Degrading our planet, one nanoparticle at a time

This year, India and the United Nations (UN) are jointly hosting the global World Environment Day celebrations, with ‘Beat Plastic Pollution’ as the central theme. There is no reason to celebrate, really. Recently there was alarming news of how we are ingesting plastic nanoparticles in the food that makes it to our tables. It’s time to fix the problem but where do we even begin?

Curated By: Madhu Kapparath

Published: Jun 5, 2018

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Public apathy stems from an inability to embrace the idea of collective ownership. Here’s a brief list of questions on the topic posed on popular website, Quora.
1. Why is there a lack of civic sense among the people of India?
2. Do Indians lack civic sense? And how?
3. What is the reason behind the poor civic sense of Indians?
4. What would be some great ways to increase civic sense among common Indian citizens?
The answers vary and reasons span from ‘parental values’ to ‘third world rat race’ to ‘false entitlement’. But these answers (or the use of plastics) aren't exclusive to Indians so we’ll leave it at that.

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Every human activity, from farming to construction (and yes, shopping) affects the environment. Termed ‘ecological footprint’, it measures the demand that a nation’s consumption and waste makes on the biosphere (it is measured in global hectares units). China leads the list of resource guzzlers, followed by the US and India, due to their large populations. Surprisingly, when ecological footprint was measured per person (an indicator of the demand that a citizen places on his nation’s resources and waste), Qatar came on top, followed by Luxembourg and UAE! Simply put, we are all in it together, and must shoulder the blame gamely.

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Plastic is everywhere, and so is photography now. Leo Baekeland’s association with both is legendary. Around 1894, Leo perfected a photographic paper that would allow enlargements to be printed by artificial light, which he named "Velox". It was the first commercially successful photographic paper. To make up for the lack of an investor, he found a partner and established the Nepera Chemical Company in New York. In 1899, Leo and his partner sold Nepera to George Eastman of the Eastman Kodak Co. for $750,000, signing a non-compete clause: Leo agreed not to do research in photography for at least 20 years. So he set out to find another promising area of research. In 1907, Leo invented bakelite, the world’s first fully synthetic plastic and coined the term ‘plastic’.

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Dutch conceptual artist, Florentijn Hofman's playful floating duck sculpture called 'Spreading Joy Around the World’ arrived in Hong Kong in May 2013. The 16.5-metre high rubber duck, constructed with more than 200 pieces of PVC, had travelled to 10 countries and 12 cities by then. “So much of the ocean feels really inhuman” the writer Donovan Hohn was quoted as saying, “so a toy duck washing up on a beach humanises it.” That’s precisely what happened to over 7,200 yellow ducks in 1992. They were among a consignment of 29,000 bathtub toys (headed for the US) that spilled from a Chinese cargo ship during a storm in the North Pacific Ocean. Some of the the ducks landed in Hawaii. Others traveled over 17,000 miles, spent years frozen in Arctic ice to reach the British and Irish shores 15 years later in 2007.

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Replace the ducks with plastic flotsam and you get the drift. We all have heard of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, a collection of plastic floating trash larger than the size of the US, discovered around 1985. Current research from Scientific Reports, collating data from multi-vessel surveys, show 80,000 tonnes of plastic floating inside an area of 1.6 million sq.km in North Pacific Ocean. Atleast 46 percent of the trash is comprised of fishing nets. “The term ‘garbage patch’ is misleading”, Angelicque White, Associate Professor at Oregon State University was quoted as saying, “because it is not visible from space; there are no islands of trash; it is more akin to a diffuse soup of plastic”.

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Substantial amounts of marine debris from the patch washes ashore on the beaches of the 2.4 sq km long Midway Atoll. Of the 1.5 million Laysan albatrosses that inhabit Midway, nearly all are found to have plastic in their digestive system.The birds eat brightly colored plastic, mistaking them for marine animals (such as squid and fish). Approximately one-third of their chicks die, being fed plastic by their parents.

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At least 8 million tonnes of plastic ends up in the oceans each year, the equivalent of a full garbage truck every minute. In the ocean, it can take hundreds of years to degrade and break down into microparticles (smaller than 5mm). These are consumed by marine animals, finding their way into the human food chain.
The danger isn't merely in their toxicity, but its presence that impedes functioning. Most organisms can’t break down these particles. They build up over time and can even cross the blood-brain barrier, according to a recent study by Lund University researchers, at current rates of pollution, there will likely be more plastic in the sea than fish by 2050, according to a UNEP report. In December 2017, total of 194 UN countries signed a resolution to help eliminate marine litter and microplastics.

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Bales of plastic waste collected by fishermen from the Tyrrhenian Sea await recycling. As part of the ' Arcipelago Pulito ' project in Tuscany, fisherman bring the plastic they collect, ashore for recycling at Revet Recycling, a specialised plant in Pontedera near Pisa, Italy. The project is the result of an agreement between the Tuscan Region, the Ministry of the Environment, Unicoop Firenze and Revet Recycling with the total supervision of the Coast Guard of Tuscany. About 10 percent of the volume of each fish haul caught is plastic waste.

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Microplastic pollution arguably poses a bigger threat to life on land, according to UN Environment report. Sewage sludge - which contains upto 80 percent plastic particles - is often applied to fields as fertilizer, ends up affecting fauna’s health and soil functions. Additives from plastic particles can disrupt the hormone system of vertebrates and invertebrates. Nano-sized particles may cause inflammation, traverse cellular barriers, and affect the placenta. Within the cell, they can trigger changes in gene expression and biochemical reactions, among other things.

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The World Health Organisation (WHO) is looking into potential risks of plastic in drinking water after a new analysis by the State University of New York’s scientists (commissioned by journalism project Orb media) was carried out. It found that more than 90 percent of world’s most popular bottled water brands (including India’s) contained tiny particles of plastic. The scientists “found roughly twice as many plastic particles within bottled water” compared with their previous study of tap water, reported the Guardian. Coca-Cola had told the BBC it had strict filtration methods, but acknowledged the ubiquity of plastics in the environment meant plastic fibres “may be found at minute levels even in highly treated products”. A previous study had also found high levels of microplastics in tap water.

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Thermocol plates, discarded by a passersby after a free meal at a bhandara (religious food offering) float about in the Ganga river. Strewn garbage - entwined with plastic that collect around nooks and corners of public spaces, a no-mans land - are so common a sight now that we accept it as an inevitable part of our landscape. A Central Pollution Control Board data shows that India generates around 15,000 tonnes of plastic waste per day, and 90 percent of it isn't recycled. Waste pickers are bearing the brunt, unable to send plastic for recycling as there’s no segregation of waste at household level.

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What can I do? Plastic is ubiquitous in our lives in the modern world. The wings of the plane you fly in uses carbon-fibre reinforced plastic, glass-fibre reinforced plastic and quartz-fibre reinforced plastic extensively. We have produced more plastic in the last decade than in the whole last century, 50 percent of it is in the form of single-use or disposable products, says a UN Environment report. Every year the world uses 500 billion plastic bags. What can I do? You don't need Quora for answers. Reduce. Reuse. Recycle.

Credits: UN Environment, Wikipedia.