New Study: Alarming Levels of Plastic and Dangerous Associated Chemicals in Children's Bodies

Surfing on our waste (source)

by Thomas Neuburger

We recently wrote about the astonishing amount of microplastic — microscopic pieces of ordinary plastic, byproducts of the breakdown of the residue of our trash — in both our environment and our bodies (see "It's Raining Plastic, From the Pyrenees to the Rockies to the Arctic"). As we noted there, environmental microplastic so ubiquitous, it's even falling from the sky onto the ice floes of the Arctic.

A recent German study has more information, finding that plastics and associated products have been discovered "in 97-100% of blood and urine samples from 2,500 children tested between 2014 and 2017." That's an astonishingly high percentage.

The study also refutes the defense that the presence of plastics in human bodies is relatively harmless since plastic is inert. Even if the plastic is inert (there's no evidence that it is), some associated products that enter our bodies with it are decidedly dangerous.

From a Common Dreams piece on the study (translation from the German by the authors):

Der Spiegel, the German weekly magazine, published the findings Saturday, which were part of a federal study focused on "human biomonitoring" of 3 to 17-year-olds. Traces from 11 out of 15 plastic ingredients were found in the test samples.

"Our study clearly shows that plastic ingredients, which are rising in production, are also showing up more and more in the body. It is really worrying that the youngest children are most affected as the most sensitive group," Marike Kolossa-Gehring, one of the study's authors, told the magazine.

Researchers said that they were especially concerned about high levels of perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA) that were found in the study. PFOA is an extremely persistent, bioaccumulative, and toxic chemical frequently used in non-stick cookware and in waterproof clothing.

In 20 percent of those examined, they were above the limit, in the younger children, the proportion was even higher. The study also showed children from poorer families had more plastic residue in their bodies than children from higher-income families, according to German public broadcaster ARD

While PFOA is not itself a plastic, it's used in the manufacture or treatment of a number of materials, like Teflon and carpeting, and despite claims to the contrary, it persists in those products:

A study of workers living near a DuPont Teflon plant found an association between PFOA exposure and two kinds of cancer as well as four other diseases. A positive exposure-response trend for kidney cancer is supported by many studies. PFOA has been detected in the blood of more than 98% of the general US population in the low and sub-parts per billion (ppb) range, and levels are higher in chemical plant employees and surrounding subpopulations. How general populations are exposed to PFOA is not completely understood. PFOA has been detected in industrial waste, stain-resistant carpets, carpet-cleaning liquids, house dust, microwave popcorn bags, water, food, some cookware and Teflon (PTFE) products. (emphasis added)

The study also notes an increase in exposure to substitutes for previously banned chemicals.

As Madge might have said in the famous commercials, "We're soaking in it."

We're also eating, breathing, drinking, swimming and drowning in it. Not a good sign. If those whom we let control us get their way, I fear it will be with us till it kills us.
  

It's Raining Plastic, From the Pyrenees to the Rockies to the Arctic

Rainwater samples collected across Colorado and analyzed under a microscope contained a rainbow of plastic fibers. Photograph: USGS (source)

by Thomas Neuburger

I often worry whether we aren't one of those species that self-eliminates, that commits "ecological suicide" as many bacteria do when they turn their environment too acid to live in. It's certain we're polluting the air with CO2 in a way that will change the climate from habitable to very inhospitable.

But we're doing this in other ways as well — according to the latest news, surprisingly, with plastic. To be more exact, the microplastic that results from the breakdown of our trash, which as you likely know if you look at your garbage, is filled with plastic.

Microplastics are fibers that can be seen only with a microscope. The latest reports show that microplastic is not only present in abundance in the ocean, where much of our bulk plastic resides, but also in the air and, via the same settling effect that drops soot and dust to the surface of the earth, on the ground we walk across.

Day after day, year after year, minute after minute, a film of microplastic particles is raining on the earth. The more we produce it, the more we will live in it. If in a thousand years we revert as a species to Stone Age life, reduced in numbers and struggling to survive, we'll find the ground, not rich in minerals as it was when our ancestors first walked on it, but rich in the indestructible garbage our descendants' ancestors — us — cast off on the way to their own self-caused demise.

One report from April of this year in Science reveals the amount of plastic descending on the Pyrenees in France:

Prior studies have shown that microplastics, which can be ingested and inhaled by humans—and which may lead to reproductive issues in some marine mollusks—can rise up into the atmosphere and drop back to solid ground in the cities they come from. But scientists thought these plastics couldn’t travel very far from their urban sources.

To find out just how far they can go, the researchers collected particles falling from the sky in dust, rain, and snow for 5 months at the Bernadouze meteorological station in the Pyrenees mountains in southwestern France—100 kilometers from the nearest city.

To their horror, the authors found plastics, predominantly the kind from the single-use packaging used in shipping. From their sample, they determined that each day, an average of 365 plastic particles sifted down from above into the square meter surface of the collection device. If comparable quantities of airborne microplastic fall across the rest of the country, the researchers estimate roughly 2000 tons of plastic blanket France each year, they report today in Nature Geoscience.

Another report in the Guardian says this about plastic falling on the Rockies:

Plastic was the furthest thing from Gregory Wetherbee’s mind when he began analyzing rainwater samples collected from the Rocky Mountains. “I guess I expected to see mostly soil and mineral particles,” said the US Geological Survey researcher. Instead, he found multicolored microscopic plastic fibers.

The discovery, published in a recent study (pdf) titled “It is raining plastic”, raises new questions about the amount of plastic waste permeating the air, water, and soil virtually everywhere on Earth. ...

Rainwater samples collected across Colorado and analyzed under a microscope contained a rainbow of plastic fibers, as well as beads and shards. The findings shocked Wetherbee, who had been collecting the samples in order to study nitrogen pollution.

There's even plastic landing on the ice floes of the Arctic. According to the UPI in April: "New research published on Wednesday in Science Advances shows that even the remote ice floes of the Arctic have measurable amounts of microplastics and microfibers gracing their surfaces."

We eat it, we drink it, we breathe it. Does it hurt us? Hard to imagine it doesn't, though the subject is just now coming under scrutiny, as this study published in Science Direct notes:

Microplastics have recently been detected in atmospheric fallout in Greater Paris. Due to their small size, they can be inhaled and may induce lesions in the respiratory system dependent on individual susceptibility and particle properties. Even though airborne microplastics are a new topic, several observational studies have reported the inhalation of plastic fibers and particles, especially in exposed workers, often coursing with dyspnea caused by airway and interstitial inflammatory responses.

While the authors notes that inhaled microplastic can cause respiratory lesions, dispnea (shortness of breath) and inflammation, they don't mention the relationship of chronic inflammation with cancer.

I'm frankly not sure we can address the problem of plastic, for the same reason we can't address the problem of fossil fuel as a source of atmospheric CO2. Both are too embedded in the way our species lives.

As a result, both will be embedded in the way we die as well.
 

World Without Us: Death of Insects and the Third Great Tsunami

by Thomas Neuburger

I've written in the past about "twin tsunamis" approaching the U.S. and the world — the chaos caused by out-of-control climate change and the blossoming of pre-revolutionary America, the America that elected Trump and almost elected Sanders, into revolutionary America, the America fed up here with life under the predatory rule of the very very rich and the corporations they control.

But there's a third great tsunami as well, one related to the destruction of our habitat, the environment of the world we depend on for physical sustenance, and only partly the consequence of climate change itself.

Put simply, we're destroying our world. Or rather, remaking it so it's uninhabitable by ... us. This radical transformation takes many forms, from acidification of the ocean, which will alter for millions of years what kinds of species it supports, to destruction of our soil and food supply so that a single, politically powerful company can prosper.

We're also killing off the world's insects:

Plummeting insect numbers 'threaten collapse of nature'

Exclusive: Insects could vanish within a century at current rate of decline, says global review

The world’s insects are hurtling down the path to extinction, threatening a “catastrophic collapse of nature’s ecosystems”, according to the first global scientific review.

More than 40% of insect species are declining and a third are endangered, the analysis found. The rate of extinction is eight times faster than that of mammals, birds and reptiles. The total mass of insects is falling by a precipitous 2.5% a year, according to the best data available, suggesting they could vanish within a century.

The planet is at the start of a sixth mass extinction in its history, with huge losses already reported in larger animals that are easier to study. But insects are by far the most varied and abundant animals, outweighing humanity by 17 times. They are “essential” for the proper functioning of all ecosystems, the researchers say, as food for other creatures, pollinators and recyclers of nutrients.

A world without insects, or dramatically stripped of them, is a world without us. This is the path we're on. This is the third tsunami, and like the others, its mist is wetting our faces as we speak.

This doesn't change the implications for the 2020 election, which I'll return to later, but it certainly adds to them.