Pelagic Plastics
The American people weigh 50 billion pounds. They produce 100 billion
pounds of small plastic pellets each year. All the world's people weigh
a trillion pounds. They produce 5 trillion pounds of epoxy resin each
year. This stuff never goes away. The environment is filling up with it.
Plastic lighters and razors began the movement toward our "throw away
society". The pace is accelerating. Plastic toys don't last very long,
do they? Not as usable toys they don't, but as bits and pieces of plastic
junk, they do. Not all this plastic makes it to landfills; indeed not
all the raw material makes it to 
manufacturing
plants. The most common contaminant on Orange County Beaches is pre-production
plastic pellets. There they were dubbed "nurdles" by junior
lifeguards.
"Plastic resin pellets are small granules generally with the shape of a cylinder or a disk with a diameter of a few millimeters. These plastic particles are industrial raw material transported to manufacturing sites where 'user plastics' are made by remelting and molding into the final products. Resin pellets can be unintentionally released to the environment, both during manufacturing and transport. The released resin pellets are carried by surface runoff, stream and river waters eventually to the ocean. Resin pellets can also be directly introduced to the ocean through accidental spills during shipping. Because of their environmental persistence, they are distributed widely in the ocean and found on beaches and on water surfaces all over the world. A growing production of plastic leads to a measurable increase in plastic pollution in the ocean. A significant increase in concentrations of plastic particles, including resin pellets, in the seasurface has been observed in the North Pacific from the 1970s to the present."5
"Plastic resin pellets (small granules 0.1-0.5 centimeters in diameter)
are widely distributed in the ocean all over the world. They are an industrial
raw material for the plastic industry and are unintentionally released
to the environment both during manufacturing and transport. They are sometimes
ingested by seabirds and other 
marine
organisms, and their adverse effects on organisms are a concern. In the
recent study, PCBs, DDE, and nonylphenols (NP) were detected in polypropylene
(PP) resin pellets collected from four Japanese coasts. Concentrations
of PCBs (4-117 ng/g), DDE (0.16-3.1 ng/g), and NP (0.13-16 µg/g) varied
among the sampling sites. These concentrations were comparable to those
for suspended particles and bottom sediments collected from the same area
as the pellets. Field adsorption experiments using PP virgin pellets demonstrated
significant and steady increase in PCBs and DDE concentrations throughout
the six-day experiment, indicating that the source of PCBs and DDE is
ambient seawater and that adsorption to pellet surfaces is the mechanism
of enrichment. The major source of NP in the marine PP resin pellets was
thought to be plastic additives and/or their degradation products. Comparison
of PCBs and DDE concentrations in marine PP resin pellets with those in
seawater suggests their high degree of accumulation (apparent adsorption
coefficient: 10^5-10^6). The high accumulation potential suggests that
plastic resin pellets serve as both a transport medium and a potential
source of toxic chemicals in the marine environment."5
Some very nasty chemicals facilitate this awesome productivity, not only polluting the water, but also our air. "Chemicals such as isocyanates, trimellitic anhydride and phthalic anhydride"1 are identified as causes of asthma. Polynuclear aromatic hydrocarbons, PAHs, and polychlorinated hydrocarbons, PCBs, are making their way to the remote realms of the ocean and causing biological damage to whales, as well as fish and other species. Indeed, killer whales are more polluted with these chemicals than any other creature on earth.
The effect of plastic on the human population, however, has been to contribute
to its growth. The durability of goods packaged in plastics, the medicines
delivered in plastic containers, the all weather protection afforded by
plastic clothing, the durability of plastic fishing gear, and the effectiveness
of plastic instrumentation have all afforded our species the means to
populate every continent on earth at a level 1000 times 
greater
than the mean population of mammals otherwise similar to humans. Of all
the animals on earth, only three bird species live on all the continents
except Antarctica, the Roseate Tern, the Barn Owl and the Osprey. "It
is impossible to enumerate the environmental effects of supporting the
current human population."2 "In all,
mankind has managed to inject into the global environment at least seventy
thousand synthetic chemicals, often with great ignorance of where they
go and what they do."3
"And the pace of change itself becomes even faster. Next month the world population will increase by more than the number of human beings that lived on the paleness 100,000 years ago, a time when evolution had already produced a human brain almost indistinguishable from today's model. Human inventiveness has created problems because human judgment and humanity's ability to deal with the consequences of its creations lags behind its ability to create."4
In
our research, we found an abnormally small amount of the tiniest size
classes as plastic fragments. We believe that larvaceans and other mucus
web feeding jellies and salps are removing them. They thus enter the food
chain and become concentrated in larger animals. The fact that these particles
absorb oil soluble pollutants is a cause for concern, as is the fact that
radioactive particles can adhere to them. Polluted, radioactive jellyfish
creating polluted, radioactive turtles and so on and so on. The easiest
thing in the world would be to conduct a study on this potential problem
and label the results, "inconclusive." Let's all do a mental exercise
which thinks logically about this potential problem, and label the results,
"troubling." When will we be as careful about the environment as we are
about ourselves?
Watch a preview of Pelagic Plastics.
Captain Charles J. Moore Algalita Marine Research Foundation (excerpts)
Plastic Resin Pellets as a Transport Medium for Toxic Chemicals in the Marine Environment © American Chemical Society (excerpts)
1. Ridley, Matt 1999. Genome, The Autobiography
of a Species in 23 Chapters (Harper Collins)
2. Fowler, Charles W. 2000, Ecological Effects of Marine Debris: The Example
of Northern Fur Seals (Alaska Fisheries Science Center)
3. Broad, William J. 1997, The Universe Below (Simon & Schuster)
4. Ornstein, Robert and Ehrlich, Paul 1989, New World New Mind (Simon
& Schuster)
5. Mato, Yukie, et. al. 2001, Plastic Resin Pellets as a Transport Medium
for Toxic Chemicals in the Marine Environment (Environ. Sci. Technol.,
vol. 35, p.318-324)
For more information about helping your environment visit these links:
www.mindfully.org
Other
Hot Topics
global cooling technology
pelagic plastics
shark diving
shark research
mimic octopus
manatees
electric rays
bat caves (Bali)
black sea bass