Microplastics

Cook

Cook

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Anyone else been hearing how much we are apparently ingesting of these plastics. Seems to have a link to disease later in life. I’ve personally taken some small steps, but gees it’s unavoidable.
 
Yes!
Apparently certain brands of beer are full of microplastic.
 
Yeah, they're a major issue and they are so heavily ingrained in everything that they're unavoidable. Seafood tends to have the highest rates, but microplastics get into everything. They're in the soil, the plants, cows, pigs, everything.

Normally they should pass through the body, but they have been found in human blood including the blood of new born babies. And not too much is known about the health effects, but it is known that they can cause cell death.

Basically put, it's another pollutant we have put in the environment that will likely cause all manor of disease and death.
 
Arentbthe nanobots and graphine oxide more worrying? Lol
 
The DoggFather said:
Arentbthe nanobots and graphine oxide more worrying? Lol
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I wouldn't worry. You're not going to be accidentally exposed to either. So if someone wanted to use either on you then it would take them a lot of effort. Easier just to use poison.
 
Hacky McAxe said:
I wouldn't worry. You're not going to be accidentally exposed to either. So if someone wanted to use either on you then it would take them a lot of effort. Easier just to use poison.
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Yeah, I'm old school....I like the direct approach lol
 
Humans have survived lead in paint, asbestos in houses and plenty of other self inflicted nasties. If micro plastics turn into a massive issue for us, enough people will survive to develop the next massive poison/carcinogen/catastrophe.

As for the microplastics in the environment, I'm sure enough species will survive to dismiss those lost as natural selection.
 
Alan79 said:
Humans have survived lead in paint, asbestos in houses and plenty of other self inflicted nasties. If micro plastics turn into a massive issue for us, enough people will survive to develop the next massive poison/carcinogen/catastrophe.

As for the microplastics in the environment, I'm sure enough species will survive to dismiss those lost as natural selection.
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The difference with stuff like that is that we could get rid of it easily. There's currently no easy way to get rid of microplastics.
 
The ocean is full of it, comes out of the tap and in your food, no escaping it.
 
Cook said:
Anyone else been hearing how much we are apparently ingesting of these plastics. Seems to have a link to disease later in life. I’ve personally taken some small steps, but gees it’s unavoidable.
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I was living in france 6 years ago, and I read an article that they had taken sea scallops from all up and down the Atlantic coast of France, and 100% had traces of microplastics. Not 99.9%, 100%. Bloody scary.
 
Hacky McAxe said:
The difference with stuff like that is that we could get rid of it easily. There's currently no easy way to get rid of microplastics.
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There are growing attempts to remove plastics from the environment before it becomes micro plastic. But that's largely small scale projects as far as I've seen (generally localised surface netting contraptions). Whenever I've read about these projects, they're searching for funding to expand the reach of their projects. And it's not actually disposing of the plastic, just relocating it.

I don't see how we filter MP's from the environment once it's broken down that small. But there's research into bacteria that have evolved producing enzymes to use plastics as a food source.


I won't post the article as its massive. It's in the guardian so it won't be paywalled. But it's an interesting look at the discovery of the first bacteria in 2001 and the subsequent research into producing bacterial capable of producing plastic eating enzymes. Some of the most encouraging things I'll drop below.

A company called Carbios in France has developed a process that breaks down plastics to their components, ready to be remade into new more stable plastic than current recycling methods achieve (generally it's remade into less stable plastic than it would have been new with current methods).

The carbios process is expandable. They're moving to a facility capable of handling 130 tonnes a day, up from the 250kg it can handle daily at present. It's supposed to be about 51% more efficient than mining for and development of the component materials. And the main positive is it's using plastic already in existence more efficiently.

There is a lot of other research going on. But there is a massive amount of plastic in the environment. And most of the funding is focused on breaking it down into reusable components. There's still very limited work towards replicating the community of bacteria initially found at the dump which were breaking down the plastics into components while other microbes broke those components down further into nutrients. There's still plastics that can't be microbially broken down yet.

The positive I take from this is that nature itself had worked out the solution before we ever thought about it as a problem. Something out there will eat it if there's enough of it to eat. Nature's solution mightn't be quick enough to fix things. But it's giving us the tools to do so. If we can actually stop dumping the plastic we've made already and re use its components, at least it'll slow the build up and give nature a chance to work on what we can't pick up.
 
Alan79 said:
There are growing attempts to remove plastics from the environment before it becomes micro plastic. But that's largely small scale projects as far as I've seen (generally localised surface netting contraptions). Whenever I've read about these projects, they're searching for funding to expand the reach of their projects. And it's not actually disposing of the plastic, just relocating it.

I don't see how we filter MP's from the environment once it's broken down that small. But there's research into bacteria that have evolved producing enzymes to use plastics as a food source.


I won't post the article as its massive. It's in the guardian so it won't be paywalled. But it's an interesting look at the discovery of the first bacteria in 2001 and the subsequent research into producing bacterial capable of producing plastic eating enzymes. Some of the most encouraging things I'll drop below.

A company called Carbios in France has developed a process that breaks down plastics to their components, ready to be remade into new more stable plastic than current recycling methods achieve (generally it's remade into less stable plastic than it would have been new with current methods).

The carbios process is expandable. They're moving to a facility capable of handling 130 tonnes a day, up from the 250kg it can handle daily at present. It's supposed to be about 51% more efficient than mining for and development of the component materials. And the main positive is it's using plastic already in existence more efficiently.

There is a lot of other research going on. But there is a massive amount of plastic in the environment. And most of the funding is focused on breaking it down into reusable components. There's still very limited work towards replicating the community of bacteria initially found at the dump which were breaking down the plastics into components while other microbes broke those components down further into nutrients. There's still plastics that can't be microbially broken down yet.

The positive I take from this is that nature itself had worked out the solution before we ever thought about it as a problem. Something out there will eat it if there's enough of it to eat. Nature's solution mightn't be quick enough to fix things. But it's giving us the tools to do so. If we can actually stop dumping the plastic we've made already and re use its components, at least it'll slow the build up and give nature a chance to work on what we can't pick up.
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I like the idea of plastic eating bacteria.

I'm not sure about netting. Sure, it definitely helps, but doesn't stop the problem. I recall reading a study a while back that found that it takes less than a day for large amounts of MPs to degrade from plastics when in the ocean. Before that study it was assumed they took years before breaking down.
 
Hacky McAxe said:
I like the idea of plastic eating bacteria.

I'm not sure about netting. Sure, it definitely helps, but doesn't stop the problem. I recall reading a study a while back that found that it takes less than a day for large amounts of MPs to degrade from plastics when in the ocean. Before that study it was assumed they took years before breaking down.
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It's not just ocean projects. There's some pretty simple devices being used to catch things escaping into rivers through stormwater drains. The problem with these is it takes committed volunteers to keep emptying them. There's projects gathering from rivers, but again it requires people and boats to collect the waste. I even recall seeing a reformed commercial trawler that'd been converted to collect trash. But I can't find anything about it.

Long term the problem of collecting waste is eventually preventable if people actually throw their shit in a recycling bin even if it means carrying it for a while.

But here's a few of the collection projects
www.oceanwatch.org.au

6 awesome programs tackling ocean plastics | Oceanwatch Australia

Ocean plastics are the grown-up version of microplastics small plastic particles in the environment that are generally smaller than 1 mm (0.039 in) down to ...
www.oceanwatch.org.au www.oceanwatch.org.au

One of the bits near the end of the article I posted previously actually mentioned that there's been an algae developed that could potentially break down micro plastics in the ocean. But there's still a degree of caution about releasing things like this. But they've actually found organisms on the ocean, buried in the ground under tips breaking down MPs. It's not beyond conceivable that there's animals or people that don't have unrecognised systems starting to work on the MP problem in bodies.

But again. I do find it very encouraging that humanities solution has all begun by looking at the way nature is converting our waste into resources again and trying to boost the natural process.
 
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