Plastic pollution: 'Hidden' chemicals build up in seabirds

https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-51285103

by pseudolus • 6 years ago

54 10 6 years ago

arbitrage• 6 years ago

The effects of toxic chemicals absorbed by the body are less clear.

bovine3dom3• 6 years ago

There are, however, lots of externalities associated with alternatives to single-use plastic which we do know are harmful.

There is an excellent 2018 study [1] which enumerates these. A memorable finding is that an organic cotton shopping bag must be reused 20,000 times before it breaks even with a single-use plastic bag.

(This is not to say that a plastic bag would be likely to end up in the sea or eaten by a bird, but it has somehow become common belief that that is the case).

[1] https://www2.mst.dk/Udgiv/publications/2018/02/978-87-93614-...

titzer2• 6 years ago

Please read your actual article. The cotton bag must be reused 52 times to break even in terms of climate change and the 20,000 number is "all indicators", of which it states that " The highest number is due to the use of water resource, but also to freshwater and terrestrial eutrophication." [page 18]. There's some serious flaws with not counting water as a renewable resource. As for eutrophication, the author also doesn't consider the carrying capacity of the environment to recycle phosphorous and other other agriculture byproducts.

marriedWpt• 6 years ago

The chem Engineer in me hates the general word "Chemical".

It's not descriptive, any (macro) matter is classified as chemical.

I find the words used to describe plastics is equally poor.

Is it nylon? Is it a polyurethane? Is it ABS? Is it all large chain chemicals? Or just low density? I could go on.

romseb• 6 years ago

The plastics are polyethylene. You can find the study here: https://www.cell.com/current-biology/pdf/S0960-9822(19)31670...

"The five chemical additives were chosen from those detected in a screening analysis of plastics found in the stomach of seabirds (n = 194) [13]: a flame retardant, deca-BDE, which is composed of several PBDE congeners, dominated by 2,20,3,30,4,40,5,50,6,60-decabromodiphenylether (BDE209); three benzotriazole ultraviolet (UV) stabilizers, specifically 2-(2-hydroxy-3-tert-butyl-5-methylphenyl)-5-chlorobenzotriazole (UV-326), 2-(3,5-di-tert-amyl-2-hydroxyphenyl) benzotriazole (UV-328), and 2-(3,5-di-tert-butyl-2-hydroxyphenyl)-5-chlorobenzotriazole (UV-327); and one benzophenone UV stabilizer, 2-hydroxy-4-octyloxybenzophenone (BP-12). Industrially, deca-BDE is mixed with polyolefins at a concentration of 5% to 8% by weight [14], and benzotriazole and benzophenone UV stabilizers are mixed at 0.05% to 2% by weight [15]."

Plastic pollution: 'Hidden' chemicals build up in seabirds

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