Dilip Simeon's blog

Microplastic pollution spans the world, according to new studies showing contamination in the UK’s lake and rivers, in groundwater in the US and along the Yangtze river in China and the coast of Spain. Humans are known to consume the tiny plastic particles via food and water, but the possible health effects on people and ecosystems have yet to be determined. One study, in Singapore, has found that microplastics can harbour harmful microbes. The new analysis in the UK found microplastic pollution in all 10 lakes, rivers and reservoirs sampled. More than 1,000 small pieces of plastic per litre were found in the River Tame, near Manchester, which was revealed last year as the  most contaminated place yet tested  worldwide. Even in relatively remote places such as the Falls of Dochart and Loch Lomond in Scotland, two or three pieces per litre were found. More posts on plastics Jair Bolsonaro launches assault on Amazon rainforest protections “It was startling. I w...

Small crustaceans can fragment microplastics into pieces smaller than a cell within 96 hours, a  study has shown . Until now, plastic fragmentation has been largely attributed to slow physical processes such as sunlight and wave action, which can take years and even decades. Environmental scientists at University College Cork (UCC) in Ireland studying the 2cm-long amphipod  Gammarus duebeni  found that microplastic beads were not only ingested but were also fragmented incredibly quickly into nanoplastics. Because these fragments are small enough to pass through cell walls, it is thought they are likely to be potentially more damaging to wildlife than microplastics of up to 5mm in size. Dr Alicia Mateos-Cárdenas, the lead author of the research published in  Scientific Reports , said that her findings were “completely unexpected”. “When I started studying this three years ago, it sounded so crazy that such small animals could be fragmenting plastics but our res...

As researchers, we have been shocked to find the most remote depths of the Pacific Ocean polluted by our plastic. And it will outlive us all. Another bottle. Yet another one. We are 200km from land, in the middle of the  South Pacific , and this is the third bottle we’ve found already this morning. Every-where is plastic. The plastic we use unthinkingly every single day, the plastic we throw away without a moment’s thought, it lives on, and on. Out here. Where it is killing our planet,  killing our sea life , and, slowly but surely,  killing us . I am here as part of a team of researchers from the University of the South Pacific collecting seawater samples far removed from any human habitation. My goal is to compare offshore concentrations of microplastics with those closer to shore. My hope is to put in place another piece in the Pacific puzzle. We have a fair idea as to the scale of the problem along more populous coastlines. Yet we know very little here. A knowled...

Ecologist Mark Browne knew he’d found something big when, after months of tediously examining sediment along shorelines around the world, he noticed something no one had predicted: fibers. Everywhere. They were tiny and synthetic and he was finding them in the greatest concentration near sewage outflows. In other words, they were coming from us. In fact, 85% of the human-made material found on the shoreline were microfibers, and matched the types of material, such as nylon and acrylic, used in clothing. It is not news that microplastic – which the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration defines as plastic fragments 5mm or smaller – is ubiquitous in all five major  ocean gyres . And numerous studies have shown that small organisms readily ingest microplastics, introducing toxic pollutants to the food chain. But  Browne’s 2011 paper announcing his findings  marked a milestone, according to Abigail Barrows, an independent marine research scientist based in S...

A huge trash-collecting system designed to clean up plastic floating in the Pacific Ocean is finally picking up plastic, its inventor announced Wednesday. The Netherlands-based nonprofit  the Ocean Cleanup says its latest prototype  was able to capture and hold debris ranging in size from huge, abandoned fishing gear, known as "ghost nets," to tiny microplastics as small as 1 millimeter. "Today, I am very proud to share with you that we are now catching plastics," Ocean Cleanup founder and CEO Boyan Slat said at a news conference in Rotterdam. The Ocean Cleanup system is a U-shaped barrier with a net-like skirt that hangs below the surface of the water. It moves with the current and collects faster moving plastics as they float by. Fish and other animals will be able to swim beneath it. The new prototype added a parachute anchor to slow the system and increased the size of a cork line on top of the skirt to keep the plastic from washing over it…. https://edition.c...

Annual consumption of plastic bottles is set to top half a trillion by 2021, far outstripping recycling efforts and jeopardising oceans, coastlines and other environments Humans produce almost 20,000 plastic bottles every second More than 480bn plastic drinking bottles were sold in 2016 across the world, up from about 300bn a decade ago. If placed end to end, they would extend more than halfway to the sun. A million plastic bottles are bought around the world every minute and the number will jump another 20% by 2021, creating an environmental crisis some campaigners predict will be as serious as climate change. New figures obtained by the Guardian reveal the surge in usage of plastic bottles, more than half a trillion of which will be sold annually by the end of the decade.  The demand, equivalent to about 20,000 bottles being bought every second, is driven by an apparently insatiable desire for bottled water and the spread of a western, urbanised “on the go” culture to...

Scientists are preparing to launch the world's first machine to clean up the planet's largest mass of ocean plastic. The system, originally dreamed up by a teenager, will be shipped out this summer to the  Great Pacific Garbage Patch , between Hawaii and California, and which contains an estimated 1.8 trillion pieces of plastic.  The Global Crisis of Plastic Pollution :  Scientists across the globe are increasingly finding wildlife that has been killed after ingesting or becoming entangled in plastic. Ninety percent of sea birds, for example, have been found to have  plastic in their bellies . And the problem is only getting worse: The estimated  19 billion pounds  of plastic that ends up in the ocean every year is expected to double by 2025. These plastics will not only kill more animals; they’ll decimate  coral reefs , and  damage human health  as microplastics enter the food chain. It will be the first attempt to tackle the patc...

Our appetite for plastic continues unabated. But rather than make more, what if we could make do with what we have? Recycling plastic has been a stop-start endeavor, plagued by limitations caused by the large variety of plastics we churn out, waste contamination, and the energy-intensive processes which can make recycling an economic moot point. It's estimated only  9%  of plastic ever created has been recycled. But with the help of a chemical process, Canadian Miranda Wang and her company  BioCellection  want to change that. Call to Earth and the extraordinary people working for a more sustainable future Anna Fletcher: Indian student creates a brick made from recycled plastic Unmaking plastic is tough. There's limited evidence some plastics can biodegrade (one solution requires  mealworms ) but largely plastics  photodegrade  in the sun. It's a lengthy process, and the truth is we can only estimate how long it takes. What's certain is tha...

The  first aerial survey  of the  Great Pacific Garbage Patch  shows that the amount of debris swirling in the North Pacific has been “ heavily underestimated ,” the expedition group said. On Monday,  The Ocean Cleanup , a project founded in 2013 by then-18-year-old  Dutch inventor Boyan Slat  with the goal of ridding the world’s oceans of plastic, shared initial findings from its  aerial expedition  of the  trash vortex  between Hawaii and California. Researchers documented more garbage at the edge of the gyre than they expected to see at its center, where debris is more concentrated, Slat said at  a press conference  at Moffett Airfield in Mountain View , California . In just 2 1/2 hours, he said, the crew observed more than 1,000 large floating objects. “Although, again, we still need to get a detailed analysis of the results, I think it’s really quite safe to say that it’s worse than we thought,” Slat sai...

At least 14m tonnes of plastic pieces less than 5mm wide are likely sitting at the bottom of the world’s oceans, according to an estimate based on new research. Analysis of ocean sediments from as deep as 3km suggests there could be more than 30 times as much plastic at the bottom of the world’s ocean than there is floating at the surface. Australia’s government science agency, CSIRO, gathered and analysed cores of the ocean floor taken at six remote sites about 300km off the country’s southern coast in the Great Australian Bight.  Researchers looked at 51 samples and found that after excluding the weight of the water, each gram of sediment contained an average of 1.26 microplastic pieces.  Microplastics are 5mm or less in diameter and are mostly the result of larger plastic items breaking apart into ever smaller pieces... https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/oct/06/more-than-14m-tonnes-of-plastic-believed-to-be-at-the-bottom-of-the-ocean Restoring forests could captur...

Plastic has long had the planet in its grip. All too often it is found piled up on beaches and floating as "plastic islands" in the ocean . But it also clogs the stomachs of birds and other animals, and has even made it into the human bloodstream. To date, just 9% of the world's plastic has been recycled . Some 12% has been burned, and the rest has ended up on landfills or in nature. But as dire as the situation sounds, there is light at the end of the plastic tunnel, writes intergovernmental economic organization, the OECD, in its new Global Plastic Outlook report. If countries around the world make a concerted effort.... https://www.dw.com/en/solutions-to-the-plastic-crisis-microplastics-oceans/a-62017738 Tobacco industry severely damages environment: WHO Smoking not only kills people, but also severely impacts the environment , the World Health Organization said in a report released Tuesday. The report, Tobacco: poisoning our planet, published to coincide with World No...

A huge floating device designed by Dutch scientists to clean up an island of rubbish in the Pacific ocean that is three times the size of France has successfully picked up plastic from the high-seas for the first time. Boyan Slat, the creator of the Ocean Cleanup project, announced on Twitter that the 600-metre (2,000ft) long floating boom had captured and retained debris from what is known as the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. Alongside a picture of the collected rubbish, which includes a car wheel, Slat tweeted: “Our ocean cleanup system is now finally catching plastic, from one-ton ghost nets to tiny microplastics! Also, anyone missing a wheel?” About 600,000 to 800,000 metric tons of fishing gear are abandoned or lost at sea each year. Another 8m metric tons of plastic waste flows in from beaches.... https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/oct/03/ocean-cleanup-device-successfully-collects-plastic-for-first-time