nanotechnology
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Invisibles - the plastic inside us.
It is everywhere: the most enduring, insidious, and intimate product in the world. From the soles of your shoes to the contact lenses in your eyes, the phone in your pocket to the food in your refrigerator, the evidence is unmistakable: We are living in The Plastic Age.
The plastic inside us
It is everywhere: the most enduring, insidious, and intimate product in the world.
From the soles of your shoes to the contact lenses in your eyes, the phone in your pocket to the food in your refrigerator, the evidence is unmistakable: We are living in The Plastic Age.
Plastic frees us, improving daily life in almost uncountable ways.
And plastic imprisons us in waste and microscopic pollution.
Recent studies have shown the shocking extent of plastics in the world's oceans and lakes. Orb Media followed with a new question: If microscopic plastic is in oceans, lakes, and rivers, is it in drinking water as well?
In the first public scientific study of its kind, we found previously unknown plastic contamination in the tap water of cities around the world.
Microscopic plastic fibers are flowing out of taps from New York to New Delhi, according to exclusive research by Orb and a researcher at the University of Minnesota School of Public Health. From the halls of the U.S. Capitol to the shores of Lake Victoria in Uganda, women, children, men, and babies are consuming plastic with every glass of water.
More than 80 percent of the samples we collected on five continents tested positive for the presence of plastic fibers.
Microplastics — tiny plastic fibers and fragments — aren't just choking the ocean; they have infested the world's drinking water.
Why should you care? Microplastics have been shown to absorb toxic chemicals linked to cancer and other illnesses, and then release them when consumed by fish and mammals.
Scientists say these microscopic fibers might originate in the everyday abrasion of clothes, upholstery, and carpets. They could reach your household tap by contaminating local water sources, or treatment and distribution systems. But no one knows, and no specific procedures yet exist for filtering or containing them.
If plastic fibers are in your water, experts say they're surely in your food as well — baby formula, pasta, soups, and sauces, whether from the kitchen or the grocery. Plastic fibers may leaven your pizza crust, and a forthcoming study says it's likely in the craft beer you'll drink to chase the pepperoni down.
It gets worse. Plastic is all but indestructible, meaning plastic waste doesn't biodegrade; rather, it only breaks down into smaller pieces of itself, even down to particles in nanometer scale — one-one thousandth of one-one thousandth of a millimeter.
Studies show particles of that size can migrate through the intestinal wall and travel to the lymph nodes and other bodily organs.
What does plastic in tap water mean for human health, how did it get there, and what can people do about it? We went looking for answers in a ten-month investigation across six continents.
The Plastic Age
Sydney, Australia. Plastic envelopes us, improving daily life in almost uncountable ways. And plastic imprisons us in waste and microscopic pollution. Today's cars are getting lighter and more fuel-efficient thanks to components made of plastic and other materials. That reduces air pollution and carbon emissions.
Norfolk, Virginia. Tire dust made of styrene butadiene rubber is washed into sewers, and from there into streams, rivers, and oceans. Cars and trucks emit more than 20 grams of tire dust for every 100 kilometers they drive. It adds up. Norway, for example, produces a kilogram of tire and road dust each year for every Norwegian woman, man, and child.
Virginia, USA. Clothes made from synthetic plastic fibers are often lighter, and last longer, than those made from cotton or wool. They keep you warm, cool, and dry. Many companies market their garments by reminding consumers they're made with recycled plastic. But wearing and washing those same garments introduces microplastics back into the environment.
Sydney, Australia. Each synthetic garment emits at least 1,900 microscopic plastic fibers when machine washed. These fibers find their way into rivers, lakes, oceans – and quite possibly your drinking water. Professor Mark Browne searches sediment from a storm drain on Coogee Beach for microscopic plastic fibers.
Hong Kong, China. Advances in plastic packaging can extend the life of perishable foods, thus reducing food waste. For example, composite plastic packaging can add more than two weeks to the shelf-life of steak, a food with particularly high environmental costs. Polystyrene, the bane of environmentalists everywhere, is widely used for bringing chilled, fresh seafood to market.
Hong Kong, China. Single-use plastics for take-out meals and product packaging account for 40 percent of the 300 million tons of plastic produced each year. An estimated 8 million tons of large plastic waste items enters the oceans each year. They are indestructible, and a persistent pollutant that's killing wildlife around the world. Dr. Lincoln Fok samples a beach in Hong Kong for microplastics; fragments of expanded polystyrene foam are most plentiful.
Williamtown, Australia. The Australian government gave Neville Franks three pallets of bottled water after his household cistern was contaminated by chemical runoff. Bottled water is a staple of disaster response, from the 2010 earthquake in Haiti to the ongoing water emergency in Flint, Michigan. The global packaged water market is worth USD$170 billion and is expected to grow to USD$307 billion by 2024.
Kampala, Uganda. Plastic bottles scavenged from the Kitezi landfill wait to be sorted by color and type. The United States is the leading consumer of bottled water, and discards more than 50 million PET bottles each day. That's 18 billion unrecycled bottles each year — or USD$4.5 billion worth of plastic.
Plastic fibers have infiltrated the drinking water of cities and towns all over the world, according to Orb's exclusive research. They were even found in top U.S. bottled water brands. Synthetic fibers are almost certainly in your food, experts say, including baby formula, pasta, soups, and rice.
“This should knock us into our senses. We knew that this plastic is coming back to us through our food chain. Now we see it is coming back to us through our drinking water. Do we have a way out?"
—Muhammad Yunus, Nobel Peace Prize laureate and founder of Grameen Bank
Contaminated
Washington, DC. Orb found approximately 16 fibers in the tap water at the visitor's center in the U.S. Capitol, home to both houses of Congress. Laboratory filter paper is dyed with a substance that turns it pink to better identify plastic fibers.
New Delhi, India. Seventeen tap water samples were taken in the Indian capital. A total of 14, or 82 percent, tested positive for microscopic plastic fibers.
Trump Tower, New York. Orb found two plastic fibers in the tap water at Trump Tower in New York City. About 94 percent of our samples from the United States tested positive for the presence of microscopic plastic fibers.
Jakarta, Indonesia. A mother and children walk to collect water from a neighborhood tap while a nearby truck is loaded with plastic for recycling. Of 21 water samples taken in the Jakarta metropolitan area, 16, or 76 percent, tested positive for microscopic plastic fibers.
Jinja, Uganda. James Nsereko collects a sample at his village tap, the first stop for Lake Victoria water processed at a nearby pumping station. Nsereko's sample contained four microscopic plastic fibers. Twenty-one out of 25 samples in Kampala and Jinja tested positive for plastic fibers, 81 percent.
London, England. The private Sloane Club in Chelsea has a members-only bar, and rents apartments starting at ￡1540/USD$2000 a week. A half-liter water sample from the exclusive club contained two microscopic plastic fibers. We tested 18 sites in seven European countries. Thirteen had plastic fibers, about 72 percent. (Photo by Nicholas Connor)
Beirut, Lebanon. Sixteen water samples were taken in this Mediterranean city. Approximately 94 percent tested positive for microscopic plastic fibers. “This research only scratches the surface, but it seems to be a very itchy one," said Hussam Hawwa, CEO of the environmental resource consultancy Difaf, which collected Orb's Lebanon samples.
Chapter 3
How Dangerous?
There are certain commons that connect us all to each other, air, water, soil, and what we have universally found time and time again is if you contaminate any of those commons, it gets in everything.
—Sherri A. Mason, PhD.
Chair, Department of Geology and Environmental Sciences
The State University of New York at Fredonia
This planktonic arrow worm, Sagitta setosa, has eaten a blue plastic fiber, blocking the passage of food along its gut. The fiber is approximately 3mm long. Plankton support the entire marine food chain. Richard Kirby, an independent palnkton scientist in the U.K., has observed thousands of plankton choking on microscopic plastic in his seawater samples. Synthetic clothes are the primary source of plastic fibers in the sea. (Photo: ©Richard Kirby)
Your Challenge: How much plastic?
Many of us try to be conscientious about how much single-use plastic we use. So here's a challenge: Take a paper bag and fill it with all the single-use plastic you go through over the course of a day. Then, scatter it out on the floor and post a picture to Instagram or Twitter with the hashtag #OrbPlastics. You can see how your single-use plastic consumption stacks up with others on our community page.
Whenever you fractionalize a problem, as with the plastic industry not being held responsible for their particular types of waste, there's capacity for that industry then to blame another. So it's waste management; it's not the producer's fault. It's the sewage treatment people's fault. It's not the actual clothing manufacturer's fault. It's the people who've got the washing machine's fault. It's somebody else's fault. Generally speaking, it's all of our fault.
—Mark Browne, Ph.D.
Senior Research Associate
School of Biological, Earth and Environmental Sciences
University of New South Wales
There are literally millions of uses of plastic and hundreds, if not thousands, of different types of plastic. The latter are identified by seven resin identification codes. (The resin code does not mean a particular plastic is recyclable; it only identifies the main properties of the plastic.)
Plastic Invasion
Exeter, England. Polystyrene particles less than 50 nanometers long (in light fluorescent green) have infiltrated the gastrointestinal tract, antenna, and thoracic appendages of this freshwater plankter, Daphnia magna. Plankton like these are the bedrock of the marine food chain. Research is just beginning on the accumulation of nanometer-scale pollution in wildlife. No analytical methods exist to identify nanoplastics in food. Plastic embedded in tiny plankton wind up in fish, which are eaten by bigger fish, which are eaten by us. This tiny plankter's plastic problem is your problem, too. (Photo: Corin Liddle)
Ggaba Landing Site, Uganda. Workers on the shore of Lake Victoria fillet, salt, and smoke Nile perch for shipment to the Democratic Republic of Congo, while a kestrel reels overhead. A 2015 study found plastic fibers and particles in 20 percent of fish sampled from the lake.
Hong Kong. Fresh fish await sale at a market in Hong Kong's Central District. The city's beaches are marred by plastic waste and microplastic pollution flowing from industrial cities on the nearby Pearl River in southern China. China is the world's leading source of marine plastic pollution. Microplastics have been found in 170 different species of Hong Kong seafood.
Jakarta, Indonesia. A diver collects mussels off a pier in Jakarta Bay. Microplastics are so prevalent in mussels that one study suggests they “could be used as a potential bioindicator of microplastic pollution of the coastal environment."
Jinja, Uganda. Children collect water for their households from Lake Victoria. The second-largest freshwater lake in the world is the primary source of drinking water for 430 million people. A new study of microplastics in Lake Victoria's water by researchers from Makerere University and the University of Georgia is due later this year.
Dagupan, Philippines. Plastic waste burns at a 50-year-old landfill. Each year, between 60 million and 120 million tons of plastic worldwide goes unrecycled. That's as much as USD$120 billion in lost materials.
Muara Angke, Indonesia. A 2004 study of umbilical cords from 10 newborns showed they had been been exposed to nearly 300 different chemicals by the time they are born. Children in a fishing village watch as mussels are steamed over a fire fueled by burning polyurethane foam.
Jakarta Bay, Indonesia. Indonesia, with a population of 257.6 million, is the world's second-biggest source of marine plastic waste. (China is first.) This chain of more than 18,000 islands dumped 3.2 million tons of plastic into the ocean in 2010. The government recently pledged to spend USD$1 billion a year to reduce its plastic pollution by 70 percent.
Kanpur, India. A garbage truck sits idle in apparent defeat at the Panki landfill, 470 kilometers east of New Delhi. India generates 15,342 tons of plastic waste each day, of which 9,205 tons are recycled, according to the Central Pollution Control Board. With some 4600 miles/7500km of coastline, India is projected to become the world's fifth-biggest source of marine plastic waste by 2025.
Sydney, Australia. A man relaxes in a seaside pool, not far from a storm drain discharging plastic fibers into the Pacific Ocean. According to a recent study, every wash of every synthetic garment may release as many as 1900 microscopic plastic fibers into the wastewater stream.
Jinja, Uganda. Studies have shown that PET plastic bottles can leach the toxic mineral antimony in amounts that exceed safety guidelines when exposed to high temperatures – say your car in summertime, or an outdoor market during summertime. The health effects of excess antimony include nausea, vomiting, and diarrhea. On top of that, about 17 million barrels of oil are used to produce water bottles each year.
Dagupan, Philippines. Plastic rubbish from the city landfill has desecrated a nearby cemetery. The Philippines is the world's third-biggest source of marine plastic waste, after China and Indonesia. The government has created a national-level authority to tackle its waste management nightmare.
Chemicals from plastics are a constant part of our daily diet. We generally assume the water bottle holding that pure spring water, the microwave-safe plastic bowl we prepare our meals in, or the styrofoam cup holding a hot drink is there protecting our food and drinks. Rather than acting as a completely inert barrier, these plastics are breaking down and leaching chemicals, including endocrine-disrupting plasticizers like BPA or phthalates, flame retardants, and even toxic heavy metals that are all absorbed into our diets and bodies.
—Scott Belcher, Ph.D.
Research Professor,
North Carolina State University
Spokesman, The Endocrine Society
Chapter 4
What now?
The only way to keep plastic out of the air, water, and soil is to radically rethink its design, uses, sale, and disposal. There's a lot of catching up to do. Here are some ways people around the world are working to change this grim global reality.
Waste-to-Energy turns plastic and organic waste into gas and liquid fuel using a variety of technologies. The global waste-to-energy market is forecast to grow into a USD$33 billion industry by 2023.
In the “Circular Economy" model, manufacturers and designers ensure that packaging and materials can be easily recycled and repurposed. Today, more than half of all plastic packaging can't be recycled.
New Materials: Leading brands and new startups are working to design synthetic fabrics that won't shed fibers into the air and water. Bolt Threads, in California, is using proteins from spider silk to create a strong, stretchy fabric they hope will replace synthetic fleece. A Japanese company, Spiber, also plans to serve the outdoor apparel industry through spider silk. Meanwhile, startup NewLight Technologies has created a plastic called Air Carbon from greenhouse gases produced by cattle and landfills instead of from oil. “We can't say enough about this material," said Joe Burkhart of the U.S. furniture maker KI. “It really has potential to impact the world on a major scale."
Household Solutions. Designers around the world are looking at ways consumers can reduce plastic emissions. One product, the Cora Ball, catches up to 35 percent of the fibers released in a single load of laundry, before they're discharged into treatment facilities, rivers, and lakes.
Each of these solutions depends on individuals, companies, and governments taking responsibility for the plastic waste generated by their purchases, their product designs, and their attitude to environmental protection.
Plastics are inherently recyclable. What's preventing us from recycling I'd argue, is inadequate, inappropriate, or … lack of proper consideration on the design stage for what's going to happen at the end of life.
— Richard Thompson, Ph.D.
Associate Dean of Research
Science and Engineering
Plymouth University
The Front Line
Dagupan, Philippines. Mayor Belen Fernandez watches the city's 50 year-old dump smolder. The dump routinely sends plastic sailing out to the South China Sea. Fernandez has vowed to return the beach to its pristine form and convert the mountain of waste into fuel to power the city's fishing fleet and motorcycle taxis.
New Delhi. A worker sorts small pieces of plastic by hand to separate the different polymers for recycling. India has the world's biggest informal recycling sector.
Vila Velha, Brazil. Zilda Gomes struggles with a large load of plastic that she will recycle at the community bank in exchange for a voucher that will allow her to buy food and household supplies.
Virginia, USA. Volunteers scour the beach along the banks of the Elizabeth River in Portsmouth, Virginia, for plastic debris. The river feeds into Chesapeake Bay, the largest estuary in North America.
Kampala, Uganda. At the Kitezi dump, the largest landfill in Uganda, workers at a recycling company sort through tons of plastic bottles, separating them by color. The operation employs about 40 people.
Jakarta, Indonesia. Plastic is weighed at a small recycling center. An archipelago of approximately 18,000 islands, Indonesia is the world's second-biggest source of plastic marine waste, according to the Ocean Conservancy.
Kampala, Uganda. Makerere University student Masauso Ndhlovu monitors the wood-fired reactor he and his colleagues have built to convert plastic waste into diesel fuel. Their goal is to develop a safe and affordable tool that can help low-income families profit from discarded plastic.
Sydney, Australia. Volunteers from the Manly Council's “Litter Guard" survey the sands on Manly beach in January 2017. An evaluation of the program in 2014 showed the amount of litter increased by 24 percent when volunteers were not present on the beach.
New Delhi, India. Ground-up plastic waste is washed, melted, stretched into long tendrils, and chopped into pellets as feedstock for new products — in this case electrical outlet boxes. The workshop is one of thousands of small-scale recycling operations in the city.
Sydney, Australia. Officials placed decals along the boardwalk at the popular Coogee Beach to remind beachgoers of their responsibility to prevent marine waste and educate them on how plastics break down in the ocean. The decals, in the shape of fish and marine animals, are a novel form of public education.
What now?
Almost no one asks to have plastic or plastic-related chemicals in their body. No brand or manufacturer ever seeks permission to put them there. Regulators, industry, and independent researchers make slow and sometimes contradictory calls over how much of a given pollutant might be safe. That delay can be costly: By the time the U.S. phased out use of the fire retardant PDBE in electronics, baby clothes, and furniture, exposure to the chemical had chopped 11 million IQ points off the intellectual abilities of tens of thousands of U.S. children, at a cost of USD$266 billion and immeasurable heartache.
Fibers in tap water, then, are both a discovery and a marker — a visceral sign of how far plastic has penetrated human life and human anatomy. We can't see the long-chain molecules of pollutants like polyfluoroalkyl chemicals, even if they do reside in more than 98 percent of the population. But when fibers are filtered in a laboratory and enlarged by a microscope, the contamination becomes real.
The first studies into the health effects of microscopic plastics on humans are only just now beginning; there's no telling if or when governments might establish a “safe" threshold for plastic in water and food. Even farther away are studies of human exposure to nano-scale plastic particles, plastic measured in the millionths of a millimeter.
Municipalities are only beginning to reckon with their role in fiber pollution. Slowing the wastewater treatment process would allow facilities to capture more plastic fibers, said Kartik Chandran, an environmental engineer at Columbia University and a 2015 MacArthur Fellow. But this would likely require the construction of additional treatment facilities and would increase capital costs, he said.
In 1986, K. Eric Drexler, a pioneer in the field of nanotechnology, posited the “Grey Goo Problem," a doomsday scenario in which tiny robots self-replicate so quickly, and consume so many natural resources, that they extinguish most life on Earth. The computer scientist Bill Joy, a co-founder of Sun Microsystems, gave new fire to this hypothetical in a 2000 essay, “Why the Future Doesn't Need Us," that called for curbs on some research into genetics, nanotechnology, and robots.
But what if we don't need supercomputers and self-breeding robots to wreck the planet? The twin plagues of plastic contamination and climate change show that all it might take is cheap oil, great chemistry, rising living standards, and marvelous profits. The story of the Plastic Age doesn't end well.
“Since the problem of plastic was created exclusively by human beings through our indifference, it can be solved by human beings by paying attention to it," Muhammad Yunus, the 2006 Nobel Peace Prize laureate, told Orb. “Now what we need is a determination to get it done — before it gets us."
Dust and microscopic plastic fibers released from an acrylic blanket are reflected in the sunlight and steam from a coffee mug. Scientists believe other plasticizers and chemical compounds can absorb toxins present in the home, much as they are absorbed in water. Plastic dust can come from surfaces including carpets, cables, paint, and vinyl flooring, many of them made with plasticizers that contain endocrine disrupting chemicals. These dust particles may be inhaled or find their way into your body through food and drink left in open containers.
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