Plastic pollution

[waltky]

Big ol' floating landfill in the Pacific...

Researchers Say ‘Plastic Pollution’ Destoying Earth’s Oceans
May 21, 2012 — A marine expedition of environmentalists has confirmed the bad news it feared — the “Great Pacific Garbage Patch” extends even further than previously known.

Organized by two nonprofit groups — the Algalita Marine Research Foundation and the 5 Gyres Institute — the expedition is sailing from the Marshall Islands to Japan through a “synthetic soup” of plastic in the North Pacific Ocean on a 72-feet yacht called the Sea Dragon, provided by Pangaea Exploration. The area is part of one of the ocean’s five tropical gyres — regions where bodies of water converge, with currents delivering high concentrations of plastic debris. The Sea Dragon is visiting the previously unexplored western half of the North Pacific gyre — situated below the 35th parallel, and home to a massive expanse of plastic particles known as the “Great Pacific Garbage Patch” — to look for plastic pollution and study its effect on marine life.

Leading the expedition is Marcus Eriksen, a former U.S. marine and Ph.D student from University of Southern California. “We’ve been finding lots of micro plastics, all the size of a grain of rice or a small marble,” Eriksen said via satellite phone. “We drag our nets and come up with a small handful, like confetti — 10, 20, 30 fragments at a time. That’s how it’s been, every trawl we’ve done for the last thousand miles.” Eriksen, who has sailed through all five gyres, said this confirmed for him “that the world’s oceans are ‘plasticized.’ Everywhere you go in the ocean, you’re going to find this plastic waste.”

Besides documenting the existence of plastic pollution, the expedition intends to study how long it takes for communities of barnacles, crabs and molluscs to establish, whether the plastic can serve as a raft for species to cross continents, and the prevalence of chemical pollutants. On a second leg from Tokyo to Hawaii departing May 30, the team expect to encounter material dislodged by the Japanese tsunami. “We’ll be looking for debris that’s sub-surface: overturned boats, refrigerators, things that wind is not affecting,” Eriksen said. “We’ll get an idea of how much is out there, what’s going on and what it’s carrying with it, in terms of toxins.”

Scripps Institute graduate Miriam Goldstein was chief scientist on a similar expedition to the Great Pacific Garbage Patch in 2009. According to her research, there has been a 100-fold increase in plastic garbage in the last 40 years, most of it broken down into tiny crumbs to form a concentrated soup. The particles are so small and profuse that they can’t be dredged out. “You need a net with very fine mesh and then you’re catching baby fish, baby squid — everything,” Goldstein says. “For every gram of plastic you’re taking out, you probably take out more or less the equivalent of sea life.”

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Radioactive bluefin tuna crossed the Pacific to US
28 May`12 — Across the vast Pacific, the mighty bluefin tuna carried radioactive contamination that leaked from Japan's crippled nuclear plant to the shores of the United States 6,000 miles away — the first time a huge migrating fish has been shown to carry radioactivity such a distance.

"We were frankly kind of startled," said Nicholas Fisher, one of the researchers reporting the findings online Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The levels of radioactive cesium were 10 times higher than the amount measured in tuna off the California coast in previous years. But even so, that's still far below safe-to-eat limits set by the U.S. and Japanese governments. Previously, smaller fish and plankton were found with elevated levels of radiation in Japanese waters after a magnitude-9 earthquake in March 2011 triggered a tsunami that badly damaged the Fukushima Dai-ichi reactors.

But scientists did not expect the nuclear fallout to linger in huge fish that sail the world because such fish can metabolize and shed radioactive substances. One of the largest and speediest fish, Pacific bluefin tuna can grow to 10 feet and weigh more than 1,000 pounds. They spawn off the Japan coast and swim east at breakneck speed to school in waters off California and the tip of Baja California, Mexico. Five months after the Fukushima disaster, Fisher of Stony Brook University in New York and a team decided to test Pacific bluefin that were caught off the coast of San Diego. To their surprise, tissue samples from all 15 tuna captured contained levels of two radioactive substances — ceisum-134 and cesium-137 — that were higher than in previous catches.

To rule out the possibility that the radiation was carried by ocean currents or deposited in the sea through the atmosphere, the team also analyzed yellowfin tuna, found in the eastern Pacific, and bluefin that migrated to Southern California before the nuclear crisis. They found no trace of cesium-134 and only background levels of cesium-137 left over from nuclear weapons testing in the 1960s. The results "are unequivocal. Fukushima was the source," said Ken Buesseler of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, who had no role in the research.

Bluefin tuna absorbed radioactive cesium from swimming in contaminated waters and feeding on contaminated prey such as krill and squid, the scientists said. As the predators made the journey east, they shed some of the radiation through metabolism and as they grew larger. Even so, they weren't able to completely flush out all the contamination from their system. "That's a big ocean. To swim across it and still retain these radionuclides is pretty amazing," Fisher said. Pacific bluefin tuna are prized in Japan where a thin slice of the tender red meat prepared as sushi can fetch $24 per piece at top Tokyo restaurants. Japanese consume 80 percent of the world's Pacific and Atlantic bluefin tuna.

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[whitehall]

Blame the USA? From what I have seen the east coast beaches are kept pretty clean. Apparently it isn't unusual for cargo containers to get dumped overboard and there are stories of strange piles of shoes floating along in ocean currents. When I was in the Service I recall an order over the loudspeaker on Navy ships about three times a day to "throw all trash and garbage over the fantail". Navy ships accumulated a lot of garbage back then but I assume they have changed their ways but maybe not.

 

[Saigon]

Now, I know that the US is not the only country that pollutes. It's a global problem.

It is a global problem, and attitudes tend to be worse in developing countries than in developed world, but I believe the US still leads the world in garbage production, and needs to step up to the plate on this issue.

 

[Mr. H.]

Plastic pollution is becoming more harmful than any other form environmental pollution...We all are aware that plastics are non - degradable and even if we stopped using plastic today , they will remain with us many generation . Plastic recycling is any time better for environment . Recycled plastic product should be used world wide to reduce plastic pollution.

I love you many generation. Long time.

 

[waltky]

5 Trillion Pieces Of Plastic Floating In The Ocean...

Study: 5 trillion-plus pieces of plastic floating in ocean. What can be done? (+video)
December 11, 2014 ~ A new study has found that pieces of plastic weighing 269,000 tons are floating in the world's oceans, posing a danger to animals and humans alike.

More than 5 trillion pieces of plastic, weighing nearly 269,000 tons, are littering the world's oceans, according to a study published Wednesday by the scientific journal PLOS One. The study is the first of its kind to gather data from around the world on floating plastic. For the study, researchers traveled the world's seas on 24 expeditions between 2007 and 2013, collecting small pieces of plastic from all five subtropical gyres, or spots in the ocean where currents converge. From there, using computer models, they extrapolated to estimate global numbers. The researchers gathered data in areas where scientists haven't had measurements for floating plastic debris, including the Indian Ocean, the Southern Ocean near Antarctica, and the South Atlantic, according to Kara Lavender Law of the Sea Education Association in Falmouth, Mass., who wasn't involved in the study.

The study's estimate for plastic bits less than one-fifth of an inch – about 35,540 tons – is comparable to an earlier study by researchers in Spain who used different methodology, Ms. Law said. That study estimated there were 7,000 to 35,000 tons of plastics this size floating in the ocean. It's encouraging that two different approaches came up with similar answers, given how difficult it is to measure plastic in the ocean, she said. The largest source of plastic pollutants was found to be discarded fishing nets and buoys. As a possible remedy, lead researcher Marcus Eriksen, co-founder of the nonprofit 5 Gyres Institute, advises creating an international program to pay fishing ships to reclaim nets, according to The New York Times. Still, that would do little to solve the problem of discarded bags, toys, bottles, and other trash adrift. "We saw turtles that ate plastic bags and fish that ingested fishing lines," Julia Reisser, one of the researchers based at the University of Western Australia, told The Guardian. "But there are also chemical impacts. When plastic gets into the water, it acts like a magnet for oily pollutants."

While bigger plastic pieces can strangle animals such as seals, smaller pieces can get eaten by fish and then travel up the food chain. "Plastics are like a cocktail of contaminants floating around in the aquatic habitat," Chelsea Rochman, a marine ecologist at the University of California, Davis, told The New York Times. "These contaminants may be magnifying up the food chain." Law echoed this sentiment. "Am I being poisoned by eating the fish on my plate?" she asked, according to The Associated Press. "We have very little knowledge of the chain of events that could lead to that. But it’s a plausible scenario that plastic ingested at lower levels of the food web could have consequences at higher levels of the food chain." Researchers say the volume of plastic debris is likely to grow due to increasing production and because 5 percent of the world's plastic gets recycled. "Lots of things are used once and then not recycled," Ms. Reisser said. "We need to improve our use of plastic and also monitor plastics in the oceans so we get a better understanding of the issue."

One fashionable solution for clearing plastics from the oceans can be found at Bionic Yarn, a New York City-based start-up that makes clothes from recycled ocean plastic. The business has partnered with the designer clothing company G-Star RAW and singer Pharrell Williams. As for other actions individuals can take to reduce plastic waste in the oceans, the 5 Gyres Institute recommends a deeper look at the products individuals buy to see whether they contain plastic and what happens to them once they're thrown out. "Know the lifecycle of what you buy – what happens to your products when you're through with them? Shift some habits as you go along – commit to put your bags in the car, to not use plastic bottles, etc.," reads a statement on the 5 Gyres website. "Support legislative efforts to manage waste in your local community – your voice must be heard!"

Study 5 trillion-plus pieces of plastic floating in ocean. What can be done video - CSMonitor.com

 

[waltky]

Pollution is everywhere, including the deepest parts of the oceans...

Toxic, Man-made Pollutants Found in Deepest Oceans
February 13, 2017 - No place is safe from pollution, including the deepest parts of the oceans.

Writing in the journal Nature Ecology & Evolution, researchers from Newcastle University in the United Kingdom say small creatures called amphipods that live in the Mariana and Kermadec trenches, both of which are more than 10 kilometers deep, have “extremely high levels” of man-made toxic chemicals in their fatty tissues. The chemicals, called Persistent Organic Pollutants, include polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) and polybrominated diphenyl ethers (PBDEs). PCBs were produced from the 1930s through the 1970s when they were outlawed. But researchers estimate 1.3 million tonnes of PCBs were produced worldwide.

Hirondellea gigas are voracious scavengers that consume anything that comes down from the surface.​

They entered the environment through “industrial accidents and discharges and leakage from landfills.” Furthermore, they are “invulnerable to natural degradation” so can last for decades. “We still think of the deep ocean as being this remote and pristine realm, safe from human impact, but our research shows that, sadly, this could not be further from the truth, said lead researcher, Alan Jamieson. “In fact, the amphipods we sampled contained levels of contamination similar to that found in Japan's Suruga Bay, one of the most polluted industrial zones of the northwest Pacific.” To reach their conclusions, researchers used deep-sea landers to bring organism samples up from the trenches, which are 7,000 kilometers apart.

The pollutants, according to Jamieson, likely sank to the bottom of the ocean through contaminated plastic garbage as well as dead animals that drifted to the bottom and were eaten by the amphipods. Amphipods with toxic chemicals are then eaten by bigger organisms as the pollutants make their way back into the food chain. “The fact that we found such extraordinary levels of these pollutants in one of the most remote and inaccessible habitats on earth really brings home the long term, devastating impact that mankind is having on the planet,” said Dr Jamieson. “It’s not a great legacy that we’re leaving behind.”

Toxic, Man-made Pollutants Found in Deepest Oceans

 

[mamooth]

Navy ships accumulated a lot of garbage back then but I assume they have changed their ways but maybe not.

They have, at least the US Navy. Trash has to be separated religiously. Paper is incinerated, metal and plastic are compressed into big bricks that get offloaded for recycling when back in port.

 

[waltky]

Granny say she glad she ain't the one to have to clean it up...

Remote island has 'world's worst' plastic rubbish density
Tue, 16 May 2017 - The uninhabited Pacific island is littered with 37.7 million pieces of plastic debris, scientists say.

An uninhabited island in the South Pacific is littered with the highest density of plastic waste anywhere in the world, according to a study. Henderson Island, part of the UK's Pitcairn Islands group, has an estimated 37.7 million pieces of debris on its beaches. The island is near the centre of an ocean current, meaning it collects much rubbish from boats and South America. Researchers hope people will "rethink their relationship with plastic". The joint Australian and British study said the rubbish amounted to 671 items per square metre and a total of 17 tonnes. "A lot of the items on Henderson Island are what we wrongly refer to as disposable or single-use," said Dr Jennifer Lavers from the University of Tasmania.

Henderson Island is part of the UK's Pitcairn Islands group​

The study, published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, described how remote islands act as a "sink" for the world's rubbish. In addition to fishing items, Henderson Island was strewn with everyday things including toothbrushes, cigarette lighters and razors. "Land crabs are making their homes inside bottle caps, containers and jars," Dr Lavers told the BBC. "At first it looks a little bit cute, but it's not. This plastic is old, it's sharp, it's brittle and toxic." A large number of hard hats of "every shape, colour and size" were also discovered, the marine scientist said.

Scale of waste

Henderson Island is listed by Unesco as a coral atoll with a relatively unique ecology, notable for 10 plant and four bird species. It is 190km (120 miles) from Pitcairn Island, about 5,000km from Chile, and sits near the centre of the South Pacific Gyre - a massive rotating current. The condition of the island highlighted how plastic debris has affected the environment on a global scale, Dr Lavers said. "Almost every island in the world and almost every species in the ocean is now being shown to be impacted one way or another by our waste," she said. "There's not really any one person or any one country that gets a free pass on this."

She said plastic was devastating to oceans because it was buoyant and durable. The research was conducted by the University of Tasmania's Institute for Marine and Antarctic Studies, and the Centre for Conservation Science at the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds.

Remote island has 'world's worst' plastic rubbish density - BBC News

 

[Mr Natural]

There's no way human activity can have any effect on the environment.

 

[waltky]

Most Ocean Plastic Pollution Comes from just 10 Rivers...

Most Ocean Plastic Pollution Carried by 10 Rivers
November 24, 2017 — The equivalent of one garbage truck full of plastic waste is dumped into the world’s oceans every minute, equal to 8 million tons a year. New research suggests that 90 percent of that waste gets into the oceans through 10 major river systems.

“It seems that larger rivers preferentially transport plastic and these are rivers with a large population. You could reduce river plastic loads tremendously by focusing on these 10 rivers,” lead researcher Christian Schmidt of Germany’s Helmholtz Center for Environmental Research, told VOA. Two of the rivers are in Africa - the Nile and the Niger – while the remaining eight are in Asia – the Ganges, Indus, Yellow, Yangtze, Haihe, Pearl, Mekong and Amur. Researchers analyzed studies that examined the plastic pollution load in rivers, and compared the figures to the quantity of waste that is not disposed of properly in each river catchment or watershed.

The Government's Pasig River Rehabilitation Commission and environmentalists from Greenpeace survey the polluted Pasig River to track plastic waste to draw attention to the hazards of plastics and waste which clog rivers and tributaries in San Juan​

The results suggest reducing waste in those rivers would go a long way to tackling ocean plastic pollution. “Actually, it’s very simple. You have to improve waste management, particularly in developing countries with rapid economic growth. So, this is a waste management problem there. But globally, ((it’s)) not exclusively developing countries. Littering is the other source of river plastics, countries like Germany,” says Schmidt.

The ecological consequences of oceanic plastic pollution are difficult to foresee, but scientists are clear that it is already deeply affecting marine life. So-called microplastics – found in cosmetics - are often mistaken for food. One recent study by the University of Ghent in Belgium calculated that humans eat up to 11,000 plastic fragments in their seafood each year. “The microbeads, they might be more harmful for aquatic life, but the larger pieces, over time they are brittle and form a secondary source of microplastics,” according to Schmidt.

Afroz Shah, in black, participates in a clean up drive with school children at the Versova beach on the Arabian Sea coast in Mumbai, India​

It is estimated that 5 percent of plastic is recycled effectively. Total global plastic production was 322 million tons in 2015, a figure that is expected to quadruple by 2050. Schmidt and his colleagues hope their research offers a potential focus for cleanup programs.

Most Ocean Plastic Pollution Carried by 10 Rivers

 

[waltky]

4 year Study says Plastic Pollution Is Killing Coral Reefs...

Plastic Pollution Is Killing Coral Reefs, 4-Year Study Finds
January 25, 2018 - Millions of tons of plastic waste end up in the ocean every year. And the trash stays there: Whether it's grocery bags or water bottles or kids' toys, plastic is practically indestructible.

Now marine scientists have discovered that it's killing coral reefs. A new study based on four years of diving on 159 reefs in the Pacific shows that reefs in four countries — Australia, Thailand, Indonesia and Myanmar — are heavily contaminated with plastic. It clings to the coral, especially branching coral. And where it clings, it sickens or kills. "The likelihood of disease increases from 4 percent to 89 percent when corals are in contact with plastic," researchers report in the journal Science. Senior author Drew Harvell at Cornell University says the plastic could be harming coral in at least two ways. First, bacteria and other harmful microorganisms are abundant in the water and on corals; when the coral is abraded, that might invite pathogens into the coral. "It's certainly well known that plastics abrade corals, create new openings," she says. "They basically tear open the skin of the coral and that can allow an infection from anywhere to start." In addition, Harvell says, plastic can block sunlight from reaching coral.

Diapers, cotton swabs, bottles and wrappers are littering reefs. A new study finds they're causing widespread damage.​

Her group found increased risk of four diseases in coral in contact with plastic. "This is a huge survey," says Harvell. It was the idea of Joleah Lamb, who was at the time, a graduate student. "There are really great studies showing how much plastic is going into the oceans and how much is floating on the surface," says Lamb, who's now a fellow at Cornell University. "But we really didn't have an idea about what's underneath the surface of the ocean." The more they looked, especially in Asian waters, the more they found: bottles, diapers, cotton swabs, food wrappers. They noticed that coral that had plastic didn't look healthy. Based on how much plastic the researchers found while diving, they estimate that over 11 billion plastic items could be entangled in coral reefs in the Asia-Pacific region, home to over half the world's coral reefs. And their survey did not include China, one of the biggest sources of plastic pollution.

Australian reefs had the least amount of plastic observed on reefs, which the researchers attribute to a more comprehensive system for waste control. Other countries in the Pacific don't have much control over what ends up in the waste stream. "Massive amounts of plastic are being thrown into the oceans from land," Harvell says, in countries that don't have much recycling and with dumps that are often adjacent to the ocean or waterways that run into the ocean. Coral reefs already are susceptible to bleaching due to unusually warm water, either from seasonal shifts in water temperature or from human-caused global warming. "Bleached coral is more susceptible to disease," Harvell says. "The bleached coral is stressed. Plastic would make things that much worse."

A survey of 150 reefs found plastic was a common pollutant.​

Matthew Savoca, a marine scientist at the the University of California, Davis, who studies the effects of plastic in the ocean, suggests that ocean waters with lots of plastic waste might also carry other pollutants that could also be contributing to higher rates of coral disease. But Lamb says they found that corals within yards of each other showed a noticeable difference: Those with plastic were much more likely to be diseased. "It seems to be something associated with the plastic itself," says Lamb. Exactly how the plastic is causing disease is still unclear. What is clear from numerous studies is that the amount of plastic getting into the oceans is on the rise.

Plastic Pollution Is Killing Coral Reefs, 4-Year Study Finds

 

[MarathonMike]

Turning the oceans into landfills is a massive problem. Most of it is coming from India and China. It wouldn't surprise me if China just loads up super tankers full of garbage and dump it in the middle of the ocean. No I don't have proof, but given China's track record on everything else, it would be consistent.