7 Dangerous Lies About Plastic By Stiv Wilson, AlterNet
Posted on February 26, 2012, Printed on March 13, 2012
http://www.alternet.org/story/154279/7_dangerous_lies_about_plastic
To receive a Ph.D in industrial chemistry in the United States, no American
university requires candidates to take even a single toxicology
class<
http://www.onearth.org/article/pure-chemistry>as part of their
course work. We churn out new chemists with the divine
power to manipulate the very structure of nature itself, without teaching
them the divine wisdom of how to wield that power.
Nearly everything we consume or even interact with these days is made of
plastic. The industry that produces plastic, largely represented by the
American Chemistry Council (ACC), has an annual budget of over $120 million
to protect its interests. But as the plague of plastic that wreaks havoc on
our environment slowly gains the attention of policymakers, concerned
citizens and the media, the makers of plastic resins and the companies that
package their products have become increasingly aggressive about defending
their respective bottom lines.
Taking tactics from Big Tobacco's playbook, the industry engages in bully
tactics, politician buys and wide-scale misinformation campaigns meant to
confuse the public and turn truth to speculation. Big Plastic is big money
and survives regulatory scrutiny by creating big spin.
Because of slashed budgets to regulatory agencies, little private-sector
money for watchdogging industry, and a lazy mainstream press that simply
regurgitates its claims, the petrochemical industry goes largely unchecked.
Here are some of the biggest whoppers.
*Lie #1: Plastics are safe.*
To date, we use over 248,000 chemicals in commerce and we don't know which
ones are harmful or safe. Why? Because the vast amount of research on
plastics we use in our lives comes from the plastic industry.
Much of the plastic we see on a daily basis we know by its designated
recycling numbers 1 through 7. These plastics are not pure; rather, they're
a proprietary formulation of additives, some of which have been shown to be
endocrine disrupters, carcinogenic and pose countless other health
concerns, but very, very little data exists on additives, toxicologically
speaking. In the United States, chemicals that make plastics are innocent
until proven guilty, leaving the burden of proof of toxicity to the vastly
underfunded and under-staffed Environmental Protection Agency. With 248,000
chemicals on the market, don't expect any light shed here anytime soon.
Perhaps the best-known additive is
bisphenol-A<
http://www.ewg.org/chemindex/chemicals/bisphenolA>,
or BPA. Though it's gained media traction having been shown to cause sexual
mutations, cardiovascular disorders, obesity, and diabetes, the $6 billion
annual industry makes the plastics industry protect it fiercely, even
though Centers for Disease Control studies have shown that 93 percent of
the adult population has BPA present in their urine. BPA has been on the
radar of environmentalists for years but few policy
victories<
http://www.ourstolenfuture.org/newscience/oncompounds/bisphenola/2006/2006-0101vomsaalandwelshons.html#contingencytable>have
been won because industry-funded studies repeatedly don't show adverse
effects, though all the independent studies do.
*Lie #2: The so-called Great Pacific Garbage Patch does not exist.*
In a 25-page report for the Save the Bag Coalition, meant to refute claims
made by the media and environmentalists about the presence of plastic in
the ocean, attorney Stephen Joseph wrote that the "so-called 'Great Pacific
Garbage Patch,' which is alleged to be twice the size of Texas, does not
exist." To keep the speculation on the table, industry hammers on a single
point; in early 2011, Oregon State University issued a press
release<
http://oregonstate.edu/urm/ncs/archives/2011/jan/oceanic-%E2%80%9Cgarbage-patch%E2%80%9D-not-nearly-big-portrayed-media>
titled,
"Oceanic "Garbage Patch' Not Nearly As Big As Portrayed By Media" and a
huge media storm ensued calling out environmentalists as a result.
Why this press release was so widely distributed is strange, because the
woman who issued it isn't even a relevant name in the plastics research
world. But seeing an opportunity to pound environmentalists, the plastic
industry created a PR blitz sending press releases to media and form
letters to lawmakers. What's interesting is that no one can attribute who
first made the Texas-sized analogy, and no primary source for the quote
exists, though it certainly went viral.
The researcher from OSU, Angelique White, is correct in her assessment from
the best available data, but the data available isn't enough by several
degrees of scale to accurately predict spatial distribution of plastics in
the gyres (which any scientist who works on the issue will tell you,
explicitly), or the ocean in general. To do so would mean that 70 percent
of the surface of the earth surface had been sampled.
Well, that's not going to happen anytime soon, as research vessels cost
about $30,000 a day and funding is very limited in this field, because so
many corporate interests that might sponsor such research depend on plastic
to deliver their products. What scientists do know is that 200 billion
pounds of plastic are produced each year, and that number is on the rise,
and mitigation strategies for keeping plastics out of the ocean are
failing, horribly. Greenpeace estimates that of the 200 billion pounds
produced annually, 10 percent makes it into the ocean.
To date, the best estimate of how much plastic is in the gyres comes
from Columbia
University<
http://www.seas.columbia.edu/earth/wtert/sofos/sesini_thesis.pdf>.
Researchers took all the major data sets (of which there are very, very
few) that exist and calculated 73,878,000 pounds of plastic in the area of
the gyres, which accounts for just 16 million of the earth's 315 million
square kilometers of ocean surface.
Another problem with determining the scale of plastic pollution is that
half of the plastics that are made sink and to date no data exists on how
much plastic lies beneath the surface of the water. But when speaking only
of polyethylene terephthalate (PET) water bottles, a type of plastic that
sinks, we know that Americans alone
discard<
http://www.container-recycling.org/media/newsarticles/plastic/2006/5-WMW-DownDrain.htm>22
billion a year. Scientists who work on plastic in the ocean often
refer
to it as, "the world's largest dump." But without "conclusive" data,
industry can stay on the offensive.
*Lie #3: Plastics don't kill sea life or pose a threat to people eating
fish.*
While occasionally industry will acknowledge that marine animals do eat
plastics from time to time, they make a point of stating that they don't
know if the plastics are definitively responsible for the animal's death.
To date, 177 species of marine life have been shown to ingest plastics and
the number is likely to get much higher as more research is done. Recently
published evidence<
http://news.discovery.com/earth/washing-machine-pollutes-111024.html>has
shown that shards of plastic eroded from synthetic clothing in the
washing machine is so small that it can enter an animal at the cellular
level.
But determining death, or eventual death of an animal based on a necropsy
(autopsy for animals) is notoriously difficult in some cases. What's at
issue is that again, industry takes advantage of the "unknowns" to make the
assertion that their products don't cause morbidity. Scientists can't
absolutely know what causes an animal's death unless it lives and dies in a
controlled environment. But opening up a turtle stomach and finding pounds
of plastic in it might give them a clue. How long would a turtle have
survived with this much plastic garbage in his guts?
We know that most types of plastic aren't passed by a turtle and that it
wreaks havoc on their digestive systems. We also know that carrying around
a stomach full of plastic is going to slow him down and change his natural
buoyancy. Sharper plastics, cause gut impaction and the potential for
stomach wall and intestinal perforation. In the wild, everything about an
animal's health and agility matters in determining his survival quotient.
In December, a study<
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0048969711012630>was
published in
*Science Of The Total Environmen**t *that looked to see if the digestive
juices of turtles could make plastic bags decay. Three common types of
shopping bags (including bioplastic) were subjected to the gastrointestinal
fluids of Green and Loggerheads turtles. Without exception, the ubiquitous
High Density Polyethylene (HDPE) bag showed "negligible" biodegradability
-- which means if a turtle can't pass it, he's stuck with it forever.
Beyond turtles, 9 percent of base food chain fish (which represents as much
as 50 percent of the biomass of fish in the entire ocean) sampled in the
North Pacific have been shown to ingest
plastics<
http://scrippsnews.ucsd.edu/Releases/?releaseID=1174>,
and along with it a toxic soup of PAHs, flame retardants, DDE (a persistent
form of the outlawed DDT) and PCBs. Concentrations of these chemicals in
ocean-borne plastics have been shown to be up to a million times
higher<
http://gupea.ub.gu.se/bitstream/2077/24978/1/gupea_2077_24978_1.pdf>than
the ambient sea water around it.
Bigger fish eat the fish that eat these toxic bombs and so do humans at the
top of the food chain. All humans have levels of these toxins in their
blood and men can't get rid of them. Women can only pass the chemicals
through the umbilical chord and through breast milk, and thus, a higher and
higher chemical burden in the human body will result from generation to
generation.
*Lie #4: It shouldn't be called "plastic pollution" but rather "marine
debris."*
What's the most common type of plastic found on the surface of the ocean?
According to the Ocean Conservancy's annual report, 11
percent<
http://www.sea.edu/plastics/faq.htm>of beach litter is plastic
bags. But what happens when a plastic bag enters
the ocean? Plastic doesn't biodegrade in any meaningful timeframe, but it
photo-degrades. Thin, flimsy plastic like HDPE with a lot of surface area
(like the common bag from grocery stores) photo-degrades faster than
thicker plastic. Ultraviolet rays from the sun break the polymer chains of
hydrocarbon molecules into smaller pieces and what you end up with is small
fragments. So, you might not find a plastic bag in the "garbage patch" but
you surely will find the remnants of them. Plastic bags are of the class of
plastics recyclers refer to as "blow trash" as they tend to be picked up by
the wind and blown out to sea. They're huge offenders of plastic pollution
as Americans consume more than 100 billion a year.
Keith Christman, managing director for plastics markets at the ACC,
maintained that "marine debris" is a better phrase than "plastic pollution"
for describing the trash in the ocean even though 90
percent<
http://sailorsforthesea.org/Sailing-and-The-Environment/Ocean-Watch/Ocean-Watch-Essays/Inside-the-Plastic-Vortex.aspx>of
the contents of the gyres is plastic. Christman, understanding the
negative implications of his product's association with the word
"pollution," mentioned that it's not just plastic, but derelict fishing
gear as well. All modern fishing gear is made of polypropylene, i.e.
plastic. This is a sore spot for the ACC, and marine plastics research and
education groups that receive funding from the ACC are typically "mandated"
to refer to oceanic trash as marine debris to keep the burden of guilt from
resting squarely on their shoulders.
*Lie #5: "Plastic retail carry-out bags are 100-percent recyclable and made
from clean natural gas."*
This is a direct statement issued by the American Progressive Bag Alliance
to the city of Dana Point, California in a letter regarding a proposed bag
ban. That plastic bags are 100 percent recyclable isn't the issue; it's
that by and large, they are not recycled. Plastic bag recycling is governed
by supply and demand. People assume that if they place a bag in a recycling
receptacle this means the bag will in fact be recycled. That's not
necessarily true. In order to show (very) modest positive trending in
recycling, industry lops all polyethylene (PE) films, wraps and bags all
into one category. But for bags discretely, which are high-density
polyethylene, the numbers are atrocious. In 2009, the rate for
recycling<
http://www.epa.gov/osw/nonhaz/municipal/pubs/msw_2010_data_tables.pdf%20http://www.epa.gov/wastes/nonhaz/municipal/pubs/msw2009rpt.pdf>is
6.1 percent; in 2010, the rate is 4.3 percent.
Thus one of the main targets legislatively, is plastic shopping bags. The
biggest player in the bag market, Hilex Poly, has become a master of spin
tactics to attempt to paint a rosy picture of its business. Hilex, the
largest recycler in the US, writes posts on its Web site patting itself on
the back for increased recycling rates
claiming<
http://www.hilexpoly.com/blog-and-news/blog/polyethylene-plastic-bags>that
PE rates are up from 2009 to 2010. What it fails to mention is the
distinction between the different types of PE, and that EPA itself doesn't
independently audit the recycling industry, it just compiles industry's
reporting.
There's another problem with plastic bag recyclability. According to Mark
Daniels of Hilex Poly, only 30-percent post-consumer HDPE can be used to
make a new bag, which means 70 percent of a "recycled" plastic bag comes
from virgin sources (natural gas). Sometimes, recycled HDPE gets
down-cycled into other products like decking materials. The problem here is
that plastic decking materials have a lifespan as well, and no strategy for
reclaiming them at the end of their lifespan has been introduced to the
recycling markets.
When speaking of plastics in general (including plastic bags), even when
there is a modest gain in recycling rates, those rates are far outpaced by
higher consumption. From 2009 to 2010, plastics generated in the municipal
waste stream jumped from 59,660,000 to 62,080,000 pounds. This is an
increase of 2,420,000 pounds. In terms of recycling gains, the EPA reports
440,000 more pounds of all plastics recovered from 2009 to 2010.
So, if we subtract the increase in gains in recovery from the increase in
generation we still get an increase of plastic generation of 1,980,000
pounds. This is the central conspiracy of the plastics industry tactically.
If industry can convince the public that the environmental consequences of
their consumption habits are offset by the industry-backed solution of
recycling, industry is guaranteed that its bottom line will grow by
hoodwinking the public into believing the myth of recycling.
What about natural gas, the stock for plastic bags? It is becoming scarcer
and dirtier to get. According to the US Energy Information Administration,
35 percent of domestic natural gas drilling comes from fracking, and will
reach 47 percent by 2035. Though natural gas burns cleaner than other
fossil fuels, getting it out of the ground by fracking creates potent
greenhouse gas emissions of methane and other undesired consequences.
According to a congressional report released in April, the 14 biggest
fracking companies released 3 billion liters of fracking fluid into the
environment, including 29 chemicals known or suspected to be carcinogenic
to humans. This is where your plastic bag comes from -- or at least 70
pecent of it.
*Lie #6: Reusable bags are dangerous.*
The American Chemistry Council is worried that Americans might not
understand the danger of things when they get dirty. Like your underwear,
if you don't wash your reusable bag, bacteria might grow in it. So, rather
than issue a press release telling people to wash their bags, they funded a
study looking at bacterial contamination of reusable bags.
Bacteria are myriad on everything we touch, but the presence of bacteria is
natural and the microbe kingdom has a pretty good system of checks and
balances. The study found that 12 percent of its 84-bag sample size found *E.
coli*, and all samples but one contained bacteria. This finding spawned
scary headlines in newspapers such as the *Washington Post* that read
"Reusable Bags Found To Be Full Of Bacteria." But here's the problem: None
of the bacteria (salmonella and listeria were not found), or the strains of
*E. coli* present in reusable bags are harmful to humans.
The ACC, though absolutely knowing this, still went ahead on a PR blitz
trying to scare the hell out of people about bacterial exposure.
Thankfully, the study was officially debunked by *Consumer Reports*. My
favorite bit from the article comes from a senior staff scientist at *Consumer
Reports*, who said, "A person eating an average bag of salad greens gets
more exposure to these bacteria than if they had licked the insides of the
dirtiest bag from this study."
*Lie #7: We care about polar bears and recycling.*
Coca-Cola is one the world's largest producers of plastic waste. Coke
creates cause marketing campaigns with corporate-aligned NGOs like World
Wildlife Fund which is working with the Canadian government to to find an
area of ice that can withstand climate change to create a sort of polar
bear refuge, hoping to save the white bears from drowning because Artic ice
is melting.
In total, Coke has pledged $2 million and another $1 million matching funds
to consumer donations. What's ironic is that Coke uses a plastic bottle for
much of its product's packaging and one-third of the volume of a plastic
Coke bottle is what it takes to produce it from oil, and another third is
what it takes to transport it to market. That's a lot of fossil fuel
burning. Fossil fuel burning that melts polar ice that kills polar bears.
But perhaps the most egregious offense is that Coke vehemently opposes the
only program proven to reduce its bottles' impact on the environment: bottle
bills <
http://%20http//www.bottlebill.org/>. Statistically, for states that
have bottle deposits, the recovery rates for recycling are off the charts
compared to those that don't. In California, recovery rates top 70 percent
for PET bottles.
So what's a citizen to do? Unfortunately, cutting through the spin is a
difficult task, but as always, when there is a lot of money to be had,
injecting oneself with a healthy does of skepticism about the intentions of
chemical companies that manipulate nature for profit is a good start.
What's the best solution? Remember this: if you don't consume it in the
first place, it can't damage you or the environment.
Avoiding plastics is not just a personal responsibility, it's an
environmental mandate and should be as common in our global society as
turning off the lights when you leave the room. There is no silver bullet
solution to plastic pollution, more like a silver buckshot, but it all
starts with you saying two words: "No Plastic."
*Stiv Wilson is a freelance journalist and communications and policy
director for the 5 Gyres Institute, a global NGO working on plastic and
chemical pollution in the world's oceans and watersheds. *
© 2012 Independent Media Institute. All rights reserved.
View this story online at:
http://www.alternet.org/story/154279/
Giraffe Dies With 44 Pounds of Plastic in Stomach
By *Jack Phillips* On March 4, 2012 _at_ 4:24 pm In *Asia Pacific*
<
http://www.theepochtimes.com/n2/images/stories/large/2012/03/04/giraffe-140614319.jpg>
Ailing giraffe, Kliwon at the Surabaya zoo in Surabaya. Kliwon, died in the
evening of March 1, with 44 pounds of plastic found in its stomach. (Juni
Kriswanto/AFP/Getty Images)
Indonesian officials said that a giraffe at a zoo in Surabaya, the second
largest city in the country, died on Thursday with vets finding 44 pounds
of plastic in its stomach, reported the Jakarta Post.
The plastic was apparently in the food he’d been eating for years and
accumulated in his stomach.
“The plastic was apparently in the food he’d been eating for years and
accumulated in his stomach,” zoo official Tony Sumampaw told the newspaper.
The zoo’s medical team said the large amount of plastic blocked the
giraffe’s digestive system. The giraffe keeper noted that it lost its
appetite over the past several days leading up to its death.
Zoo spokesperson Anthan Warsito told AFP that autopsy results showed the
plastic was around 23 inches in diameter.
Warsito added that the 21-year-old giraffe was infected with tuberculosis,
adding that seven staff members were also infected. “It’s possible one of
them transmitted it to the giraffe. At this point we don’t really know the
cause of death,” he told the news agency.
Giraffes normally live up to 25 years in the wild and often times even
longer in captivity.
“This is outrageous; we should end this. We demand every party [to the
dispute] to reconcile for the sake of the animal’s welfare,” East Java
Wildlife Conservation Forum program manager Indra Harsaputra told the
publication. Indra cited several cases where animals died at the Surabaya
Zoo due to neglect over the past several years.
“There should be a solution from all disputing parties to solve this issue.
We just want the animals to live well,” he added.
Captive giraffes frequently die as a result of inadequate care and space,”
according to premier animal rights group People for the Ethical Treatment
of Animals (PETA). In 2011, two giraffes died at the Vancouver zoo,
including a baby. In 2009, a giraffe died from an neck injury sustained
while in transit to a zoo in Tulsa, Oklahoma. In 2006, a giraffe was killed
in Columbus by being given a wrong drug, and two giraffes have died in
recent years from broken necks while trying to free themselves after
getting stuck.
----[Mailing List for Eritrea Related News ]----
Received on Tue Mar 13 2012 - 10:55:38 EDT
