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Introduction: From Materiality to Plasticity by Jennifer Gabrys, Gay Hawkins and Mike Michael Part I: Plastic Materialities 1. Plastics, Materials and Dreams of Dematerialization by Bernadette Bensaude Vincent 2. Process and Plasticity: Printing, Prototyping and the Prospects of Plastic by Mike Michael Part II: Plastic Economies 3. Made to Be Wasted: PET and Topologies of Disposability by Gay Hawkins 4. The Material Politics of Vinyl: How the State, Industry and Citizens Created and Transformed West Germany’s Consumer Democracy by Andrea Westermann 5. Paying With Plastic: The Enduring Presence of the Credit Card by Joe Deville Part III: Plastic Bodies 6. The Death and Life of Plastic Surfaces: Mobile Phones by Tom Fisher 7. Reflections of an Unrepentant Plastiphobe: An Essay on Plasticity and the STS Life by Jody A. Roberts 8. Plasticizers: A Twenty-First Century Miasma by Max Liboiron 9. Plastics, the Environment and Human Health by Richard Thompson Part IV: New Articulations 10. Where Does This Stuff Come From? Oil, Plastic and the Distribution of Violence by James Marriott and Mika Minio-Paluello 11. International Pellet Watch: Studies of the Magnitude and Spatial Variation of Chemical Risks Associated with Environmental Plastics by Shige Takada 12. Plastic and the Work of the Biodegradable by Jennifer Gabrys
... The presence of microplastics in the aquatic ecosystem have resulted in accidental or intentional ingestion of microplastics by marine fauna [1]. It is often feared that ingestion of microplastics may lead to leaching of contaminants into the organs of marine fauna [20], as several studies have shown the affinity of microplastics towards adsorbing contaminants from the water [20][21][22]. These contaminants may include dioxin, polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), polybrominated diphenyl ethers (PBDEs) and others [20][21][22]. ...
... It is often feared that ingestion of microplastics may lead to leaching of contaminants into the organs of marine fauna [20], as several studies have shown the affinity of microplastics towards adsorbing contaminants from the water [20][21][22]. These contaminants may include dioxin, polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), polybrominated diphenyl ethers (PBDEs) and others [20][21][22]. Thus, it is imperative to sufficiently document the abundance of microplastics in aquatic systems so that mitigating measures can be taken. ...
Microplastics are emerging contaminants owing to their potential to adsorb and release pollutants from the environment, transferring these pollutants to the food web. Most marine microplastics come from the terrestrial environment, mainly from inland freshwaters that are direct receivers of runoff from urban, industrial, and agricultural areas. The present study investigated the occurrence of microplastics in surface water samples taken from the Cherating river and the Cherating mangrove, Pahang along with a review of recent studies on microplastics abundance in aquatic ecosystems. Three sampling sites were established (two sites along the river and one site in a mangrove in the downstream of the river). In the up-and midstream regions, the river passes by residential, fishery and tourism areas, while the mangrove is located close to Cherating Beach. The highest microplastics abundance was discovered in the midstream region, with an average abundance 0.0070 ± 0.0033 particles/m³, followed by the mangrove (0.0051 ± 0.0053 particles/m³). Fragments with a size of 0.5 to 1.0 mm and white-colored microplastics were prevalent. The findings are similar to those from other microplastic studies (e.g. in Aveiro and Lisbon, Portugal; New England, USA; Kingston Harbour, Jamaica), but lower than microplastics studies in Asia (e.g. Yangtze river estuary and Hangjiang river, China). Overall, the findings provide background information on microplastics pollution in aquatic ecosystems. © 2020 Published by ITB Institute for Research and Community Services.
... Plastic pollution has profound environmental, political, and social implications beyond its physical presence, influencing and influenced by economic systems, regulatory frameworks, and cultural practices (Gabrys et al., 2013). Despite extensive use and accumulation following its initial proliferation, plastic governance literature has primarily focused on plastic waste and pollution (4002 publications) (Villarrubia-Gómez et al. 2022b), with substantially less attention paid to its complexity, including the hazards from in-use plastics and associated chemicals (96 publications). ...
... De igual forma denotan, en concordancia con nuestro estudio, que las fibras fueron las partículas más comunes y que el color negro estuvo entre las tres principales clasificaciones por color, esquema que nos podría indicar que son las fibras el tipo de microplásticos mayormente disponible para el consumo de los peses. Las fibras de microplásticos presentan propiedades similares a las esponjas, pueden concentrar contaminantes hasta un millón de veces su concentración en el agua de mar (Takada, 2013), lo cual hace que su amplia distribución y abundancia sea realmente preocupante. Además del desprendimiento directo de la ropa y de las actividades relacionadas con el turismo, las fibras también pueden resultar del lavado a máquina de telas sintéticas (Hernández et al., 2017). ...
Introducción:
La creciente presencia de plásticos en los ecosistemas acuáticos ha sido considerada como un problema ambiental emergente global. Existen estudios que han demostrado que los microplásticos pueden ser ingeridos por una variedad de organismos acuáticos. La variabilidad natural e importancia del recurso sardina, son razones suficientes para evaluar la presencia de estas partículas en el contenido estomacal, y así generar información acerca de las implicaciones de ingestión de estos contaminantes emergentes.
Objetivo:
Evaluar la presencia de microplásticos en el contenido estomacal de la sardina y su correlación con la condición fisiológica y reproductiva de los peces estudiados.
Metodología:
Se evaluaron un total de 800 sardinas, entre abril y mayo del 2022. Se midieron las variables morfométricas longitud total y peso, se determinó el factor de condición y el índice gonadosomático. Se extrajo el tracto digestivo y se determinó el peso del estómago lleno y vacío, además del peso del contenido estomacal para determinar el índice de repleción y vacuidad. Las variables determinadas se correlacionaron con la abundancia de microplásticos. El contenido estomacal fue procesado para extraer los microplásticos y caracterizarlos de forma física.
Resultados:
El índice de repleción presentó diferencias mensuales; su promedio fue de 0.311. El índice de vacuidad promedio fue de 0.276. La abundancia de microplásticos promedio fue 3 066 ítems, con diferencias mensuales e interacción con respecto al sexo y una frecuencia de aparición de 70.125 %, con un total de 2 402 fibras y 57 fragmentos. Las fibras negras fueron las más abundantes (947 ítems). Encontramos correlaciones bajas y positivas entre la abundancia de microplásticos, el índice gonadosomático y el peso de los organismos.
Conclusiones:
Estos resultados no pueden ser concluyente con respecto a las consecuencias causadas por este contaminante emergente. Mas estudios son necesarios, incluyendo ensayos de laboratorios con metodologías estandarizadas.
... Adsorbed pollutants have been found on plastic debris all around the world and include dioxins, DDT, PAHs, PCBs, POPs, metals and pesticides (Engler, 2012;Holmes et al., 2012;Rios et al., 2007;Rochman et al., 2013b;Takada, 2013;Teuten et al., 2009). Their concentrations on microplastics are often orders of magnitude higher than in ambient seawater (Ogata et al., 2009). ...
A new report commissioned by WWF provides the most comprehensive account to date of the extent to which plastic pollution is affecting the global ocean, the impacts it’s having on marine species and ecosystems, and how these trends are likely to develop in future. The report by researchers from the Alfred Wegener Institute Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine Research (AWI) reveals a serious and rapidly worsening situation that demands immediate and concerted international action:
● Today almost every species group in the ocean has encountered plastic pollution, with scientists observing negative effects in almost 90% of assessed species.
● Not only has plastic pollution entered the marine food web, it is significantly affecting the productivity of some of the world’s most important marine ecosystems like coral reefs and mangroves.
● Several key global regions – including areas in the Mediterranean, the East China and Yellow Seas and Arctic sea ice – have already exceeded plastic pollution thresholds beyond which significant ecological risks can occur, and several more regions are expected to follow suit in the coming years.
● If all plastic pollution inputs stopped today, marine microplastic levels would still more than double by 2050 – and some scenarios project a 50-fold increase by 2100.
... Since these coastal areas, in particular, the beach sites, are also commonly used for touristic purposes during the summer period, the potential risk of human exposure to those chemicals should be taken into account. Evidence of plastic resin pellets associated with POPs adsorption have been reported under the pellet watch network (Takada, 2013), reporting levels of PCBs in the range of 5 to 605 ng/g-pellet ; however, since then, no information has been available for POP levels in other coastal areas of central Chile with microplastics as sorbent materials. Gouin et al. (2011), has evaluated the physicochemical capacities of accumulation of persistent bioaccumulative toxic substances (PBT) in microplastics, revealing its role as a vector of chemicals. ...
Plastic resin pellets were collected from coastal areas (n = 7) of central Chile. Pellets were analyzed using Fourier-transform infrared spectroscopy for polymer identification and gas chromatography-mass spectrometry for Persistent Organic Pollutants (POPs) determination. Screened compounds were PBDEs (n = 10), PCBs (n = 7), and OCPs (n = 13). Pellets were only found at Lenga Beach (San Vicente Bay), which is likely influenced by the presence of industrial activities in the surrounding coastal area. The diameter of the pellets was 4.0 ± 0.6 cm (n = 370), the color varied from white (32%) to yellowing (68%), and the most prevalent polymer identified was high-density polyethylene (99%). POPs concentrations (ng/g-pellet) ranged from 10 to 133 for Ʃ10PBDEs, from 3 to 60 for Ʃ7PCBs and between 0.1 and 7 for DDTs. Levels of POPs are consistent with other investigations around the world and highlight the sorbtion capacity of plastics resin pellets, and consequently transport of POPs into coastal environments.
... The sources of APs in bottled water could be due to the laboratory equipment and materials, water, or container during washing steps and not directly to the water containers, especially PET bottles [76]. Recently, Takada [84] reported that plastic bottle caps could be a potential source of nonylphenol. Finally, Guart et al. [85] reported the migration of 4-NP from Tritan™, a material that has emerged as a possible substitute of polycarbonate polymer, to be used for water bottling up to 0.162 μg/kg. ...
Plastics are widely used around the world as packaging material covering a wide range of applications. Plastics could be a source of chemicals into food through migration of various compounds (polymers, monomers, and processing aids) from packaging to foodstuffs. The intentionally added substances (IAS) are listed and controlled by laws and regulations from various organisations. For these authorised substances, specific migration limits (SML) have been established on the basis of migration tests performed on the plastic material using different food simulants according to the food type. These tests are based on the risk assessment of the single substance able to migrate, simulating the worst case of the foreseeable conditions, in order to ensure the safety of the final material. However, over 50 % of compounds migrating from food contact materials are non-intentionally added substances (NIAS). The European Regulation No. 10/2011 concerning plastics and multilayers recently became more strict, stating that ‘the risk assessment of a substance should cover the substance itself, relevant impurities and foreseeable reaction and degradation products in the intended use’. This chapter presents the materials used in food containers and food packaging, the additives employed in different types of plastics in order to improve their properties, current legislation with emphasis on European Regulation No. 10/2011, and the migration tests and specific migration limits. In addition, there is discussion on the compounds usually found in various food categories and bottled water due to the presence of IAS or NIAS in packaging materials.
This article delves into the process of technological adaptation to local environments by presenting the case of food delivery platforms in Mexico City. Primarily, it focuses on the tension between design and local economic practices. Given the primacy of cash as an object of economic exchange, platforms facilitate cash payments. Platforms then delegate the task of cash administration to couriers. Labor control around this task is then institutionalized in the form of platform features. Furthermore, platform dependency to cover basic necessities shapes divergent experiences of the delegated task of cash administration. Conceptually, this article employs the Latourian concept of delegation to explore the human and nonhuman enrollments mobilized to adapt digital technologies to local environments.
This article explores how Finnishness is constructed in media texts with and through plastic buckets. By so doing, the article contributes to research on materiality and nationalism through examining the role of a mundane object instead of official national symbols. It also examines the material and cultural influence of plastics in contemporary society. The data consist of 211 media texts published between 2012 and 2023. Through analysing the affective material semiotics of the bucket phenomenon in these texts, I have identified three narratives that aim to define Finnishness and offer national subject positions in relation to buckets. I call the narratives (1) a glorifying narrative, (2) a demeaning narrative and (3) an affirmative narrative. The article argues that the free plastic bucket has become an unofficial national symbol of Finnish culture and that the symbolic values are closely entangled with the materiality of buckets and embodied bucket‐related practices.
A circular economy has emerged as a promising solution for addressing plastic pollution. It directly impacts waste management practices in the household, which has long been considered a feminized domain. What are the hidden gendered costs of household plastic waste management? This paper systematically reviews extant knowledge on household plastic management in sociology and cognate disciplines. Noting the inadequate attention to gender in the current literature, we set out two research agendas. Firstly, we propose that research focus on the household as a site where the gender division of labour may be rigidified or reconfigured through household plastic consumption and waste management. Secondly, plastics research needs to attend to the multiple and overlapping social roles that women play within and beyond the household. Remaining sensitive to how women interact with plastic materials in their daily lives will encourage integrating feminist analysis into environmental analysis so as to work through the challenges posed by a circular economy.
The tourism industry contributes to and is impacted by plastic waste. The Walt Disney Company (Disney) is one of the largest media and entertainment companies contributing to global travel and waste. Disney theme parks represent a microcosm of society and the conflict between consumerism and environmentalism in the effort to reduce single-use plastic and waste to landfills. Disney has targets to reduce single-use plastic and waste at its wholly owned and operated parks and resorts in France and the United States (U.S.). As a multinational company that operates without a legally binding international agreement on plastic waste, Disney is subject to the plastic policies of each jurisdiction. The policy context in which Disney established its waste targets and the actions taken by Disney to reduce plastic waste in theme parks are discussed in this chapter. Moreover, opportunities to improve waste management practices and shared learning were identified.
In response to the mounting plastic waste issue, the Indonesian government has introduced various measures aimed at curbing plastic usage, but these initiatives have fallen short in altering public behavior. A more impactful strategy would involve implementing a disincentive by levying additional fees on plastic use, effectively increasing its cost. Discussions on a plastic excise were initiated between the Indonesian government and the House of Representatives but have since stalled. This study aims to higlight the necessity of a plastic excise in regulating the behavior of Indonesian citizens and explores the appropriate methods for the government to formulate such an excise policy. A qualitative research method was employed, utilizing thorough interviews and extensive literature review. Findings suggest that the environmental damage inflicted by plastic waste justifies its classification as taxable goods, warranting regulatory control over its consumption due to the adverse effects on society and ecology. These findings serve as the foundation for the government to consider a plastic excise. The challenge lies in identifying the specific plastic types to be taxed, necessitating renewed coordination and dialogue with the pertinent Ministries and Agencies within the Inter-Ministerial Committee. This is essential to gain the Indonesian House of Representatives' approval and to address the complexities in policy formulation, considering that state levies shall be approved by the parliement. A possible solution to this challenge is to synchronize the taxable goods' plastic types with those outlined in the existing regulations of the Waste Reduction Roadmap by Producers, ensuring consistency and regulatory alignment.
Plastic stands for designed materials, chemically synthesized for massive use in industry and commerce. As plastic production continues to accelerate, plastic waste is incinerated, globally, as a preferred—though contested—technology for disposal. Burning plastic can be harmful; many associated chemicals, including those produced by burning certain plastics, are potentially toxic. They accumulate in bio-geological environments, known to entail serious health effects in humans for generations. Thus, matters of containment—emission filtration, limiting exposure, spatial localization, and so on—assume technopolitical significance.
This article is about household plastics recycling in England. Rates of recycling have stagnated across the country over the past decade. Fitting with an individualisation of responsibility across industry and policy, households commonly get the blame. We bring this framing into question through a conceptualisation and exploration of the ‘disposal work’ undertaken by households. This concerns the bundle of practices involved in the identification, preparation, and segregation of everyday discards. Drawing on in-depth qualitative research, involving a purposefully disruptive trial and 60 interviews, we consider what affects disposal work, unwrapping a series of everyday sociomaterial entanglements of practice and the constitutive roles played by bins, packaging, and lay normativities. We argue that the blame attributed to households for poor-quality recycling reflects a blinkered problem framing and an oversimplification of responsibilities. Our argument is premised on tracing out and revealing a set of relationships between practices and domains of work that intersect in and extend out beyond homes and help shape the ebb and flow of plastic recyclables. Several pragmatic responses aimed at improving matters are discussed. We also signpost this article’s broader significance for sociological research on practices and sustainability, arguing that privileging work, over consumption, provides one means of attuning and attending to power dynamics and the politics of the everyday.
This article proposes un/making as a designerly response to urgent environmental issues. By focusing on the simultaneous constructive and destructive aspects of design, this effort attempts to challenge design’s dominant focus on making new things. The implications and potentialities of un/making are explored through a designerly inquiry into ongoing and emerging attempts to ban the plastic straw. Based on this inquiry, the article proposes an approach to un/making that is driven by speculative, what if questions, informed by the history of the plastic straw: from coming into being to becoming preferable and now emerging as a matter of concern. Through a series of speculative design artifacts, the authors articulate matters at stake in the un/making of the plastic straw. They also show how these matters are a stake in the un/making of disposability as part of a preferable future. Rather than proposing one preferable future, the article highlights the frictions that emerge in un/making.
La variabilidad natural e importancia del recurso Sardinella aurita, son razones para que se mantenga un seguimiento de la especie, que incluya estudios biológicos y pesqueros. Si a esto le sumamos la problemática causada por la contaminación plástica, es necesario evaluar la presencia de microplásticos en el contenido estomacal y branquias de la especie, para obtener información necesaria que pueda ser incluida dentro del enfoque ecosistémico de gestión pesquera, resaltando las posibles implicaciones sanitarias si existiese transferencia en la trama trófica de estos contaminantes hacia las personas. Por tales motivos, en el siguiente trabajo se evaluaron mensualmente un total de 100 sardinas, en un periodo comprendido entre abril y noviembre del 2022, meses correspondientes a la época de pesca del recurso. Los organismos fueron adquiridos en los principales mercados y/o puertos pesqueros del estado Sucre. Se les midieron las variables morfométricas longitud total y peso, se les extrajo el tracto digestivo y se determinó el peso del estómago lleno y vacío, además del peso del contenido estomacal. A su vez, se evaluaron las gónadas de los ejemplares para estudiar su dinámica reproductiva. El contenido estomacal fue procesado para separar los microplásticos y caracterizarlos de forma física. La relación talla-peso fue definida por la ecuación Peso= 0,00059*LT3,132. Las más altas frecuencias de organismos maduros se encontraron en los en mayo, julio, agosto y noviembre, en organismos con tallas mayores de 14 cm de LT, presentando un L50 de 16,194 cm de LT, la proporción sexual fue 1:1. El factor de condición promedio fue de 0,861, presentando diferencias significativas mensuales. La media del índice gonadosomático fue de 1,355, esta variable presento diferencias significativas para ambos factores. El índice de repleción presentó diferencias significativas por el factor mes, su promedio fue de 0,311, valor que entra dentro del rango de estómagos vacíos. El índice de vacuidad promedio fue de 0,276, siendo los meses de septiembre y noviembre los que contabilizaron mayor número de estómagos vacíos, este índice no presento diferencias. La abundancia de microplásticos promedio fue 3,066 ítems, con diferencias mensuales e interacción con respecto al sexo y una frecuencia de aparición de 70,125 %, se obtuvieron un total de 2 459 ítems, 2 402 fibras y 57 fragmentos, ambos tipos en diferentes colores, siendo las fibras de color negro las más abundantes con 947 ítems. Este estudio, aunque demostró la alta presencia de microplásticos dentro del contenido estomacal, y una baja correlación de esta abundancia con las variables estudiadas, no puede ser concluyente a la hora de hablar de las consecuencias causadas por este contaminante emergente. En necesario profundizar más sobre el tema, incluyendo ensayos de laboratorios con metodologías estandarizadas.
Das Anthropozän bezeichnet ein geologisches Zeitalter, in dem die Menschheit zur dominanten geologischen Kraft geworden ist. Auch in der Umweltsoziologie ist das Anthropozän ein wichtiger Bezugspunkt geworden, weil es umweltsoziologischen Intuitionen über den intrinsischen Zusammenhang von Natur und Gesellschaft entgegenkommt und neue (inter)disziplinäre Anknüpfungspunkte eröffnet. Der Beitrag rekonstruiert zunächst die Diskussionen zur angemessenen Datierung und Benennung des kontemporären Erdzeitalters. So wird sichtbar, dass das Anthropozän nicht nur eine geologische Epochenbeschreibung darstellt, sondern sich mit sozialwissenschaftlichen Periodisierungen (Beginn des Kapitalismus, des Kolonialismus, der Moderne, der Industrialisierung etc.) überschneidet. Anschließend beleuchtet der Beitrag die epistemische Situierung und politische Performativität des Anthropozänbegriffs. Es wird gezeigt, wie die Erdsystemwissenschaft das Konzept gezielt lanciert hat und sich selbst als entscheidende reflexive Kraft innerhalb des Anthropozäns verortet. Der Beitrag identifiziert drei zentrale umweltsoziologische Herausforderungen des Anthropozäns. Erstens lassen sich die großen Erzählungen über die moderne Gesellschaft auf die Anthropozändebatte beziehen. Umgekehrt kann die Anthropozändebatte dabei helfen die „planetarische“ bzw. ökologische Dimension dieser großen Erzählungen besser in den Blick zu bekommen. Zweitens lässt sich das Anthropozän aus einer Beobachterperspektive zweiter Ordnung als spezifisches wissenschaftliches und politisches Skript analysieren, das aktuelle gesellschaftliche Initiativen mobilisieren, um ökologische Probleme zu rahmen und zu bearbeiten. Drittens regt die Anthropozändebatte dazu an unterschiedliche Themen- und Problemfelder der Umweltsoziologie stärker aufeinander zu beziehen, um so den soziologischen Blick auf den „globalen Wandel“ sozialer Naturverhältnisse zu schärfen.
In a single serving of boba tea, the non-human actors of the tall plastic cups, plastic dome lids, and the giant plastic straws dominate, but receive little attention. This article uses recent theories and discussions of new materialism to bring together cultural analysis of the boba tea consumption phenomenon that could be relevant for reflecting on a sustainable future. The article contributes to social research of waste by focusing on the mediating functions of plastic before it becomes waste. My central argument is that plastic is not merely a physical and impartial container in the contemporary food and beverage industry. It plays an indispensable role in the visualization, mass mediation, and consumption of the boba tea beverage. While current waste research often focuses on the “afterlife” of plastic waste as it relates to underclass waste workers, recycling economy and global waste trade, this article highlights the performative function of plastic as it changes the way we imagine time, gender, and waste. I show it is the plastic cup that enables boba tea to be so visually and gastronomically satisfying in an age when the photogenicity and “Instagrammability” of food and beverage have become more relevant to taste and distinctions.
The earth is drowning in plastic waste. Yet, as the plastic waste crisis grows exponentially, responses to excess waste remain stuck around containment and management processes. These approaches fail to notice that plastics know no boundaries. We now encounter plastic rocks, plastic water, plastic bodies, plastic worlds spilling into oceans and rivers and across landscapes. Responding to the complexity of plastic’s unruly presence demands careful attention both globally and within situated local contexts. This article explores how the queer synthetic curriculum takes up the concept of excess through common worlding waste pedagogies to attend to children’s relations with plastic waste. We speculate with the idea of excess by making large amounts of plastic the main protagonist in an early childhood classroom. Disrupting waste management’s metaphors of distance, we exaggerate plastic’s presence: a plastic whale stomach is stuffed with plastic bottles, dozens of bottles hang from the ceiling, hundreds of bottles are strewn across the classroom floor, and crochet hooks turn out plastic yarn balls. Without claiming to develop children’s understanding of the problematic nature of waste, this article stories moments of excess that might provoke subjective transformations as children encounter excess in their daily lives.
This article explores how extravagantly visible mask-wearing relates with consumer culture. Methodologically, three purposively chosen case studies of spectacular or performative mask-wearing are used to show what the face mask can teach us about consumer culture in a pandemic. First, a Daily Mail (UK) article in which an ‘elderly shopper’ is shamed for wearing a sanitary towel as a face mask is used to explore the politics of disposable commodities. Second, the multiplying portraits of people wearing masks archived under Instagram’s #MaskSelfie hashtag allows an examination of how consumer-citizenship is performed. Third, the presence of extremely expensive luxury designer masks, as evidenced by Rich Mnisi’s Swarovski-encrusted offering, is a base for considering how virtue signalling has become a platform for luxury branding. Building on these three examples, the argument is made that waste, selfies and luxury are modalities for a pandemic commodity politics that is layered over and into the scientific citizenship signalled by the wearing of face masks. Together these create what I call a ‘sci-commodity’ sensibility, in which the face mask as a technology has become integrated with the modalities of consumption. This has resonance with ongoing debates about the object, subject and brand in consumer culture.
Apple's AirPods have helped forge a multibillion-dollar market for true wireless hearable devices. The article employs media geology and political ecology to argue that AirPods exemplify the Capitalocene, a time where a planetary sociotechnical system based on ecologically unequal exchange benefits a privileged minority of humans while inflicting significant harms to humans and ecosystems that will persist across inhuman temporalities. These harms are inequitably distributed and are not typically experienced by those who can afford luxury items such as AirPods. While digital technologies are often mistaken for dematerialised objects that will enable infinite economic growth on a materially finite planet, examining the flows of energy, matter, labour and knowledge required for the production and maintenance of these devices comprehensively refutes these claims. AirPods are designed to function for just eighteen to thirty-six months of daily use before planned obsolescence renders AirPods as long-lived, toxic, electronic waste. Pending ‘right to repair’ legislation should prohibit the production of irreparable digital devices such as AirPods, as the right to repair an irreparable device is effectively meaningless.
The contributors to Reactivating Elements examine chemicals as they mix with soil, air, water, and fire to shape Earth's troubled ecologies today. They invoke the elements with all their ambivalences as chemical categories, material substances, social forms, forces and energies, cosmological entities, and epistemic objects. Engaging with the nonlinear historical significance of elemental thought across fields—chemistry, the biosciences, engineering, physics, science and technology studies, the environmental humanities, ecocriticism, and cultural studies—the contributors examine the relationship between chemistry and ecology, probe the logics that render wind as energy, excavate affective histories of ubiquitous substances such as plastics and radioactive elements, and chart the damage wrought by petrochemical industrialization. Throughout, the volume illuminates how elements become entangled with power and control, coloniality, racism, and extractive productivism while exploring alternative paths to environmental destruction. In so doing, it rethinks the relationship between the elements and the elemental, human and more-than-human worlds, today’s damaged ecosystems and other ecologies to come.
Contributors. Patrick Bresnihan, Tim Choy, Joseph Dumit, Cori Hayden, Stefan Helmreich, Joseph Masco, Michelle Murphy, Natasha Myers, Dimitris Papadopoulos, María Puig de la Bellacasa, Astrid Schrader, Isabelle Stengers
As the urgency around the environmental impact of fashion production grows, biotechnologies that engineer microbes and other biological organisms such as plants offer cleaner, greener processes and entirely new products. Bacteria and yeasts may be engineered to colour fabric, generate synthetic fibre precursorss, and produce enzymes used to break down and convert waste. Biotechnology can also present as a continuation of humanity’s mastery over the natural world. This article explores how biotechnology may offer fashion – as both industry and culture – alternative ways of forming relationships with the natural world, offering a range of propositions for the role of biotechnology in fashion practice. The first theme, ‘taming’, examines how biotechnology offers alternatives that control and reduce environmental impacts within existing industry norms. Taming includes synthetic biology and microbial biotechnology to develop processes for silk and leather alternatives, and the replacement of existing fossil-fuel based fibres with bio-based equivalents. The second theme, ‘rewilding’, focuses on the role biotechnology may play in local, decentralised fashion production existing outside of industry control, within the community. Last, ‘speculating’ shows the role biotechnology may play in imagining and enacting alternative views of the living world in which the human and more-than-human entangle to form new kinships.
Plastics, with their ubiquitous presence in our daily lives and environment, pose an uncomfortable conundrum. Producers and consumers are aware of the value of these organic ingredients in material flow, yet their persistence and disruption to the ecological milieu desperately stipulate a shift in the status quo. Biodegradable plastics—as the name suggests—has its appeal in ensuring the safe return of carbon to ecosystems by complete assimilation of the degraded product as a food source for soil or aquatic microorganisms. However, despite more than a decade of commercial presence, these plastics are still far from replacing the demand for fossil-fuel-based commodity plastics. We discuss this apparent disconnect herein through a material value chain perspective. We review the current state of commercial biodegradable plastics and contrast it against the desired state of the zero-waste-focused circular economy. To close the gap, we suggest critical research needs concerning the structure and properties of biodegradable plastics, testing standards, application development, and waste management. The ultimate success in displacing conventional plastics with biodegradable alternatives will be predicated on collaboration between all stakeholders across the product value chain.
This article seeks to materialize social theories of modern temporalities. It proposes a tempo-material analysis of carbon resources like coal, oil, and gas to illuminate how fossil materialities both underpin and undermine modern temporalities and introduce the notion of fossil modernity to evoke an understanding of the modern composed of multiple conflicting modes of material temporality. Fossil resources (fossil fuels and petrochemical substances) drive the pace and progressive perspective of modernity. The residuals of these resources (CO 2 , plastic waste, and petrochemical toxins) confront societies with long-lasting ecological damage. Fossil fuels helped to produce the expectation of growth and endless possibility. Fossil residuals create a horizon of ecological liabilities in which past options have become future obligations. This renders the pretences of “modernization” understood as a process of constant renewal and innovation problematic. The article argues that modern societies cannot simply overcome their material–temporal predicaments through “decarbonization” because even after a shift to solar power, organic agriculture, and sustainable plastics, the fossil past will continue to influence, inform, and incite social operations. The article thus shows how different responses to the problems of fossil modernity need to go back to and emerge from the material residues of the past: this goes for bio-capitalist projects seeking to “recycle” the entropic temporality of fossil residuals as well as for environmental justice movements that decipher these residuals as indexes of social asymmetries and call for socio-ecological “redistribution.”
This article examines the 1968 decision by the French mineral water company Vittel to use PVC packaging for its main product. This was the first time this type of packaging had been used for a mainstream consumer product. By examining the causes, manifestations, and consequences of this business decision, it aims to show how this model has spread and contributed to the creation of an environmentally damaging waste regime by abandoning deposit systems. The article also seeks to show, through this case, the importance of identifying social and institutional contexts to understand the trajectory of consumer products.
Geographers have long considered mobile phones to be ubiquitous instruments and agents of globalisation, migration, commodification, and technologies for fieldwork. Drawing on two years of ethnographic research with families and communities in Greater Manchester, amidst nearly a decade of austerity cuts in the UK, this paper makes the case for revitalising, repoliticising and rematerialising the mobile phone in this socio-economic context. Drawing on concepts of vital materialism and vibrant matter, I illustrate the relationalities, resonances and recalcitrance of the mobile phone as a necessary utility, part of the fabric of everyday life in austerity, as well as a vital object and life in itself. Using a vignette approach, findings highlight experiences, mediations and material politics of companionship, indebtedness, gendered labour, financial independence, social isolation, vulnerability and durability, intimacy, sensuality and more. In the conclusions, I reflect on the everyday politics of the mobile phone during and in spite of austerity, including in a period of ongoing welfare digitalisation.
When words are translated from one linguistic repertoire to another, their resonances stay behind. This is a challenge for those who write in academic English while working and living in another tongue. Here, I exemplify this with stories about the Dutch word schoon. The dictionary translates schoon into English as clean, but it is not quite clean. For a start, the songs, books and other cultural resources that resonate in schoon are distinctively local. Next, the particular sites (say, waste water treatment plants) where schoon is strived for differ from their (diverse) counterparts where English is spoken and the ambition is clean. And if dirt has notoriously been defined as ‘matter out of place’, this spatial thought would never have arisen in Dutch, because vies, the most prominent antonym of schoon, is invariably visceral. Finally, in urban settings in the Netherlands, schoon stands out as an aesthetic, a moral and a hygienic ideal; knowing whether this is also true for clean would require fieldwork in English (but where, in which English?). These examples suggests that hoping to purify one’s theoretical notions of empirical filth is a monolingual delusion. For, however well-polished, English concepts will never have universal salience: they are just (a version of) English. Good academics therefore artfully, carefully, mind the gaps between different ways of knowing, acting and speaking.
Anthropologists have shown how recent efforts to tell apart foreigners from autochthons have played out, often subtly disguised, in panics over objects that may seem trivial: “alien species” of fish, trees, or plants that endanger “local” nature. Little has been said about plastic's dominant position among these objects. In Samburu county, northern Kenya, “plastic boys” are unemployed men whom others despise for being unattached, “useless paupers,” who, not unlike plastic itself, have allegedly no capacity to grow roots and thrive. Analyzing this subject position against a wider background of objects and afflictions deemed “foreign”—including plastic bags, plastic rice, plastic hair, plastic smiles, and homosexuality as a “plastic pollutant”—I show how different troublesome objectifications of plastic resonate with one another and their wider context. I argue that panics over plastics and the politics of belonging shape one another, producing new, less‐obvious forms of inclusion and exclusion. [ belonging, materiality, plastic, Samburu, Kenya ]
Object narratives as a methodology for mitigating marine plastic pollution: multidisciplinary investigations in Galápagos - Volume 94 Issue 373 - John Schofield, Kayleigh J. Wyles, Sean Doherty, Andy Donnelly, Jen Jones, Adam Porter
This article opens discussion on the positivist epistemology underlying the understandings of materials in design research that have been brought along as a result of theory and methods inherited from engineering and psychology. Examining the ambitions of work that seeks to operationalize knowledge created by these methods in the design process, we propose that attending to the processuality of material forms is a more adequate way for design research to capture the multiplicity of materials. We develop this view by exploring the implications of the positivistic perspective that underlies recent work on new and smart materials, showing that it limits their theory and methods. This work, therefore, cannot grapple with the liveliness and fluidity of emergent cultural and material forms, and so cannot address the potential and future of emergent materialities. We conclude by arguing for the development of qualitative and ethnographic research methods that are better suited to exploring material processuality.
Filmic, photographic, and poetic images of seabirds encumbered, weakened, and killed by anthropogenic plastic have gone viral. This essay asks what visual, generic, and affective modes such images invoke and invite. It postulates, first, that they give rise to, and work through, discernible conventions. It contends, second, that these images and their spectators tend to communicate via a kind of feedback loop, whereby human lookers-on recognise themselves, their societies, and their cultures in the contents of bird bellies. The essay suggests, furthermore, that this loop is a key element of these images’ power, but ironically compromises their capacity for testifying to the complex ecological, historical, and imperial contexts that subtend the scenes they display. By constantly rediscovering the signs of their own culture in the stomachs of dead birds, spectacles and spectators hazard reproducing a fixation that distracts from the broader situatedness of these encounters.
In recent years the concept of the circular economy gained prominence in EU policy-making. The circular economy promotes a future in which linear ‘make-use-dispose’ cultures are replaced by more circular models. In this paper, we use the concept of sociotechnical imaginaries to ask how an imaginary of circularity has been assembled and stabilised, which imaginative resources were drawn on, and how goals, priorities, benefits and risks haven been merged with discourses of innovation, sustainability and growth. Drawing on policy documents and interviews with policy officers of the European Commission, we argue that the monitoring framework and indicator development function as a site collective imagination in which desirable ‘circular’ futures are co-produced. These futures are imagined to provide novel opportunities for the private sector and to generate jobs and economic growth while at the same time improving the natural environment as measured by selected environmental indicators.
This article is an exploration of the possibilities of interdisciplinary, imaginative and collaborative methodologies in generating understandings of the affective nature of litter in everyday life. It is a critical intervention into the current proliferation of ‘solution-focused’ academic waste studies, asserting that it is essential to attend to the complex intersectionality of the subject and to develop new understandings through the use of innovative methodologies. The article is structured around two inter-related sections. The first consists of six performative texts in the manner of an instructive guidebook, interspersed with visual and literary forms of investigation: a series of photographs, a poem and a broadside publication. The second is a reflection on the various modes of attention that informed the research: it functions as a field guide to the potential of interdisciplinary, imaginative and collaborative methodologies for revealing new ways of thinking about relationships to place, people and materiality.
Marine plastic litter and microplastics pollution is a global governance problem with unknown and potentially dire consequences. Efforts to promote individual‐centered solutions to the problem are increasingly necessary but are insufficient to tackle the root causes of the problem. Therefore, a concerted policy response at the global level is imperative. The success of such efforts necessarily depends on the way in which the problem is framed and understood, including its degree of urgency. This paper engages with this problem by considering the nature of the issue in light of the crisis term and argues that the global problem of marine litter may be more productively considered a “creeping crisis” given the complexity, scope, and spatio‐temporally fragmented nature of the problem.
This article surveys the politics of plastics through a reading and analysis of more than 180 scientific articles in the fields of environmental science and environmental studies. Despite the many benefits of plastics, the global plastic system is increasingly being recognized as the source of severe environmental problems. Rather than orient the investigation around specific venues, levels, or architectures of governance, our survey first follows plastic through its life cycle, and then considers the major categories of plastic objects addressed in the current literature, and the different approaches taken to each category. The politics of plastics is a growing field of inquiry, with the most rapid expansion in the areas of marine pollution and microplastics. Our consideration of plastic flows reveals increasing politicization towards the latter end of the life cycle, that is, plastic as waste and pollution. Turning to plastic objects, we observe different forms of mobilization, and varying connections between flows and objects, which allow for multiple interpretations of what is at stake. In the closing section, we consider two recent trends in the plastic governance discussion that take a more holistic view of the plastic crisis: attempts to construct (a) a circular plastics economy and (b) global plastics conventions or treaties. We end the paper by highlighting the need for studies to further investigate the norms and practices that maintain the role of plastics in society, as well as the political and economic arrangements that secure its overabundance and low price.
This article is categorized under: Energy Policy and Planning > Economics and Policy
Fossil Fuels > Science and Materials
Fossil Fuels > Climate and Environment
This review article on Volume Geography argues that contemporary geopolitical and environmental issues should be retheorized by volumetric thinking. This review is divided into four main sections. The first section introduces the key concepts in volume studies literature, namely the definition of volume, three-dimensional geopolitics and security governance, relationship between geophysical politics and geopolitics, and affect and body within a volume. The second section elaborates the roles of air, aerospace, atmosphere and weather in security governance. The third section discusses the challenges posed by geophysical processes to related practices of resource ownership, territorial boundary, and soverignty power. The fourth section explains how affect and body experience within the volume are formed, represented and transformed via arts and technologies and through environments. The conclusion notes certain theoretical and empirical implications.
Contemporary research on fashion consumption has largely focused on the surface qualities of dress, comprising questions of esthetics, expression, and identity. Rather than thinking about how clothes look, this paper considers how clothes feel. Theorizing clothes as always in-process rather than stable or static, this paper uses touch as lens to explore haptic and sensuous engagements that occur across a garments prosaic biography. Informed by five vignettes from a broader ethnographic project concerning clothes use, touch is located in conversations with hands and bodies. These conversations cultivate somatosensory relations with clothes that are “in-process”, in various states of wear and repair, texture, and time. The material qualities of garments emerge as an active, tangible force that works alongside an evolving dialog of use—as clothes “wear in” or “wear out.” This paper illustrates two ways in which touch informs clothes-in-process: how bodies come to know the fabric of clothes, and how the surface qualities of clothes push back against bodies of wearers. Although mundane and instinctive, the liveliness of materials and the haptic skills that attend to the use of clothes-in-process speak to value, care, and responsibility. But somatosensory relations also encompass discomfort and anxiety, leading to accumulations of clothes as matter out of place. Paying greater attention to the somatosensory registers of the body provides insights about the material meanings of clothes as garments wear over time. In light of the social and environmental implications of clothes and clothes use, such insights are important for advancing knowledge about how wearers interact with their clothes, over time.
This article aims to examine the ongoing changes in ‘green politics’ in China by focusing on the example of e‐waste recycling and, specifically, transformations in one given town, Guiyu. It is argued that the spontaneous stage of development in e‐waste recycling in Guiyu has become the object of civilizational politics, which includes the formalization, centralization and spatial and visual evolution of the recycling site. Civilizational politics is conceptualized as an approach towards adapting to the existing socio‐technical conditions and the introduction of a new infrastructural regime, which is discursively framed as a civilized one: modern, environmentally friendly and socially beneficial. The ‘informal’ sector in e‐waste recycling is the main target of civilizational politics, as it is associated with ‘low‐tech’ and polluting technologies and small‐scale enterprises powered by migrant labour. While the target of civilizational politics is upscaling via the creation of large, centralized, ‘formal’ facilities, the social and environmental sustainability of such a transition should be questioned.
This paper considers how an interdisciplinary approach to the “wicked problem” of plastics pollution offers unique and important collaborative possibilities. Specially, the paper considers the approach of the Synthetic Collective, a group comprising artists, humanities scholars, and scientists. Considering first how artists and scientists might respond differently to tracking, mapping, understanding, and representing plastics pollution, we then look for potential points of commonality across disciplinary difference. In respect to the urgent and multifaceted problem of marine plastics pollution in the Great Lakes region, we ask what are some of the successes and pitfalls of bringing together diverse approaches and interests? The paper concludes with a clear strategy: a set of instructions geared towards building successful interdisciplinary collaborations. Ultimately, we conclude that a strong relationship amongst scientists and artists is possible, fruitful, and indeed warranted when shared goals are the driving principle of the group.
This paper attempts to show that while the production of waste may be universal, the threat it poses is not. In order to explain and justify the question ‘what type of problem is waste’, the paper begins by attempting to, first, provincialise the ‘environmental’ framing of waste by examining the category's historically changing problematisations in Western Europe and North America, and, second, through a critique of Mary Douglas's work Purity and danger, to argue that waste should be theorised ethnographically rather than analytically. It then argues that, in Egypt, the materiality of litter and the sociality of waste work are sublimated into a religio-civilisational register based on the central trope of cleanliness rather than environment. It does so by considering various meanings and inflexions of the word ‘cleanliness’ in vernacular usage, the way the terms environment and pollution are used, naming conventions for waste collectors and anti-litter campaigns.
A jellyfish surrounds a plastic fragment, merging the synthetic material with its body; a water agency poster warns of dangerous plastic bottle ‘fish’ in the Mediterranean; marine organisms take shelter on and under synthetic materials. These are the denizens of a growing realm marine ecologists call the ‘plastisphere’, where sea life and plastics meet. Building upon multispecies ethnography, science and technology studies interrogations of nature/culture divides and the practical work of classification, this article explores the indeterminacy – the very plasticity – of the category of ‘species’ as it is engaged in seriousness and irony, with living and nonliving bodies. First, I draw on participant observation at a nonprofit marine institute laboratory in California to trace the travels of plastic-creatures through attempts to disentangle them in the pursuit of scientific knowledge. Here volunteers sort tiny plastic bits from animal ones under the microscope, enacting material boundaries as they decide what gets counted as life (not plastic) and what does not (plastic). Second, I follow movements of plastic-creatures through public education campaigns, paying particular attention to assumptions about belonging and agency enacted with assumptions about whether and when plastic-species should or should not meet. I argue that the ‘danger’ of plastic relationships lurks not in associations but in the very categories used to know and live with forms of plastic and forms of life, in the kinds of belonging that emerge with kinds of materials, and in the failure to recognize the impossibility of their separation.
Lodged in an impasse between questions of environmental justice and modes of capitalisation in the green economy, indeterminacy is a vulnerable and porous relation. Pollution activates a potentiality in the organism to be otherwise, to generate certain kinds of tumours, mini-deaths or mutations. Toxicity has an intermediary status that launches a mobility of effects that is often fragmented through sense organs, affirming forms of non-identity in biopolitical relations. Organisms are receptive to such bodily reconfigurations precisely because they are open to the material communication of the world. In contrast to the “hidden labour” of indeterminacy in capitalist modes of capture, this article crafts an analytics of indeterminacy as an interjection in the politics of environments. Through dispersants in the Gulf of Mexico and military bees, two economies of indeterminacy are discussed. Drawing on Georges Bataille’s notion of political economy, I argue that what is required is an economy of radical inequivalence; an excessive engagement with the possibilities of indetermining forces to make fleeting marks.
Additives and monomers are integral components of plastics or polymers. Bisphenol A (BPA), nonylphenol (NP), and polybrominated diphenyl ethers (PBDEs) are the common monomer and additives used primarily to improve the quality of plastic materials. They are used as antioxidants, stabilizers, plasticizers, and flame retardants in plastics that are in turn used in the manufacture of a wide range of consumer and industrial products. In this chapter, the release of BPA, NP, and PBDEs from waste plastic materials is presented. A brief background of the physical and chemical characteristics of BPA, NP, and PBDEs, and other factors that influence the release of these monomer and additives from plastics, is also discussed. The overview of the consequential occurrence of these compounds in leachates from landfills and/or municipal solid waste (MSW) dumping sites provides evidence on the release of BPA, NP, and PBDEs from dumped plastic materials.
Within a Federal Environmental Agency research project to develop a biological test for hormone-mimetic compounds using the freshwater snail Marisa cornuarietis, the effects of the suspected xenoestrogenic substance bisphenol A (BPA), not only on freshwater but also on marine prosobranch snails, were investigated. For the laboratory experiments the ramshorn snail Marisa cornuarietis and the ovoviviparous snail Potamopyrgus antipodarum were considered as freshwater species and two marine prosobranchs, the netted whelk Nassarius reticulatus and the dog whelk Nucella lapillus, were additionally employed. N. reticulatus, as a typical sediment-living species, was exposed via artificial sediments, while the three other prosobranchs were exposed via water.
The test series with Marisa cornuarietis covered a nominal concentration range between 1 and 100 μg BPA/l in a 5 month experiment with adult snails and a complete life cycle test for 12 months. Additionally, a third test in the nominal range between 0.05 and 1 μg BPA/l (measured: 0.0079–0.404 μg/l) was performed with adults snails for 6 months. In these experiments, BPA induced a complex syndrome of physiological and morphological alterations in female Marisa referred to as the induction of ‘superfemales’. Affected specimens were characterised by the formation of additional female organs, an enlargement of the accessory pallial sex glands, gross malformations of the pallial oviduct section resulting in an increased female mortality, and a massive stimulation of oocyte and spawning mass production. For these tests, an LOEC of 48.3 ng/l, an NOEC of 7.9 ng/l and an EC10 of 13.9 ng/l were calculated.
Superfemales occurred also in the BPA exposure experiment with the other snail species, but comparable oviduct malformations as in Marisa were not found, probably due to species differences in the gross anatomical structure of the pallial oviduct.
During the 9 week test with Potamopyrgus antipodarum in the nominal concentration range between 1 and 100 μg/l, BPA induced an enhancement of embryo production even in the sexual repose phase of the reproductive cycle. A characteristic inverted U-type concentration response relationship was found. Nassarius reticulatus was exposed via BPA-spiked artificial sediments (nominal concentration range: 10–1000 μg/kg dry wt.) for 3 months. BPA exhibited a significant and concentration dependent uterotrophic effect which could be detected not only by an enlargement but also by a weight increase of the accessory pallial gland complex in the pallial oviduct section.
Adult Nucella lapillus were tested for three months in the laboratory in a nominal concentration range between 1 and 100 μg BPA/l. Superfemales in the dog whelk were also characterised by enlarged accessory pallial sex glands and an enhancement of egg production, but the test compound also affected the males in this species. A lower percentage of exposed specimens had ripe sperm stored in their vesicula seminalis and male Nucella exhibited a reduced length of penis and prostate gland when compared to the control. Because statistically significant effects were observed already at the lowest nominal test concentration (1 μg/l), it can be assumed that even lower concentrations may have a negative impact on the snails.
The results show that prosobranch snails are affected by BPA at lower concentrations compared to other systematic taxa in the animal kingdom. Consequently, it has to be claimed that the results of these experiment have to be considered for the current EU risk assessment for BPA in order to achieve a sufficient protection of wildlife in aquatic ecosystems.
Through transportation accidents or intentional releases, plastic pellets (small granules 1-5 mm in diameter) are widely distributed in the ocean all over the world. These pellets accumulate organic pollutants and can be used for the determination of diffusive seawater pollution. Pellets demonstrating a certain degree of erosion are expected to have enough contact time with the water pollutants and thus, reach sorption equilibrium with the water phase. In the present study, eroded pellets collected from Greek beaches, were separated into polyethylene (PE) and polypropylene (PP). Polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs, i.e. naphthalene, phenanthrene, and pyrene) were used as model compounds to study the uptake kinetics into these eroded pellets. Naphthalene uptake demonstrates similar kinetics in both eroded PE and PP. Phenanthrene and pyrene uptake demonstrates slower kinetic rates by eroded PE than by virgin PE and similar kinetic rates by eroded and virgin PP. These observations are then used to evaluate PAHs measurements in pellets sampled from two sampling sites in Saronikos Gulf. It is concluded that seawater in Loutropyrgos beach is polluted by PAHs more than seawater in Aegena island. PAH pollution in both sampling sites is of pyrogenic origin.
An HPLC method utilizing reversed-phase chromatography coupled with coulometric detection was developed for the determination of alkylphenols in mineral water. Alkylphenols in water samples were extracted with ethyl acetate. The alkylphenols were completely separated by an ODS column with acidic mobile phases and detected with a dual coulometric detector. The first electrode set at 400 mV was used for sample clean up, whereas the second one set at 650 mV was used for analytical purposes. The limits of detection (signal-to-noise ratio of 2) of eight alkylphenols tested were in the range from 0.25 pmol (BPA) to 1.0 pmol (p-NP) on chromatograms. The proposed procedures were applied to mineral water in PET bottles. All nine samples contained both bisphenol A (BPA) and p-nonylphenol (p-NP). The concentrations of BPA and p-NP calculated from calibration curves were 2 - 10 ng/l and 19 - 78 ng/l, respectively. The concentrations were essentially the same before and after heating at 50 degreesC for 8 h.
1 - CAPLUS AN 2002:943098(Journal)
Plastic resin pellets collected from remote islands in the Pacific, Atlantic, and Indian Oceans and the Caribbean Sea were analyzed for polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), dichloro-diphenyltrichloroethane and its degradation products (DDTs), and hexachlorocyclohexanes (HCHs). Concentrations of PCBs (sum of 13 congeners) in the pellets were 0.1-9.9 ng/g-pellet. These were 1-3 orders of magnitude smaller than those observed in pellets from industrialized coastal shores. Concentrations of DDTs in the pellets were 0.8-4.1 ng/g-pellet. HCH concentrations were 0.6-1.7 ng/g-pellet, except for 19.3 ng/g-pellet on St. Helena, where current use of lindane is likely influence. This study provides background levels of POPs (PCBs<10 ng/g-pellet, DDTs <4 ng/g-pellet, HCHs <2 ng/g-pellet) for International Pellet Watch. Sporadic large concentrations of POPs were found in some pellet samples from remote islands and should be considered in future assessments of pollutants on plastic debris.
We investigated the plastics ingested by short-tailed shearwaters, Puffinus tenuirostris, that were accidentally caught during experimental fishing in the North Pacific Ocean in 2003 and 2005. The mean mass of plastics found in the stomach was 0.23 g per bird (n=99). Plastic mass did not correlate with body weight. Total PCB (sum of 24 congeners) concentrations in the abdominal adipose tissue of 12 birds ranged from 45 to 529 ng/g-lipid. Although total PCBs or higher-chlorinated congeners, the mass of ingested plastic correlated positively with concentrations of lower-chlorinated congeners. The effects of toxic chemicals present in plastic debris on bird physiology should be investigated.
Endocrine disrupting compounds can affect the hormone system in organisms. Industrial chemicals with estrogenic effects were detected in large quantities in landfill leachates. Membrane technology has proven to be an effective barrier to these substances and thus widely applied in the treatment of landfill leachate. The removal techniques under investigation are membrane bioreactors, nanofiltration, activated carbon adsorption, ozonation as well as reverse osmosis. Investigations were conducted at two different landfill leachate treatment plants with a variety of process configurations. The xenoestrogenic substances nonylphenol and bisphenol A were detected in high microg/L-ranges in raw landfill leachate. Membrane bioreactors (MBRs) were capable of removing more than 80% of the nonylphenol load. Final effluent concentrations range between 1-12 microg/L nonylphenol and 3-30 microg/L bisphenol A respectively. Reverse osmosis treatment proved to be less effective in nonylphenol and bisphenol A removal than MBR with further polishing stages like nanofiltration and activated carbon adsorption.
The present study shows that polybrominated diphenyl ethers (PBDEs) and polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) can interact and enhance developmental neurobehavioral defects when the exposure occurs during a critical stage of neonatal brain development. PBDEs are used in large quantities as flame-retardant additives in polymers, especially in the manufacture of a great variety of electrical appliances, and textiles. In contrast to the well-known persistent compounds PCBs and DDT, the PBDEs have been found to increase in the environment and in human mother's milk. We have previously shown that low-dose exposure to environmental toxic agents such as PCB can cause developmental neurotoxic effects when present during a critical stage of neonatal brain development. Epidemiological studies indicate the adverse neurobehavioral impact of PCBs. Recently, we reported that neonatal exposure to PBDEs causes developmental neurotoxic effects. In the present study, 10-day-old Naval Medical Research Institute male mice were given one single oral dose of PCB 52 (1.4 micromol/kg body weight [bw]) + PBDE 99 (1.4 micromol), PCB 52 (1.4 micromol or 14 micromol), or PBDE 99 (1.4 micromol or 14 micromol). Controls received a vehicle (20% fat emulsion). Animals exposed to the combined dose of PCB 52 (1.4 micromol) + PBDE 99 (1.4 micromol) and the high dose of PCB 52 (14 micromol) or PBDE 99 (14 micromol) showed significantly impaired spontaneous motor behavior and habituation capability at the age of 4 and 6 months. The neurobehavioral defects were also seen to worsen with age in mice neonatally exposed to PCB 52 + PBDE 99.