Science Forward

Written by Alec Mateo and posted on his behalf by Prof. Branco:

I was browsing Science Magazine’s website recently looking for interesting studies regarding climate change. I stumbled across a study that I found to be immediately fascinating, if not terrifying. This study claimed to have found a statistically significant correlation between levels of violence and changes in climate.

So much has been debated over the potential consequences of the more rapidly/drastically-changing climate we face in the wake of global warming, and I think that the information provided in this study adds a very unique approach in attempting to quantify effects on a social scale.

This study, entitled Quantifying the Effect of Climate on Human Conflict, was written by three scientists each from different fields including Agricultural Science, Environmental Policy, and Economics. The impetus for the study was born out of a sudden burst of interest in the connection between climate change and conflict which was accompanied by an “explosion of quantitative studies” which were then collected and added to by the authors and released as a comprehensive quantification of the correlations.

It would seem this influx of information allowed them to draw conclusions that spanned over all scales of human interaction, both in magnitude and time. That is to say they found relations between irregularity of precipitation and mild temperatures affects the occurrence of violence “from a single building to the globe and at temporal scales ranging from an anomalous hour to an anomalous millennium.” The conclusions go on to state the 1-SD increase in rainfall or warmth would be responsible for a 4% increase in interpersonal violence and a 14% increase in intergroup violence.

The relevance of these social implications regarding the change of climate is extremely tangible and extends beyond any personal bias, as violence is undoubtedly a universal concern, perhaps one of the biggest in the spectrum of human life. This correlation, while frightening, will hopefully bring the discussion regarding consequences of climate change to a broader audience who had trouble grasping the effects on their personal lives. Climate change is a natural process but the unnatural speed with which it is occurring can truly disrupt a lot of balances that hold the world in order in ways most people can’t imagine. It’s amazing how the ripples of macro science create waves in the lives of individuals.

Below is the link for the study, I’m interested on everyone’s take on this correlation and the methods used to derive it.

http://www.sciencemag.org/content/341/6151/1235367.abstract

This week, our Science Forward students and faculty are performing a home plastic audit to see how we might be contributing to the global marine plastic debris problem. According to the EPA, there were approximately 31 million tons of plastic waste generated in the USA in 2010j. Only 8% of this waste was recovered. For our home audit, we are not tracking tracking the mass of plastic waste, but rather pieces of plastic that enters the waste stream (either through trash or recycling). It will be interesting to see exactly how much of our individual plastic waste streams is recyclable, as indicated by recycling codes or labels on individual items. This home audit is relatively easy and fun. So much that even my children are getting into the act.

So easy, even a pre-K student can do it.

This year, I spent my Halloween in a very interesting way.  How did I spend my Halloween, you ask? Why, I spent it doing plastics data collection at Plumb Beach! On Friday, October 31st, a few of my classmates and I went to Plumb Beach with our professor to collect plastic that washed up on the shore. We categorized each piece of plastic that was picked up, recorded how many fell into each category, and recorded a recycling number, if present.  Seeing all of the things that washed up on the beach was absolutely astounding and to be honest, quite disheartening.  We found an array of plastic bottles/containers, cigarette butts and lighters, children’s toys, candy wrappers, straws, and unidentifiable pieces of plastic.  In fact, there was even one very large piece of plastic that seemed to belong to some sort of kitchen appliance.  Every where we looked there to seemed to be a piece of plastic or some other form of garbage on the beach, and my group only covered a twenty meter area! Perhaps, the worst part about this situation is that even though we picked up a lot of plastic and trash that day, twice the amount we picked up probably washes up on the shore in a matter of days.  One of the most interesting aspects of the trip, however, was what I found while I was leaving.  While Anna and I were walking along the beach to get to the B44 bus, we saw what looked like a pet carrier.  Upon closer inspection, we noticed that something placed in a black garbage bag was put inside the carrier. It turns out, we had actually stumbled upon what looked like a beloved pet’s burial.  Although how the carrier got there is questionable, the fact that something like that could be found on the beach is incredible! This just goes to show how far out the things that wash up on the beach can be.  Also, the carrying case looked like it was made out of plastic!

I was walking in the Union Square train station, when I came across a whole line of these ads. Poland Springs is actually celebrating their supremacy as the number one beverage…in a city with some of the best tap water in the country. Come one New Yorkers, get those reusable water bottles and stop supporting this smug corporation.

Two things stood out to me when we visited Plumb Beach on Halloween. The first was the unusual shape of the beach, the second, the types of garbage we found there. As Professor Branco had previously mentioned, the beach sand had been distributed unevenly due to the way the water moves sand, but additionally, erosion of sand volume was also blatantly displayed. At a certain location of the beach, there was an actual shelf of sand which was unevenly worn away and abruptly dropped off to a lower level of sand. The shelf was at least two feet higher than the sand level next to it, and it was clear that a lot of sand had been moved off the beach already. With such a clear example of erosion (it looked like a textbook example!) one would hope that the Parks Department is diligently looking for funds for a beach nourishment project, or is contriving a better way to keep sand on the beach in a nondisruptive manner.

The plastics we found on the beach were largely the usual food waste and bottles, along with fishing and boating supplies, but, disturbingly, there were (used!) hospital items to be found more frequently than should be. We even found an IV bag that looked like it used to have blood or some other body fluid in it (thank goodness for our gloves!). These are clearly not items that happy beachgoers tote along for a day in the sun, which means that, like most of the plastic, it washed up with the tide. Which begs the question, what hospitals are dumping their waste in the bay, and why are regulations not stricter, or enforced? Sure, pollution needs to be prevented by changes in personal behavior, but a real biohazard could be eliminated by institutions being reasonably responsible.

Unfortunately, I arrived to Plumb Beach late and was unable to participate in the surveying of plastic debris at Plumb Beach. However, I still got the chance to see and experience the natural oceanic formations and the amount of plastics littered all over the beach.

As soon as I stepped onto the beach, I already noticed scattered pieces of garbage. I counted numerous water bottles, glass bottles, plastic bags, and the like just on my way to meet up with my other classmates. When I finally met up with the rest of the class, I actually got to see the groins, tombolo, and wave patterns that Professor Branco had explained to us in class. I was surprised to see the drastic difference between the shorelines of each side of the groin. I was impressed by the work of the preservers of the beach. They constantly have to come every several years and restore the beach by adding new sand and making the shoreline straighter and further away from the Belt Parkway. It’s difficult to be working against nature and maintaining something that so easily turns back to what it naturally is.

Emma, Kay, and I were assigned to find the most unique type of plastics on one side of the groin. Just by walking a few meters, we already began to find lots of water bottles, plastic cups, and trash. I wish we were able to pick up the debris, because it is sad to find so much garbage and not be able to properly dispose of it. Overall, we found plastic cups, plastic straws, plastic toys, plastic bags, plastic labels, and even a plastic syringe. I learned that all the debris was probably not thrown on the beach, but from other areas and got washed up along the shore. That was why a majority of the plastics we found were by the shore and not further onto the land area.

There was such a variety of plastics on the Plumb Beach. Litter easily collects in an area like this where there is a lot of traffic nearby and waves constantly hit the shore. There is a lot of maintenance and clean-up that needs to happen every few years or else the beach would turn into a wasteland and come close to destroying the Belt Parkway. Being able to visit Plumb Beach made me realize the positive and negative human impacts on environments like this.

Last Sunday, some of my fellow classmates and I went on the scheduled plastic survey and cleanup trip to Plumb Beach. When I arrived, I expected to see massive piles of trash, plastic bottles and food wrappers everywhere. However, at first glance, it seemed as though the beach was clean of all debris, plastic and all. At that moment, I thought that Professor Branco exaggerated a little as to how much plastic was by the shore. As we were placed into groups and given a 20×80 square foot of area, I wasn’t expecting for the survey to take too long. In fact, I doubted we could even fill half of the garbage bag we were given.

Once we began to scrutinize every square foot of sand, I realized how much plastic there really was: Candy wrappers, plastic bags, water bottles, beer and whiskey bottles, and dozens of caps (and cigarette butts). There were so many different types of plastics. When my group found a nail polish brush and a make-up applicator, I finally understood why on the tallying sheet there was a category of “personnel care products.” We also found some plastic with their recycling codes, like a bag with recycling code 3, or a container with recycling code 5. Once we scanned our whole piece of land, we threw out our garbage bag full of plastic and other garbage.

As we discussed in class, there were a few “hot spots” where most of the plastic debris was found. One spot was right by the shore line, because of all the plastic in the ocean that washes up onto shore. Another place where we found most of our plastics was by the weeds and by the fence. Because less wind reaches the bottom of the plants and the fence, the plastics are blown left and right until they reach where less wind is present.

One thing that I might have already pointed out in class that I would also like to address in this post is that when I was at the beach, I didn’t see many garbage cans around. And I know that someone in class said that even with the garbage cans, people will still be throwing trash on the floor. I sort of disagree with that comment because I don’t think most people want to litter. If you put lots of trash cans spanning throughout the whole shore in strategic areas, you could decrease the amount of trash that piles up on the beach. I agree with the fact that not all garbage is coming from the beach goers. Some plastic wash up to shore or are thrown out of windows from cars driving on the belt. But I still feel like if people were given a chance to keep the beach clean, they would do it and walk a couple feet to the nearest trash can.

(not such a great picture, but it shows how much garbage we collected)

(checking to see if the slipper we found belonged to Adam…it didn’t)

Pictures courtesy of Vivian!

-Adiell Melamed

As we all know by know, plastics have taken over our society and we as people choked our environment with all this plastic debris at land and at sea. However, what we don’t know (us in class and the rest of the world) are the true effects of BPA, or Bisphenol- A. Bisphenol- A is a chemical compound used to make plastic and epoxy resins. After, discussing about it very briefly in class, I decided to check up on my own what exactly this chemical does to your body. Before BPA was used in water bottles, baby bottles, and cans for food, it was used as an estrogen substitute. Everyone agrees that BPA is an “endocrine disruptor” and that it mimics estrogen. According to Thomas Zoeller, a biologist at the University of Massachusetts and an advocate against BPA, it binds to not just the estrogen receptor, but to also the male hormone and the thyroid hormone receptor.

The rage to this BPA controversy comes in to play as to how harmful is this endocrine disruptor. Besides, humans are not nearly exposed enough to have an effect on us, right? Well, some studies show that US residents are exposed to a very low amount of BPA, most of which are efficiently metabolized and excreted. Others disagree and say that humans are exposed to at least eight times the suggested amount every day (50 micrograms of BPA per kilogram of body mass), and the liver can’t keep up detoxifying.

After searching and searching for the truth, I seem to have gotten nowhere. There is so much to discuss and so little time and space, we might not have time to discuss them all in our debate. I don’t know which side to take. That will make reffing the debate a lot more difficult, meaningful and interesting. Coming into the debate as a ref allowed me to search both sides of the coin, the advocates against and the advocates for BPA.

Sources:

1. http://www.nytimes.com/gwire/2010/09/20/20greenwire-study-human-exposure-to-bpa-grossly-underestima-4581.html?pagewanted=all&module=Search&mabReward=relbias%3Ar%2C%7B%222%22%3A%22RI%3A18%22%7D

2. http://www.forbes.com/sites/geoffreykabat/2014/09/04/the-raging-controversy-over-bpa-shows-no-signs-of-abating/

– Adiell Melamed

The study of marine plastics has a cyclic theme as cyclic debates focus on cleaning up plastic, spinning and gathering at two polar ends of an ocean current. To date, the majority of those debates, especially among government officials, have not led to the implementation of a solution to the pressing marine problem. However, the solution may have just rolled in (I will admit that these puns are getting to be a bit excessive). This past May, the Water Wheel (really creative title…) was set-up in Baltimore’s Inner Harbor. Personally, I think Southern Fried Science’s “ solar-powered, trash-eating, waterwheel-driven garbage scow” nickname is the real winner.

The Water Wheel is made up of three parts working in unison – a water wheel, several rakers and a steady conveyor belt. The water wheel, which harnesses energy from the current, powers the rakers and belt. The rakers push garbage onto the conveyor, running at a sustainable speed, which then deposits the collected garbage in a large dumpster to be properly disposed of. This large dumpster sits on the water and functions separately from the device. Thereby, replacing filled dumpsters with empty ones, is a simple swap. To supplement the energy produced by the water wheel, the device is also solar-powered. It’s basically the better-looking cousin of the old-fashioned water wheel. So, I guess I can let the boring title thing slide.

The Water Wheel represents the immaculate product of a truly well thought out project. Not only does the device use renewable energy, it stops plastics before they reach an ocean gyre, where the real problems begin, a “no-mans-land” so to speak. If the Water Wheel were to be situated at the mouth of every large body of water leading to the ocean, virtually no discarded plastics would come into contact with marine life and be further broken down into microplastics. Personally, I believe setting up devices like the Water Wheel should be a top priority in the marine plastics community rather than “high-sea cleanup projects”. As Southern Fried Science so simply pointed out “Attacking the Great Pacific Garbage Patch is treating the symptoms, not the cancer.” After we cut off the source of plastic to the Patch then, we can reasonably talk about effectively cleaning it up.

Baltimore Inner Harbor Solar Powered Water Wheel

Article from IFLScience – “SolarPowered Water Wheel Could Clean Ocean Plastic”: http://www.iflscience.com/environment/solar-poweredwater-wheel-could-clean-ocean-plastic

Article from Southern Fried Science – “Charm City’s Water Wheel: The first truly feasible ocean cleaning array is already afloat”:  http://www.southernfriedscience.com/?p=17362&_ga=1.238528640.1804081251.1406485204