Plastics Waste During COVID

"I remember going to a coffee shop and them saying, 'We can't fill  your cup'. I think it was mere days later everything was shutting down. But that was the first little tiny step, was reusable coffee cups."                                             "People are still motivated to want to do something [about the environment]."                             "There was really strong support for more regulations and bans on single-use plastics a year ago. When we ran our survey this summer, we saw a lot less support for that, which makes sense based on the idea that it's less of a priority issue right now [in preoccupation with COVID-19 issues]."                                                                                               "The experience of the pandemic has been gendered in a lot of different ways [such as childcare disproportionately affecting women]."                                       "It's hard to imagine how you can move ahead [with things like zero-waste grocery stores] in the same way today in our new environment. But at the same time, the issue of plastic pollution is the same whether or not there's a pandemic. Ocean plastics don't care about our pandemic. The problem hasn't gone anywhere, and we still need to find solutions."                                                                                  Robert Kitz, research associate, Agri-Food Analytics Lab, Dalhousie University, Halifax, Nova Scotia

When COVID-19 struck an unready world, companies such as Bulk Barn and Starbucks halted the use of reusable containers in a reflection of overall concerns relating to contagion and hopes of controlling the coronavirus spread. This issue marked the turning point as the coronavirus transmission was identified as a global pandemic by the World Health Organization, heralding sweeping changes in coming months. Not too gradually cup lids, disposable cutlery, bottled water packs and plastic containers have been proliferating as plastic waste continues to make its presence known.

Dr.Kitz and co-authors of a new study on plastic food packaging looked intensively at how attitudes of consumers have been altered as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. In their search to identify the changed attitudes, the researchers compared 977 responses collected between July 10 and 14 against results of an earlier survey of 1,014 Canadians dated May12 to 18 of 2019. Consumers actively avoiding plastic packaging has stabilized, remaining the same (58 percent in 2019 as opposed to 66 percent in 2020).

More than half (52 per cent) of Canadians think new regulations on plastics should only be put into place when the COVID-19 pandemic is over, the study found. Photo by Michael Loccisano /Getty Images

In Canada, consumers taking steps to avoid plastic packaging has remained pretty much stable (58 percent in 2019 versus 60 percent in 2020), yet fewer consumers are now concerned in relation to environmental repercussions (91 percent from 87 percent; the larger decrease seen among men), as one-third of respondents admitted purchasing more plastic-wrapped foods, attributed primarily to takeout and home delivery (44 percent) and increased concerns over safety (43 percent). Anxiety over food safety strikes fifty-five percent of Canadians, while 40 percent think of new safety concerns as "very", or "extremely important" in considering whether to purchase plastic-wrapped consumables.

At the outset of the study, researchers imagined that respondents might be less concerned over plastic pollution in the light of grave immediate concerns relating to pandemic contagion. A measurable decrease was recognized, but it was also observed that most Canadians continue to be engaged in the issue of environmental protection. Zero-waste grocery stores where bans on plastic bags and straws, pre-pandemic were proliferating, have come to an abrupt halt.

1/3 of Canadians now buy more plastic-wrapped foods Photo: Mario Tama /Getty

The issue of plastic pollution appears to be gaining momentum as the use of single-use plastic is seen to have grown by 250 to 300 percent during the pandemic, and as their use has increased, regulation efforts have faltered in the face of the coronavirus. Plans announced last year by the federal government on a ban of single-use plastic have not yet been carried through and will not likely be, for the foreseeable future of struggling to overcome the threat of the pandemic.

Back in 2019, fully 90 percent of respondents viewed stricter regulations favourably, while 70 percent gave their support to a single-use plastics ban. A drop of 11 and 12 percent respectively was seen in the most recent survey; men in particular reporting a notable drop in agreement. The issue of gender in concerns over environmental ramifications -- pointed out Dr.Kitz -- wasn't present in 2019. Price-consciousness has struck 50 percent of Canadians among the demographic receiving government top-ups to income, under CERB (Canada Emergency Response Benefits).

Leaving 55 percent of people reporting their willingness to pay more for products wrapped in biodegradable food packaging. Food security, as a result of the pandemic disrupting production and supply chains, has arisen as a greater issue in Canada because of the pandemic, with rising food costs; yet another recognizable difference from the year before. New regulations on plastics should be put into place only once the pandemic is over, in the view of over half of Canadians (52 percent). 

“What we found was that people are still concerned about it,” says Robert Kitz about plastic pollution. “People are still motivated to want to do something.” Photo by Mario Tama /Getty Images

The Sacred Mother Ganges

"The bacterial levels are 'astronomically high'."
"We are not telling people to stop rituals they've done for thousands of years."
"But the government should do more to control the pollution and protect them."
Dr.Shaikh Ziauddin Ahammad, professor of biochemical engineering, Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi

Sheep along the banks of the Bhagirathi River in Harsil Village, about 16 miles from Gangotri. The high Himalayan waters are cleaner, and scientists have been puzzled by drug-resistant germs found there.  The New York Times

"[In Canada, he had heard] there is a river where you can get fined if you even touch it -- and it's just a river, not holy at all."
"Here we have a holy river, and it's very dirty and nothing is being done."
Suraj Semwal, 44, resident of Gangotri, India

"When bacteria are stressed, they turn on their S.O.S. system. It accelerates the rate at which they rearrange their genes and pick up new ones."

"Until then [8 years ago when his former student Dr.Ahammad suggested testing Indian waters], I had avoided India because I thought it was one huge polluted mess."

"[With antibiotic-resistant bacteria so ubiquitous, it would be hard to design a good experiment — one with a] control; [someplace relatively bacteria-free]."

"We needed to find some place with clear differences between polluted and unpolluted areas."
David W. Graham, professor of ecosystems engineering, Newcastle University, Britain 

Tests by scientists show that antibiotic-resistant bacteria appear in the waters of the Ganges in the Himalayan foothills, hundreds of miles before the river encounters any of the usual culprits.

 

 

The sacred Ganges River flows out of the Himalayas, draining out of a glacier where rock silt dyes the freezing water torrent an opaque grey shade. The river is biologically considered to be pristine, absolutely free of bacterial content. Yet, suddenly, there is a stark degradation of its purity, long before it winds past big cities, hospitals, factories or farms. A virulent kind of bacteria, resistant to common antibiotics, desecrates the river.

A study of the Ganges has given researchers insight into the prevalence and spread of drug-resistant infections at a time when it has become one of the medical world's most urgent public health problems. Clues as to the manner in which these pathogens have entered the ecosystem lie within the waters of the Ganges as it winds its way over 2,400 kilometers to the Bay of Bengal; the river in its timeless course becomes one of the most polluted rivers on the planet.

Rafters in Rishikesh, India. The population in the area swells to from less than 100,000 to 500,000 during tourist and pilgrimage seasons.

Antibiotic-resistant bacteria have been found, according to annual tests by scientists from the Indian Institute of Technology, while the river is yet at its origins, still flowing through the narrow gorges of the foothills of the fabled Himalaya, well before it encounters a situation that would pollute its waters with resistant germs. India is known to be the second-most populous country in the world. It is a nation of religion-based customs. Researchers readily reached the conclusion that the source of the pollution is humans.

Great throngs of people converge on the Ganges for special occasions. Aside from that, the river is used for bathing, for cleaning and washing clothing, it is where effluent from human waste and tainted garbage from factories and hospitals end up. Ritual bathers flock to the Ganges to wash away their sins and immerse themselves in the holy Ganges.

The research that is being carried on will lead to a better understanding of the mechanism whereby drug-resistant bacteria leap from person-to-person outside a hospital setting.

The numerous watersheds in the mountains across the Deccan Plateau and its vast delta serve the needs of 400 million people, representing a full third of India's massive population. From those sources they take their potable water for humans and animals. Two of Dr. Ahammad's doctoral students twice yearly take samples along the river from Gangotri to the sea, to test for the presence of organisms with drug-resistant genes.

In the river's lower stretches, the  high levels of bacterial counts came as no surprise, given the proximity of humanity. It was the unexpected discovery of bacteria with resistant genes discovered in the river's first 160 kilometers, after leaving Gangotri to flow past the next downstream cities. More to the point, the research team discovered levels of bacteria with resistant genes to be consistently low in winter, only to surge during May and June, the pilgrimage season.

Pilgrims bathed in the Bhagirathi River, at the headwaters of the Ganges, in Gangotri, India.  The New York Times

Rishikesh is the most famous of the Upper Ganges' pilgrimage cities where the population in winter is around 100,000, swelling during the pilgrimage-vacation season to a half-million people. The waste of 78,000 people can be handled by the city's sewage treatment plant, clearly inadequate for the numbers involved at peak season, let alone year-around residents. To augment the treatment plant capacity the government provides portable toilets, vulnerable to the slightest rainstorm that can flush sewage into the river.

Dr.Ahammad and his academic mentor Dr. D.W. Graham of Newcastle University -- a pioneer in drug-resistant bacteria -- in 2014 found the site of contamination where the clean Ganges becomes the contaminated Ganges to be at its starkest at Rishikesh, where upstream the water was found to be fairly clean summer and winter, but downstream in summer bacteria with drug-resistance genes proliferated wildly, a finding that led them to several conclusions.

First, that the resistant bacteria had to have come from people and more specifically from their intestines. Intriguingly, the source of the resistant bacteria appeared to be healthy people; pilgrims who were yoga students or river rafters. Yet these are the people who shed bacteria into the Ganges, according to the research by Drs. Ahammad and Graham. Should someone else pick up the bacteria, then become ill, is given antibiotics, that person's good bacteria can be expunged with the bad ones opportunistically filling in.

The researchers reached the conclusion that pilgrimage areas are "potential hot spots for antibiotic resistance transmission at large scales". "Ganga is our mother -- drinking her water is our fate", commented Jairam Bhai, a 65-year-old food vendor, waiting to descend into the water. "If you have faith, you are safe."

Rafters in Rishikesh, India. The population in the area swells to from less than 100,000 to 500,000 during tourist and pilgrimage seasons. The New York Times

Hot, Leisure Summer Days and the Ocean

"When we get a deceased sea turtle in, our stranding investigations program here at Mote conducts a thorough necropsy and learns as much as they can about the animal."
"Right now, it's very strongly believed that the Florida red tide is playing a role in the sea turtle mortalities."
Hayley Rutger, Mote Marine Laboratory, Sarasota

"People have really beautiful yards in Florida, and we want to have all of these really nice things. But you know all of this comes at a price."
"It's alarming. I think we will see long-lasting effects from this event."
Gretchen Lovewell, manager, Mote Marine Laboratory, stranding investigations program

Fish, eels and turtles have died in Florida due to a toxic algae known as "red tide."

CBS News

Manatees, turtles and dolphins in the hundreds have washed up dead since 2006 in the worst case of red tide algal bloom, toxic to sea life and to any that ingest it, that has infested southwest Florida. Algal bloom occurs in places where there is an excess of nutrients. Where human waste, as an example, is poured directly into the sea without first being processed in sewage treatment plants. When untreated human sewage cannot be identified as the problem, fertilizer runoff from agricultural fields, along with farm animal waste creates the same toxic threat.

The rarest species of sea turtles in the world, the Kemp's ridley sea turtles, are being affected, with over 200 stranded in the red tide epidemic, with an almost complete mortality rate. Florida waterways have been fouled with red tide since last fall, caused by a tiny algae, Karenia brevis, known for the deadly toxin it produces. Although algae is an important part of any marine ecosystem, when extreme blooms caused by high nutrient levels result, algae responds by high reproduction rates.

According to the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission, close to one hundred manatees have died since January, resulting from suspected exposure to red tide toxin. A dozen bottlenose dolphin corpses were recovered in one week alone, including one baby dolphin. Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation and Mote collect and test the bodies, attempting as well to save animals close to death if they are recovered still alive.

They are housed in rehabilitation facilities to wait out the toxin passing through their body system, safe from further exposure while at the facilities. Life jackets and pool noddles are used to keep the manatees afloat to enable them to breathe at the surface of the rehabilitation pools. These ancient animals whose presence in the state is as primal as 26 million years in the past, are of the sirenian order of animals. Fittingly enough ancient Greek legend referred to them as sirens of the sea; mermaids.

The lifeless body of a West Indian manatee (also known as a sea cow) floats in the San Miguel river in Jonuta, Mexico, August 7, 2018. Across the Gulf of Mexico in Florida, 92 manatees have died since January, according to the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission.

REUTERS/Luis Lopez

They are nearing the stage of being placed on the endangered species list with fewer than ten thousand of the West Indian manatees left worldwide. The death of some hundred of this species of which less than five thousand are present in Florida, represents an ecological disaster. The manatees' main food source is sea grass which toxic algae settles on. The toxin is capable of remaining in the environment even once the bloom has disappeared, and for weeks afterward, the manatees may remain in danger.

Both the turtles and the manatees are paralyzed by the algae's neurotoxin, causing their tissues to swell once the algae is ingested. That state of paralysis prevents the animals from swimming to the surface of the water to enable them to breathe, and drowning is generally the cause of death. Shellfish too become infected with the algae and that's usually when human health becomes impacted. The water itself may cause problems such as skin rashes, but eating creature infused with the algae is even more potentially serious, causing non-lethal symptoms such as numbness, tingling, loss of coordination, vomiting and diarrhea.

"These shellfish, over time, they accumulate high concentrations of these toxins, but it doesn't seem to affect them at all. Then humans come along and eat shellfish, and they get very sick." 

"A bunch of people get sick about the same time, same location, and you could track it back to the source. And that's how we discovered all these toxins. There's almost certainly other toxins being produced by these cyanobacteria that we have not discovered yet."

"If you see a bloom of cyanobacteria, you should simply assume it's got toxins in it. Don't go swimming in that water. Don't eat any seafood from that water."

"When you start feeding these things with all these excess nutrients ... now you've got what we call a 'harmful algal bloom'. Now you've got high concentrations of toxins, and now you're causing a lot of human health [problems] as well as destruction of the ecosystem and so on."

"This is not just a unique situation in Florida. This is a global problem."

Larry Brand, professor, marine biology and ecology, University of Miami Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Science

Sources of Atmospheric Pollution

"You can see these really rapid decreases in tailpipe emissions [reflecting automakers' newer tehnologies reducing volatile organic compounds in automobile emissions]."
"It just made sense to start looking at other sources and seeing whether they could be growing in relative importance."
"The use of these products emits VOCs in a magnitude that's comparable to what comes out of the tailpipe of your car. One of the main reasons for this is that in the U.S., as well as in Europe, air quality regulations have been really successful at controlling emissions from motor vehicles."
"In some ways, this is a good news story that, as we control some of the bigger sources in the past, the other sources are emerging in relative importance, such as these consumer products."
Brian McDonald, scientist, Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Science, University of Colorado, Boulder

"[Gasoline is] stored in an airtight tank, it's burned for energy, and converted mostly to carbon dioxide."
"But these volatile organic compounds [VOCs] that you use in everyday products -- even though it may just be a teaspoon or a squirt or a spray [e.g., paint, perfume, deodorant] -- the majority of those kinds of compounds will ultimately end up in the atmosphere, where they can react and contribute to both harmful ozone formation and small-particle formation."
"But whether it's synthetic or natural, once it gets into the atmosphere it's incredibly reactive."
"One of the things that we're hoping the public takes away from this [study conclusion] is that our energy sources and the consumer products we use every day are continually changing the composition of our atmosphere."
Jessica Gilman, research chemist, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, U.S.

Getty Images

Another study, another revelation, another piece of the puzzle to contend with, but how to resolve such issues when they reflect ordinary, everyday-use products contributing to harmful atmospheric emissions is another thing altogether. A new study published recently in the journal Science, releases data discovered by researchers that further complicates the issue of how our energy consumption and use of consumer products contribute to environmental degradation, but there is scarcely a hint of how we should react to alleviate the problem. Other than: STOP!

That being an unlikely solution to a mounting problem, we can only wonder how it is, why it is, and when the full force of our interference with the natural processes of nature will finally culminate to haunt us beyond recognition. The study finding where researchers discovered that petroleum-based chemicals used in perfumes, paints and a myriad of other consumer products can, in the aggregate, emit as much air pollution in the form of VOCs, as motor vehicles, certainly comes as an unwelcome surprise.

It is these very same VOCs' interaction with other particles circulating in the atmosphere to create the presence of smog (ozone) capable of triggering asthma and permanently scar lungs, alongside the production of yet another type of pollution identified as PM2.5 fine particles linked to heart attacks, strokes and lung cancer, informing us in no uncertain terms that we are in the process, through living and using ordinary consumer products, of killing ourselves. Not a very happy thought, to be sure.

Ordinarily when we think of smog, we automatically associate its production with the operation of vehicles. Since the 1970s, however, regulators have mandated automobile producers to invest in cleaner technologies, a process that succeeded in substantially reducing VOC pollution from trucks and automobiles.  Which has left a rising share of air pollution caused by pesticides and hair products in lock-step with reduced pollution caused by cars.

The invisible pollutants arising from the use of spray deodorants or from body lotions have been under the radar until this study's findings. A measurement of VOCs in Los Angeles indicated concentrations of petroleum-based compounds appearing at levels substantially more elevated than what could be attributed to fossil-fuel sources alone. Ethanol concentrations were, for example, about five times higher than expected, and they appeared to be on the increase.

According to Dr. McDonald and his colleagues the marked difference in how much of pollutants emitted from lotions and paint products ended up in the air was striking. They point out that though far more gasoline is used than the suspect products, the gasoline is kept in a confined area that mitigates against its being dispersed into the atmosphere. The carbon dioxide emissions from household products on the other hand are found not to be smog-forming; even so they are recognized as a major driver of human-caused climate change.

The researchers discovered that forty percent of the chemicals added to consumer products end up dispersed into the air.

A computer model simulating air quality in Los Angeles was constructed with data from the chemical composition of consumer goods and tailpipe emissions included. With this model, researchers were able to identify the fingerprints of the chemical compounds emitted from personal care products and were enabled to estimate how many VOCs from paints and finishes within buildings were released to the outside world.

The conclusion was that about fifty percent of the VOCs in Los Angeles' air quality could be attributed to consumer products.

Those believing that a solution might conceivably rest in turning to "natural" products would have to be advised that the researchers feel this to be no solution at all, since one class of compounds called terpenes included in many cleaning products for its pine or citrus smell can come naturally from oranges, or alternately be synthetically produced. Natural compounds are responsible for the blue haze formed by terpenes emitted from trees in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Appalachia, as an example.

Tens of thousands of chemicals are used in consumer products. Research has yet to identify which chemicals are most likely candidates for the formation of ozone or PM2.5 particles. 

"This research is a useful reminder that discussions of air pollution need to consider all sources of pollutants and that measures targeting cars only address part of the problem."
"Engineering changes to car exhausts have dramatically reduced the amount of pollution produced per mile, meaning that (a) there is now less to be gained from further changes to cars and (b) the public need more information on how their activities, apart from driving, contribute to current pollution levels."
Anthony Frew, professor of respiratory medicine, Brighton & Sussex Medical School, UK

Image caption Los Angeles: For these particular types of compound, motor vehicles are not the only culprit  David Iliff

Technological Advancement, Superior Lifestyles, Environmental Disaster

"We have trace levels of pharmaceuticals and pharmaceutical metabolites in our drinking water -- that would not be covered under CEPA."
"I'm finding in surface waters chemicals that are in my TV. We have such a huge waste stream of electronic products that require handling because of their hazardous substances."
"The casing of your TV has flame retardants that migrate from your TV. You find it as house dust, you find it in air and surface waters ... You're typing at your computer [and] your hands are going to pick u a whole lot of flame retardants and plasticizers. Our clothes pick up chemicals. We wash them, and down the drain [it all goes]."
"[As for your cellphone], It emits a very small quantity. The problem is there are so many cellphones, so many electronics, so many floor polishes, so many cosmetics. Individually, tiny. Aggregate in a home, actually not so tiny. Put it together in a city, a whole lot more."
"[In the Great Lakes, the] up and coming contaminants arise from products and materials that we use as opposed to direct effluent discharges [from factories]. We have long shifted from the belching smokestack or the pipe spewing effluent ... but a lot of the provisions [of the law] are better suited to dealing with manufacturing and also with resource extraction [like mining]."
"For example we have so many car tires. The most abundant microplastics in the environment are very small fragments from tires. And as well we see antioxidants from tire debris in surface waters and the Great Lakes."
"I think those are incredibly difficult to regulate. One way is just to talk about the sheer amount of resources that we are using and that this has unsustainable implications. But it just doesn't receive any traction."
Miriam Diamond, pollution scientist, University of Toronto

Air circulating in the home contains over 900 chemicals, including mould.

The House of Commons (Canadian Parliament) standing committee on environment and sustainable development recently set out to review Canada's federal law, the Canadian Environmental Protection Act (CEPA). This presented a large group of Canadian scientists involved in environmental sciences with a opportunity to put their heads together and draft a letter whose purpose was to present 87 considered recommendations that would in aggregate update, modernize and strengthen the CEPA.

Canada, like all countries in the developed world with strong economies that have embraced modern technologies in everyday life, faces the reluctantly-recognized reality that we have been catapulted into a world of technological convenience, and waste products resulting from those technologies. And although some of the environmental degradation occasioned by our wild embrace of the brave and the new have been tackled, the far greater consequences of our lavish use of materials, some of which have a deleterious effect on the environment, remain untouched.

Where once we envisioned pollution represented by a giant smokestack belching particulate matter into the atmosphere, or a factory heedlessly (and illegally) spilling waste into rivers, environmental degradation has become far more nuanced and infinitely more difficult to address. In Canada alone, with its 35-million population each and every member of society represents individual sources of toxic influence on the environment, a simple reality that few would ever think of, much less wish to be concerned about.

Our furniture off gassing, televisions or bathroom chemicals, cellphones -- all produce minute amounts of harmful substances that wash down drains and into lakes and rivers as we wash our hands, shower, use a dishwasher and do the laundry. And though scientists are grimly aware of this ongoing situation they cannot even hazard a guess as to the final outcome. That, in and of itself is extremely worrying to the informed scientific mind.

What Canadian researchers are convinced of, however, is that the current federal law though meeting the needs of its time when it was enacted in the 1990s, barely begins to address them at this juncture. Small amounts of toxic silver bleeds off motherboards, tantalum, cobalt, rare earth elements and other metals "for which toxicity is just becoming understood" are all involved, points out Dr. Diamond. A type of flame retardants commonly used in a variety of products represent another source of toxicity.

According to Dr. Diamond, environmental law and funding for research are based most frequently on known human health dangers, moving "away from true environmental protection and toward 'It's all about me', and human health". More intensive research is required on "the public good of clean air, clean water and clean soil", she emphasizes. Much, in the final analysis, depends on it.

Modern pollution — at least the toxic chemical kind — is smaller, more personal, from 35 million Canadians who are all individual sources of toxic bits that add up in the environment.  shironosov / Getty Images/