Case Study: Thailand

As the world continues its battle with Covid-19, it seems that we have forgotten the issue of pollution amidst this battle.

Remember how uncomfortable and troublesome it was to have your food take-away during the ‘Circuit Breaker’ phase? Likewise at the other parts of the world such as Thailand, a similar approach was adopted. While taking away your food back home for consumption does help to minimise contact between people and hence, reducing the chance of a community transmission, it has unknowingly created or worsen another problem of plastic disposal.

Already known as one of the top 4 contributor with an outstanding 3.2% in terms of global plastic mismanagement (Ritchie and Roser, 2020), the soaring figure of 62% in the volume of generated plastic waste due to Covid-19 in Thailand made matter worse.

Figure 1: Plastic Hazards for Marine Creatures (Mayne, 2020)

The question as posed by opponent is always, “How do these plastics affect my health?”. Well, technically speaking, the immediate victims of irresponsible plastic disposal are marine creatures such as turtles as shown in Figure 1. As human beings, there is a low chance where you will ingest large plastic bottles and bags directly and hence, your fate might be slightly better compared to these marine creatures, or maybe not?

Although plastics are widely known for their long lifespan, they can still degrade and fragments into smaller particles known as micro-plastic via physical (wind and waves) and chemical (UV light) actions. Micro-plastics are potentially much more harmful than large plastic matters because they are incredibly small at less than 5 millimeters long, which makes the identification and clean-up process much more complex. (What are microplastics?, 2020)

Besides the standard issues of bioaccumulation and bioamplification when marine creatures consumed these microplastics which eventually find their way onto our dining plate (De-la-Torre, 2019), these microplastics are potentially much more dangerous as they can act as vectors for pathogens and other heavy metals.

Due to its increased surface to volume ratio, pollutants can easily adsorb onto the surface of microplastics. Furthermore, as the surface of microplastics are hydrophobic (water-repelling) in nature, they can form hydrophobic interactions with many large organic pollutants such as DDT and Phthalates (Verla, Enyoh, Verla and Nwarnorh, 2019) which when ingested, causes health implications that are most pertinent to pregnant women (Anthony, Wentz, Reagan and Heggie, 1989).

Having said so, what we can all do during this pandemic is really to reduce our plastic usage by using alternatives such as washable metal containers for food takeaway as well as to reuse used plastic materials for other purposes. While the plastic pollution situation is indeed exacerbating in Thailand, in the next post, we shall see how interesting solutions are being developed in mitigating the impact of increased plastic usage during Covid-19.

Also, to know more about how prevalent microplastics are in our daily life, stay tuned for the next next post 😉

 

References:

1. Ritchie, H. and Roser, M., 2020. Plastic Pollution. [online] Our World in Data. Available at: <https://ourworldindata.org/plastic-pollution> [Accessed 9 July 2020].

2. Mayne, T., 2020. What Do Sea Turtles Eat? Unfortunately, Plastic Bags.. [online] World Wildlife Fund. Available at: <https://www.worldwildlife.org/stories/what-do-sea-turtles-eat-unfortunately-plastic-bags> [Accessed 21 July 2020].

3. Oceanservice.noaa.gov. 2020. What Are Microplastics?. [online] Available at: <https://oceanservice.noaa.gov/facts/microplastics.html> [Accessed 21 July 2020].

4. De-la-Torre, G., 2019. Microplastics: an emerging threat to food security and human health. Journal of Food Science and Technology, 57(5), pp.1601-1608.

5. Verla, A., Enyoh, C., Verla, E. and Nwarnorh, K., 2019. Microplastic–toxic chemical interaction: a review study on quantified levels, mechanism and implication. SN Applied Sciences, 1(11).

6. Anthony, D., Wentz, W., Reagan, J. and Heggie, A., 1989. Induction of cervical neoplasia in the mouse by herpes simplex virus type 2 DNA. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 86(12), pp.4520-4524.