A BILLION LIT TLE PIECES
Andrew Forrest made his fortune in mining, but fate has turned the rich-lister into an ecowarrior, and a groundbreaking new University of Queensland microplastics lab is one of the latest projects in his ambitious green agenda
Abone-shattering hiking accident in the Kimberley region of WA. A oneof-a-kind, hi-tech plastic research laboratory in Brisbane. And mining magnate Andrew Forrest the multimillion-dollar link in it all. The universe works in mysterious ways. In late 2015, Forrest, one of the world’s richest people and founder and chair of Fortescue Metals Group, slipped off a ledge while trekking in WA, hooking his leg awkwardly into a tree branch. His knee bent the way a knee should not, shattering his kneecap and surrounding bones and he very nearly lost his life.
From this misfortune, he endured a two-year recovery that included knee replacement surgery, time using a wheelchair, then crutches, then a walking stick and having to “lie still for a very long time”.
But this forced physical incapacity gave Forrest, who grew up camping on the Urala coast – a landscape of “burnt orange earth that meets bright blue water” – near his childhood home of Minderoo Station in WA’S Pilbara, the chance to embark on a long-held ambition to complete a Masters degree studying the ocean. It was the silver lining from it all.
Forrest – unofficially rejected from a Masters with a suggestion he instead do a PHD – began his study in 2016, and now holds a marine ecology doctorate from the University of Western Australia. His four years of study delved into the major influences humans are having on the oceanic environment. He emerged convinced the burning of fossil fuels is irresponsible, that green hydrogen is “an essential part of the future” and key issues of deoxygenation, overfishing and plastic pollution are caused by humans and must be fixed by us.
Professor Sarah Dunlop was Forrest’s PHD supervisor and says he was “one of my best students ever”. Speaking from Perth, Dunlop recalls how Forrest “completely knocked me off my feet” with the question: “Professor, do you think plastic gets into the human brain?”
Forrest, 60, also known by his childhood nickname of Twiggy, has always been a man of action, sometimes called “a salesman of the impossible”, with a personal motto of “never ever give up”.
Since this initial contemplation, his philanthropic Minderoo Foundation, cofounded with his wife Nicola in 2001, established a Plastics and Human Health program, headed by Dunlop, and invested $4.5m for a custom-made Plastics and Human Health laboratory at The University of Queensland’s The Pharmacy Australia Centre of Excellence (PACE) at Woolloongabba.
Here, researchers in the Queensland Alliance for Environmental Health Sciences will study microplastics, nanoplastics and the chemicals that leach from plastic products to determine if they are present in human brains, blood and urine.
Speaking from his base in Perth, Forrest says the pioneering work in the UQ lab is taking on “one of the huge issues challenging nature and humanity”.
“We have a right to clean blood,” he says. “If you have dirty blood, you are going to get sick, it’s just a matter of how that sickness forms in you, how it shows itself and how quickly it harms and kills you. That is the simple, scientific bottom line.”
Forrest says therapeutic nanoparticles are already used to attach medicine to penetrate the human blood-brain barrier to treat conditions such as brain tumours. But this research will determine if nanoplastics via environmental exposure are present.
He likens nanoplastics to a “burglar armed with a knife and a gun” who has broken into your house while you sleep.
“What we don’t yet know is what harm the burglar is going to do to your house. We have not yet assessed what that damage is,” he says.
Plastic never truly disappears. Instead, it breaks
down, fragments and degrades into smaller and smaller pieces called microplastics and, even smaller still, nanoplastics, which Forrest calls “the evil you can’t see”.
“We’re not even measuring it (nanoplastics) yet. That’s why Sarah’s work and the Queensland lab work is pioneering and critical to the human race,” he says.
In our modern world, life without plastic – cheap, lightweight, versatile, convenient – barely seems possible. A 2019 Plastics Europe report put global plastic production at almost 360 million tonnes.
Plastic is, simply, everywhere that scientists have looked – in our air, soil, rivers, oceans, plants, food, water and animals. There are vast vortices of floating microplastic and plastic debris in the oceans. It is in Arctic sea ice, in remote mountain lakes, in the world’s deepest ocean trench, at the summit of Mount Everest.
Plastics are leaching off our synthetic-blend clothes as we walk around and spewing out of our clothes dryers inside our homes. They come off plastic kitchen cutting boards and the packaging on fruit and vegetables. They are sloughing off the carpet as we walk upon it.
Plastic microbeads are also added to many cosmetic products, such as toothpaste and shower gels, to achieve a cleaning effect.
Microplastics have been widely found in the seafood we eat; in the tap water we drink; in fact, in just about everything in between – sea salt, beer, honey, rice, vegetables and tea.
A UQ study of rice alone found that people are consuming 3-4mg of plastic for every 100g of rice they eat (with numbers fourfold higher in instant rice), adding up to about one gram of plastic per person via rice every year.
And you may think you are doing your bit to save the planet by reusing your bottle of spring water but every time you screw the lid back on and off, you are likely swallowing an added slew of microplastics.
Even in the great outdoors – where you may be lying on the beach, enjoying nature, feeling the sand fall between your fingers – look closely and you may find you are holding tiny, lightweight plastic pellets or microplastics called nurdles that are the raw material in the plastic manufacturing process. Billions of these pellets are transported around the world to make countless types of plastic products but many end up in the oceans from accidental spills. They are likely found on every beach in the world.
And here’s something else you may never have thought about. What happens to the tread on your car’s tyres when it wears away from use? Scientists have found that, far from disappearing, tyre and brake pad wear ends up as “invisible microplastic”, hanging around in the gutters of our highways and roads until rain or a storm event washes it all into our waterways and eventually out into the oceans.
Last year, UQ researchers estimated there was 850kg of invisible microplastic on roadsides in the Brisbane council area alone.
Even normal household dust is filled with plastics. A 2021 Macquarie University analysis of the airborne dust from homes found almost 40 per cent of it was microplastics, with a greater exposure for young children who typically spend a lot of time on the floor and put things in their mouths. Study researcher Professor Mark Taylor, now Victoria’s chief environmental scientist, says we are all exposed.
“We are living in a sea of microplastic from which we can’t escape,” he says.
“We inhale it, we ingest it. When microplastics lodge in your lungs, they are not going to biodegrade. The consequences of our exposure are yet to be known but it’s unlikely to be good.”
The amount of microplastic humans consume is uncertain but best estimates are thought to be about 1000 plastic particles a day through food, water and air, although it has been put as high as 5g of plastic a week – the equivalent weight of a credit card.
Dunlop says there is a growing amount of scientific literature relating the chemicals that leach from plastic to health issues ranging from reproductive health, miscarriage, endometriosis, obesity, diabetes and heart attacks but says there are still many thousands of plastic chemicals about which science knows very little.
Scientists already know we exist in a sea of micro and nanoplastics and that we are inhaling and swallowing it daily. What we do not yet know is how far the smallest nanoparticles are able to penetrate into our bodies and if all this plastic is actually doing us any harm.
WE INHALE IT, WE INGEST IT … THE CONSEQUENCES OF OUR EXPOSURE ARE YET TO BE KNOWN BUT IT’S UNLIKELY TO BE GOOD
Minderoo’s Plastic and Human Health
laboratory is the only known purpose-built lab that adheres to such strict and minimal use of plastics. Before its construction, all known building materials used in laboratories were tested and all were found to leach plastic, or shed particles. The lab’s inner sanctum – including its floor, roof and walls – was therefore constructed almost exclusively from stainless steel to minimise plastic contamination, though some plastic use has been unavoidable with compliance features such as fire alarms and electricity sockets.
Only six researchers have authorisation for entry into the lab. They avoid wearing synthetic clothing and all wear bright green, 100 per cent cotton lab coats that allow fibres shed in the lab to be easily identified.
Entry to the lab is via a 3m by 3m ante room, then a 1.2m by 3m airlock chamber, and finally a 4m by 3m inner “clean room” of the laboratory itself. Each section has increased air pressure with air blowing from the clean room outwards to avoid contamination. The air in the clean room is also filtered many times an hour using to make the air as clean as it can possibly be.
All this is to make sure testing procedures are robust – that any plastic detected in the brain, blood or urine samples is not in fact contaminated by plastic in the surrounding environment.
Queensland Alliance for Environmental Health Sciences director Professor Kevin Thomas says sophisticated instrumentation available to his team allows them to detect plastic additives in quantities of less than a teaspoon in an Olympic-sized swimming pool.
They can also look at nanosized plastic particles less than one micron in size. For perspective, there are 1000 microns in a millimetre and a hair’s width is between 20 and 180 microns.
Thomas, who moved to Australia to take up his current role in 2016, after working as the research director at the Norwegian Institute for Water Research, has long been fascinated by environmental contaminants.
“We are interested in plastic particles between 10 and 20 microns and below because if plastics do cause us harm, then it’s those smaller particles that are likely to be the ones that can cross cell boundaries …’’ Thomas says.
“So we are trying to develop methods that are sufficiently sensitive and robust that give us unequivocal data as to whether there is plastic in our blood, urine or brains. We need a whole lot of procedures and protocols in place that you are 100 per cent certain.”
Thomas hopes testing of human samples will begin by the end of the year, after testing methods are fully validated. Brain tissue will be sourced from the Sydney Brain Bank.
Professor Dunlop says there are two components to the research – studying the chemical additives that leach out of the plastic and detecting the plastic particles themselves.
“If we prove it – and I’m sure we will – that the nanoplastics are in our brain or blood, that in itself is an invasion; a toxic trespass …” she says.
“By detecting plastics and having faith in the results, it is a very powerful statement to say to the world: ‘This plastic pollution has to stop’.
“And it’s more than that. We think we have to be totally disruptive and redesign plastic so it doesn’t contain toxic chemicals and it doesn’t fragment into micro and nanoplastics.”
Dunlop says it is hoped that scientific findings will eventually help inform or shape government policy and health advice on microplastic exposure and the chemicals in it.
“We know there are microplastics in our gut; in our lungs. Soon we will be able to say if nanoplastics are in us – I’m sure they will be. And then you start looking at the health effects.”
MACRO AND MICROPLASTIC ARE ON A JOURNEY AND THAT ULTIMATE DESTINATION IS NANOPLASTIC. EVERY SINGLE BIT OF PLASTIC ON THIS EARTH IS GOING TO EVOLVE INTO NANOPLASTIC
Forrest is perhaps the last person you would
expect to become such a passionate environmentalist. As founder and chairman of Fortescue Metals Group – one of the world’s biggest iron ore producers – he is in charge of a company that last financial year released 2.22 million tonnes of greenhouse gases, consumed 700 million litres of diesel and made a net profit after tax of $Us10.3bn ($14.2bn).
But Forrest is repositioning his company into a green energy powerhouse and has committed to carbon neutrality by 2030.
He created Fortescue Future Industries, a “100 per cent renewable green energy and industry company” that will “produce green energy at a scale equal to the oil and gas super majors”. Using green hydrogen technology, Fortescue Metals Group is working to decarbonise its mining and shipping fleet including trucks, drill rigs and trains.
Last year, FFI announced it would build the world’s largest green energy hydrogen manufacturing facility, with the first step a $115m plant to be built at Aldoga, west of Gladstone, in Central Queensland.
Forrest also recently committed $3bn to the construction of a wind, solar and battery farm at Clarke Creek in Central Queensland, about 150km northwest of Rockhampton. Once completed, the farm could produce enough energy to power 660,000 homes or about 40 per cent of Queensland households.
Forrest, who is an Officer of the order of Australia for service to mining, philanthropy, employment and sustainable foreign investment, is a passionate advocate for an end to fossil fuel subsidies and believes new coal mines and gas plants are “a contradiction to the fact the planet is cooking”.
He is also scathing of the fossil fuel sector turning to plastic production as worldwide demand for renewable energy increases (almost all of the world’s plastic is made from chemicals sourced from fossil fuels).
“Burning fossil fuels, now you have an alternative, is a crime against your kids. To deny it, you obviously haven’t taken the time to inform yourself,” Forrest says.
“I’ve seen the fossil fuel sector pivot away from fossil fuels and pivot towards another product that is tenaciously poisonous. That is plastic and the chemicals that go with it.”
Forrest says he would never have got into mining if he knew what he did now.
“I didn’t for a second count that mining would one day be seen as polluting, otherwise I wouldn’t have gone into it,” he says.
Forrest has also committed to give away most of his vast fortune to drive positive and lasting change on a global scale. And the Minderoo Foundation is powerful.
As one of Asia’s biggest philanthropies, Minderoo has committed $2bn to myriad global issues as broad as modern slavery, Indigenous disparity, childhood cancer, disaster resilience, ocean research and tackling power imbalances of global technology companies.
And plastic waste and pollution is firmly on Forrest’s radar. Last month, Forrest visited his “magnificent, one-of-kind-in-the-world lab” at Woolloongabba, in Brisbane, where he thanked the scientists for devoting their life to one of the “most dangerous threats in the world”.
“If your course is true, moral, and needed, you don’t give up on it,” he says.
“You don’t ever give up.”
I’VE ALWAYS BEEN DEEPLY CONCERNED ABOUT (PLASTIC). BUT THE MOST DANGEROUS THREAT IS WHAT YOU CANNOT SEE