Hello Prof and friends!
Today, we will be talking about…. Microplastic pollution!
In our post about ‘Nasty waters’, we discovered how the pandemic has led to an increase of plastic pollution – in the form of disposable masks, hand sanitizers and plastic gloves – which have been ‘affectionately’ termed “COVID waste” by Joffrey Peltier. This has indeed sparked an interest to find out more about microplastic pollution and what exactly makes it so environmentally damaging.
Now, you must be wondering, why is this blog titled Plasticene? Are we talking about Plasticine clay?
Well, sadly, we will not be talking about Arts & Crafts today :,)
The overwhelming flood of plastic that has overtaken our aquatic and terrestrial ecosystem has led to the conception of an era, “The Plasticene” (Reed, 2015). This is especially since the “long-term persistence of plastic pollution and contaminants” in the aquatic ecosystem can be traceable through future fossil records. Can you believe it? Our addiction and use of plastics is so extensive that while previous eras had fascinating geological findings such as dinosaurs, ours would possibly be marked by traces of plastic!! (Reed, 2015).
The incessant, exponential increase of plastic waste and debris in our oceans thus makes it one of the most significant pollution issues as it impacts aquatic life through “ingestion, entanglement and suffocation” (Canning-Clode, 2020). We have learned that over time, these plastic waste will break up into smaller pieces and particles called “microplastics”, as seen in the diagram below.
Figure 1: Transformation from plastics to microplastics
[Ref Lecture 5, Slide 24: Jahnke et al. 2020, ES&T Lett]
Microplastics – as extremely small particles – are harmful to the ocean and aquatic life as its toxicity includes both physical and chemical forms. These small plastic fragments is easily ingested by aquatic species who mistake them for food; for example, they are the same size as the food eaten by zooplanktons which are planktons that play a huge role in balancing global climate and in the marine food chain (Carrington, 2020). When ingested, fish species may suffer liver toxicity and pathology (Rochman et al., 2013)! This heavily affects us as it has directly infiltrated our food chain.
Not only that, these plastic particles contribute to climate change due to “carbon emission and a greater risk to global food change” (Fadare, 2020).
Therefore, with COVID-19 and the rising use of disposable masks, it exacerbates microplastic pollution as these masks are disposed of in the oceans. These masks become a new source of microplastic fibers as they can degenerate into smaller particles under environmental conditions illustrated in Fig. 1. Aside from above mentioned effects of microplastic, the disposal of face masks is particularly concerning as it can possibly act as a medium for disease outbreak, because microplastics are able to “propagate microbes such as invasive pathogens” (Fadare, 2020).
As an emerging field of study, the full-scale impact of microplastics are unanticipated, which makes it all the more dangerous as there might be a long-term, fatal effect that we are currently ignorant of. The best thing we can do now is to work towards reducing our plastic waste, and particularly in this context, our COVID waste. But how exactly can we do that? Stay tuned for our next post as we uncover individual actions that can be taken!
References
Canning-Clode, J., Sepúlveda, P., Almeida, S. and Monteiro, J., 2020. Will COVID-19 Containment and Treatment Measures Drive Shifts in Marine Litter Pollution?. Frontiers in Marine Science, 7, p.691.
Carrington, D. (2020). Microplastic pollution in oceans vastly underestimated – study. [online] The Guardian. Available at:
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/may/22/microplastic-pollution-in-oceans-vastly-underestimated-study [Accessed 17 Sep 2020].
Fadare, O.O. and Okoffo, E.D., 2020. Covid-19 face masks: A potential source of microplastic fibers in the environment. The Science of the total environment, 737, p.140279.
Reed, C., 2015. Dawn of the Plasticene age. New Scientist, 225(3006), pp.28-32.
Rochman, C.M., Hoh, E., Kurobe, T. and Teh, S.J., 2013. Ingested plastic transfers hazardous chemicals to fish and induces hepatic stress. Scientific reports, 3, p.3263.