The Microplastics And PFAS Connection
By Cayla Cook and Eva Steinle-Darling
Microplastics, small plastic particles with sizes ranging from 5 millimeters to 1 nanometer with various morphologies such as microfibers, fragments, pellets (nurdles), or microbeads, have received increasing attention, including upcoming statewide monitoring in California.
Per- and Polyfluoroalkyl Substances (PFAS) are a group of unique chemically stable compounds and, as a result, have made them highly valuable across a wide range of industrial, commercial, and military uses. However, this feature concomitantly makes them recalcitrant and persistent in nature thus coined “forever” chemicals (Lindstrom et al. 2011, Buck et al. 2011). Recent developments in toxicology, coupled with significant political pressure, have put PFAS on the fast-track for regulation in drinking water and wastewater. While co-occurrence is well-known for a variety of contaminants like triclosan and triclocarban, the connecti
Related Mary Beth Kirkham hadn’t studied microplastics when she was invited to co-edit a new book about microplastics in the environment but something stood out to her about the existing research.
“I had read in the literature that . . . cadmium and other toxic trace elements [are] increased when we have these particulate plastics in the soil. So, that was of concern to me,” said Kirkham, a plant physiologist and distinguished professor of agronomy at Kansas State University.
Kirkham’s expertise is in water and plant relations and heavy metal uptake, so she decided to conduct her own research in which she cultivated wheat plants exposed to microplastics, cadmium, and both microplastics and cadmium. Then she compared these plants to those grown without either additive. She chose cadmium because it’s poisonous, carcinogenic, and ubiquitous in the environment due to human activity it’s shed from batteries and car tires, and is naturally found in the phosphate rock used t
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A study has revealed that a number of camels have died after foraging plastics they had mistaken for food outside Dubai, in the United Arab Emirates.
(Photo : Chris Clark)
The dromedary camels, in their large numbers, have been foraging on desert trash including plastics, on the outskirts of Dubai in the UAE. The study reveals that 1 in 100 camels die as a result of foraging on plastics. The plastic bags and trash they ingest accumulate in their stomachs and form masses known as polybexoars.
The Study of Plastic Pollution
Two plastic pollution experts met in the Arabian Gulf, in the UAE. Markus Eriksen was studying plastic pollution when he met Ulrich Wernery, a camel expert. Immediately, Wernery asked Eriksen to follow him since he wanted to see the plastics. The two went on an expedition deep into the desert. Not quite long, they sighted a camel s skeleton on the ground.
(Photo : Photo by Wolfgang Hasselman on Unsplash )
Deadly Alert: Masses of Plastic Waste Found on Camel Guts
Eriksen and Wernery said that massive lumps of plastic wastes, as big as a medium-sized suitcase are found in ribcages of dead camel s guts.
Wernery, a veterinary microbiologist based at the Central Veterinary Research Laboratory in Dubai said that of the 30,000 dead camels that he and his colleagues have examined since 2008, 300 of these had guts that contained three to 64 kilograms of plastic wastes which researchers dubbed as polybezoars , the plastic variation from the naturally occurring hair and plant fiber bezoars.
Camels mistake plastics for food, thus they search for food and eat plastic wastes that are scattered into trees and along roadsides.