The Plastic Pandemic Increases

Disposable masks and gloves add to the crushing weight of the existing plastic pandemic

In the Mediterranean alone, 570,000 tons of plastic end up in the sea every year. It is the equivalent of 33,800 plastic bottles thrown into the water every minute, according to Bianchi. That’s pre-COVID-19, however. Now, she says,

“We ask that institutions prepare appropriate collectors for masks and gloves and install them near ports and in parks, around villas and at supermarkets. It would be an advantage for the environment—and for our health.”

OceansAsia, a marine conservation organization headquartered in Southeast Asia, maintains a remote, boat-access-only test beach on the Soko Islands south of Lantau, Hong Kong. Twice each month, OceansAsia researchers visit the beach to carry out microplastics surveys. “Because the area is so distant, all the plastic there has its origins in the sea,” says Teale Phelps Bondaroff, OceansAsia’s director of research. “In late February, about six weeks after wearing masks became a widespread practice in Hong Kong, much to our surprise we started noticing a massive influx of surgical masks.”

Since then, he says, OceansAsia scientists have continued to find surgical masks “in considerable numbers at beaches around Hong Kong.” Gary Stokes, Oceans-Asia’s director of operations, investigated another beach on April 25, 2020—and came across dozens of masks in less than five minutes. Stokes returned to the beach in early June and again found handfuls of masks. “The masks break down into smaller and smaller pieces of microplastic,” Phelps Bondaroff says.

Researchers often discover the source of the plastic by identifying certain characteristics, for example, a wrapper from a local restaurant or a pill bottle with the name of the prescribing doctor. “While that’s not possible for face masks,” says Phelps Bondaroff, “we can look at similar items on the sand, along with the location of the beach and its tidal patterns, to help trace the masks’ origins.”

The scientists think surgical masks retrieved from Soko Islands beaches likely came from Hong Kong or the nearby Pearl River system.

“When you suddenly have a population of 7 million people wearing one to two masks each day, the amount of plastic discarded is going to be substantial,” says Stokes.

“When you suddenly have a population of 7 million people wearing one to two masks each day, the amount of plastic discarded is going to be substantial,” says Stokes.

That is bad news indeed. Researchers recently discovered that microscopic bits of plastic in the ocean are carried aloft in sea spray, where they are ferried far and wide. More than 136,000 tons of microplastics are blowing ashore on the sea breeze every year, scientists at the UK’s University of Strathclyde reported in a June 2020 paper in PLoS ONE.

“Plastic pollution has entered every ecosystem, with implications for interactions at every level of biological organization,” writes Chelsea Rochman of the University of Toronto in the September 2020 issue of Oceanography. Rochman gave the 2020 Roger Revelle Commemorative Lecture at the US National Academy of Sciences. “There is no doubt that…plastic debris can have an impact on wildlife, and compelling evidence suggests that macroplastics are already impacting marine populations, species, and ecosystems.” Those ecosystems include humans.

In medical masks, it is a case of circular microplastics; to protect human health, we have ultimately endangered human health. Microplastics pose a potential health problem on their own, but treating human diseases is adding to it.