Nurdles are on the beaches and inside marine animals, in our sewage and our beauty products. Ahead of a conference on plastic in the oceans, Anne Zammit looks at how far and wide this ordinary but dangerous material has spread.

Decayed fishing or fish-farm equipment and sewage effluent containing wastewater from laundering synthetic fabrics are common sources of microplastics in the sea. Photo: Anne ZammitDecayed fishing or fish-farm equipment and sewage effluent containing wastewater from laundering synthetic fabrics are common sources of microplastics in the sea. Photo: Anne Zammit

Sitting on the beach in the spring sunshine, you casually scoop up a handful of sand and let it run through your fingers. Thoughts are mainly of the summer days ahead. Yet it may not have escaped your notice that something about the sand is changing.

Unadulterated beach sand once came in pure, natural shades of reddish gold and silvery grey. It was made exclusively of natural materials, manufactured by wave action over the course of centuries.

Looking more closely at the sand on our beaches today, an ongoing incursion of tiny bits of multicoloured plastic is clearly visible. Plastic never really biodegrades, it simply gets broken down into particles which are hardly visible, eventually to the molecular scale.

With more growth expected in plastic production (the figure is projected to reach 34 billion tons by 2050) campaigners believe that microplastics could create an environmental crisis on a par with climate change. It can threaten even the smallest of creatures in the marine food chain.

Last year a group of American universities totted up the amount of plastic produced since the 1950s. It came to over eight billion tonnes, much of which has ended up dumped on land or in the oceans. The study, led by the University of California Santa Barbara, warned that plastic pollution risks “near-permanent contamination of the natural environment lasting hundreds, perhaps thousands, of years.”

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“We are increasingly smothering ecosystems in plastic, and I am very worried that there may be all kinds of unintended, adverse consequences that we will only find out about once it is too late,” said UCSB project leader Roland Geyer of the first global analysis of the production, use and fate of all plastics ever made. Statistics from the 1970s show that commercial shipping fleets worldwide were discarding thousands of tons of plastic waste into the marine environment.

Last year a group of American universities totted up the amount of plastic produced since the 1950s. It came to over eight billion tonnes

It took 18 years to reach an international agreement (MARPOL) to stop ships dumping waste at sea, which was only partially successful. Large quantities of plastic waste still end up in the marine environment. Plastic straws, cups, bottles and other containers made of plastic degrade into smaller and smaller pieces which can be ingested by marine life.

Absorbent plastic “imbiber” beads have been routinely thrown in the sea to form a “blanket” to mop up oil spills. At the same time scientists have been looking at how plastics can attract and spread toxic chemicals, including DDT and PCBs.  

Small plastic beads known as nurdles, easy to transport in bulk by manufacturers of many common plastic objects, can end up in the marine environment by accident.

Containers full of nurdles have washed off ships in storms. The Geneva-based Mediterranean Shipping Company, founded in Naples, admitted responsibility for such an environmental disaster last November in a South African port. Durban’s beaches were awash with the tiny plastic pellets.

An even smaller form of microplastic is added to health and beauty products like toothpaste and facial scrubs. Beat the Microbead is an international campaign against microplastics in cosmetics, listing companies which do not contain or are phasing them out in their products on its website.

At less than one millimetre in size, these microplastics can also be problematic for sewage plants, as some are still released into rivers and seas with treated effluent.

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Microplastics in sewage can attract bacteria. Studies have shown waters downstream of wastewater treatment plants to contain more harmful pathogens than expected.

An important source of microplastics appears to be sewage contaminated by fibres from washing clothes. As the weather warms up, fleece jackets and other synthetic wear are washed and stored away until late autumn. According to a 2011 study,  microfibres make up 85 per cent of man-made debris found on shorelines globally.

How to avoid the plastic threat to the marine environment was addressed in a talk held in Valletta recently by Action Planet. The environmental group brings together Maltese organisations, business players and government ministries to explore viable solutions “for sustainability and growth”.

An international conference is to be held in Malta next month by a Plastics Europe forum for industry stakeholders PolyTalk on the theme of Zero Plastic to the Oceans.   

Schoolchildren in Michigan in the United States recently declared a monthly Skip the Straw Day to raise awareness of microplastics in the oceans with the slogan: Be a rebel! Drink from the edge!

For a guide to the microplastics found in health and beauty products, go to www.beatthemicrobead.org.

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