Tag Archives: Student Posts

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Home Plastic Audits: Can You Spot the Difference?

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If you’re a person with a uterus, you’ll know that menstruation is an absolute mess.

I know I don’t need to go into the amount of struggles that we uterians endure: inhaling chocolate like the Noo Noo from Teletubbies,crying over pictures of Tom Hiddleston, and becoming an erupting volcano every time you sneeze.

noonoo
Dear Lord Noo Noo, how similar we are

My period came right on time for the Home Plastic Audit and added nearly 30 pieces of plastic to my week’s total. Both tampons and pads produce two pieces of plastic per tampon and pad. Three women synced up at one time (it happens) in one household could produce up to 100 pieces of plastic within a week.

In light of these issues, some forward-thinking (and most likely exasperated) women have created the underwear of the future!

They’re called Thinx.These pieces of underwear (which come in four different styles and levels of absorbency) were created to replace pads, tampons, and any other disposable period apparatus. They’re meant to be worn throughout an entire day and washed. Sound gross? Thinx has already anticipated an understandable level of revulsion, and makes a fairly convincing sanitary argument: each pair has four layers that absorb, fight bacteria, and maintain dryness (so no, you won’t be swimming in your own blood for 12 or more hours). As of now, they come in two colors–beige and black, and sizes from XS to XXXL.

Me when I receive my order

Giving up the changeable extra layer of plastic waste seems weird at first, but after you…thinx…about it, this really seems like an awesomely sustainable way to transform the experience of menstruation.

Do you appreciate the title now

Semper ubi sub ubi guys,

Alex

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MUST READ: The A-Zs of Marine Plastic Ingestion

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The issue of plastic pollutants in the ocean and their averse effects on marine life is a current and pressing matter. For something with such a huge affect on the world and humanity, you’d think more people would care about it, or even know about it in general, but that’s not the case. In researching information for this topic, we noticed that the many studies and data collections could seem daunting to the regular person who isn’t such a science buff. I imagine that many people would understand this issue and care about it, if they could understand clearly what is being written about it. The same goes for any problem going on that pertains to a specific area of knowledge. While there is a lot of important research articles explaining the effects of marine plastics, the 2014 NOAA Marine Debris Program Report on Ingestion: Occurrence and Health Effects of Anthropogenic Debris Ingested by Marine Organisms stands out for its clarity in this matter. It is of course based on scientific data, yet at the same time geared toward the common man.

The report gives a broad analysis of the issue of marine plastic ingestion, from albatrosses to zooplankton (literally A-Z!!!) The first part summarizes the cause for and effects of ingested marine debris on a variety of marine species: The causes widely depend on where the species looks for food, the type of food each species ingests, and distinct physical qualities that could endanger them. The effects are based off of what type of marine plastic was ingested and how long it was in the system, and can be separated into two categories: physical and physiological. The size and shape of objects can do a lot of damage to the digestive tracts of many species, while the toxins inside the plastics can also have adverse effects on them just as well. The second part of the report denotes what is still missing from research and the problems they pose, such as our underestimate of marine debris due to the possibility of deeper accumulations of marine plastics we have yet to find. Also, there is a lot to further examine in area of toxicology the interaction of predator and prey in this circumstance.

Group #4 is exploring the how plastics affect all sorts of marine species. What drew us to this report was its promise to “summarize the “state of the science” regarding the effects of ingested marine debris and highlight areas where knowledge is currently lacking“. The organized and understandable collection of information combined with a critical lens for the missing pieces in the research made it an easy read and a very telling one that is serving as a springboard to our project. I think everyone can gain from reading this report, as it states what we do know and what we don’t in a way that leaves the door open to further effective investigation of this meaningful topic.

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Must-Read: “New Link in the Food Chain? Marine Plastic Pollution and Seafood Safety”

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Many people are not concerned about the issue of increasing plastic consumption and its pollution into our oceans. It may not be necessarily that people don’t care. It could very well be that they do care, but not enough because it does not directly affect them/us. Something that may or may not change our minds on the issue: “New Link in the Food Chain? Marine Plastic Pollution and Seafood Safety.” This is an article that was published in the Environmental Health Perspectives journal that talks about the potential impact marine plastics can have on humans through our food chain.

Group 2’s focus is on the effect that plastic pollution can indirectly have on humans. It is an intriguing topic and is definitely concerning. The article talks about plastic’s tendency to “sorb” or take up “persistent, bioaccumulative, and toxic substances,” which can be found in the bodies of water we are polluting. The article then discusses how these toxic-sorbed plastics find their ways into marine animals when they eat. As seen in Ana Luiza’s video, even the smallest of organisms are documented as having consumed microplastics. As we go up the food chain, the plastics follow, all the way up to commonly eaten seafood like tuna and swordfish and ultimately making it’s way to us. I think this article is a must-read for anyone even remotely concerned about their own health and of course the plastics issue at large.

This food chain issue is an interesting piece to the puzzle that is plastic pollution. A lot of what was talked about in the article is not yet proven by scientific research, which is why some people are not convinced. Funding for research on this topic is harder to get because of greater concern in other things (overfishing, acidification) and although we have a lot more to learn, it is comforting to know that the EPA and other government agencies are starting to look into it. By 2016, the EPA plans to launch a full-scale “inquiry” into effects on human health in relation to chemical loading effects on plastic litter. I’d urge everyone to give this article a read because it gives us a good understanding of what we know, what we can infer, and what we still have to learn about plastic’s harmful link in our food chain.

 

Link here: 

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Plastic Debris Affects on Wildlife

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Our group has chosen to focus mainly on the negative effects that marine plastic debris has on wildlife and marine ecosystems. Unfortunately, people don’t tend to worry about problems unless it affects them individually or someone they’re close with. As a result, the issues that marine plastic debris causes for aquatic organisms can go unnoticed and unchanged. We hope that our group can raise awareness about the dangers of plastic debris and maybe even inspire people to actively combat the issue.

Our research indicates that three of the main issues that arise from abundant amounts of marine plastic debris are ingestion, entanglement and smothering of the sea floor. Ingestion can lead to undernourishment due to false feelings of satiety and absorption of toxins contained in plastics (among other things). Both of these effects could be fatal. Entanglement can have similar effects. Fish or other forms of wildlife can get caught in plastics of some kind or “ghost nets” and not be able to escape. Additionally, smothering that occurs on the seafloor can inhibit the exchange of gas between pore water and seawater and even ruin once pristine ecosystems.

To get an understanding of how widespread these effects can be we’ve also accumulated research that describes the abundance and travel tendencies of plastics in the world’s waters. One reason that society loves using plastics is that they’re durable. However, this poses a problem once they are thrown in the oceans because it means they will remain there for a very long time. Also, even when they do break down they turn into plastic fragments as opposed to just disappearing. This means that even smaller organisms can be affected. One study, through collecting debris samples with nets and scanning them using infrared spectroscopy, determined that levels of plastic fragments have been increasing over time. To make matters even worse, plastics have an amazing ability to float to even the most remote places on the planet. Basically, there is no escaping them.

Not wanting to have such a pessimistic topic, we also managed to find possible solutions to prevent the marine plastic debris issue. Our sources have suggested pushing for more biodegradable plastics, passing legislation limiting use of plastics, encouraging people to recycle more and constructing barriers at points where plastics are likely to enter the oceans. These recommendations can’t completely solve the marine plastic issue that the world faces today, but hopefully it can prevent all of the Earth’s waters from turning into the Gowanus Canal!

 

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Zooplankton Lunch Special: Plastics

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Five Films, a UK based film company invested in sharing the stories of our Earth and biology filmed for the first time in recorded scientific history the event of zooplankton eating plastics. Although a seemingly mundane discovery, this evidence of microorganisms filling their tiny little bellies with plastics provides more backing to the claim that plastics are affecting our marine life in a fundamental way. So in order to eat, the little plankton guy stirs up all the water surrounding him in a frenzy of limbs and eats up all the foodstuffs he draws into his mouth from the water. In this case, the foodstuffs being plastics. As observed in the video, the plastics are the florescent green beads in the water, and you can see the plankton eating and having the plastics in their bodies. Now, from our research in class, and basic knowledge of the plastics that exist in the oceans, it is not too surprising to find out that the plankton are eating the micro pieces of plastics which makeup the majority of plastic pollution in the ocean. The significance of this video is the amount and concentration of plastics eaten by the plankton, and how this affects the biology of our oceans. It is almost impossible/very very hard to know the correction concentrations of plastics in the ocean because we as individuals/ scholars, and the scientific community do not exactly how big our ocean is. So its very hard to calculate how the presence of plastics and the organisms who eat them when we can’t accurately measure the body in which they live in. But when we can know is that these feeding habit it altering our ocean ecosystem in ways we don’t entirely understand yet. Plastics are unnatural substances, and so when something like, i don’t know, a plankton per-say eats it, their insides get a little funky. So if we follow the food chain oceanic game of “The Little Old Lady Who Swallowed a Fly” it would look as follows: the plankton ate the plastic, and the crab ate the plankton, and the fish ate the crab, and then the person ate the fish. Why did the plankton eat the plastic? It’s not that we don’t know why, it is because there is so much of it in a micro sense in the ocean that zooplankton inevitably ingest it while eating. Now this is a problem for all of us for a number of reasons, the main points being that a) our ecosystems are changed because of the presence of plastics, and b) we ourselves could be harmed by eating/ having the presence of plastics in out marine life, big and small. Relating back to our research, this video helps visual the statistics of plastics being gathered in the ocean, and the affects it has on our ocean life. Also, look at the plankton, it’s pretty cool to watch them eat.

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How do marine plastics affect us anyway? (Group 2’s research)

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This video was posted on Youtube by a nonprofit organization called Seas at Risks, which aims to influence public policy regarding the protection of the marine environment. Although this video is quite comical, featuring cartoon characters singing about plastics ending up in the marine environment, it is also informative because it illustrates the apathetic perspective of many humans regarding the marine plastics issue. Many people know about the marine plastic problem, but not many care enough about the problem to do anything to combat it, probably because they don’t see the effect it will have on them directly. My group has decided to focus our Science Forward research on how marine plastics impact humans, in order to prove that plastics in the oceans is an issue people should care about because it actually does have an effect on individuals.

One study my group came across in their research was a paper describing an experiment conducted by Chelsea Rochman, who is part of the Department of Anatomy, Physiology, and cell biology at the University of California. In this experiment, two groups of fish were examined. In one group, pellets containing plastics were placed in the water the fish were swimming in. In the other group, no plastic pellets were placed. After two months, it was determined that the fish that may have ingested plastic showed an increase in harmful substances like PCBs. A statistical analysis was conducted and although the presence of PCBs in the fish that may have eaten plastic was not found to be statistically significant, that doesn’t mean that the plastic couldn’t have caused this increase. The results of the statistical analysis could be attributed to small sample size or less plastic ingested than would be ingested in the open ocean. Plastic consumption can very well be harming fish that humans will ultimately eat.

Taking this study into account along with our other research, our group has recognized that thinking about how marine plastics will affect humans is a topic that allows for a personal connection. Marine plastics affect humans and although our research is far from over, we are starting to see the negative effects plastics have.