Worms fail to thrive in soil containing microplastics: study

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/sep/12/worms-fail-to-thrive-in-soil-containing-microplastics-study

by JulianMorrison • 7 years ago

248 96 7 years ago

theguardian.com

skybrian• 7 years ago

Abstract is here: https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acs.est.9b03304#

(I didn't see an ungated version.)

I wonder what concentration they used?

lixtra• 7 years ago

All mesocosms received 1060 g of the sieved soil to reach a dry bulk density of 1.1 g/cm^3. As such, mesocosms treated with microplastics received 1 g/kg dry soil of HDPE or PLA (0.1% w/w), whereas those treated with synthetic fibers received 10 mg/kg of dry soil (0.001% w/w).

noname120• 7 years ago

Do you know how this compares to the real-life concentrations in soil?

anigbrowl6• 7 years ago

You know this isn't going to stop until bad things happen to polluters, who are perfectly content to wreck the biosphere for everyone else as long as they get theirs. Existing economic incentives are perverse and many people will fight tooth and nail to maintain their ability to extract economic rents rather than sacrifice for the public good.

lostlogin• 7 years ago

You know this isn't going to stop until bad things happen to polluters

I think this is the problem. It’s not them doing it, it’s us. We need to change what we are doing.

vanderZwan2• 7 years ago

No, it's definitely them doing it, and we are enabling it. These aren't mutually exclusive problems.

NeedMoreTea• 7 years ago

It's us driving or flying too much, it's us buying artificial fibre fleeces, or products in plastic packs that formerly came in card or paper, etc. We need to change those.

It's not us choosing to end use of a sustainable packaging to replace with plastic, or having mainly artificial fibres in the clothes stores, or setting policy on inappropriate methods of disposing of plastic. It's not us subsidising oil at the expense of renewables, or approving planning permission on a factory making single use plastic packaging, or a fracking site or refinery. They need to change with far more urgency, as these acts are orders of magnitude larger, and cancel out all acts and change of millions of individuals.

anigbrowl6• 7 years ago

Who exactly is asking for more plastic waste? Name the consumer lobbyists and marketing firms that actively demanding this, and whose demands command the forces of industrial production.

Your consumer + education focus is an approach that takes generations, time we don't have. Coincidentally or not, it also lets the manufacturers completely off the hook.

spodek3• 7 years ago

We can all help stop this. Everyone can reduce their contribution. I cut out nearly all packaged food, which reduced my garbage to where I empty it less than once a year (I'm in month 13 of my current load). I was pleasantly surprised that doing so cost less, reduced food preparation time, increased diversity of food, and led to more social interaction with friends and farmers. For the record, it took a couple years of practice to go from weekly garbage to monthly to yearly.

That's just one example. Everyone can reduce some. The more you start, instead of just accepting and throwing your hands up, the easier each next step.

The producers will see the trend and stop buying plastic.

Of course there are other ways to act: legislation, creating healthier alternatives.

The point is: everyone can act starting here and now and they will find joy in it. It may take time, but acting on one's values is rewarding.

xamde• 7 years ago

I stopped to believe the individuals can vote with their wallets to stop the pollution. We are not enough people who care and there are too many things to consider. We need to fight the system using the mechanisms of the system. If pollution costs money, capitalism will optimize to minimize pollution. It depends on the price. We need politics to change the rules. I would advocate to use your time to make destroying the earth costly.

mattkrause• 7 years ago

How do you get ingredients? We cook a lot, but everything besides flour and sugar seems to come in some sort of plastic or metal container.

ctrl-j• 7 years ago

I worked in a grocery store for 5 years in the produce department and we sold a loooot of unpackaged food to customers that came to us in a lot of packaging. From stabilizers to keep produce from jostling and bruising - all the way to the shrinkwrap the pallets came in with...

I dumped a lot of plastic into the trash compactor. I dumped a ton of styrofoam into the trash compactor.

Sure, it might show a desire to the producers of food if we shop better - but I doubt your food is as plastic-free as you imagine. And I tossed more plastic daily than the average household did in months.

The supply chain needs to be plastic free before we stop having a problem.

Joakal2• 7 years ago

Speak to a supermarket owner/manager. You would not believe how much packaging exists for a simple apple or similar. You would see an unpackaged apple at the end of the process and be none the less aware about the plastics involved.

Make sellers take back waste as a condition to sell. Boom. Problem solved.

gbrown• 7 years ago

Sure, everyone should do their part. BUT:

1. Pretending that's a practical way to get the kind and scale of change we need is extremely wishful thinking, to the point that I wouldn't be shocked to see polluting industries promoting it to distract from regulatory solutions.

2. That attitude reflects your economic privilege. Not only is it harder for poor people to make these kinds of choices, living with a scarcity mindset makes you less likely to care and less able to act strategically.

There must be collective action - must.

stjohnswarts• 7 years ago

You don't give any context for what "a load" is to you? 1 garbage bag? A pickup truck? a regular garbage truck?

anigbrowl6• 7 years ago

Give me a break. I have been leading a low pollution lifestyle for decades and many consumers do too. Nobody likes waste except the people that make money from producing it.

I am not throwing my hands up, I am saying it's time to attack the root of the problem instead of clipping the topiary into slightly better shape. Waiting for the market to just catch up is failing and discounts the influence of marketers and lobbyists, as well as discounting the possibility of collective action. Don't be a judas goat.

ericd3• 7 years ago

From some of the other comments, sounds like we also need to throw away all our polyester fabric and stop using cars, as well.

pvaldes3• 7 years ago

You know this isn't going to stop until bad things happen to polluters

Well, this is happening yet and Annelida are figthing back and contaminating (returning the microplastics to) OUR food. Is ironic if we think about it, and very interesting. Who would expect that from the humble Marphysa?

pvaldes3• 7 years ago

Urg, duplicated for some reason, sorry

pvaldes3• 7 years ago

You know this isn't going to stop until bad things happen to polluters

Well, this is happening yet. Annelida are figthing back and silently contaminating OUR farmed seafood with microplastics. Is ironic if we think about it (and very interesting). Who would expect that revenge from the humble Marphysa?

hanniabu2• 7 years ago

Well on the bright side (/s) Trump rolled back clean water act regulation because it was hindering manufacturing....

tsmarsh• 7 years ago

I used to be angry at ‘polluters’ now I’m frustrated at a market/society that encourages bad behavior.

Few set out to destroy the planet. If you buy fish from fishermen that drop their lines sea it doesn’t matter how many plastic straws, bottles and cutlery you didn’t use. But as a consumer we are so abstracted from the source we are powerless to affect behavior.

DoreenMichele• 7 years ago

Failure to thrive is an ill-defined term that strikes me as a tad histrionic in this title. The article indicates worms lost 3% of their weight in contaminated soil versus a control group that gained 5%. It's not the dramatic figure I was expecting from the title.

Clinical assessment for FTT is recommended for babies who lose more than 10% of their birth weight or do not return to their birth weight after three weeks.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Failure_to_thrive

simion314• 7 years ago

Clinical assessment for FTT is recommended for babies who lose more than 10% of their birth weight or do not return to their birth weight after three weeks.

I am not sure if the comparison is relevant here, the numbers are not large but they are significant, something is wrong and it needs investigation. You losing 5% weight may be nothing but if you in the same time have constant pain because of damage do your digestive track is not pleasant at all.

I am wondering if similar tests was done on rats?. -- I google it and it causes cancer

marcosdumay• 7 years ago

It is a small effect, what should raise alarms for the p-problems. But it is a very important effect, so if it is real, it is something to be very concerned about.

andybak• 7 years ago

The plastics stuff is worrying but I am concerned it will divert attention away from global warming. One issue is "hmmmm. this isn't good" whilst the other is "hey people, we should probably start thinking about panic mode about now".

Some people will argue that the solution to both is similar and linked but I'm not so sure.

Swenrekcah• 7 years ago

It seems to me that both issues are very frightening and deserve our attention. Climate change is fucking up the systems we humans and many other animals rely on, which will kill off many species although as a species we will likely survive. But plastics pollution seems to be literally poisoning every possible corner of the ecosystem, which might be a greater hazard to humans in the long run.

Regarding plastics, it could be a solution to put a very hefty tax on plastic, that's partially refundable if you return it to recycling/proper disposal. This might reduce the incentives to produce single-use items out of plastic, but would not ban it (because for some use cases plastics is perhaps the only viable option, not just the cheapest).

mrob• 7 years ago

I think the biggest threat of plastics pollution is loss of our ability to use plastics as a long-term building/manufacturing material. Very few microbes can metabolize plastics now, but not zero, and the ability will only spread as plastics (and especially high surface-area to volume ratio microplastics) become more common in the wild. Microbes evolve fast, and they have access to horizontal gene transfer. Heavily fluorinated plastics might survive but I expect all cheap plastics will end up easily biodegradable.

It's potentially a major inconvenience, but if we pretend it's as big a threat as CO2 pollution then civilization will have collapsed before it happens, so that's one way to avoid the problem.

fiblye• 7 years ago

Action was taken against asbestos and lead around the same general time. Problems don't need to be solved sequentially.

It's probably best to work on these problems together while people are actually worried about the future of the planet. If we manage to address one and ignore the other, we'll have plenty of people thinking we've saved the world and anything else is needless alarmism. I mean, we already have that problem, and those 50% of people won't be convinced either way.

zaroth2• 7 years ago

I would add CFCs to that list. But you needed adequate replacements and a much more clear and present danger for those things to happen.

“Worms are 5% smaller in this study” is a shade better than a conspiracy theory, not something that will motivate massive changes in global manufacturing and packaging standards.

We do know it can be done, because we’ve worked historically to make big changes. Unfortunately there’s been a lot of lost credibility in environmental science over the last few decades, and at the same time society seems to be significantly more divided over issues that at first blush might smell like a crusade.

The rules are you need something that’s equally as good at perhaps a slightly higher initial cost (an adequate replacement) and a clear and present danger (e.g. there’s a massive hole in our ozone layer, we can measure it directly, we know exactly what’s causing it, and if it keeps getting bigger we can’t ever go outside again).

hinkley2• 7 years ago

We can break things faster than we can fix them. If we don’t try to fix things in parallel then we are not going to be around for long.

“We should fix X first” is rhetoric from people who don’t want to fix anything or are more interested in being in charge. Don’t contribute to the foot dragging.

ehnto2• 7 years ago

They're both appearing to be significant threats to the biosphere, worth immediate attention. I doubt the solution to both is similar though no. We can probably work on both simultaneously though. Even in a perfectly aligned world we wouldn't be able to have everyone working on climate change.

anigbrowl6• 7 years ago

I would definitely argue they're linked, given that plastics are primarily produced from oil and so intimately tied to fossil fuel extraction.

There was another interesting article on HN yesterday about the depletion of soil minerals as a result of monocultural planting and a corresponding (and horrifyingly steep) drop in the mineral content of fruits and vegetables. This was news to me but not really surprising; I've felt for years that much American food is just not that great based simply on the experience of eating it.

Ultimately these are all problems of the industrial model that developed countries in general and the UK/US in particular have exported very successfully (which is not to say that other countries and cultures haven't also catastrophic environmental decisions). While the reductionist approach of identifying, selecting for, and then maximizing particular quantities has yielded great dividends, it does so at the expense of the system as a whole; just like a diet consisting of abundant refined ingredients allows rapid growth but eventually leads to obesity and sclerosis.

Adam Smith, revered by many as the father of modern capitalism, offered a famous example of a pin factory to show how the division of labor into multiple parallel tasks yielded far greater outputs than would be possible if one laborer had to serially perform all the different jobs involved in the manufacture of a pin, and generations of industrialists have applied his advice to great profit. But they have also ignored his caveat that an excess division of labor is both soul-destroying due to boredom, and weakens the laborer through overspecialization and a concomitant loss of flexibility and thus economic bargaining power by allowing the buyer of the labor to determine 'value' of the laborer's skills by limiting the opportunities for their development.

The basic problem is the pursuit of maximal yield through endless division without regard to the structural integrity of the overall system; industrial economists' tendency to reduce everything to the lowest common denominator of fungibility through division and offloading of externalities is just as dangerous to the biosphere and the social body as a diet of high fructose corn syrup and vitamin pills would be to the individual animal. Those who insist on wealth maximization at the transactional and the blind operation of market forces as the distributive mechanism of wealth are in the grip of a cognitive addiction little different from an infant hooked on sugar, and responsible people must steel themselves to ignore the screams of dissatisfaction which will greet a transition to a more sustainable diet.

derpherpsson• 7 years ago

My grandfather says crazy stuff like "oh, but we will be in the grave long before this turns into a problem" whenever topics like this emerge at the dinner table.

There is a little psychopath in each one of us.

dpau• 7 years ago

unfortunately that's not psychopathy, it's just humanity

EForEndeavour• 7 years ago

This is anecdotal, but your grandfather's attitude is entirely consistent with the pattern of people generally giving less of a fuck as they age, starting around their 50s or 60s.

WanderPanda• 7 years ago

Which is a problem as people are wasting 50 years of their life giving fucks all the time.

chrisco255• 7 years ago

The Earth is antifragile. Studies are often hyperbolized and exaggerated. There's no evidence of some world wide decline in earthworm population.

Local populations can be impacted, but far more damaging is tilling and the commercial farm practices: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/05/170508095152.h...

anigbrowl6• 7 years ago

Why don't you respond with 'you will, I won't' and see what sort of response you get? While I don't want to promote disharmony at the dinner table, your grandfather's gloom at his looming mortality is no excuse for endorsing the diminution of your life expectancy. That said, such frankness might well result in him allocating any legacy away from you in his will.

andy_ppp• 7 years ago

I’m always skeptical, was the original study a realistic amount of micro plastics in the next 20 years or is it a totally artificial amount for funding and headlines?

sp332• 7 years ago

In a BBC interview, one of the researchers said that the concentration was quite high, like what you'd find in a contaminated landfill site. I think the research is just starting though, and now that they have an interesting result for high concentrations, they'll start looking at lower ones. So we don't know yet what effect different levels have.

new299• 7 years ago

This appears to be the original paper:

https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acs.est.9b03304

There’s a slightly better summary, which at least references the paper, here:

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/09/190911193303.h...

bArray• 7 years ago

Thank you, it's really bad not to link the paper in a news piece, 1) for evidence, 2) for further reading and 3) for accreditation for the hard working researchers/institutions.

Do you happen to have access to the paper through the pay wall? I'm interested in the data itself, the abstract certainly doesn't match up to "worms fail to thrive [..]", I want to see some numbers. There are enough environmental disasters on the horizon without the need to manufacture more.

air72• 7 years ago

Important to note that western countries (almost) don't contribute plastic that ends up in the ocean (that later becomes microplastics) because of modern waste management. [0]

Plastic in the oceans comes from poorer countries where a huge population lives next to rivers or beaches and the waste management systems are inadequate. In fact, "90% of plastic polluting our oceans comes from just 10 rivers" [1]

Our efforts should be directed there, financially and politically and not locally be it via individual effort or local government pressure.

This is a unique type of issue as, generally speaking, enviorment awareness is stronger with liberals yet "meddling" in other countries internal affairs (waste management in this case) is not.

[0] https://ourworldindata.org/plastic-pollution [1] https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2018/06/90-of-plastic-polluti...

baxtr• 7 years ago

I believed this, too. But it’s apparently not true...

See: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17067350

graeme• 7 years ago

That doesn't follow. That post argues it's actually us because we export plastics to China for recycling.

But China shut that down and we haven't had a surge of western plastics in the oceans. They just go to landfills instead.

Much plastic also goes in garbage, not recycling. This doesn't end in the oceans.

I wish we'd move our supply chain off plastics for most things. But, the post you linked to isn't very persuasive on ocean plastic.

imhoguy• 7 years ago

"modern waste management", like sending containers full of unrecyclable garbage to East Europe or Asia?

air72• 7 years ago

That's FUD. The percentage of our waste we send is quite small. Also the percentage of these countries' waste that is imported is small (far from being the main source of trash).

And also arguably, if they buy trash to recycle and then don't it's their responsibility to see it through and ours to make sure they do.

daddylonglegs• 7 years ago

I believe the paper that lead to all of those articles blaming the plastics in the ocean on Asian rivers was one that was specifically looking looking at plastics carried by major river systems [1]. This was to complement a previous study on plastics from coastal strips [2]. The large Asian river systems have catchment areas that hold billions of people between them and would carry a substantial proportion of the worlds riverine pollution even if all other things were equal. The microplastics in the environment in the first world come from first world activities, including littering and driving (and hence producing car tyre fragments).

Low and middle income countries need better public services - including waste and waste water management - and enforcement of environmental laws. High income countries need less waste and enforcement of environmental laws.

[1] https://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms15611.pdf

[2] https://science.sciencemag.org/content/347/6223/768.full https://jambeck.engr.uga.edu/landplasticinput "There is one high income country on the list, the United States, and while our waste management systems are well-designed and very effective, and the only mismanaged waste is from litter, we have a large coastal population and a large waste generation rate."

FrozenVoid• 7 years ago

Microplastic is in the air you breathe, that is how it gets into the soil. Its a global pollution problem that isn't confined to "few bad countries" or "polluted rivers" somewhere in Asia. https://www.latimes.com/environment/story/2019-08-14/micropl... https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S246858441... https://inhabitat.com/microplastic-rain-new-study-reveals-mi... https://www.nationalgeographic.com/environment/2019/04/micro... https://www.npr.org/2019/04/15/713561484/microplastic-found-... https://livelovefruit.com/breathing-in-microplastic/

nkurz• 7 years ago

The paper looks to be "Effects of Microplastics in Soil Ecosystems: Above and Below Ground" by Bas Boots, Connor William Russell, and Dannielle Senga Green.

The abstract is here: https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acs.est.9b03304

And the full paper here: https://sci-hub.tw/10.1021/acs.est.9b03304

After a quick skim, it looks like a well written paper with a small dataset. They took 40 1.2L plastic pots and filled them with 1kg of local soil. In 10 of the pots, they then added 1 g of PLA microplastic; in another 10 they added 1 g of HDPE microplastic; in another 10 they added 10 mg of acrylic and nylon fibers collected from a washing machine; and in the last 10 they added nothing.

In half of the pots (5) from each of the 4 categories, they then planted ryegrass. Then they added 2 earthworms to each of the 40 pots, waited for a month, and then measured the results. They found (Figure 3) that the 10 earthworms in the 5 unplanted control (no plastic) gained about 5% weight, that the 10 earthworms in the 5 planted HDPE containers lost about 5% of their weight, and all the rest had no significant change.

Overall, it seems like a solid paper, with all the information one would need for a replication attempt. Nicely, they report the average weights for the two each of the individual pots, but unfortunately they don't seem to report the intra-pot variation of the individual worms, which would be helpful to know in assessing the likelihood of replication.

The Guardian article, though, which mentions only the two "significant" results and ignores the 6 results that showed no particular difference, seems more intent on generically sowing fear than on informing the public about recent scientific results. I guess it's better to have a soft-science article like this than another "did you see what the idiot tweeted", but sometimes I'm not sure.

ps. Did you know that in much of the northern US, all of the native earthworms were killed by the glaciers, and that practically all the current earthworms in these areas are invasives? The northern hardwood forests evolved without these earthworms, and may in fact be harmed by their presence: http://theconversation.com/silent-partners-are-earthworms-cr.... I wonder if the same true for England (where the study was done) since it was also mostly glaciated?

Forge36• 7 years ago

Thank you for sharing a source on how earthworms are invasive (I'd heard the claim, but not a source).

I remember a Park ranger talking about flowers in Minnesota which didn't grow as well because of earthworms and were thus Endangered. I wonder how these flowers would do if Plastics were added to their soil.

I can't recall the name of the flower, but that the reason they couldn't flourish was that Earthworms were eating the nutrients they needed to grow.

I found two sources https://kstp.com/news/u-of-m-researchers-find-earthworms-are... And https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2000/09/000904130558.h...

I don't believe this is the same flower (I feel like I'd remember the state flower). So the impact of earthworms is interesting, as I'd never heard of a way (or suggestion to) treat and remove earthworms from an ecosystem.

userbinator• 7 years ago

you know that in much of the northern US, all of the native earthworms were killed by the glaciers, and that practically all the current earthworms in these areas are invasives?

That made me think of an alternative title for this article: "Microplastics are an effective solution to invasive earthworm control."

...that is, if a 5% difference in some of the results is even considered significant.

autokad2• 7 years ago

and fighting climate change. Earth worms release more green house gasses than cows that politicians seem to like going on about.

refurb• 7 years ago

1 g per 1 kg is 1 Part per thousand.

How does that compare to what is seen in nature that seems like an incredibly high plastic load.

Reminds me of other studies that say “X causes problems” and then you learned they force fed rats 1000x any reasonable exposure doesn't necessarily tell you a lot.

scottlocklin• 7 years ago

Cue 50 posts about how "we're all in this together" talking about irrelevancies like recycling their supermarket plastic bags and using metal water containers. No.

The consumer end source of the problem comes from tires and the use of synthetic fabrics. As far as I know there is no effort at all to do anything about tires (using regular vulcanized rubber presumably would help). Synthetic fabrics, you actually can do something about. Stop buying them; your spandex pants are destroying the environment.

The other sources are pellets and coatings used industrially.

https://storyofstuff.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/IUCN-rep...

forgotmypw• 7 years ago

What about sneakers?

giancarlostoro2• 7 years ago

What about airless tires? I havent looked deeply into them but they sound like they would not be as profitable since you will be less likely to change tires due to a nail certainly reducing sales. But I am not sure what kind of cars these tires compliment and what kind of driving they are not for.

https://www.bridgestonetire.com/tread-and-trend/tire-talk/ai...

legulere• 7 years ago

The problem of tires is wear. Everything that's not on your tire anymore is microplastics now.

partialrecall• 7 years ago

Their claim of low rolling resistance is surprising to me, since all the non-pneumatic designs similar to that I've seen before had abysmal rolling resistance. It seems their prototype is still in development, so maybe that claim represents their ambitions, not their achievement thusfar. Although, looking at the render of the product they've provided, it looks pretty dang narrow compared to the "ecopia" brand tires they're compared against. It could be they've reduced rolling resistance by simply making it narrower than an otherwise equivalent pneumatic tire.

bt8482• 7 years ago

At least in America the motorist is unassailable. The most you can ask of an American motorist is that one of their three cars is a Prius. Never mind the tire dust, the brake dust, the sprawl, forty thousand dead pedestrians, ecological collapse, lead poisoning, leaking gas station tanks, and climate change. Give them paper straws and carry on.

MrEldritch• 7 years ago

lead poisoning

Uh... leaded gasoline has been phased out since the '70s, despite being demonstrably better for car engines (no anti-knock agent as good as tetraethyl lead has yet been invented), precisely because the American motorist is not unassailable!

JulianMorrison2• 7 years ago

Poor people's clothes are synthetics. Natural fibers cost. People have become used to buy-and-trash one season clothes. This is a problem.

tokai• 7 years ago

I have been thinking about getting a washing bag like the guppyfriend. Anyone knows if they actually work?

kiwicopple2• 7 years ago

For tires, it looks like pyrolysis is the least-worst option, of which there are a few small players such as eneform.com

Disclaimer: family affiliation

kiwicopple2• 7 years ago

Some high level data why pyrolysis is preferable over other options: https://paul.copplest.one/knowledge/pyrolysis.html#what-is-p...

Jeff_Brown• 7 years ago

How much of the plastic were they exposed to -- the kind of amount you'd find on a farm, or some kind of experimental super-plastic-dirt?

Worms fail to thrive in soil containing microplastics: study

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