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Remote Pacific Island Is the Most Plastic-Contaminated Spot Yet Surveyed (arstechnica.com)

Posted by BeauHD on from the great-pacific-garbage-patch dept.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Plastic is durable -- very, very durable -- which is why we like it. Since it started being mass-produced in the 1950s, annual production has increased 300-fold. Because plastic is so durable, when our kids grow up and we purge our toy chests, or even just when we finish a bottle of laundry detergent or shampoo, it doesn't actually go away. While we're recycling increasing amounts of plastic, a lot of it still ends up in the oceans. Floating garbage patches have brought some attention to the issue of our contamination of the seas. But it's not just the waters themselves that have ended up cluttered with plastic. A recent survey shows that a staggering amount of our stuff is coming ashore on the extremely remote Henderson Island. Henderson Island is a UNESCO World Heritage site in the Pitcairn Group of Islands in the South Pacific, roughly half way between New Zealand and Peru. According to UNESCO, Henderson is one of the best examples we have of an elevated coral atoll ecosystem. It was colonized by Polynesians between the 12th and 15th centuries but has been uninhabited by humans since then. It is of interest to evolutionary biologists because it has 10 plant species and four bird species that are only found there. Despite its uninhabited status and its extremely remote location, a recent survey of beach plastic on Henderson Island revealed that the island has the highest density of debris reported anywhere in the world: an estimated minimum of 37.7 million items weighing 17.6 tons. This represents the total amount of plastic that is produced in the world every 1.98 seconds. Further reading: Here And Now

18 of 132 comments (clear)

  1. It's not plastic that's the problem... by iMadeGhostzilla · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Plastic has great utility (as long as it's safe), it's disposable plastic that's the problem. And much of it is just for convenience that's not necessarily all that convenient.

    As an example -- I've been drinking water from disposable plastic bottles for over a decade and just recently switched to refilling water at my local store. At 50 cents a gallon I pay less for higher quality water in a BPA-free container. I had thought that's too much of a hassle but with "double buffering" it's actually less hassle than the bottled water, it's cheaper, tastier, and supposedly healthier.

    1. Re:It's not plastic that's the problem... by ShanghaiBill · · Score: 4, Interesting

      just recently switched to refilling water at my local store. At 50 cents a gallon ...

      Could please you explain your rationale for doing this instead of just getting water from the faucet in your kitchen?

    2. Re:It's not plastic that's the problem... by ShanghaiBill · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Most tap water is poisoned with fluoride.

      The water sold in the grocery store is usually filtered tap water. The filtering does not remove fluoride. In fact, there is no evidence that it removes anything other than money from your wallet.

    3. Re: It's not plastic that's the problem... by Type44Q · · Score: 2

      Proper reverse-osmosis filtration will remove fluoride but the resulting water is too soft and should be buffered salts/electrolytes

    4. Re:It's not plastic that's the problem... by Cmdln+Daco · · Score: 3, Interesting

      We have unimaginably good tasting well water here. Good enough that I sometimes ponder if bottling and selling it would be practical. Our well is the deepest on the highway we live on.

      A lot of 'natural' well water has a lot of fluoride in it. Fluoride in water is not something unnatural. It's just that some water doesn't have an adequate amount of fluoride to discourage tooth decay.

      In our case, we just brush with a fluoridated toothpaste ("Pepsodent", a paleo-brand of toothpaste that they sell at Walgreens for $1 a tube) to be sure.

    5. Re: It's not plastic that's the problem... by ShanghaiBill · · Score: 2

      Proper reverse-osmosis filtration will remove fluoride but the resulting water is too soft and should be buffered salts/electrolytes

      The "bring-your-own-bottle" machines at the grocery store do not use reverse osmosis. They use cheap activated charcoal filters, which do not remove fluoride even when they are changed regularly, which usually aren't. The input is tap water, and the output is, well, basically tap water.

    6. Re: It's not plastic that's the problem... by drinkypoo · · Score: 2

      The "bring-your-own-bottle" machines at the grocery store do not use reverse osmosis.

      My local hippie co-op has machines for filtered, RO, and DI water.

      --
      "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
    7. Re:It's not plastic that's the problem... by sheramil · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Plastic has great utility (as long as it's safe), it's disposable plastic that's the problem.

      Disposable plastic isn't the problem. It's partly dumbshits who think plastic should be disposable, and other dumbshits who treat it like it is.

      Having worked in the plastics industry.. it's weird how plastic is incredibly durable, unless you need it to be, in which case it degrades and breaks down almost immediately.. although that could be observation bias.

    8. Re:It's not plastic that's the problem... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2

      The filtering does not remove fluoride. In fact, there is no evidence that it removes anything other than money from your wallet.

      Do you realize that in addition to fluoridating water, why, there are studies underway to fluoridate salt, flour, fruit juices, soup, sugar, milk, ice cream? Ice cream, Bill? Children's ice cream!

      You know when fluoridation began?...1946. 1946, Bill. How does that coincide with your post-war Commie conspiracy, huh? It's incredibly obvious, isn't it? A foreign substance is introduced into our precious bodily fluids without the knowledge of the individual, and certainly without any choice. That's the way your hard-core Commie works.

      I first became aware of it, Bill, during the physical act of love... Yes, a profound sense of fatigue, a feeling of emptiness followed. Luckily I — I was able to interpret these feelings correctly. Loss of essence. I can assure you it has not recurred, Bill. Women, er, women sense my power, and they seek the life essence. I do not avoid women, Bill...but I do deny them my essence.

    9. Re: It's not plastic that's the problem... by dbIII · · Score: 4, Interesting
      From the totally correct but doesn't matter department.

      The "bring-your-own-bottle" machines at the grocery store do not use reverse osmosis. They use cheap activated charcoal filters, which do not remove fluoride even when they are changed regularly

      The fluoride doesn't matter (which is why the obsession was used to make a character look ridiculous in "Dr Strangelove") so the charcoal is enough to get rid of annoyances. I've been to places where people live off artesian water with a bit of fluoride and they don't get poisoned by it and die young (good teeth too, but maybe that's diet instead of fluoride).
      Seriously guys, unless you live somewhere like Flint with lead compounds in the water boiling is enough (though reverse osmosis is great for camping).

      The bottled water craze keeps reminding me that Evian is naive spelled backwards.

    10. Re:It's not plastic that's the problem... by Kiuas · · Score: 4, Informative

      Most tap water is poisoned with fluoride.

      Poisoned? You do know that every single substance, including water itself, is potentially lethal if ingested in excess?

      That's the thing really. It's the dosage that makes something either healthy or unhealthy. The world health organization recommends a level of fluoride of 0,5 mg to 1.0 mg per litre because fluoride has proven benefits for dental health at low doses..

      Now then, let's look at the numbers:

      Referring to a common salt of fluoride, sodium fluoride (NaF), the lethal dose for most adult humans is estimated at 5 to 10 g (which is equivalent to 32 to 64 mg/kg elemental fluoride/kg body weight).[1][2][3] Ingestion of fluoride can produce gastrointestinal discomfort at doses at least 15 to 20 times lower (0.2–0.3 mg/kg or 10 to 15 mg for a 50 kg person) than lethal doses.

      So to even get to the lower bound of gastrointestinal discomfort, someone would have to think anywhere from 10-30 litres of water, and to get to the lethal dose the number goes up to 30-60 litres. At that quantity you're in life danger even if you're drinking fluoride free water because of water intoxication.

      There are understandable reasons for not drinking tap water in certain areas (taste, purity, etc). but fluoride is not one of them. The tap water here in Finland ranks among the best in the world and bottled water consumption is low compared to most western nations, yet do we see cases of people dropping because of the added fluoride? No.

      --
      "It is the business of the future to be dangerous" -Alfred North Whitehead
  2. Re:It must not matter much by Ogive17 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Well, it doesn't matter to me so I'll just dump my trash in your front yard. If it matters to you, you'll clean it up!

    --
    "Action without philosophy is a lethal weapon; philosophy without action is worthless."
  3. It's not the US that is polluting like this... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Look at the containers and material in the photos. They are almost all from fishing or costal areas, and likely from South America.

    Many 3rd world countries just through their trash in the streets and have no concept of public cleanliness. If the trash was coming from the US, you'd see it on our shores as well, but you don't.

    Go look (google) photos of 3rd world country streets, homes and neighborhoods. They just don't have a sanitation system, nor seem to care to create one. Maybe we could export our sanitation tech to India, Ghana, etc...

  4. Mind-boggling by jenningsthecat · · Score: 5, Insightful

    "... an estimated minimum of 37.7 million items weighing 17.6 tons. This represents the total amount of plastic that is produced in the world every 1.98 seconds".

    If that's true, then it's a staggering and sobering statistic. In nice round numbers, call it 8 tons per second. That's over 690,000 tons of plastic produced per day! Given that plastic is largely made from a non-renewable resource, and that it takes a huge amount of energy to produce, and that much of it is used frivolously... Talk about fouling our own nest! As a species we are remarkably good at choosing short term gain that causes long term pain. Sadness...

    --
    'The Economy' is a giant Ponzi scheme whose most pitiable suckers are the youngest among us and the yet-unborn.
  5. Re:It must not matter much by quenda · · Score: 4, Informative

    And that is the worst.

    Not even close! Try looking at the source of most of the trash : Asia.

    This Chinese beach had 362 tonnes of garbage :

    http://www.dailymail.co.uk/new...

  6. Re:It must not matter much by ShanghaiBill · · Score: 4, Informative

    But then again, tourists bring money to the island.

    There are no tourists. The island is uninhabited. The trash comes from the ocean, and is washed onto the beaches by the waves.

  7. hydrocarbons by OrangeTide · · Score: 3, Insightful

    I wonder if very many people realizes that plastics are made of hydrocarbons, not unlike fossil fuels like gasoline and diesel. And with the right furnace plastics will burn and produce energy quite nicely. If anyone can put together some automated way to collect lots of ocean trash in one spot, we can shovel it into an incinerator and push some steam turbines along. (yeah, collecting it all is the hard part. technical hurdle but not impossible)

    --
    “Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
  8. Re:It must not matter much by K.+S.+Kyosuke · · Score: 3, Funny

    Wait a minute, I thought the gates protected us from them...? You don't want decent folks threatened by golf carts and stuff, right?

    --
    Ezekiel 23:20