Microplastics in the sea

[nortonscove]

Originally Posted by GordMay

Global warming has caused a decline in the sea ice habitat polar bears depend on to catch seals, and scientists predict further sea ice loss. To understand how polar bears will be impacted, we need to know their survival and reproductive rates, under these lower sea ice conditions. However, we don’t have field measurements, since they are never-before-seen conditions, and we can’t assume the rates won’t change because we know bears need ice to eat and thus survive. The ice is much more than just a platform to move and hunt. Sea ice is the foundation of all Arctic marine life. It’s where they mate and raise their cubs. Sea ice is also essential habitat for their primary food, ringed seals, as seals pup and rest on the ice.
As sea ice decreases at a rate of about 4.6% a decade, polar bears at the southern edges of their range; like those in southern Nunavut, Manitoba and Ontario, spend five to six months on land, with very few seals to eat.
Current knowledge shows that polar bears have some capacity to adjust to the warming Arctic, but the loss of sea ice habitat may be happening too rapidly to allow for adaptation, and there are no substitutes on land for the fat rich seals on which the bears depend.
Are they going extinct? I think not (yet). Although most of the world's 19 populations have returned to healthy numbers, there are differences* between them. Some are stable, some seem to be increasing, and some are decreasing due to various pressures.
However, what is certain is that polar bears will face a difficult future without sea ice, which has been the foundation of their lives for hundreds of thousands of years.

* 1 population was in decline
2 populations were increasing
7 populations were stable
9 populations were data-deficient (information missing or outdated)

While I respect your use of the facts. The fact is that the numbers are very healthy around here where the banning of seal product and the end of a 300 year old hunt have seen a ballooning of the seal population. Latest estimated number in the vicinity of ten million. Up by about seven and a half million over the past couple decades. And when the polar bears show up with them they don't look to be in bad shape. When you need to look outside before going out in the spring and when you can't get the boat in the water until late June due to pack ice I'll attest to change but not to the implications of in danger.

[Luckyknot]

Originally Posted by nortonscove

While I respect your use of the facts. The fact is that the numbers are very healthy around here where the banning of seal product and the end of a 300 year old hunt have seen a ballooning of the seal population. Latest estimated number in the vicinity of ten million. Up by about seven and a half million over the past couple decades. And when the polar bears show up with them they don't look to be in bad shape. When you need to look outside before going out in the spring and when you can't get the boat in the water until late June due to pack ice I'll attest to change but not to the implications of in danger.

This shows that humans have a profound effect on the world. Changing our actions BEFORE it is too late as stated above can truly make a difference in preserving the natural world. Should we really wait until danger is upon us and no longer deniable in any way before we start to take action to be better?

[Hardhead]

Originally Posted by Luckyknot

This shows that humans have a profound effect on the world. Changing our actions BEFORE it is too late as stated above can truly make a difference in preserving the natural world. Should we really wait until danger is upon us and no longer deniable in any way before we start to take action to be better?

For many people, the answer is yes. They only care if they are directly affected - then it's a travesty. What may happen to their kids doesn't count. Unfortunately.

[john61ct]

Do you consume a credit card's worth of plastic every week?

https://phys.org/news/2019-06-consum...th-plastic.amp

[john61ct]

https://www.thelancet.com/journals/l...121-3/fulltext

[Hardhead]

We'd all better get used to all of the beaches and wetlands being covered up in old crapped up plastic bottles and packaging everywhere you go. This is a fact.

By the end of our children's lifetimes, sailing into a beautiful natural setting will be a thing of the past. The current packaging we throw away or drop somewhere along the way never biodegrades, and it's a rare thing, even now, to walk a beach and not see a dozen or so plastic bottles washed up or stuck in the reeds.

We've stolen that from our kids, and it's only going to get dramatically worse every single year from here on out. Screw any potential health or endocrine effects on living tissue, or DNA mutations over generations -- the pure ugliness of the natural environment we are causing as a people is our gift to everyone who lives after our generation. That's a fact too.

We could easily do something about it, and the right time is now -- but the plastic packaging manufacturers and their lobbyists will vilify the capitalistic solution, and inevitably turn it into a cultural war. Conservatives who love the outdoors will happily fight for the right to pollute with plastic, and the whole issue will stalemate with vicious name calling.

The lobbyists, and those wealthy with tons of money to hire lobbyists, will consider it another successful confusion of the issue. Big smiles all around, and keep the plastic packaging rolling out into the beaches, ocean, air and inside the body of every living thing. Success. We are stupid, but it's easiest that way. In fact, the easiest way is to stop thinking about the issue, say it's too complicated, and just flat out ignore it. We might just squeak it out to the end of our personal lifetimes at least.

[Lake-Effect]

Originally Posted by Baba Buoy

Plastic garbage is a problem. If eaten by some dumb animal it can cause death by choking or obstruction of digestion track. The problem is when this subject become a witch hunt and supersedes common sense or objective science. Obsessing over plastic straws in the USA, while nearly all plastic pollution is from Asian fishermen and Asian rivers is one example of how this issue is distorted.

Plastic straws are a small but OBVIOUS place to start reducing the use of single-use plastics. They're not essential and paper straws are also cheap. It was only the right-wing press blowing it out of proportion and making ridiculous exaggerated arguments about the edge-cases (the disabled, hospitals, seniors) that created the impression of a witch-hunt around straws.

Yes there are other countries that have a worse problem with plastic waste. Not coincidentally, many are also the countries that the west was shipping their plastic trash to. Out of sight, out of mind, right? That's finally stopping, as those countries finally take a stand.

Anyway, some western countries are starting to provide leadership on this issue. There are alternatives to just about all single-use plastic; a little pressure will cause those alternatives to magically reappear.

[a64pilot]

Wanna bet that cigarette butts out number plastic straws in the oceans by a huge margin? By number or mass.
Don’t get me wrong, I think consumer use of single use use plastics ought to be banned, but if we are going on a campaign, maybe we ought to do some research and go after the biggest polluters first

[Lake-Effect]

Originally Posted by a64pilot

Wanna bet that cigarette butts out number plastic straws in the oceans by a huge margin? By number or mass.
Don’t get me wrong, I think consumer use of single use use plastics ought to be banned, but if we are going on a campaign, maybe we ought to do some research and go after the biggest polluters first

Who could disagree that butts are a more serious problem? No research necessary, just lived experience and basic observation. And why is it ok, macho even, to just toss your butt anywhere?



Seems reasonable to require that all cigarette filters are of organic materials and/or quickly biodegradable.

[Hardhead]

Originally Posted by a64pilot

Wanna bet that cigarette butts out number plastic straws in the oceans by a huge margin? By number or mass.
Don’t get me wrong, I think consumer use of single use use plastics ought to be banned, but if we are going on a campaign, maybe we ought to do some research and go after the biggest polluters first

Well, you just have to actually start someplace. Current single-use plastic packaging is the low hanging fruit - as a much better option would be simply reverting to the basic non-plastic packaging of 1940 or so.

The huge new multi-billion-dollar free market created for biodegradable or inert packaging will, no doubt, spur hundreds of new patents for better solutions created with all the new technology developed since 1940.

Many new millionaires will be made, and some of the old ones will lose their status. That's why it won't happen. Just watch.

[Hardhead]

That worst part of this fact is -- it’s a simple problem to solve.

Only one thing necessary – Congress – under the basic Commerce clause - would pass a law stating that effective June 15, 2024, all single-use packaging must be either naturally biodegradable or revert to inert substances under typical north American conditions within 5 years of natural environmental exposure. President Trump would approve it.

5 years of ramping up notice for biodegradable packaging, and the profit motive of the capitalistic system will take it from there. Off to the races. Profits are made on new production machinery. Manufacturing efficiencies bring the cost dramatically down. Historic profits are fully restored. Some capitalists and companies win big, some others who could not compete, for whatever reason, will be replaced. We all win. If we stop winning, we do it differently. The U.S. sets the eventual packaging market for the whole world.

Capitalism is the best system in the world for finding packaging solutions, and absorbing change. If there is any doubt – please name one industry that is not making a profit.

Anything making the solution more complicated than that is pure BS manipulation, and smoke and mirrors being story fed to the TV watching working public – as always, by those with financial fortunes and lobbyists who don’t want to compete anymore. One handpicked sob story will be introduced at a time, about a week apart.

The problem could be easily solved with capitalism (no lie), if it was used correctly.

Hundreds of millions are spent each year on lobbyists, and highly paid opinion leaders, to culturally confuse and shape the issues as they are presented to us by the media. Works all the time. Works right now.

[Gerrycooper56]

Originally Posted by leandroflaherty

Bottled water is almost always worse than local tap water. It actually contains a large amount of micro plastics from the container it sits in, and its chemical leaching. Then there's the single use and its inevitable end in a landfill or the ocean. Dont use bottled water unless its an emergency. Dont be part of the problem. Reusable water bottles and a water filter from the tap (or watermaker / rain) is the way to go.


As for clothing, yes, tons of plastic ends up in our water supply from the synthetic fibers breaking down. Outside of extreme applications, like sports wear, its foolish to not use natural fibers, cotton, wool, linen, etc.


The only reason all this plastic is there is because of short sighted profit $$. Shame their use and lead by example. When regular people demand (by paying for it in their daily lives) sustainable green alternatives its when industry will respond.

So if the micro plastics are in the bottle then someone drinking bottled water for years, even from the office water cooler has been directly ingesting plastic. Either the plastic goes straight through with no effect or is retained in the body which should be easy to check. Maybe too soon to know the effect on health. Either way, one would think the harmful effects would show up on someone drinking bottled water regularly.

[Lake-Effect]

Originally Posted by Gerrycooper56

Maybe too soon to know the effect on health. Either way, one would think the harmful effects would show up...

It is being studied. The worst direct effects upon humans may be long-term (cancer, liver damage, birth defects). The negative effects upon other creatures, many of whom are in our food-chain, are already known.

EVEN IF there's no direct effects, there's bound to be indirect effects upon humans, such as losing a fishery or two.

[Eshelby67]

Originally Posted by Hardhead

We'd all better get used to all of the beaches and wetlands being covered up in old crapped up plastic bottles and packaging everywhere you go. This is a fact.

By the end of our children's lifetimes, sailing into a beautiful natural setting will be a thing of the past. The current packaging we throw away or drop somewhere along the way never biodegrades, and it's a rare thing, even now, to walk a beach and not see a dozen or so plastic bottles washed up or stuck in the reeds.

We've stolen that from our kids, and it's only going to get dramatically worse every single year from here on out. Screw any potential health or endocrine effects on living tissue, or DNA mutations over generations -- the pure ugliness of the natural environment we are causing as a people is our gift to everyone who lives after our generation. That's a fact too.

We could easily do something about it, and the right time is now -- but the plastic packaging manufacturers and their lobbyists will vilify the capitalistic solution, and inevitably turn it into a cultural war. Conservatives who love the outdoors will happily fight for the right to pollute with plastic, and the whole issue will stalemate with vicious name calling.

The lobbyists, and those wealthy with tons of money to hire lobbyists, will consider it another successful confusion of the issue. Big smiles all around, and keep the plastic packaging rolling out into the beaches, ocean, air and inside the body of every living thing. Success. We are stupid, but it's easiest that way. In fact, the easiest way is to stop thinking about the issue, say it's too complicated, and just flat out ignore it. We might just squeak it out to the end of our personal lifetimes at least.

Pretty much sums it all up in one post.

[Uncle Bob]

Originally Posted by Hardhead

That worst part of this fact is -- it’s a simple problem to solve.

Only one thing necessary – Congress – under the basic Commerce clause - would pass a law stating that effective June 15, 2024, all single-use packaging must be either naturally biodegradable or revert to inert substances under typical north American conditions within 5 years of natural environmental exposure. President Trump would approve it.

5 years of ramping up notice for biodegradable packaging, and the profit motive of the capitalistic system will take it from there. Off to the races. Profits are made on new production machinery. Manufacturing efficiencies bring the cost dramatically down. Historic profits are fully restored. Some capitalists and companies win big, some others who could not compete, for whatever reason, will be replaced. We all win. If we stop winning, we do it differently. The U.S. sets the eventual packaging market for the whole world.

Capitalism is the best system in the world for finding packaging solutions, and absorbing change. If there is any doubt – please name one industry that is not making a profit.

Anything making the solution more complicated than that is pure BS manipulation, and smoke and mirrors being story fed to the TV watching working public – as always, by those with financial fortunes and lobbyists who don’t want to compete anymore. One handpicked sob story will be introduced at a time, about a week apart.

The problem could be easily solved with capitalism (no lie), if it was used correctly.

Hundreds of millions are spent each year on lobbyists, and highly paid opinion leaders, to culturally confuse and shape the issues as they are presented to us by the media. Works all the time. Works right now.

You may well be correct, for America, but my guess is that the worst of the plastic contamination does not emanate from there directly and that anything passed by President Trump will be ignored by much if not most of the rest of the world.