By Tom Molloy
Microplastic Armageddon
Microplastics formed from everything from outflow from our washing machines (polyester clothes) to plastic bottles and bags and other products have been flowing into our oceans mirroring the exponential growth of plastic production which is now at over one trillion pounds per year. According to the World Economic Forum, plastic production could triple from 2016 levels by the year 2050.
An international team of researchers calculates that between 2.4 to 10.8 billion pounds are floating across the world … and that’s only in the top foot of seawater.
That’s also only counting the bits down to a third of a millimeter long, even though microplastics can get much smaller, Microplastics are defined as particles smaller than 5 millimeters long. Scientists are now able to detect nanoplastics in the environment, which are measured on the scale of millionths of a meter, small enough to penetrate cells— If this new study had considered the smallest of plastics, the numbers of oceanic particles would be in the quintillions, says Scott Coffin, a research scientist at the California State Water Resources Control Board and a coauthor of the study along with Marcus Eriksen which was published this year in the journal PLoS ONE.
Scientists are now finding that the smallest microplastics readily move through the body, showing up in our blood, guts, lungs, placentas.
Eriksen and Coffin did their quantification by gathering reams of previous data on plastic samples from across the world’s oceans. They combined this with data they collected during their own ocean expeditions. All told, the researchers used nearly 12,000 samples of plastic particle concentrations, stretching between the years 1979 and 2019. That allowed them to calculate not only how much may be out there, but how those concentrations have changed over time.
The researchers found that beginning in the mid-2000s, the number of particles shot up dramatically, and it continues skyrocketing. They further project a 2.6-fold increase in plastic flowing into aquatic environments by 2040 unless there’s drastic action.
There may have also been a sort of time-delayed pollution bomb: Larger trash takes a while to fully degrade into little pieces. Another group of researchers has termed this the “global plastic toxicity debt”: Even if we were to stop all plastic pollution tomorrow, what’s already out there will keep breaking into ever smaller bits. “You’ve got these microplastic ‘factories’ in places where plastic is trapped on coastlines at the high tide line, that’s just shedding constantly,” says Eriksen. “When the next storm happens, it’s washed back to the ocean.”
Along the surface, these particles contaminate the very base of the food web. From plankton to Seabirds, marine and terrestrial life are all , are threatened from consuming plastic.
Although Coffin and Eriksen’s new quantification only counted plastics floating near the surface, Off the coast of Southern California, other scientists were able to look through sediment layers going back nearly a century and found that deposition rates have doubled every 15 years since the 1940s, when plastics production began in earnest.
And microplastics in the ocean don’t necessarily stay offshore. When a bubble ascends from the depths, it collects bacteria and organic matter, then flings them into the air when it pops. Now, bubbles are doing the same with microplastics. These blow back onto land in sea breezes, as described in a 2020 study. If more microplastics are gathering at the water’s surface, that means more are available to go atmospheric.
Eriksen and Coffin say it’s critical that United Nations negotiators agree on a global treaty to put limits on plastics production. (Talks began in November and are expected to continue for a few years.) “I’m convinced,” says Eriksen, “If we have a really strong treaty that caps production, reduces the single—use plastic output—and countries get good at waste management and capturing waste in their rivers and their streets, I bet you’ll see a precipitous drop in the amount of trash that makes its way to the open ocean.”
Let’s hold on to that silver lining as we greet the new year….. and hope for elections for politicians that will participate in the UN negotiations with good will vs. being an adversary of the UN as Trump was in his disastrous term.
