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Dangerous Plastics Are a Threat to Us and Future Generations
Why a legally binding treaty cannot be postponed
Apr 04, 2019
Every day people make decisions about what to eat, sometimes opting for colorful fruits and veggies, sometimes finding the smell of bacon irresistible. At the end of the day people are controlling their own health. What is remarkable though, is the possibility that something one swallows today could have a lasting effect on future offspring--children, grandchildren, great grandchildren. New research is finding a generational impact of certain chemicals. This time it's not the bacon we're worried about--but plastics and the toxins within them.
A 2004 study of 2,517 people found that 93% had detectable quantities of BPA's by-product in their urine.
Twenty years ago, researchers at Washington State University discovered accidentally that the now-infamous bisphenol A (BPA) was leaching out of plastic cages, harming the mice within. The contamination caused abnormalities in mice eggs and fertility. Numerous subsequent studies found BPA exposure affects adult fertility and health across species, including monkeys, fish, and humans. Known to decrease sperm count in rats and to cause breast cancer in women, BPA was banned in 2012 by the FDA from being used in baby bottles and sippy cups. Yet BPA is still used in many products, including epoxy resins used to coat canned foods. A 2004 study of 2,517 people found that 93% had detectable quantities of BPA's by-product in their urine.
Since the toxic effects of BPA came to light, several replacement bisphenols were quickly brought to market by chemical companies and are now in widespread use. Twenty years after the BPA toxicity discovery, by remarkable chance, the same Washington State University lab recently noticed again that something was amiss with their mice. This time the mice were housed in cages comprised of replacement bisphenols, largely believed to be safer than BPA. The researchers subsequently performed controlled studies with several of the replacement bisphenols including BPS, a widely used replacement.
Results demonstrated that the new bisphenols behaved similarly to BPA, causing health problems including detrimental effects on fertility in both males and females, reported in Cell Biology in September 2018. Scientist Sarah Hunt explained, "This paper reports a strange deja vu experience in our laboratory." What the lab discovered once with BPA, it was seeing again with the replacements. Perhaps most troubling were the long-lasting effects of the toxins. Even if all bisphenols could be magically eliminated today, the toxic effects would still last about three generations through the germline of people already exposed. This means bisphenols ingested today could affect the fertility of one's great grandchildren.
The bisphenol case demonstrates that FDA bans do not necessarily solve the root problem. Chemical companies tend to roll out similar chemicals to those that have been banned, because this is the easiest way to bring something to market quickly. But more testing is needed before chemicals are released into the environment. Long term problems such as generational infertility and cancer risk often cannot easily be examined in clinical trials, and environmental effects are not rigorously analyzed prior to release.
The Washington State University study also proved that damaged and heated plastics are particularly deadly, as the damaged cages leached more toxins. This should serve as a warning for those who microwave food in plastic containers for their families. And it should remind us that discarded plastic bottles degrading in oceans and rivers are releasing toxins that cause irreversible infertility.
The current estimate of plastics in our oceans is approximately 150 million metric tons. By 2050, the amount is expected to 'outweigh the fish,' according to Jim Leape, co-director of the Stanford Center for Ocean Solutions. A recent study has determined microplastics (small plastic particles) are present in every river and lake in Britain. And they have been found in tap water, everywhere from the Environmental Protection Agency in Washington, DC to the Trump Grill in New York. A study of 159 drinking water samples on five continents found that 83% of those samples were contaminated. Plastics are everywhere, from the highest mountains to the deepest parts of the ocean and Arctic. Nanoplastics less than 50 nanometers long have even been found in plankton, which is ingested by fish that humans eat.
Scientists are finding that plastics are disrupting marine mammals' ability to reproduce. Many forms of plastic including polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) and Bisphenol A are endocrine disruptors, meaning they affect the hormonal systems of animals. An orca of adult age called Lulu, researchers recently found, was barren as if she was a juvenile. Analysis revealed very high levels of PCBs in her lipid tissues. One orca pod off the coast of Scotland has not produced a calf in 25 years. Despite bans on PCBs 30 years ago, toxins remain in orca mothers' milk, and are passed from mother to baby. A recent study published in the journal Science predicts that half the world's population of orcas will be extinct in just a few decades due to PCB poisoning. Researchers have also found that despite the PCB ban in Europe, levels of PCBs have not decreased, indicated that they may be leaching out of landfills. Hormone disruptors have also been found to impair male frogs' fertility, and to cause tadpoles to more frequently develop ovaries rather than testicles, thus skewing the proportion of males to females. Similar problems have been found in fish. Reproductive risks associated with endocrine disrupting chemicals span species.
Bisphenol A is known to decrease sperm count and to cause cancer in many species. Its counterpart replacement plastics (BPS, BPF, BPAF, BPZ, BPP, BHPF... to name just a few), researchers have recently discovered, are no better. Whether these pollutants have already affected humans is anyone's guess, but it would be wise to view statistics during the time period since plastics became popular, starting in the 1960s, and to see if there is a significant trend over time.
It appears there is. Notably, a 2017 study found that sperm counts per milliliter declined by more than 50% from 1973 to 2011, with total sperm counts down almost 60%. Two other recent studies have demonstrated that over the past few decades in the U.S. and Europe, both sperm count and motility have decreased.
The United Nations Environment Assembly (UNEA) recently debated a proposed legally binding treaty to address plastic pollution. One objective of the proposed treaty was to phase out single use plastics by 2025. Norway also suggested a global agreement for handling ocean plastic pollution. Sadly, the U.S. was the largest voice against the proposed treaty and the proposed global waste disposal plan.
Eventually a non-legally-binding agreement was reached in which the U.S. watered down the language to "significantly reduce" plastics by 2030, eleven years from now. One UN delegate described the Trump representatives as "trying to remove all targets and timelines."
Unearthed, Greenpeace's research group, has found that in the first six months of 2018, almost half of U.S. plastic waste was sent to developing countries: Thailand, Malaysia, and Vietnam.
Meanwhile, the U.S. has been exporting large quantities of plastics overseas for years, historically mostly to China. In the previous year, 70% was exported to China and Hong Kong. But in 2018, China banned imports of plastic waste. Since the ban the U.S. has looked to poorer nations for its overseas garbage dump. Unearthed, Greenpeace's research group, has found that in the first six months of 2018, almost half of U.S. plastic waste was sent to developing countries: Thailand, Malaysia, and Vietnam. U.S. plastic waste exports to Thailand went up by nearly 2,000% this year.
Most developing nations do not have sufficient recycling infrastructure to properly handle plastic waste. On Earth Day 2018, the top producers of mismanaged ocean plastic waste were ranked by tons of waste. The top five after China were Indonesia, the Philippines, Vietnam, Sri Lanka, and Thailand. In some cases as in parts of the Philippines, recycling is done laboriously by hand, picking bottles out of large dumps. As this is very difficult and time consuming, large quantities find their way into oceans and rivers. Sadly and not surprisingly, the Pasig River in the Philippines transports approximately 72,000 tons of plastic downstream, and has been declared "biologically dead" since 1990. Instead of helping these countries to develop recycling infrastructure, we are sending them more toxic waste.
We might think we are kicking the can down the road by sending plastics overseas but they will wash right back up on the Hawaiian and California coast. Beachgoers might witness solid litter washing ashore, or unearthed from the stomachs of dead whales. Or they might not notice the pollution -- instead unknowingly consuming microplastics in their next Ahi Tuna sandwich. On the East Coast, one might encounter them in a glass of water at the Trump Grill in New York. There is only one world sink after all. Tossing poison to the other end of the tub only works for so long - it will inevitably, over time, mix and wash back to your side of the water. And when one of us is diagnosed with cancer, do we really know the cause?
It is instructive to remember the orca Lulu, a mammal like us, who no longer produces eggs. And to remember that if sperm counts continue to decline at the present rate, they will soon reach levels where it becomes difficult to have children. By then, the world's water supply may be irreversibly contaminated and an enforceable treaty will be too late.
Postponing a legally binding treaty may put us on the path of our fellow mammals the orcas, half of which already face inevitable extinction worldwide. And we can not forget the tragedy of the orca Tahlequah, who last summer carried her dead calf for a record 17 days and 1,000 miles in mourning.
Eleven years may be too late.
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BP's Blatant Climate Hypocrisy on Show As it "Buys" Vote to Defeat Carbon Tax
So the company that at the beginning of the century promised to go “beyond petroleum” just defeated a ballot which would have helped the US to do that
Nov 07, 2018
As millions of people digest the saturated press coverage of the mid-terms, and wonder what the next two-years of a chaotic and destructive Trump Presidency will mean with the Republican loss of the House, it is easy to miss other issues that were also voted on this week.
On the Washington State ballot was something called the Carbon Emissions Fee and Revenue Allocation Initiative, known for short as Initiative 1631, which would have imposed a $15 fee on each tonne of carbon emissions, rising $2 a year until the state's 2035 emissions target is met.
It was a ground-breaking ballot that would have imposed the US's first ever carbon tax and if passed, would have been a spring-board for other states to follow.
It was a ground-breaking ballot that would have imposed the US's first ever carbon tax and if passed, would have been a spring-board for other states to follow.
According to Reuters "The carbon fee aimed to generate $2.3 billion over five years for clean energy and air programs" however the "oil industry was expected to feel most pain".
This said, as Rolling Stone point out: "The Initiative was hardly a fossil-fuel killer. In fact, it was distressingly modest .. This modest fee (don't call it a tax!) is far below what most economists believe is necessary to really have a transformative impact on our energy system, especially in a state like Washington, which has a lot of clean hydro power, but it was a start."
Even this modest start was too much for the Big Oil barons. For an industry that has decades of history of putting profits over people and planet, it is predictable what happens next. Big Oil effectively "bought" the election.
The measure was defeated 56 to 44 per cent after a Big Oil public relations campaign which said it would hurt the economy, including spending millions of dollars on television and digital ads, flyers and mail drops.
Reuters reports that "The Western States Petroleum Association raised $31.2 million from oil companies and business groups to oppose the measure". Top donors to the campaign were BP America, which donated just under $13 million, Phillips 66 and Marathon Oil Corp.
So the company that at the beginning of the century promised to go "beyond petroleum" just defeated a ballot which would have helped the US to do that.
BP's staggering hypocrisy even goes beyond that too: on its website the company says it is not only in favour of action on climate change but also in favour of carbon pricing, the very measure it just spent millions defeating.
So either this is corporate greenwash or a blatant lie to consumers and investors.
According to BP: "We believe that carbon pricing provides the right incentives for everyone - energy producers and consumers alike - to play their part in reducing emissions"
As Rolling Stone noted: "The big lesson of the defeat of 1631, if there is one, may be that before we can get carbon out of the atmosphere, we need to get dirty money out of American politics."
Towards this end, there was some good news on Tuesday night. According to an analysis by Oil Change US, "more than half of new Democrats in House refuse to take fossil fuel industry money".
Stephen Kretzmann, Executive Director of Oil Change United States said:"Despite the fossil fuel industry-sponsored carpet-bombing of advertising against clean energy and climate around the country, several bright spots survived".
He continued: "In a sign of things to come, more than half of the new Democratic freshman class has signed the No Fossil Fuel Money Pledge.Of the anticipated 34 new Democratic seats taken over from the Republicans, 11 have signed the Pledge, which commits them to not take contributions from the oil, gas, and coal industry and instead prioritize the health of our families, climate, and democracy over fossil fuel industry profits."
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Wrapped in a Sea of Plastic
Half a century of this “uncontrolled experiment” is fast becoming as serious a problem as climate change
Mar 31, 2018
By now most of us have read that plastic, that incredibly useful product that all of us use every day, is fast becoming public enemy number one. We have been using plastics for decades and as a result, plastic is everywhere: in our fish, in our food, in our oceans, in our waste water treatment systems, and in our public spaces. We use plastics in every part of our lives, from single use plastics, such as bags, bottles, and straws, to our babies' toys to our nylon clothes to our paint. Plastic particles and plastic microbeads are used in our shampoo, toothpaste, soap, and millions of other products, all of which contain different kinds of tiny particles of plastic, all of which come off in our bodies, our mouths, our scalp and our skin as we use them. And plastic use is on the rise, more than 10 percent a year, while industry titans build more and more profitable plastic factories with high priced fossil fuels.
Plastics everywhere was bad enough, but now multiple studies have found that 94 percent of our drinking water and 93 percent of sampled bottled water worldwide are full of plastic particles and chemicals, including BPA, heavy metals, phthalates, pesticides, PCBs and other chemicals, many of which are linked in animal studies as well as some human studies to cancer, premature puberty, reduced immunity, birth defects, endocrine disruption, insulin resistance, and other major diseases. And we have no idea and neither does the FDA, EPA, or any other federal agency, whether this lethal cocktail, which binds together with other toxins, is having an even more profound impact on our health and that of our kids. What we get now from those agencies is "conflicting findings" and "uncertainties" about the potential impact of plastics-related chemicals. What we do know is that governments only test or analyze the impacts of individual chemicals to determine the levels of potentially life-threatening exposure, making it impossible to figure out the combined total load of chemicals from plastics our babies can safely absorb.
We, the general public, have unleashed this problem on ourselves without understanding the impacts that fossil-fuel based plastics were having on our environment or our health. Half a century of this "uncontrolled experiment" is fast becoming as serious a problem as climate change because no corner of the earth, no animal, no body of water, no human, is immune from its impacts.
The plastics industry, and our fast food industry which relies on single use plastics, along with others, perhaps taking a page from Big Tobacco, have assured us that everything is perfectly fine. Yet many countries are banning BPA, phthalates, and other chemicals from plastics in some plastic products, and even industry is scouring around for suitable alternatives to fossil fuel based plastics, although so far many "biodegradable" plastics aren't living up to their reputation. What's the alternative for us, the consumers and multi-decade guinea pigs, while we wait? Getting rid of single use plastics, using less plastic and getting involved in local legislation and regulation to reduce and recycle plastics is a good start.
In the meantime, some countries and some U.S. states are wising up to the problem and the plastics lobby. An international treaty on plastics is under consideration but that may be a decade away. In the meantime, we know for sure that our plastic bottles, sippy cups, and the water in them are spiked with chemically laced plastic micro-particles that should not be there.
This op-ed was distributed by American Forum.
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