be really affected,” Seebacher said.

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One limitation of their findings is that the team conducted the study in zebrafish, a small freshwater species commonly used as a model organism in scientific research.

Seebacher said he expected the findings to be similar in other fish species, although more research would be needed to determine this for certain.

“All the endocrine systems … are highly conserved amongst vertebrates, so it’s unlikely that you’d have a massive divergence among vertebrates in how they respond [to BPA], but the possibility exists and has to be verified,” he said.

The study was published in the peer-reviewed journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B.

Innovative sewage solutions: Tackling the global human waste problem

  • The scale of the world’s human waste problem is vast, impacting human health, coastal and terrestrial ecosystems, and even climate change. Solving the problem requires working with communities to develop solutions that suit them, providing access to adequate sanitation and adapting aging sewage systems to a rapidly changing world.
  • Decentralized and nature-based solutions are considered key to cleaning up urban wastewater issues and reducing pressure on, or providing affordable and effective alternatives to, centralized sewage systems.
  • Seeing sewage and wastewater — which both contain valuable nutrients and freshwater — as a resource rather than as pollutants, is vital to achieving a sustainable “circular economy.” Technology alone can only get us so far, say experts. If society is to fully embrace the suite of solutions required, a sweeping mindset change will be needed.

The sum of human waste produced by 7.8 billion people is grossly impacting human health and the environment, with wastewater adding around 6.2 million tons of nitrogen to coastal waters annually, along with unknown amounts of other pollutants ranging from pharmaceuticals to microplastics.

Sewage and wastewater pollution are so bad, in fact, that they’re contributing to the destabilization of Earth’s safe operating systems, negatively impacting at least five planetary boundaries — polluting freshwater, oceans and land with nutrient overloads and other contaminants; harming biodiversity; and even adding to climate change.

But while wastewater pollution is a dangerous multiheaded hydra, there are a plethora of technologies and innovations being tested and implemented to tackle the crisis. The good news: each local solution that works, and can then be scaled up globally, offers an opportunity to start backing away from not just one planetary boundary breach, but several.

Efforts are currently underway across the world not only to treat wastewater and offer adequate sanitation, but also to recover and reuse the valuable nutrients and freshwater we flush away daily as waste.

Untreated wastewater enters the ocean in Roatan, Honduras. Image by Antonio Busiello/Coral Reef Alliance.

Supporting communities, protecting ecosystems

About six in 10 people planetwide lack access to proper sanitation, according to USAID. In developing nations, where basic sanitation systems and waste treatment facilities are lacking, access to safe sanitation is a first vital step. Without such services, communities can be exposed to harmful bacteria and diseases, while ecosystems, such as coral reefs and seagrass meadows, can be overloaded with nitrogen and phosphorus nutrients, or threatened by toxic chemicals found in wastewater.

Many governmental organizations, including the United Nations and USAID, along with partner countries, are actively working to solve basic sanitation problems. The Coral Reef Alliance (CORAL) is just one example of an NGO catalyzing that effort. It supports communities, helping them find sanitation solutions that protect reefs. CORAL conservation director Helen Fox points to two such projects.

In Roatan, West End, Honduras, the NGO engaged local stakeholders and communities to make a moribund wastewater treatment facility operational. Since the site’s revival, pollution has been reduced and local beaches declared a blue flag area — safe for tourist use, providing obvious public health, business and economic benefits. A drop in disease occurred on coral reefs as well. Although not all this improvement is attributable to decreased waste pollution, it’s certainly a factor, says CORAL.

Similarly, in Puakō, on the Big Island of Hawai‘i, raw sewage presently seeps from community cesspools, aerobic treatment systems and septic systems into groundwater and flows directly into the ocean in as little as five hours after release — harming coral reefs and putting human health at risk. After several years of monitoring and discussion between CORAL, locals and government, $1.8 million in funding was approved in 2021 for the design of a wastewater treatment facility that could resolve the issue.

“I think it’s important to have the solutions be tailored to the problem,” Fox says. Doing so “can be a long process. But at the same time, there are examples of ecosystems bouncing back relatively quickly once that pollution threat is removed.”

A coral reef in Komodo, Indonesia. Protecting human health and ecosystems, including coral reefs and seagrass meadows, from wastewater pollution requires more open conversations about the issue and accepting what may sometimes seem like unpalatable solutions, say experts. Image by Beth Watson/Ocean Image Bank.
A staff member at the Polos Water Treatment Plant in Half Moon Bay in Roatan, Honduras. Pollution was significantly reduced there, resulting in benefits for locals and coral reefs. Image by Antonio Busiello/Coral Reef Alliance.

Aging infrastructure, climate risks

A popular misconception has it that inadequate waste treatment is mostly a developing world problem. But antiquated, aging sewage treatment systems that service many developed countries, including the U.S., U.K. and EU nations, face equally serious waste conundrums.

The most daunting problem arose due to a late 19th– and early 20th-century treatment system design flaw known as the combined sewage overflow (CSO). These citywide systems send waste and stormwater through the same pipes, which works fine until rain falls hard (an increasingly common occurrence due to climate change). Then the onrush of filthy water must bypass overwhelmed sewage treatment plants, sending thousands of liters of raw or partially treated sewage into rivers, lakes and oceans.

More than 102 million cubic meters (27 billion gallons) of raw sewage and polluted stormwater discharge out of 460 CSOs into New York Harbor each year, according to Riverkeeper, an NGO protecting the Hudson watershed. Add to that 860 U.S. municipalities — including urban centers like Chicago and St. Louis — where CSOs are a priority water pollution concern. The issue also looms large in the European Union and Great Britain, where CSOs are counted in the tens of thousands.

CSOs are a legacy wastewater headache that can cost many billions of dollars per municipality to fix — a financial burden most cash-strapped metropolises can’t afford. One expensive solution: construct deep tunnels, which expand sewer storage capacity and, in theory, allow time for water to be treated and disposed of properly during storm events. One such system, successfully implemented in Milwaukee, has a storage capacity of 2 million cubic meters (520 million gallons). But it came at a high cost: more than $5 billion.

Such large-scale investments can’t be relied on to eliminate sewage outflows completely, and can themselves be overwhelmed by increasingly frequent extreme weather. In Indiana, the $2 billion DigIndy tunnel system, currently under construction and expected to be completed in 2025, aims to reduce CSO releases by up to 97%. The project, however, was designed using rainfall figures from the 1990s. Fears are that the capacity of the new tunnel will be outstripped by increasing precipitation in the state over coming decades. Climate projections around the world warn of many more extreme precipitation events, with multiple inch totals falling in just hours.

Other solutions are clearly needed. Some more expensive options include improved wastewater flow monitoring, separating storm and sewage pipe systems from one another, and expanding treatment facilities. Rapid water treatment technologies are also being developed.

Experts agree: there’s no one CSO solution, but rather a host of actions that must be taken. “It’s a combination of green and gray infrastructure,” says Barry Liner, chief technical officer at the Water Environment Federation.

Increased precipitation, especially coming in sudden brief bursts, is a climate change-driven problem that is exacerbating CSO wastewater releases. Shown here is normal annual U.S. precipitation as a percent of the 20th-century average for each U.S. Climate Normals period from 1901-1930 (upper left) to 1991-2020 (lower right). Places where the normal annual precipitation was 12.5 percent or more below the 20th-century average are darkest brown; places where normal annual precipitation was 12.5 percent or more wetter than the 20th-century average are darkest green. Map by NOAA Climate.gov, based on analysis by Jared Rennie, North Carolina Institute for Climate Studies/NCEI.
Gorla Maggiore Water Park, Italy. This 6-hectare (15-acre) treatment wetland was constructed in 2014 on the site of an abandoned poplar plantation. It supports treatment of CSO wastewater, mitigates flood risks, and provides habitat. Image © IRIDRA.

Rethinking urban spaces: Thinking small

The human population is expected to reach 9.7 billion by 2050, with the number of people living in cities set to grow too, putting ever more pressure on sanitation systems. That, combined with the effects of climate change, make treating wastewater an escalating problem that threatens to overwhelm existing systems.

That’s why there’s an urgent need to rethink how cities are designed, says Aaron Tartakovsky, co-founder and CEO of Epic Cleantec. He calls sustainable water and wastewater management a “defining global challenge of the 21st century.”

As part of this new urban vision, Tartakovsky’s company has created a system that captures and treats water not at a centralized waste treatment plant, but at the buildings where waste originates. Once purified there, that water needn’t be disposed of; it is clean enough to be recycled for non-potable needs. Additionally, the process produces valuable natural fertilizers and heat energy — both of which can be used locally.

“Just as rooftop solar and distributed power generation helped to decentralize the electric grid, we believe that onsite water reuse can make water infrastructure more resilient,” Tartakovsky states. “We’re simply 10-15 years behind the energy folks.”

Green roofs are another nature-based solution, with possible benefits for treating domestic wastewater, and reducing pressure on conventional sewage systems.  Image courtesy of International Sustainable Solutions via Flickr (CC BY-NC 2.0).

Decentralized systems are necessary to solve the wastewater pollution issue globally, agrees Riccardo Zennaro, a wastewater expert with the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP).

“The problem with conventional systems, i.e., wastewater treatment, is that they are usually very expensive,” while being overly centralized and unable to deal with changing urban growth patterns. “In some areas, these [centralized systems] are not effective, and cannot be built because of circumstances and lack of financing,” he explains. “This is why going small is the most effective way.”

Harnessing nature-based solutions (NbS) to reimagine urban areas is considered a far more accessible and affordable option — especially for dealing with the pressing CSO problem. These techniques are defined by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature as “actions to protect, sustainably manage and restore natural or modified ecosystems that address societal challenges effectively and adaptively, simultaneously providing human well-being and biodiversity benefits.”

One NbS, green infrastructure, would revolutionize urban planning and design via constructed wetlands, neighborhood green spaces, rain gardens, roof gardens, bioswales, with the addition of rain barrels and cisterns, as well as permeable pavements to absorb, store and reuse stormwater flows.

Constructed wetlands, for example, are often “affordable, operable, and reliable,” says UNEP’s Zennaro, and can be operated at small or large scales, depending on need, and can be adapted to urban or rural environments.

These decentralized nature-based solutions can greatly reduce wastewater pollution, effectively removing pollutants including nitrogen and phosphorus, pathogens, and pesticides, and can complement existing treatment infrastructure. Other benefits, says Katharine Cross, a senior adviser at Water Cities, include flood mitigation, habitat and outdoor recreation creation, temperature regulation, and, in some cases, carbon sequestration.

A constructed wetland in Conover, North Carolina, U.S., designed to support treatment of stormwater runoff. Constructed wetlands typically consist of a soil or gravel base topped with plants to help absorb and filter wastewater from storm overflows or other sources. Image courtesy of NC Wetlands via Flickr (Public domain).
The release of nitrogen and phosphorus via wastewater and sewage is contributing to pressure on coastal ecosystems such as coral reefs and seagrass meadows. Here, algae grown on a vertical conveyor belt are used to strip nitrogen and phosphorus from wastewater, producing reusable fertilizer in the process. Image courtesy of Gross-Wen Technologies.

An example is the Chulalongkorn Centenary Park in Bangkok. This watery open space, constructed in 2017, can collect, treat and hold up to 3,780 cubic meters (1 million gallons) of water, alleviating overstressed public sewage facilities during heavy rainfall, according to the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change. Consisting of wetlands to filter and purify water, a retention pond and underground storage tanks, the park supports treatment, reduces flooding risk, and provides a green space for city dwellers.

Cross was part of a team that published a review last year examining NbS sites around the world. “What we wanted to do was put together something that was quite practical, that would allow different users, especially wastewater utility, and municipalities that often operate wastewater plants or wastewater schemes to understand what the options are for using nature-based solutions,” she said.

To aid planners, an online tool is being developed by the Catalan Institute for Water Research and the EU-funded MULTISOURCE project; it will allow practitioners to identify which NbS might work best in their localities, thus scaling up local NbS across many nations.

But even NbS solutions are not without their limitations for wastewater management. Depending on site and solution used, NbS can have only limited success removing contaminants such as heavy metals or antibiotic-resistant genes. Another, often forgotten fact: These installations, while nature-based technologies, still require regular funding for maintenance and upkeep, adds Cross. Careful planning must be built into every design; that includes consideration of NbS limits, what waste can and can’t be treated, and how various solutions fit into nation-specific regulatory requirements, she explains.

A report by UNEP on NbS implementation in the Caribbean region — where an estimated 85% of wastewater flows into the ocean untreated — outlines the extensive potential environmental and community protections offered by NbS solutions. But that document also highlights the scale of the challenge: “Increasing education and awareness, improving planning and design, investing more resources in scientific analysis and monitoring, enhancing legal and regulatory functions, and developing dedicated funding for water health will all be necessary for NbS projects to succeed.”

A retention pond in Chulalongkorn Centenary Park. The 4.6-hectare (11-acre) park was constructed to provide a green space in Bangkok, Thailand, reduce pressure on the city’s sewage treatment system, and reduce flood risk. Image by Supanut Arunoprayote via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 4.0).
A remote boat developed by the INTCATCH project. Equipped with onboard sensors, it can monitor water quality in real-time. This simple technology represents a new tool and a useful “incremental change” for monitoring wastewater pollution, helping to pinpoint source points. Image courtesy of INTCATCH.

Transforming our vision: From waste to resource

Experts say there’s only one way to truly deal sustainably with a pollution problem: Capture, transform and reuse all waste, turning it into a valuable resource. This vital 21st-century vision is encapsulated in the term “circular economy.”

Nitrogen and phosphorus, for example, are key resources contained within human waste. The amount of human excreta produced annually, now often polluting aquatic ecosystems, “has the potential to replace 25% of the nitrogen currently used to fertilize agricultural land in the form of synthetic fertilizers, and 15% of the phosphorus, along with enough water to irrigate 15% of all the currently irrigated farmland in the world,” says a UNEP report.

Solutions that strip nitrogen and phosphorus from wastewater currently exist, but they can be resource-intensive, energy-demanding and, in some cases, unsuitable for smaller treatment plants. Treatment plant upgrades could achieve important reductions, though more is needed.

Wastewater used for irrigation in Kanpur, India. Image by IWMI Flickr Photos via Flickr (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0).

A startup in the state of Iowa, U.S., has developed a Revolving Algal Biofilm system to not only remove nitrogen and phosphorus but enable wastewater reuse. Lateral conveyor belts, added to existing wastewater treatment plants, dip into wastewater. Algae living on those belts feed on the nutrients in the water. Once exposed to C02 and sunlight, the algae grow. “We’re then able to harvest the algae, process it, and sell it as a fertilizer,” says Max Gangestad, COO at Gross-Wen Technologies (GWT) the company promoting this innovation.

“So now we can keep that nitrogen [and] phosphorus in our ecosystem,” Gangestad continues. While the system cannot remove all nitrogen and phosphorus, he adds, it can reduce it to low levels. GWT hopes to use this low-impact technology to turn the algae grown by the system into other products such as bioplastics or biofuel.

Properly treated and cleansed water can be reused for many purposes, including as drinking water — already a reality for millions around the world. In Singapore, an estimated 40% of the potable and non-potable water needs of the country’s population of 5.7 million comes from recycled sources. Dubbed “NEWater,” that proportion is due to increase to 55% by 2060. Similar advanced treatment facilities operate across the U.S., providing recovered drinking water to many thousands of households — with more on the way. California’s Orange County Water District, for example, is implementing a groundwater replenishment system to provide low-cost drinking water for 1 million people by 2023.

Recovering resources at the household level for those with limited or no access to sanitation is also on the horizon. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has spent millions of dollars on its “reinventing the toilet” challenge to reimagine a system that can at once cleanse waste of human and environmental dangers, while also transforming human excreta into electricity, drinkable water, and fertilizers.

Ongoing Park Habitat project in San Jose, California. “[O]ur approach will be producing recycled water to irrigate 20 stories of living wall, as well as upcycling the wastewater organics into high quality soil products — diverting tens of thousands of pounds of methane-emitting organics from landfill,” says Aaron Tartakovsky, co-founder and CEO of Epic Cleantec. Image courtesy of Kengo Kuma and Associates/Westbank.

Talking waste

While solutions to wastewater and sewage pollution problems are many, several of the experts Mongabay interviewed agreed upon two points: Technology can only get us so far and changing public perception is crucial.

Aside from scatological humor, people typically avoid talking about bodily waste, and especially what happens to it once flushed. Overcoming this taboo with open discussion is vital to driving the societal change needed to solve the human waste problem, says Stephanie Wear, senior scientist and strategy adviser at The Nature Conservancy and co-founder of the Ocean Sewage Alliance.

“What I’ve learned from the work that we do is how much we forget to think about human behavior in all of this,” Wear says. “Behavior is as much a part of the solution as the technology. You have to get people to use it. You have to get people to want it.”

People are often more open-minded than expected, says Tartakovsky. “We have seen that the public is actually much more open to water reuse than the industry has historically believed.” For him, presenting the science well is crucial.

Despite the scope of the challenge, Wear and others are optimistic, believing things are moving in the right direction. Knowledge is increasing and innovations are being developed. Key to future progress are enhanced conversations and collaborations between the public and private sectors and other stakeholders, who must recognize both the human health and environmental impacts, and move cooperatively toward affordable solutions that can work at scale, she says.

“It’s never gonna get solved unless we start talking about things that make us a little squeamish. Maybe it’s a bit embarrassing,” Wear concludes. “But if we don’t talk about it, we can’t solve this problem.”

Ashbridges Bay wastewater treatment plant in Toronto, Canada. Image by Timothy Neesam via Flickr (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0).

Banner image illustration by Maria Angeles Salazar/Mongabay.

Citations:

Wiegner, T. N., Colbert, S. L., Abaya, L. M., Panelo, J., Remple, K., & Nelson, C. E. (2021). Identifying locations of sewage pollution within a Hawaiian watershed for coastal water quality management actions. Journal of Hydrology: Regional Studies38, 100947. doi:10.1016/j.ejrh.2021.100947

Sengupta, S., Nawaz, T., & Beaudry, J. (2015). Nitrogen and phosphorus recovery from wastewater. Current Pollution Reports1(3), 155-166. doi:10.1007/s40726-015-0013-1

Bunce, J. T., Ndam, E., Ofiteru, I. D., Moore, A., & Graham, D. W. (2018). A review of phosphorus removal technologies and their applicability to small-scale domestic wastewater treatment systems. Frontiers in Environmental Science6. doi:10.3389/fenvs.2018.00008

Zhao, X., Kumar, K., Gross, M. A., Kunetz, T. E., & Wen, Z. (2018). Evaluation of revolving algae biofilm reactors for nutrients and metals removal from sludge thickening supernatant in a municipal wastewater treatment facility. Water Research143, 467-478. doi:10.1016/j.watres.2018.07.001

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How did nanoplastics end up at the North and South Pole?

For the first time researchers have identified the presence of tiny polluting plastic particles at both of the world’s polar regions.

Microplastics have previously been found in Arctic ice samples, but “it turns out there’s an even smaller and more toxic form of plastic pollution infiltrating remote reaches of the globe”, said Eco Watch.  

Nanoplastics have often “escaped attention” from research into polar plastic pollution, said a team from Utrecht University in their paper, published in the Environmental Research journal. Nanoparticles are invisible to the naked eye, and can’t be detected through standard scientific sampling and measuring processes.

Instead studies have generally focused on microplastics, which measure between one micrometre and five millimetres and are known to cause a number of environmental problems and disrupt marine ecosystems. Nanoparticles, which are often the byproduct of microplastics breaking down in natural environments, measure less than one micrometre in size. 

The research team analysed samples from the Earth’s most remote regions, the Greenland ice core and the Antarctica sea ice core. They identified six types of plastic nanoparticles present in the first, including dust from tyre wear, and three in the second. The volume of particles found indicates “that the tiny particles are now pervasive around the world”, said The Guardian.

Polyethylene was the most common particle found in the samples, accounting for more than half the total particles analysed. It is one of the most commonly used plastic materials in the world, and is used to manufacture household items including bin bags, plastic films and bottles. 

“Nanoplastics is really a bigger pollution problem than we thought,” said Dusan Materic, who led the project. The data also suggests that this “is not a new problem”. The Greenland core contained nanoplastics that indicated this type of pollution had been “happening all the way from the 1960s. So organisms in that region, and likely all over the world, have been exposed to it for quite some time now,” he exaplined.

It is generally understood that nanoparticles are easily carried long distances by the wind due to their light weight. The researchers concluded that the nanoplastics likely reached the North and South Pole regions through a “combination of complex processes including both atmospheric and marine transport, (re)emission, deposition and ice incorporation”. They concluded that the particles likely reached Greenland through the air, and Antarctica through ocean currents.

“Plastics are part of the cocktail of chemical pollution that pervades the planet,” said The Guardian. A study published by scientists at the Stockholm Resilience Centre last week said that the level of synthetic chemicals in the Earth’s ecosystems has now exceeded the planetary boundary for environmental pollutants.

And nanoparticles could come with serious health risks too. Pollution expert Dr Fay Couceiro told The Guardian: “Aside from the environmental damage caused by plastics, there is growing concern about what inhaling and ingesting microplastics is doing to our bodies.” 

Though research into the specific risks of nanoparticles is ongoing, they are known to be toxic to both marine organisms and humans. “Nanoplastics are very toxicologically active compared to, for instance, microplastics, and that’s why this is very important,” said Materic. 

We’re eating plastic, people!

More news to file in the great book of They Saw It Coming But Did Nothing this week.

The Environmental Investigation Agency (EIA) reported that the world must enact a binding treaty to curb the use of plastics. According to the international NGO, plastics waste is almost as big a threat to the planet as climate change. The average person is said to consume about a credit card worth of plastic every year.

Mmmmm, tasty.

How does this happen? Turns out that plastics never really break down. They just become smaller, so small that microplastics have spread into every part of our world. Microplastics are in Arctic snow, they’re in the food we eat and the air we breath. Even if you’re buying the expensive organic stuff, you can’t escape microplastics – we created so much plastic that it’s everywhere now. Like it or not.

The amount of plastics people consume is higher depending on what they consume. For instance, people drinking bottled water (ie, water out of plastic bottles, not rich people drinking their bottled water out of actual glass bottles) have more plastic in their system than those that drink tap water.

And babies are said to consume many times more plastic due to drinking out of plastic baby bottles. Their plastics intake is particularly high because cleaning the plastic bottles at a high heat, as many concerned parents do to sterilise them, degrades the plastic allowing it to flake off into babies’ milk.

Tasty for baby.

Of course, the rest of the planet isn’t better off with all this plastic either. Animals are frequently found dead after accidentally consuming plastics, and recently 20 elephants in Thailand died after eating plastics from a rubbish dump.

The EIA estimates that by 2040, the weight of plastics in the ocean could be greater than the weight of fish. That’s a little disconcerting.

The EIA and other experts agree that some kind of binding global agreement to limit the use and production of plastics is needed. Supposedly, 100 countries support such an agreement and it will be brought up at the United Nations Environmental Assembly in February and March.

Reducing the amount of plastics being made is the only solution.

Of course, the champions of plastics, namely the companies that produce the stuff, are saying otherwise. BBC News quoted the British Plastics Federation: “Plastic is a lightweight, safe, and energy-efficient material, and simply replacing it with alternatives can often have negative environmental consequences as well as ramifications for health and safety.

“The unfortunate scenes of plastic waste washing up in oceans around the world are a direct result of improperly managed plastic waste.”

Improperly managed plastics waste? That means we should recycle right? Yeah, in theory.

The important thing to remember about recycling is that it’s still an expensive process, more expensive than just producing “virgin” plastic. Until recycling is ramped up to a scale where it becomes more economically feasible, or taxes are enacted on new plastics, the current recycling infrastructure is inadequate to handle the amount of plastics being produced.

Contrary to what the plastics hypebeast wants people to think, there is no way to recycle our way out of this.

But the plastics people are right about one thing. Plastic is a very useful material. Lightweight, water-proof, doesn’t biodegrade (both its blessing and curse), and is necessary in certain industries. The medical industry comes to mind.

Plastics are very useful. But we have to start limiting our overuse of it. Go to the supermarket and count how many plastic containers there are. Go to a kid’s toy store and everything is plastic. We need to make sure plastic is only used in the industries where it is absolutely needed. And a binding international agreement could make that happen.

But will this binding agreement get signed and actually limit plastics production? If previous agreements on climate change are any indicator, nope, nothing concrete will come of this. Maybe an agreement will be signed that acknowledges plastics are a problem and we’ll take another look in a decade. That seems to be how we (don’t) make progress. Yeah, I’m cynical.

Is it time to panic?

Yeah, maybe a little.

Studies show when animals consumed too much plastic, their organs eventually shut down, which clearly isn’t optimal for life, and you can picture how that goes. In humans, we’ve had plastic around for a while, and people aren’t dropping dead. Yet.

That’s not to say we can’t get to a level of microplastics in our world where it becomes a major human health issue. Or it might be one already and we just haven’t figured it out yet.

In any case, look for us to do nothing about plastics until they’re literally killing us. That seems to be the way humans work.


Big Smile, No Teeth columnist Jason Godfrey – a model who once was told to give the camera a ‘big smile, no teeth’ – has worked internationally for two decades in fashion and continues to work in dramas, documentaries, and lifestyle programming. Write to him at lifestyle@thestar.com.my and check out his stuff at jasongodfrey.co. The views expressed here are entirely the writer’s own.

Environmental justice concerns loom over Kanawha County ethylene oxide cancer risk reassessment

“Are you saying that the DEP doesn’t understand what environmental justice is?”

The question came from West Virginia Environmental Council President Linda Frame.

It came after the Department of Environmental Protection representative on the Zoom call said the department needed more federal guidance on dealing with environmental justice concerns.

All the participants in last month’s council-hosted online town hall with department members to let them bring concerns to the agency’s attention knew what environmental justice is not.

It’s not Institute.

The historically Black community has long been what NAACP Charleston branch Environmental and Climate Justice Committee chair and former DEP environmental advocate Pam Nixon has called an “environmental sacrifice zone.”

Chemical facilities like those operated by Union Carbide Corp., Bayer CropScience and US Methanol as well as sites like the nearby Dunbar treatment plant and asphalt-producing company West Virginia Paving have exposed the area to adverse impacts.

A plant was built in Institute during World War II for the federal government to produce butadiene and styrene, which are used to produce synthetic rubber. Union Carbide bought the plant in 1947 to produce other chemicals.

By the 1970s, the plant was a “major source of air pollutants” and “major generator of hazardous wastes,” according to a 1984 U.S. Environmental Protection Agency overview of Kanawha Valley environmental pollution.

The agency reported that monitoring wells onsite had detected significant groundwater contamination, exceeding drinking water standards. Union Carbide had told the EPA that it had buried a wide variety of chemical wastes at the site from 1950 to 1970.

In August 1985, an accidental release of aldicarb oxime from the Institute plant sent at least 135 people to the hospital — eight months after a leak of methyl isocyanate from a Union Carbide pesticide plant in Bhopal, India, killed thousands and caused permanent disabilities or premature death for many thousands more.

In August 2008, an explosion at the plant then owned by Bayer CropScience left two dead and eight treated for possible chemical exposure.

And in 2018, the EPA released its latest National Air Toxics Assessment, finding that six of the 90 census tracts with the highest cancer risk from the flammable, colorless gas ethylene oxide were in Kanawha County.



Bayer CropScience explosion 2008

Flames shot 50 to 100 feet into the air at the Bayer Plant in Institute as explosions rocketed the valley in 2008.




It was the first such assessment since the EPA reclassified ethylene oxide as a carcinogen in 2016, causing risk estimates to go up.

The total cancer risk in Kanawha was 366 in 1 million, 10th-highest in the country, and made up largely of the risk from ethylene oxide that composed much of the risk for most tracts across the country.

Located along W.Va. 25 near West Virginia State University, the Institute facility released 9,164 pounds of ethylene oxide from 2015 through 2019, according to EPA data. That was more than most of the 25 high-priority facilities where the agency has estimated emissions significantly contribute to elevated estimated cancer risk.

Union Carbide in 2018 transferred permitting in Institute to Specialty Products US, LLC, a subsidiary of International Flavors & Fragrances, Inc., meaning Specialty Products now operates an ethylene oxide process there that had been run by Union Carbide.

Ethylene oxide has been a raw material at the Institute plant dating back to at least the 1970s, according to the EPA’s 1984 Kanawha Valley environmental pollution overview.

“What specific steps has the DEP taken related to the state focusing on the EJ [environmental justice] implications of having this ethylene oxide issue that is centered partially around a chemical plant in Institute, a majority Black community that is home to a historically Black university?” Frame asked DEP Environmental Advocate Ed Maguire, reading another question from a town hall participant.

Maguire responded by shifting focus to the EPA.

The EPA, Maguire said, had wanted the DEP to provide environmental justice training for all staff, prompting the latter agency to ask the former for a training program.

“They never responded,” Maguire said. “ … It’s almost like they don’t want to interject EPA’s view. They want us to develop it on our own.”



wvsu1 (copy)

The West Virginia State University campus in Institute.




EPA Region 3 Regional Administrator Adam Ortiz deferred comment on staff environmental justice training to state agencies but added that the EPA is willing to provide training.

“We have a lot of folks that are willing to come out and train anybody to help us achieve our environmental goals,” Ortiz said.

Asked by Frame whether the DEP had an environmental justice policy to ensure that communities of color aren’t bearing disproportionate levels of pollution, Maguire acknowledged that the agency did not.

The department has an acting environmental justice coordinator that monitors EPA guidance but no new policy or statutory authority to deny permits based on environmental justice concerns, Maguire said.

“We look forward to the opportunity to do that when we’re provided all the resources necessary to be incorporated in it,” Maguire said of having a state environmental justice policy.

Nixon, a former Institute resident who now lives in South Charleston, responded by pointing out that the DEP had published an environmental equity policy drafted at her request in 2003 pledging to ensure that no segment of the population, regardless of racial or economic makeup, bears “a disproportionate share of the risks and consequences of environmental pollution or be denied equal access to environmental benefits.”

“It needs to be updated because it really has no teeth to it,” Nixon said.



For environmental equity

Pam Nixon stands on the deck of her South Charleston home. A longtime advocate of chemical safety and clean air, Nixon wants a Kanawha County-focused cancer risk reassessment that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection are working on to result in greater air emissions regulations and not just a new set of numbers. Nixon also wants the DEP to come up with an updated, strengthened environmental equity policy.




DEP acting spokesman Terry Fletcher said the policy is no longer in effect because its terms are already included in agency permitting and enforcement. Fletcher noted the 2003 policy stated it did not affect regulatory requirements and that the DEP has never had the authority to permit or enforce regulations based on a community’s racial or economic makeup.

The EPA defines environmental justice as “fair treatment and meaningful involvement of all people regardless of race, color, national origin, or income, with respect to the development, implementation, and enforcement of environmental laws, regulations, and policies.”

The Biden administration has emphasized environmental justice, setting a goal of delivering at least 40% of the overall benefits from federal investments in climate and clean energy to disadvantaged communities.

But Maguire’s comments characterizing the DEP as powerless to statutorily enforce environmental justice and the EPA short on guidance suggest a long road ahead for resolving the latest environmental justice concerns for Institute over ethylene oxide.

Meanwhile, state and federal regulators are playing catchup in educating the public about the health risks from the chemical in their communities.

“[W]e know that the violations are out there on many levels,” Nyoka Baker Chapman of the League of Women Voters of West Virginia Natural Resources Committee told Maguire. “And in order for enforcement with environmental justice for communities on all different kinds of levels, you have to have teeth to be able to get the job done.”

A sampling plan

The 2018 National Air Toxics Assessment based on 2014 data indicating Kanawha County’s high total cancer risk driven by ethylene oxide emissions hasn’t been the final word.

The DEP subsequently asked the EPA for help getting localized data, suspecting the assessment overestimated the cancer risk at the Union Carbide facilities.

In 2019, the DEP got what Fletcher said were the most recent and accurate emissions data from the sites so regulators could perform their own dispersion modeling and get a more precise view of potential risks and minimization strategies.

A May EPA document the Gazette-Mail obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request said state air dispersion modeling showed “the risk for populated areas remain high.”

Records the Gazette-Mail additionally obtained from the state Department of Health and Human Resources and the EPA turned up analysis of cancer data that found an area of elevated ethylene oxide-related cancers downwind of the Union Carbide sites but cautioned the data were inconclusive.

A cloud of uncertainty hangs over the issue partly because environmental regulators chose not to hold public meetings on the subject until now. A March 2020 EPA Office of Inspector General report urged the agency to inform people who live near facilities with significant emissions about their elevated estimated cancer risks.

The report noted agency plans for potential outreach in the first half of 2020. The EPA delayed those efforts as regulators decided to gather and model additional information instead.

EPA officials agreed to provide quarterly updates to Nixon and others on ethylene oxide cancer risk assessment in Kanawha County, but she said that didn’t happen.

A DEP webpage published in August explains the flammable, colorless gas is used to make antifreeze, detergents and plastics and sterilize medical and dental equipment. Long-term exposure has been associated with increases in female breast and white blood cell cancers, including leukemia, Hodgkin’s and non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma. Short-term exposure to high concentrations of ethylene oxide can cause nausea, fatigue, respiratory irritation and vomiting.

An analysis of Cancer Registry data that state epidemiologist Steven Blankenship shared with health officials showed elevated ethylene oxide-related cancers downwind of the Union Carbide facilities, according to internal documents obtained by the Gazette-Mail.

The analysis was based on a review of cancer data from 1993 — the first year of West Virginia Cancer Registry operations — to 2019.

Blankenship presented a map showing a cluster of census tracts east of the area of release with higher rates of ethylene oxide-related cancers. He also compared the percentage of cases by primary site by ZIP code for the areas of concern to the remainder of Kanawha County and found nothing stood out in the target area. But Blankenship said major flaws with that approach could skew the results.

“The point is that any estimate used will be wrong, and there is no way of knowing by how much,” Blankenship wrote. “The reliability of any rates calculated at the census tract level for these data cannot be defended.”

It was impossible to attribute those cancer clusters east of the area of release to ethylene oxide exposure, Blankenship concluded, citing potential exposures from sources known to exist in an area he acknowledged was “well-known as ‘Chemical Valley.’”

Nevertheless, Blankenship observed it was reasonable to expect people onsite could be the most vulnerable.

Blankenship recommended contacting the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, which he wrote in a November 2019 email to former state health officer Cathy Slemp “might be willing to investigate cancer incidence among daily onsite workers likely to have relatively high levels of exposure.”

“Occupational study would definitely be a more direct way to look at exposure,” Slemp replied in an email.

State Health and Human Services spokeswoman Jessica Holstein has said the agency is not aware of any such study having been conducted.

Kyle Bandlow, spokesman for Union Carbide parent company Dow Chemical, has declined to comment on whether the company would welcome another workplace study. He said in an emailed statement that safety is Union Carbide’s top priority and that the company follows OSHA and other regulatory guidelines to protect employees and communities.

Using 2017 modeling, the EPA estimated the potential increased cancer risk from breathing ethylene oxide released from another Union Carbide facility along MacCorkle Avenue Southwest in South Charleston to be 807 cases in 1 million, the Institute Union Carbide facility to be 379 in 1 million and a Covestro facility in South Charleston to be 185 cases in 1 million.

In November, the EPA approved a field air sampling plan for the DEP’s Division of Air Quality to assess atmospheric concentrations in fenceline, onsite and offsite locations near facilities with known ethylene oxide air emissions in Institute and South Charleston.

Sampling will be conducted using summa canister samplers. Each sample will be collected over a 24-hour period, with sampling taking place over a roughly three-month span, according to the plan.

Four sets of canister samplers will be placed around each area as well as a background site location.

The Division of Air Quality will review the results to determine ethylene oxide presence and conduct short-term air dispersion modeling, with the EPA providing funding for lab analyses and advisory help.

Union Carbide, Specialty Products and Covestro will provide sampling location access and operational and emissions data for sampling days. Sampling will take place when the most ethylene oxide-emitting processes are in operation at the facilities.

The canisters will be situated at approximate breathing height — 5 to 6 feet from the ground — as much as possible.

Final results and their public release are anticipated in May or June, Maguire said during the Dec. 7 town hall, admitting that citizens “may not be thrilled” with that timetable.

State environmental regulators are planning on holding an in-person open house in late March or early April at which members of the public could raise ethylene oxide concerns with Division of Air Quality and EPA staff one-on-one.

Maguire contended that while DEP public meetings conducted virtually have been useful in facilitating participation from residents across the state and will continue, an in-person event would allow agency officials to better gauge public reaction.

Maguire demurred in response to a participant’s request to provide information to all attendees at the planned spring meeting at the same time rather than in stations designed for small groups.

“There’s a value in having small groups,” Maguire said. “ … A little bit of intimacy is part of the reasons for having it that way. But we’ll see.”

The EPA and DEP fielded questions from Kanawha County residents and public officials with health and regulatory concerns about ethylene oxide emissions in Institute and South Charleston during a Zoom teleconference meeting they hosted in September. The meeting attracted more than 175 attendees and marked the agencies’ first local public meeting on ethylene oxide.

‘Subjectivity is not helpful’

During the town hall, Maguire recalled a November meeting with water regulators in states comprising EPA Region 3 (West Virginia, Delaware, District of Columbia, Maryland, Pennsylvania and Virginia) at which an EPA official said that the feds didn’t want to “give anyone a script about how to address environmental justice” and were looking to the states to develop an environmental justice approach.

“Well, it’s going to be different in Texas than it is in Minnesota and it is in West Virginia,” Maguire said. “ … [A] lot of this stuff becomes subjective. If you’re in the regulatory business, subjectivity is not helpful.”

The EPA has demonstrated it “hasn’t quite figured it out yet” regarding its environmental justice approach, Maguire said.

Ortiz acknowledged that environmental justice “covers a lot of ground” but said the Biden administration is performing data-based assessments of human health impacts, demographic information and environmental stressors to determine communities’ environmental distress levels.

Ortiz recalled speaking with DEP Secretary Harold Ward and state Department of Health and Human Resources Secretary Bill Crouch about immediate environmental justice issues and having a closer partnership toward identifying the most impacted communities.

Those environmental justice issues included ethylene oxide impacts in Institute and South Charleston. Ortiz said, emphasizing adequate drinking water testing, lead line replacements and data collaboration.

“Sometimes it’s not an enforcement action, but rather it’s technical assistance or education or funding to help make a change of some kind,” Ortiz said.

Ortiz said that the EPA plans to make public a list of environmentally distressed communities and an analysis of the issues they face this spring after confirming that agency data matches up with what state regulators have observed locally.

Ortiz touted the importance of federal, state and local officials to address findings in EJSCREEN, the EPA’s environmental justice screening and mapping tool that can identify demographic and environmental conditions within a certain distance of an industrial facility.

Maguire sees great potential for West Virginia to benefit from the Biden administration’s focus on environmental justice.

Given West Virginia’s chronically high poverty levels, the White House’s goal of delivering 40% of the overall benefits of relevant federal investments to disadvantaged communities would especially benefit the state, Maguire said.

“That’s how we sell this to our Legislature and anybody else when they have a problem endorsing this concept,” Maguire said.

Not living in a silo

Frame said after the town hall that it’s time for the DEP to review and update its nearly 20-year-old environmental equity policy with input from citizens and leaders from impacted communities.

Of particular concern, Frame said, is the water and air quality surrounding the Kanawha Valley’s chemical plants located near communities of color and low-income neighborhoods.

“We need legislation in West Virginia, we need the introduction of House bills that are going to be supporting climate justice policies and laws that they can enforce,” Chapman said.

But the first week and a half of the 2022 state legislative session has resulted in the advancement of bills favorable to energy industries, not measures focused on environmental justice.

State lawmaker committees have pushed forward bills that would lift restrictions on nuclear power development, allow restricting state banking contracts with financial institutions that divest from fossil fuel companies and create a mining mutual insurance company with $50 million of state funds that critics say amounts to a coal industry bailout destined to lose taxpayer dollars amid the energy transition away from coal.

Those seeking environmental justice in Union Carbide’s shadow are looking for justice through the courts as well.

Two federal class-action lawsuits filed by Kanawha County residents against Union Carbide in 2019 touted the EPA’s air toxics assessment finding elevated cancer risks from ethylene oxide, alleging the company’s ethylene oxide emissions exposed residents in Institute and South Charleston to hazardous levels of the chemical for decades.

The still-unresolved lawsuits contend the pollution prompted residents to turn to medical monitoring to mitigate increased cancer risk.

The plaintiffs in those cases have sought any medical surveillance programs Union Carbide has considered or implemented for employees exposed to ethylene oxide at Union Carbide’s West Virginia operations since 1970, including whether such programs were used for any risk assessments or epidemiological investigations. They have also sought all enforcement actions taken by and communications with state or federal regulators regarding ethylene oxide at the Institute and South Charleston sites.

Union Carbide has fought those requests, calling them “overbroad, unduly burdensome, and not proportional to the needs of the case” in a court filing last month.

“Safety and integrity are at the core of Union Carbide’s operations and we remain dedicated to reducing ethylene oxide emissions to a level that meets or out-performs EPA regulations and our own aggressive company sustainability goals,” Union Carbide said in an emailed statement. “We take, and have always taken, emissions seriously and believe it is important that measurement and modeling techniques are subject to ongoing development and improvement over time.”

There have been no Clean Air Act violations identified at Union Carbide’s Institute or South Charleston plants since at least April 2019, according to EPA data.

But the facilities have emitted more than 868,000 pounds of ethylene oxide since 1987.



Environmental justice concerns

Chemical facilities in Institute have raised lingering environmental justice concerns that state and federal environmental regulators have struggled to assuage.  




Kathy Ferguson, an Institute area resident, said at the EPA and DEP joint public meeting in September on ethylene oxide in Kanawha County that uncertainty over cancer risks from the chemical made it feel like she and neighbors are being treated like guinea pigs.

“I feel like we’re talking about ethylene oxide sort of in a silo,” Ferguson said, alluding to the 1985 leak from Union Carbide’s Institute plant and other chemical incidents in the Kanawha Valley. “It’s the chemical de jour … [T]o look at ethylene oxide and say, ‘Well, there’s this amount of cancer risk,’ add that to the other exposures. Add that to the other chemicals that are in the air.”

Looking for a new normal

Opponents of a proposal to build a 1,275-megawatt natural gas-fired power plant in Monongalia County that the Division of Air Quality earlier this month approved an air quality permit for cited environmental justice concerns with the project.

Longview Power’s Mountain State Clean Energy LLC was looking to build the facility north of the Longview coal-fired plant in Maidsville.

Mon Valley Clean Air Coalition coordinator and Morgantown resident Duane Nichols argued in written comments to state environmental regulators and at an October public hearing on the permit that it would be environmentally unjust for the plant to be located near West Virginia University medical facilities, University High School, health centers and other public sites of importance.

Nichols said greenhouse gas emissions from the planned plant would add to long-term exposure for area students, patients in medical treatment and older residents in care facilities, exacerbating an environmental justice issue he contends already exists with Longview Power’s 700-megawatt coal-fired plant and FirstEnergy’s 1,107-megawatt coal-fired Fort Martin Power Station nearby.

Those two plants emitted a combined 11,720,168 tons of carbon dioxide in 2019, resulting in health impacts that included 82 deaths and 4,173 lost work days, according to a Clean Air Task Force analysis of state data derived from a federal screening model.

The permit allows annual carbon dioxide equivalent emissions of 2,227,260 tons per year for each emission point for a Mitsubishi Hibachi Power Series M501JAC combustion turbine and 2,563,571 tons per year for a General Electric 7HA.03 combustion turbine.

“We believe that this proposed project with the numerous issues that offend the public interest should be set aside for a detailed environmental justice analysis,” Nichols and other project opponents wrote in public comments filed with the DEP on the permit application.

The Division of Air Quality responded in a written comment by applying the EPA’s environmental justice screening tool to Mountain State Clean Energy’s proposed facility location.

The area’s low-income population was greater than 72% of the rest of the state, while its population with less than a high school education ranked in the 75th percentile and its population over age 64 in the 62nd percentile.

Despite the relatively high rankings, the Division of Air Quality wrote that the results didn’t warrant further review.

“For now, there will not be a ‘new normal’ for Monongalia County and the surrounding region,” Nichols said in an email.

Those who lament Institute’s history of disproportionate environmental burdens also hope to turn the page toward a new normal. In the meantime, the people behind the percentiles in Institute and South Charleston residents wait on the DEP and EPA for more information — and regulatory relief.

“It is beyond time to provide community-based public education from state leadership to inform residents of the health hazards they are exposed to and for the DEP to act immediately to reduce those hazards,” Frame said.

Ineos faces legal challenge over plans for plastics plant in Antwerp

Ineos faces legal challenge over plans for plastics plant in Antwerp

Project does not meet EU’s requirement for environmental impact assessment, NGOs say

Jim Ratcliffe, owner of Ineos

British petrochemicals company Ineos is facing a legal challenge over plans to build a giant plastics plant in Antwerp.

Environmental law firm ClientEarth on Friday launched an appeal against Antwerp’s decision to grant Ineos a permit to build a chemicals installation to make ethylene from fracked US shale gas, the Guardian has learned.

Ineos’ billionaire owner, Sir Jim Ratcliffe, announced a €3bn investment in Antwerp in January 2019 at a signing ceremony with top Flemish politicians. “We’ll become stronger in Europe as a petrochemicals player,” said the businessman, an ardent Brexit supporter, who lives in tax-free Monaco.

Acting for 13 green NGOs, including Greenpeace and WWF, ClientEarth said the project has not met the EU legal requirement of a full assessment of the impact on the environment, including greenhouse gas emissions and wildlife.

“We already have more plastics than we need,” said ClientEarth lawyer Tatiana Luján. “Beyond the local effects on nature and health [Ineos] project one would cause, we cannot ignore that the basis of this project is fossil fuels, and they’ll be used to create the building blocks of plastics.”

The NGOs say the project will fuel the production of single-use plastics, thus failing to match the requirements of EU waste reduction strategies and climate commitments. Antwerp authorities, which granted the permit last December, are also accused of having failed to consider the plant’s lifetime greenhouse gas emissions, as well as the damage nitrogen pollution would wreak on local wildlife.

Separately, the Dutch province of Zeeland announced earlier this month it would appeal Antwerp’s decision, arguing that “no appropriate assessment has been made” of the impact of increased nitrogen on its nature reserves.

Flanders is already suffering from excess nitrogen, a result of intensive farming and industry, according to local NGOs. Across the north-western Belgian region, nitrogen emissions have turned purple heather into straw, clear water into brown sludge and accelerated the disappearance of flowers, bees and butterflies.

Ineos says the ethylene “cracker” is the largest petrochemicals investment in Europe for a generation and will create 450 jobs on site and up to 2,250 in other companies. Construction is scheduled to begin later this year at the port of Antwerp, where the company has its roots.

Using intense heat and pressure, the installation “cracks” the bonds in ethane gas to create ethylene, which can then be turned into polyethylene, used to make packaging and plastic bottles.

Ineos disputes the claim the cracker will fuel single-use plastics, highlighting that ethylene can also be used to make water and gas pipes, healthcare products, lighter cars and blades for wind turbines.

It also claims that ethylene buyers could save 2m tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions a year by buying from its plant, rather than older rivals.

The NGOs are unconvinced. “Maybe this plant will be more carbon efficient than other crackers that we have,” Luján said. “But crackers have a lifetime. If you create a new one you lock in the extraction of fuels and the production of plastics for another 30 years, when what we should be doing is scaling down on our use and production of petrochemicals for plastics.”

The EU has pledged to phase out some single-use plastics, including cutlery, cotton buds, straws and stirrers, but campaigners fear a tide of cheap fracked US shale gas will create a new boom in plastics.

Others say anti-plastics regulation could mean the industry over-expands, leaving taxpayers on the hook as expensive installations are no longer needed and become stranded assets.

“One of our biggest fears is that we not only use Flemish taxpayer money to guarantee an economic activity, which is such an ecologically bad thing to do right now, but that we will be linked to an economic activity that is not as economically viable as first thought,” said Frank Vanaerschot of FairFin, one of the NGOs backing the case.

The Flemish region enticed Ineos to build the cracker with a government guarantee worth €250m-€500m (£209m-£418m) according to local media, although that was before the project was scaled back.

Last year Ineos announced it was putting on hold plans to produce propylene at Antwerp, another raw material used to make plastics.

Vanaerschot fears the plant creates perverse incentives for Belgium, which is not on track to meet its 2030 climate targets. “There will be a conflict of interest between having strong ecological regulations – which we really need – and the economic interests of this company.”

Ineos has been contacted for comment. When the permit was granted in December, the company said it was setting a new environmental standard: “Our ethane cracker will have the lowest carbon footprint in Europe: three times lower than the average European steam cracker and less than half of that of the 10% best performers in Europe.”

Nanoplastic pollution found at both of Earth’s poles for first time

Nanoplastic pollution found at both of Earth’s poles for first time

Tiny particles including tyre dust found in ice cores stretching back 50 years, showing global plastic contamination

The Union Glacier in Antarctica, pictured in 2017.

Nanoplastic pollution has been detected in polar regions for the first time, indicating that the tiny particles are now pervasive around the world.

The nanoparticles are smaller and more toxic than microplastics, which have already been found across the globe, but the impact of both on people’s health is unknown.

Analysis of a core from Greenland’s ice cap showed that nanoplastic contamination has been polluting the remote region for at least 50 years. The researchers were also surprised to find that a quarter of the particles were from vehicle tyres.

Nanoparticles are very light and are thought to be blown to Greenland on winds from cities in North America and Asia. The nanoplastics found in sea ice in McMurdo Sound in Antarctica are likely to have been transported by ocean currents to the remote continent.

Nanoplastics pollution

Plastics are part of the cocktail of chemical pollution that pervades the planet, which has passed the safe limit for humanity, scientists reported on Tuesday. Plastic pollution has been found from the summit of Mount Everest to the depths of the oceans. People are known to inadvertently eat and breathe microplastics and another recent study found that the particles cause damage to human cells.

Dušan Materić, at Utrecht University in the Netherlands and who led the new research, said: “We detected nanoplastics in the far corners of Earth, both south and north polar regions. Nanoplastics are very toxicologically active compared to, for instance, microplastics, and that’s why this is very important.”

The Greenland ice core was 14 metres deep, representing layers of snowfall dating back to 1965. “The surprise for me was not that we detected nanoplastics there, but that we detected it all the way down the core,” said Materić. “So although nanoplastics are considered as a novel pollutant, it has actually been there for decades.”

Microplastics had been found in Arctic ice before, but Materić’s team had to develop new detection methods to analyse the much smaller nanoparticles. Previous work had also suggested that dust worn from tyres was likely to be a major source of ocean microplastics and the new research provides real-world evidence.

The new study, published in the journal Environmental Research, found 13 nanograms of nanoplastics per millilitre of melted ice in Greenland but four times more in the Antarctic ice. This is probably because the process of forming sea ice concentrates the particles.

In Greenland, half the nanoplastics were polyethylene (PE), used in single-use plastic bags and packaging. A quarter were tyre particles and a fifth were polyethylene terephthalate (PET), which is used in drinks bottles and clothing.

Half the nanoplastics in the Antarctic ice were PE as well, but polypropylene was the next most common, used for food containers and pipes. No tyre particles were found in Antarctica, which is more distant from populated areas. The researchers took samples only from the centres of the ice cores to avoid contamination, and tested their system with control samples of pure water.

Previous studies have found plastic nanoparticles in rivers in the UK, seawater from the North Atlantic and lakes in Siberia, and snow in the Austrian alps. “But we assume the hotspots are continents where people live,” said Materić.

The researchers wrote: “Nanoplastics have shown various adverse effects on organisms. Human exposure to nanoplastics can result in cytotoxicity [and] inflammation.”

“The most important thing as a researcher is to accurately measure [the pollution] and then assess the situation,” Materić said. “We are in a very early stage to draw conclusions. But it seems that everywhere we have analysed, it is a very big problem. How big? We don’t know yet.”

Research is starting to be carried out on the impact of plastic pollution on health and Dr Fay Couceiro is leading a new microplastics group at the University of Portsmouth, UK. One of its first projects is with Portsmouth hospitals university NHS trust and will investigate the presence of microplastics in the lungs of patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) and asthma.

The research will investigate whether recently carpeted or vaccumed rooms, which can have a high number of fibres in the air, trigger the patients’ conditions. “Aside from the environmental damage caused by plastics, there is growing concern about what inhaling and ingesting microplastics is doing to our bodies,” said Couceiro.

Her recent research suggested people may be breathing 2,000–7,000 microplastics per day in their homes. Prof Anoop Jivan Chauhan, a respiratory specialist at Portsmouth hospitals university NHS trust, said: “This data is really quite shocking. Potentially we each inhale or swallow up to 1.8m microplastics every year and once in the body, it’s hard to imagine they’re not doing irreversible damage.”

Jersey conservationists worried about pandemic plastic pollution

Face mask

At a glance

  • Jersey conservationists are worried about the impact of pandemic plastic pollution on the ocean around the island.

  • They say litter can float down to the seabed and quickly make its way into the food chain.

  • A beachcomber who has been cleaning the island’s beaches for 25 years says she is finding “a lot more” face masks entangled in seaweed.

8 hours ago

Conservationists in Jersey are concerned about the effects litter connected to the pandemic is having on the environment.

They say there are large numbers of face masks and rubber gloves blowing into the sea around the island.

Kevin McIlwee from Jersey Marine Conservation said he was especially concerned by items being found on the seabed.

He said rubbish is being dropped on land which can then easily blow into the sea.

He said: “Working gloves, plastic bags, can fill up with water and seep down to the seabed.

“So it’s not just what we see on the surface it’s actually items that are actually on the seabed itself.

“They’re particularly disturbing because they’re going to go very quickly into the food chain.”

Tracy Vibert and plastic she has found

Tracy Vibert has been cleaning the island’s beaches for about 25 years and said she is finding “a lot more” face masks entangled in seaweed.

What began as beachcombing gradually turned into beach cleaning.

“We were considered strange, weird, even got asked if we were doing community service because a lady couldn’t understand why we were picking somebody else’s rubbish up,” she told BBC Channel Islands.

Ms Vibert says attitudes towards her hobby have changed over the years and that more people are picking their rubbish up since the start of the Covid-19 pandemic.

She said: “With the pandemic, people are spending a lot more time on the island and they’re seeing Jersey in a different light.

“It’s becoming more popular and acceptable to pick up rubbish now which is a good thing.”

Senegal's 'Plastic Man' is on a mission to clean up pollution

Dressed head to toe in plastic, Modou Fall is a familiar sight in Dakar. But however playful his costume, his goal couldn’t be more serious: ridding the capital of the scourge of plastic bags.

DAKAR, Senegal — As the marathon runners stretched and took their places on the starting line, one man stood out, dressed, as he was, in plastic from head to toe.

A multicolored cape made entirely of plastic bags swept the sandy ground. A hat constructed out of plastic sunglasses was perched on his head.

But this man, Modou Fall, was not competing in the annual marathon held in Dakar, Senegal’s capital, each November. He was participating in a different kind of race: one to save the West African country from the scourge of plastic waste that clogged its waterways, marred its white beaches and constantly blew across its streets.

With the marathon drawing large crowds and a major media presence, he could not pass up the chance the race presented to promote his cause.

Waving the Senegalese flag and carrying a loudspeaker from which spilled songs cataloging the damage caused by plastic — “I like my country, I say no to plastic bags” — Mr. Fall swished in and around the runners in his long plastic cloak as the race began.

Those at the race who stopped him to ask for selfies fell into his well-laid and oft-used trap: He seized every opportunity to give them a gentle lecture about environmental issues.

After the last group of runners had left the starting area, Mr. Fall and his team of volunteers began to pick up the empty water bottles and plastic bags they had left behind.

For the foreign racers and tourists the marathon brought to Dakar, this might have been their first encounter with Mr. Fall, but for local residents, he’s a familiar presence known as “Plastic Man.”

Zohra Bensemra/Reuters

He can often be seen dancing through the streets dressed in a self-designed and ever-evolving costume made entirely of plastic, mostly bags collected from across the city. Pinned to his chest is a sign that reads NO PLASTIC BAGS. It’s a fight he takes very seriously.

His costume is modeled after the “Kankurang” — an imposing traditional figure deeply rooted in Senegalese culture who stalks sacred forests and wears a shroud of woven grasses. The Kankurang is considered a protector against bad spirits, and in charge of teaching communal values.

“I behave like the Kankurang,” Mr. Fall said in a recent interview. “I am an educator, a defender and a protector of the environment.”

While plastic waste poses a severe environmental problem around the globe, recent studies have found Senegal, despite its relatively small size, to be among the top countries polluting the world’s oceans with plastic. This is in part because it struggles to manage its waste, like many poorer countries, and it has a large population living on the coast.

In an effort to reduce its share of pollution, the Senegalese government implemented a ban on some plastic products in 2020, but the country has had a hard time enforcing it. Senegal, with a population of about 17 million, is projected to produce more than 700,000 metric tons of mismanaged plastic waste by 2025 if nothing is done, compared with about 337,000 metric tons in the United States.

Leo Correa/Associated Press

Mr. Fall, 48, has been fighting against plastic waste for most of his adult life. A tall, quietly charismatic former soldier, he first noticed plastic’s damaging effects in 1998 during his military service. He was stationed in rural eastern Senegal, home to many herding communities, where he saw their cows getting sick after consuming the fragments of plastic bags that littered the arid landscape.

The herders would slaughter their valuable animals before they inevitably died. This way, at least, eating their meat would not be haram, or forbidden by Islam.

After his military service, Mr. Fall sold T-shirts and life buoys in Dakar’s busy Sandaga market, where dozens of traders displayed all kind of goods, often packed in plastic. Plastic bags were cheap and plentiful, and shopkeepers would toss them into the street with abandon, unaware of how they could harm the environment.

For months, Mr. Fall tried to get his fellow shopkeepers to recognize the environmental threat posed by using so much plastic, and if they did use it, to dispose of it properly. But nobody listened. The market was a mess.

Fed up, one day he decided to try leading by example. He would clean up the entire market on his own.

Ricci Shryock for The New York Times

“It took me 13 days, but I did it,” he said.

The plastic eventually came back. But he’d succeeded in making some of the stall holders think twice.

And stopping the rising tide of plastic became Mr. Fall’s obsession. “If it continues like this, the lives of future generations are in jeopardy,” he said.

In 2006, Mr. Fall used his life savings, just over $500, to found his association, Senegal Propre, or Clean Senegal.

He planted dozens of trees across the city and held community meetings to persuade people to stop buying throwaway plastic. He organized cleaning and tire recycling campaigns in Dakar’s lively neighborhoods, his waste pickers dodging taxi drivers and street vendors as they went.

With the plastic waste they collected, Clean Senegal made bricks, paving stones and public benches. Old tires became couches that they sold for about $430 apiece — money that went toward more environmental efforts like planting trees at schools.

Other street vendors began to see the point of what he was doing, and joined in.

“I used to throw plastic bags or cups in the street after use because I wasn’t aware of the dangers it could cause,” said Cheikh Seck, 31, who sells sunglasses and watches in Pikine, his home suburb in Dakar. “Plastic waste is a global concern, and I am more than happy to contribute to the fight that Modou started.”

The plastic waste clogging up the ocean waters off Dakar has damaged fishing stocks, further decreasing the incomes of Senegalese fishermen already struggling against their waters being overfished. Plastic can also poison agricultural land.

Zohra Bensemra/Reuters

Mr. Fall’s message seems to be catching on. At November’s marathon, the third one he has cleaned up after, some of the runners now knew his favorite slogan and yelled it to him as they passed: “No to plastic waste!”

Following much of the marathon route, Mr. Fall and his team of 10 young volunteers in green shirts and gloves fanned out for their cleanup operation.

They picked up water bottles outside Dakar’s pioneering Museum of Black Civilizations, which showcases one of Africa’s largest art collections. They collected hundreds of plastic bags on the leafy campus of Cheikh Anta Diop University. They found plastic cups in the thrumming city center, known as Plateau, home to the presidential palace and many embassies.

One of the neighborhoods they passed through was Medina, built by the French during the colonial period, and where Mr. Fall was born. After his father died when he was 4, Mr. Fall’s mother moved the family to the suburbs. As a single mother, she struggled to make ends meet running a restaurant, and Mr. Fall had to leave school after only six years of primary education to support the family by taking jobs in metalworking and house painting. After his mother died, he joined the army.

By midafternoon of the marathon day, Mr. Fall and his team were staggering under the weight of the plastic they had collected. A van drove up and they handed over hundreds of plastic bottles.

The team took a short break for lunch. But not Mr. Fall. He was still focused on his mission. There were five miles to go along the race route, and he set off, his plastic cape floating around him.

Ricci Shryock for The New York Times