Plastic menace to the environment

The gorgeous sandy beaches along South Africa's shores are not as pristine as you might have thought, and our unique marine protected areas are definitely not as unspoiled as we would like to believe. The beaches and the waves crashing onto them are severely polluted with microplastics – thousands of tiny pieces of plastic no larger than a lentil.

If you go further away from the big cities in search of a pristine, isolated beach, it will not help. Beaches and bays hundreds of kilometres away from a port city or a river mouth, can be just as polluted as a beach only 10 kilometres away. The amount of microplastics depends more on ocean currents than the distance from the source of pollution.

Dr Holly Nel will explain this rather disturbing finding at a Scifest Africa lecture at the Olive Schreiner Hall in the Monument on March 14.

Dr Holly Nel received her PhD at the University of KwaZulu Natal for her research on estuarine ecology. She is currently doing post-doctoral work at Rhodes University.

As part of her post doctoral research, Nel measured the amount of microplastics found on the beaches and waters in the surf-zone of 24 sites along the South African coast. The sites covered a large proportion of our shoreline all the way from Cape Vidal on the East Coast to Port Nolloth on the West Coast.

The scientific investigation of microplastics in the world’s oceans is relatively new, and her study is one of the first to look at sites in the Southern Hemisphere. She explains that there are broadly two types of microplastics.

Primary microplastics are pieces of plastic that have been manufactured to be less than five millimetres long. In this category we have micro-beads, tiny plastic spheres used as exfoliants in face wash, toothpaste, deodorant and just about any other beauty products on the shelves (see box). This category includes nurdles, small plastic pellets which are melted down to create large plastic items.

Secondary microplastics are the shredded fragments of larger plastic products that have been worn away into tiny pieces. This category includes fibres from carpets and garments that have been broken down in the washing process. These minute particles are so small that they usually pass through water treatment plants and into streams, rivers and eventually the oceans. Even though these microplastics are barely noticed on our beautiful beaches, they are there, and they are dangerous. Microplastics leach toxic chemicals that are added during the manufacturing process. They also attract toxins because they are made from oil and have a relatively large surface area compared to their size. The tiny particles are then consumed by mussels, fish and other marine life as they travel up the food chain and very often end up on our plates. This means that humans are increasingly consuming significant amounts of plastic without us even knowing.

The consequences of human consumption of microplastics are not yet fully understood but that researchers are busy investigating this problem, Dr Nel says.

Her research focussed on the distribution and concentration of microplastics on our beaches and shores. She says that the extent of microplastic pollution (below 5mm) in the southern hemisphere, particularly southern Africa, is largely unknown.

Scourge of the beauty industry!

Holly Nel hates plastic microbeads – those tiny plastic balls you often find in face-scrubs, liquid hand-cleaners and even toothpaste. She hates them because they are polluting our rivers and oceans as well as threatening our health.

The little plastic balls are deliberately added to cosmetics and certain other products in order to bulk them up and give abrasive qualities.

The problem is that a large proportion of these plastic pollutants pass through sewage treatment plants and into rivers and oceans.

So how can you avoid microbeads? Nel advises users to read the packaging and be especially careful with facescrubs. Don’t buy products that contain plastic microbeads or polyethylene beads and avoid products that contain polypropelene.

She says that an environmentally aware consumer can find many natural scrubs to choose from and that she has made her own scrubs which are just as effective as the commercialised products.

The United States and several European countries have already taken steps to ban the use of microbeads in cosmetic products sold in stores. South Africa’s green news portal, Green Times, is part of a local campaign to have microbeads banned in this country.

For more information on the campaign: http://thegreentimes. co. za/ 5- gyres- and- theban-on-microbeads/