Plastic Pollution . An estimated 3. 00 million tons of plastics were produced in 2. World Economics Forum, released at Davos in January 2. In 2. 00. 8, our global plastic consumption worldwide has been estimated at 2. Global Industry Analysts, plastic consumption is to reach 2. Plastic is versatile, lightweight, flexible, moisture resistant, strong, and relatively inexpensive. Those are the attractive qualities that lead us, around the world, to such a voracious appetite and over- consumption of plastic goods. However, durable and very slow to degrade, plastic materials that are used in the production of so many products all, ultimately, become waste with staying power. Our tremendous attraction to plastic, coupled with an undeniable behavioral propensity of increasingly over- consuming, discarding, littering and thus polluting, has become a combination of lethal nature. Although inhabited and remote, South Sentinel island is covered with plastic! Plastic pollution and marine debris, South Sentinel Island, Bay of Bengal. Photo source: . All over the world the statistics are ever growing, staggeringly. Tons of plastic debris (which by definition are waste that can vary in size from large containers, fishing nets to microscopic plastic pellets or even particles) is discarded every year, everywhere, polluting lands, rivers, coasts, beaches, and oceans. Dead Sea salt and Oil is the one of the best way to nourish and renew your skin. You'll find after using the Dead Sea salt that your skin glows with pure radiance.View Dead Sea Natural Mineral Shampoo 300ml. Collect 4 Advantage Card Points for every Pound you spend. Skin care instilled by nature. Whether in your personal or professional life first impressions are really important. When going to work or out socially you want to. Dead Sea Salt Learning Center. Important: Beware of “processed” or “washed” salts. Many vendors will often claim to sell real Dead Sea bath salts when they. Natural Sourcing, LLC (and its From Nature With Love trademark) is a B2B wholesale supplier that serves experienced, professional beauty and personal care product. Salt (NaCl), sodium chloride, mineral substance of great importance to human and animal health, as well as to industry. The mineral form halite, or rock salt, is. Technical Specs; Name: Dead Sea Spa MAGIK Mineral Shampoo: Suitable For: Mild Seborrhoeic Dermatitis Mild Psoriasis Occasional Dry Scalp treatment: Active Ingredients. Discover the benefits of Himalayan salt and how it compares to sea salt. Sea salt is large in size and difficult to digest, whereas ionic Himalayan salt requires. Published in the journal Science in February 2. UC Santa Barbara’s National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis (NCEAS), quantified the input of plastic waste from land into the ocean. The results: every year, 8 million metric tons of plastic end up in our oceans. It’s equivalent to five grocery bags filled with plastic for every foot of coastline in the world. In 2. 02. 5, the annual input is estimated to be about twice greater, or 1. So the cumulative input for 2. Lying halfway between Asia and North America, north of the Hawaiian archipelago, and surrounded by water for thousands of miles on all sides, the Midway Atoll is about as remote as a place can get. Collection of weekly news and commentaries from John Betts, lecturer, author, photographer, mineral collector, and mineral dealer. Practical everyday advice for. However, Midways’ isolation has not spared it from the great plastic tide either, receiving massive quantities of plastic debris, shot out from the North Pacific circular motion of currents (gyre). Midways’ beaches, covered with large debris and millions of plastic particles in place of the sand, are suffocating, envenomed by the slow plastic poison continuously washing ashore. Then, on shore, the spectacle becomes even more poignant, as thousands of bird corpses rest on these beaches, piles of colorful plastic remaining where there stomachs had been. In some cases, the skeleton had entirely biodegraded; yet the stomach- size plastic piles are still present, intact. Witnesses have watched in horror seabirds choosing plastic pieces, red, pink, brown and blue, because of their similarity to their own food. It is estimated that of the 1. Laysan Albatrosses which inhabit Midway, all of them have plastic in their digestive system; for one third of the chicks, the plastic blockage is deadly, coining Midway Atoll as “albatross graveyards” by five media artists, led by photographer Chris Jordan, who recently filmed and photographed the catastrophic effects of the plastic pollution there. Albatross, victim of plastic ingestion. Photo: Unknown. From the whale, sea lions, and birds to the microscopic organisms called zooplankton, plastic has been, and is, greatly affecting marine life on shore and off shore. In a 2. 00. 6 report, Plastic Debris in the World’s Oceans, Greenpeace stated that at least 2. According to the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration, plastic debris kills an estimated 1. The United Nations Joint Group of Experts on the Scientific Aspects of Marine Pollution (GESAMP), estimated that land- based sources account for up to 8. However, most of the littered plastic waste worldwide ultimately ends up at sea. Swirled by currents, plastic litter accumulates over time at the center of major ocean vortices forming “garbage patches”, i. The most well known of these “garbage patches” is the Great North Pacific Garbage Patch, discovered and brought to media and public attention in 1. Captain Charles Moore. Yet some others large garbage patches are highly expected to be discovered elsewhere, as we’ll see further. The plastic waste tide we are faced with is not only obvious for us to clearly see washed up on shore or bobbing at sea. Most disconcertingly, the overwhelming amount and mass of marine plastic debris is beyond visual, made of microscopic range fragmented plastic debris that cannot be just scooped out of the ocean. Slow, silent, omnipresent, ever increasing, more toxic than previously thought, the plastic pollution’s reality bears sobering consequences, as recently unveiled by the report of Japanese chemist Katsuhiko Saido at the 2. National Meeting of the American Chemical Society (ACS) in August 2. Project Kaisei and Scripps (Seaplex) scientific cruise- expeditions collecting seawater samples from the Great Garbage Patch. Both, the reports and expeditions uncovered new evidence of how vast and “surprisingly” (as it was termed at the ACS meeting) toxic the plastic presence in the marine environment is. Extremely littered beach in northern Norway. Photo source: . In 2. Dr Richard Thompson at the University of Plymouth, UK, reported finding great amount of plastic particles on beaches and waters in Europe, the Americas, Australia, Africa and Antarctica. They reported that small plastic pellets called “mermaids tears”, which are the result of industry and domestic plastic waste, have indeed spread across the world’s seas. Some plastic pellets had fragmented to particles thinner than the diameter of a human hair. But while some cannot be seen, those pieces are still there and are still plastic. They are not absorbed into the natural system, they just float around within it, and ultimately are ingested by marine animals and zooplankton (Plankton that consists of tiny animals, such as rotifers, copepods, and krill, larger animals eggs and larvae’s and of microorganisms once classified as animals, such as dinoflagellates and other protozoans.). This plastic micro- pollution, with its inherent toxicity and consequences on the food chain, had yet to be studied. The study presents an alarming fact: these tons of plastic waste reputed to be virtually indestructible, do decompose with surprising speed, at much lower temperature than previously thought possible, and release toxic substances into the seawater, namely bisphenol A (BPA) and PS oligomer. These chemicals are considered toxic and can be metabolized subsequent to ingestion, leading Dr Saido to state “. SIO director Tony Haymet described the trip as “ . It took at first a magnifying- glass to see the true extent of plastic damage in the North Pacific.”The overwhelmingly largest unquantifiable plastic mass is just made of confetti- like fragmented pieces of plastic. In a press conference in September 2. California Department of Toxic Substances Control (DTSC), Maziar Movassaghi, referring to Project Kaisei’s findings, held a small glass bottle filled with seawater sampled at the Great North Garbage Patch. Inside was murky seawater with hundreds of fragmented plastics pieces: “That is what we have to stop”. All sea creatures, from the largest to the microscopic organisms, are, at one point or another, swallowing the seawater soup instilled with toxic chemicals from plastic decomposition. The world population “. In essence, humans are eating their own waste.” (Dixit Renee Brown, Wired. Press). Photo: Manan Vastsyayana. The scientists from Project Kaisei and Scripps hope their data gives clues as to the density and extent of these debris, especially since the Great Pacific Garbage Patch might have company in the Southern Hemisphere, where scientists say the gyre is four times bigger.” We’re afraid at what we’re going to find in the South Gyre, but we’ve got to go there,” said Tony Haymet. The “Silent World” is shedding mermaid tears. A plastic- poison has undeniably been instilled by us, prompting an unwilling and illegitimate confrontation of two titans: one synthetic (plastic), the other oceanic. The crisis is of massive proportion. An unprecedented plastic tide has occurred, pervasively affecting the world’s oceans, beaches, coasts, seafloor, animals and ultimately, us. I: The Great Plastic Tide: Magnitude, Scope, Extent A full understanding of the magnitude and scope of this plastic pollution starts with clear definitions as to what and why it is happening. Thus, we will define the notions of marine debris, gyres, and oceanic garbage patches, or giant floating marine debris field, as first discovered in the North Pacific by Captain Charles Moore’s, since referred to as The Great Pacific Garbage Patch (GGP). Marine Debris and Plastic. Krichim, Boat in plastic, April 2. Photo: Dimitar Dilkoff. Marine Debris The term marine debris has been used for at least 2. The earliest references come from the 1. Workshop on the Impacts and Fate of Marine Debris (Shomura and Yoshida 1. This workshop came out of a 1. Marine Mammal Commission to the National Marine Fisheries Service to examine the impacts of marine debris. At that time, the focus of research was primarily on derelict fishing gear. Keep in mind that this was prior to the implementation of both the high- seas driftnet ban and MARPOL Annex V. Other terms used prior to 1. Feder et all 1. 97. Balazs 1. 97. 9), plastic litter (Merrell 1. Morris 1. 98. 0), man- made objects (Shaughnessy 1. Venrick et al 1. 97. Scordino and Fisher 1. It would appear that the term debris was being used in these articles by academics as something discarded: litter. The term marine debris encompasses more than plastic, including metals (derelict vessels, dumped vehicles, beverage containers), glass (light bulbs, beverage containers, older fishing floats), and other materials (rubber, textiles, lumber).
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