Some actual relevant and promising work by the United Nations and governments around the world! Tackling fiber micro-plastics!

h/t Emily

From here:

Article: A Treaty to Preserve Oceans -- and Our World | OpEd News

“There is cause for celebration in our climatically distressed world for a treaty of historic proportions has been signed by the UN member states. It is the culmination of 15 years of talks and discussions.

Vital to the preservation of 30 percent of our earth, i.e. land and ocean, the oceans treaty broke many political barriers. The EU environment commissioner Virginijus Sinkevicius applauded the event saying it was a crucial step towards preserving marine life and its essential biodiversity for generations to come.

The UN Secretary General commended the delegates, his spokesperson calling the agreement a "victory for multilateralism and for global efforts to counter the destructive trends facing ocean health, now and for generations to come."

A taste for the issue is detailed here:

Seabirds Are Suffering From Plasticosis, A New Plastic-Induced Disease | IFLScience

And here:

Plastic In Oceans Will Outweigh Fish By 2050 | IFLScience

In one of my first SubStack posts, on 21 August 2022, I fumbled around with some numbers on the catastrophic environmental impacts of test kits, injections, face masks and wet-wipes:

An Inconvenient Truth - by Peter Halligan (substack.com)

Considering only face masks and wet-wipes, How many of each? “..it is estimated that there are about 129 billion masks used every month in the world during COVID-19, most of which are disposable masks made using microplastic fibers.”

The 129 billion masks a month would mean that the planet’s 8 billion people are using 3-4 masks a week. Plausible, perhaps on the high side . Not everyone gets “masked up”. I personally have worn a (slightly upscale) cloth mask for maybe 5 hours over the last three years. Some people might use several disposable masks a day, some maybe a few a week.

Another source (below) suggests 52 billion masks for the whole of 2020 – which equates to a  world per capita number of an eighth of a mask a week – quite a difference!

I hazard a guess that the same number of wet-wipes have been used as face masks.

129 billion a month for the 36 months of the C19 pandemic = 4.644 trillion masks and the same number of wet-wipes. All of these are likely incremental to face mask and wet-wipe usage prior to the C19 pandemic.

Fiber micro-plastics are especially worrisome.

“The presence of microplastics in human feces has been confirmed (Schwabl et al. 2019), and research showed that up to 52,000 microplastics can be ingested by US citizens every year (Cox et al. 2019). A recent study carried by Ragusa et al. (2021) reported that microplastic particles were found in all placental portions, indicating that microplastics have potential threat to the fetal health.”

“.. evidence has demonstrated that the actual pollution of fiber microplastics to water environment is suspected to be much higher than that of other microplastic particles..”

Wet wipes and disposable surgical masks are becoming new sources of fiber microplastic pollution during global COVID-19 - PMC (nih.gov)

Sixty-seven references in that paper to other papers. The paper says this:

“It has been reported that in 2020, about 52 billion masks have been produced worldwide, of which 1.56 billion entered the oceans through various pathways. Each mask is about 3–4 g in weight, and after conversion, there are about 4680–6240 tons of discarded masks in the ocean.”

So, maybe somewhere between:

3 years times 1.56 billion masks into oceans = 4.68 billion masks in oceans (how much on the 30% of the planet that is land?) resulting in at least 4,680 tons of masks per annum for three years (assuming constant annual usage rates as 2020, for 2021 and 2022) = 14,040 tons of waste containing fiber micro-plastics

Or

4.6 trillion masks times 1.56/52 = 138 billion masks into oceans and 414,000 tons of waste.

Wet-wipes maybe the same number and 3-4g weight? Maybe a little heavier.

These are the sorts of micro numbers times mega multipliers that the large consumer goods service and manufacturing companies turn into bumper profits. In this case, bumper profits are (inversely?) analogous to bumper pollution.

The kind of pollution that destroys all fish, reptile and mammalian life and a far clearer and more present danger than any chicken little climate change squawking!

Anyway, let’s not distract from the news that the UN has reached agreement with hundreds of countries to protect 30% of our land and ocean. It is a start.

Hopefully, the disposal of used test kits and syringes is properly done all around the world and not just in a few countries.

Maybe we need an RT-PCR test for micro-plastic levels in the food we buy – certified by regulators in the CDC/FDA of course (groan).

Onwards!

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