Cans without BPA

A list of cans with, and cans without, BPA.

Are you willing to pay 2.2 cents more per can to get the BPA out of our canned food?






WITHOUT BPA:

Eden Foods:  All 33 of its organic beans, chili, rice & beans, refried, and flavored.

Trader Joe's Brand:  Canned corn, tomatoes, beans (except baked beans), tunafish, anchovies, poultry, beef, coconut milk, fruit (except mandarins) and vegetables (except artichokes).

Hunt's Tomato Products:  Only their plain tomatoes - but great first step!!!

Whole Foods: 27% of its store-brand canned goods. No specifics given!*

Native Factor:  Coconut Water.

Native Forest:  Organic coconut milk, asparagus, mushrooms, hearts of palm and all of their canned fruits.

Ecofish (Henry & Lisa's):  Canned Tuna.

Oregon's Choice:  Canned Tuna.

Vital Choice:  Canned salmon, albacore tuna, sardines and mackerel.

Wild Planet:  Canned Tuna.

Nature's One:  Organic powdered baby milks.

Muir Glen:  Is 'just' starting to transition to BPA-free - (only its) tomato products. I would wait for six months before purchasing.

Tetra-pak (aseptic containers) are lined with Polyethylene, not BPA. 'Pomi' Brand Chopped tomatoes in tetra-paks are becoming more widely available.





 
WITH BPA: 

Eden Foods: Canned tomato products (look for their new - glass jars)

Trader Joe's Brand:  All soups, chilis and stews. Plus; Sardines, Crab, Cherrystone Clams & Oysters, Mandarins, Hatch Chilies, Artichokes, Organic Baked Beans.

Whole Foods: 73% of its store-brand canned goods.


ALL food cans out there other than those listed above...

Amy's, Annie's, Bionaturae, Brad's, Muir Glen, Westbrae, cans are lined with BPA.

Most All  Aluminum Cans are lined with BPA.

Polycarbonate plastic (grouped in #7) contains BPA and BPAF (worse!).

Many shiny thermal receipts contain BPA.
(ATM receipts, cash register receipts, prescription labels, lottery/airline tickets, etc)
Don’t hand children receipts that might contain BPA!
Don’t recycle receipts that might contain BPA!

Since 1999 Eden Foods has used steel cans coated with a 'baked-on oleoresinous c-enamel', which does not contain BPA. Oleoresin is a non-toxic mixture of oil and resin extracted from plants, such as pine or balsam fir.'(1) The cost is currently 2.2 cents more (14%) than cans with industry-standard BPA epoxy liners. Yet that natural liner is not approved by the FDA for acid foods, such as tomatoes. Hopefully in the very near future, alternative liners will be put on the market as more research is completed. But as of now, be aware that canned tomatoes, soups and pastas are your highest sources of BPA due to their acid consuming the lining of the can.

The Environmental Working Group estimates that BPA exposure is 'unsafe' in 11 percent of all canned food and an unbelievable one-third of all infant formula.(2) When BPA was detected, the EWG found a single serving contained enough BPA to expose a woman or infant to levels more than 200 times the government's safe level of exposure for industrial chemicals. In the 2010 study, 'No Silver Lining', food from 50 cans collected from 19 US states and Ontario, Canada were tested for BPA contamination. Over 90% of the cans tested had detectable levels of BPA, and some at much higher levels than had been detected previously.(3) The study's tests show that meals involving one or more cans of food can "cause a pregnant woman to ingest levels of BPA that have been shown to cause health effects in developing fetuses in laboratory animal studies."(3) Consumer Reports' latest tests of canned foods found that almost all of the 19 name-brand foods they tested contain some BPA. "A 165-pound adult eating one serving of canned green beans from their sample, could ingest about 0.2 micrograms of BPA per kilogram of body weight per day, about 80 times higher than the experts' recommended daily upper limit."(4)

The Breast Cancer Fund recently released a product testing report called "BPA in Thanksgiving Canned Food." For the study canned goods were purchased in California, Massachusetts, New York and Minnesota. Four cans of each of the common Thanksgiving staples: Campbell’s Cream of Mushroom Soup, Campbell’s Turkey Gravy, Carnation Evaporated Milk (by Nestle), Del Monte Fresh Cut Sweet Corn (Cream Style), Green Giant Cut Green Beans (by General Mills), Libby’s Pumpkin (by Nestle) and Ocean Spray Jellied Cranberry Sauce were purchased. The results showed a tremendous variability in BPA levels in the canned foods tested, from non-detectable to 221 parts per billion. Variabily was extreme even among cans of the same product made by the same company, which means that consumers have no way of knowing how much BPA is in the canned food they’re buying and consuming. www.breastcancerfund.org

A 2011 study by Harvard University analysized the urine of seventy-five people for BPA. Each participant ate a 12-ounce serving of either fresh or canned soup for five days in a row. They were advised not to otherwise alter their regular eating habits. After a two-day break, the groups switched and ate the opposite type of soup. The study showed the canned soup eaters had 1,221 per cent higher levels of BPA in their urine than those who ate the fresh soup.⁵

The Good Guys:



















































Resources:

*) www.wholefoodsmarket.com/products/bisphenol-a

1) www.edenfoods.com   Read this!

2) www.ewg.org/node/20936

3) www.contaminatedwithoutconsent.org/nosilverlining

4) www.consumerreports.org

5) www.canada.com

According to the Environmental Working Group, the amount of BPA in receipts can be 1,000 times that found in cans or bottles. "Retail workers carry an average of 30 percent more BPA in their bodies than other adults. The Japan Paper Association began to halt the use of BPA in 1998, completing the phase-out by 2003." www.ewg.org/bpa-in-store-receipts

Although the rest of us can most likely count cans as our largest source. See www.ehp03.niehs.nih.gov study shows that returning to fresh, uncanned foods reduces (not eliminates) BPA levels considerably in a rather short time.


www.treehugger.com

www.willystreet.coop/BPA

www.inspirationgreen.org/plastics-bpa.html   Numerous studies listed.

www.ecofish.com

www.edwardandsons.com/native_info

www.traderjoes.com   All TJ products non-GMO!

www.vitalchoice.com

www.wildplanetfoods.com

www.blog.wholefoodsmarket.com/2010/01 - good post


What can you do?

How about an e-mail to those companies you purchase canned food from...

You are welcome to copy and paste this example if you would like.

Dear Food Company,

Although it is true that the scientific studies regarding BPA exposure are conflicting and confusing, why not be safe rather than sorry and line your cans without the addition of the hormone distruptor BPA. Eden foods has been doing that for more than a decade and they estimate an initial additional cost of 2.2 cents per can (until a safer, cheaper, more natural solution comes to light).

As a customer, I promise to pay the additional 2 cents for your product if you go BPA-free. But if you do not, my only recourse is to discontinue use of your product.

Sincerly,


BPA is
Found In:

    * Food and drink packaging
    * Store Receipts
    * The lining of food cans
    * The lining of aluminum cans
    * Milk container linings
    * The inside of bottle tops
    * Water Pipes
    * Dental sealants
    * Polycarbonate tableware
    * Plastic Wrap
    * Some Newspaper Ink
    * Carbonless Copy Paper

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Microplastics in the Ocean

By Nickie Polson, posted in Canada.com February 17, 2012

When we think of plastic pollution in the world's oceans, most of us imagine floating masses of plastic bags, or heaps of bottles washing up on beaches. But that might be the tip of the proverbial iceberg.

Most plastics don't decompose the way other organic materials do. When natural organics decompose, they break down into new compounds that are useful to natural cycles. When plastics break down, they tend to simply become smaller and smaller fragments of plastic.

In fact, they can become so small that we can't see them any more unless we look very carefully. But that doesn't mean that they aren't a problem.

The world's beaches are collecting more and more plastic.

Even in the tropical paradise of Hawaii - far from the world's factories - plastic is changing the beaches. The visible plastic we have come to expect can easily be cleaned up - toothbrushes, shoes, bottles, bags, and the like. But in actual fact, even that process of cleaning up is not easy because the wind and waves will bring in another load the next day.

Taking a closer look at a Hawaiian sand beach may reveal another plastic pollution issue - nurdles. These are the tiny plastic pellets used as the raw material for manufacturing plastic goods.

More than 250 billion pounds of nurdles are shipped around the world each year. They escape from ships, factories and port facilities and wind up on beaches everywhere. Five years ago, Greenpeace estimated that 10 per cent of plastic debris on beaches was nurdles.

Removing nurdles from a beach seems to be close to impossible. Tiny balls of white plastic are not easy to pick up.

But they are not the worst of it. Digging farther into the sand, one can find countless tiny specks of plastic that are the remains of plastic items beaten up by the waves. Some beaches are said to be more plastic than sand.

Even a beach that looks clean may have up to 5,000 plastic bits in a litre of sand.

But that is still not the end of it. Perhaps the most disturbing are the plastic fibres that are too small to be seen with the human eye. Fragments of plastic smaller than the width of a human hair contaminate surface waters and shoreline habitats worldwide, according to research published in the journal Environmental Science and Technology last year.

Researchers sampled 18 sites representing six continents from the poles to the equator. Every site showed some level of this microplastic fibre pollution.

Where do these fibres come from? It turns out the microplastic fibres found in ocean sediments contained polyester and acrylic fibres in the same proportion that is found in sewage discharge.

And where do those fibres in sewage come from? Possibly, probably, from our washing machines. Researchers found that a single garment in a household washing machine can lose nearly 2,000 fibres per wash. The worst offender is the fabric we have grown to love - fleece.

Which leaves us in a dilemma. What's a caring individual to do? Throw away our fleece? Stop washing our clothes? On the individual level, this is not something we can easily resolve.

The question is now posed to clothing manufacturers, washing machine makers and those who run sewage treatment plants. Can they figure out how to somehow filter out these tiny plastic fibres so they do not make it to the sea?

But the bigger question that begs for an answer is how much trouble are we in with all these tiny bits of plastic getting out into the world's oceans?

There is plenty of evidence for plastic bits of various sizes betting into the digestive systems of creatures and plugging them up. Birds, turtles, fish, dolphins and others suffer for our plastic spillage.

Plastic as 'food' is happening at the microscopic level too. Certain bacteria are eating the plastic bits. A recent study coming out of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution finds that some marine bacteria are actually eating the tiny bits of plastic.

Whether or not this is a good thing remains to be seen. Researchers now want to know if the digestion produces harmless byproducts or whether it puts poisons into the food chain.

They also want to know more about these particular bacteria. They are different from the bacteria normally found in seawater or on seaweed. In fact, some of them are similar to cholera bacteria.

We have more questions than we have answers. While we wait for those answers, we must carefully consider our use of plastics.

nickiepolson@shaw.ca

© Copyright (c) Postmedia News

How plastic bags are poisoning the planet's greatest predators: 65ft long sperm whales are being killed by human pollution

By Philip Hoare posted in the Daily Mail February 8th, 2012


You quickly run out of superlatives when talking about whales.
They are the largest, loudest and longest-lived animals on our planet. How amazing, then, that we should still know so little about them — and that our ignorance has led these beautiful creatures into clear and present danger.

As a writer, I’ve studied whales around the world — from majestic blue whales off Sri Lanka to the playful humpbacks of Cape Cod. But it is the enigmatic sperm whale which fascinates me.

The sperm whale - at 65ft long, 'the greatest that has ever existed' - spends 90 per cent of its life in the profound depths, able to dive deeper than any other animal

It has the biggest brain of any animal — a massive 18lb to our human 3lb — yet we really have no idea what it does with it.


This magnificent predator — at 65ft long, the greatest that has ever existed — spends 90 per cent of its life in the profound depths, able to dive deeper than any other animal.


For precisely that reason, it is the least studied of all the great whales.
And of all whales, it is under the greatest threat, too — from what we humans are doing to its environment. Only now are we beginning to understand these creatures.

But is it too late?

This week the results of the first Whale Symposium ever held in Britain were published in a book I co-edited.

It contains new scientific research revealing the true nature of this most mysterious ocean giant, but also the devastating impact we humans are having on them — not least because we pollute their habitat with plastic bags and other waste — and the terrible problems they face as a result. 


The sperm whale is a natural submarine, a miracle of evolutionary engineering. It is actually able to change the physical shape of its body to accomplish its dives.

A sperm whale can dive down for more than a mile, to depths which would crush a human being's internal organs at a pressure of 500lb per square inch

At the surface, it will breathe deeply, like an athlete getting ready for an event. It exchanges all the carbon dioxide in its body for oxygen, storing it in its muscles. 


Humans do this to a certain extent, but the whales’ muscles are far more efficient at the process, as demonstrated by their almost black colour, an indication of how supercharged they are with myoglobin, which binds the oxygen to their blood.


As it prepares to dive, the sperm whale undergoes one of nature’s most amazing transformations. Its characteristically square head is in fact an extended nose. Fifteen feet long from nostril to shoulder, it contains a massive reservoir of spermaceti oil. This waxy oil has remarkable bio-acoustical properties. It is used to amplify the sonar clicks that echo along the animal’s head and out into the ocean.


The result is the loudest noise created by any animal — 230 decibels, as loud as a jet engine and powerful enough to be heard six miles away.


As the whale dives, its massive nose, which is plump and bulbous when at the surface, is squeezed into a narrow, hydrodynamic wedge shape — the better to allow the animal’s plunge into the abyss. 


The whale then shuts down every organ in its body, except heart and brain, in order to conserve energy and oxygen.


Its lungs collapse as the animal’s ribs close in on bony hinges, lubricated by special mucus. If they did not, the increased pressure below would snap its ribcage. Any air left in its body is confined to its nasal passages, where it is needed to generate the sonar clicks the animal uses to hunt.


Its flippers fit into its sides like an aircraft’s undercarriage. Everything is streamlined. Finally, the whale uses the rippling muscles in its tail to jack-knife downwards with an astonishing power.


Having witnessed this feat from water-level, I can attest to its amazing dexterity. The animal is so beautifully designed that it barely leaves a ripple at the surface. Amazingly, when it reappears, it will do so at almost exactly the same point.


A sperm whale can dive down for more than a mile, to depths which would crush a human being’s internal organs at a pressure of 500lb per square inch.  In just five minutes, it can reach a depth of 500 metres, the limit at which a human diver can work. 


Soon it will far exceed that, reaching 1,000m — its favoured hunting ground. We do not know exactly how the whale’s body resists such pressure. But it must be comfortable down there, since it can spend two hours underwater.


In the inky darkness, the whale hunts by using its sonar as a sweeping scan, in search of its favourite food: squid. Their prey ranges from shoals of creatures little bigger than cuttlefish to gargantuan giant squid up to 50ft long.

By virtue of its position at the top of the marine food chain, the pollution we dump in the sea affects sperm whales more than any other creature

As they zone in on them, the whales appear to communicate in strange growls and buzzes. Are they indicating the direction and source of their food?  Maybe they’re just happy at eating.


Each sperm whale must consume up to 1,000 squid a day — that’s 1,100lb or half a ton of calamari! Although it has a 10ft-long jaw studded with 42 of the biggest teeth in the animal kingdom (each up to 2ft long), it does not bite its prey.


Instead, it sucks up its food like a giant vacuum cleaner, swallowing the squid whole. We know this from the stomach contents of dissected whales.


Or, as I have seen myself in the Azores, from the loose tentacles that break off in the process and float to the surface. Unlike the whale, which decompresses as it resurfaces, a squid’s body cannot survive the rapid change in pressure. It liquifies to a gooey, soupy mess.


Occasionally, however, a sperm whale will feed at the surface. Off Kaikoura in New Zealand, where the waters run six miles deep, I watched a massive, 50ft male sperm whale at the surface.


Around it were circular patches of disturbed water — the result of the ultra-loud sonar bursts it was using to knock out yard-long kingfish — almost like a sonic gun. It is a lethal weapon unique to sperm whales, so intense that they can kill prey at a distance.


I watched as the whales’s great head erupted from the waves, a stunned fish in its huge toothed jaws. It looked as if it were triumphantly claiming its prize. But no one has ever witnessed a sperm whale feeding at depth — although that may be about to change.


Professor Hal Whitehead is one of the world’s most pre-eminent experts on this amazing species. He told me recently that new equipment currently being developed will allow scientists to attach cameras to whales and record their foraging behaviour.


Already, using high resolution digital electronic tags which monitor exact movements, speed and ocean depths, Hal and his colleagues have been able to trace much of what sperm whales get up to in the deep.


But it may be some time before we can see for ourselves the greatest battle known to nature — the mythical struggle between the sperm whale and the giant squid. It has even been claimed that the squid will use its tentacles to smother the whale’s blow hole in an ultimately futile attempt to defeat its foe.

We humans are having a devastating impact on sperm whales - not least because we pollute their habitat with plastic bags and other waste - and the terrible problems they face as a result

For centuries man has hunted the sperm whale, principally for that precious oil in its pugnacious head. Before the discovery of mineral oil, sperm whale oil burned in street lights and oil lamps. It lubricated the machines of the Industrial Revolution. It was even used in the NASA space missions as lubrication for space probes, since it does not freeze in sub-zero temperatures.

In 200 years we managed to reduce their population from two million to 360,000. Luckily, most of the world no longer hunts these beautiful creatures. But now, tragically, there are new dangers to their wellbeing.


By virtue of its position at the top of the marine food chain, the pollution we dump in the sea affects sperm whales more than any other creature.


One of the greatest problems faced by any marine species is the sheer amount of plastic in the ocean, especially plastic bags, as has been highlighted by the Daily Mail’s campaign against the profligate use of them.


Dr Ruth Leeney notes in the book I co-edited, Dominion: A Whale Symposium, these bags don’t biodegrade. They break down into smaller fragments that enter the food chain — and eventually the whales’ bodies.


‘It is ironic that a plastic shopping bag, with so short a lifespan in a person’s existence, can have a powerfully negative impact elsewhere, by causing unnecessary death’, says Dr Leeney.


As my fellow editor, artist Angela Cockayne notes, a minke whale recently stranded itself on the French coast. Its stomach was clogged with 800kg of plastic, including British supermarket bags.


One problem for the sperm whale is, ironically, its awesome success. It inhabits every ocean and almost every sea, from the vast Pacific to the enclosed Mediterranean. This is because it has evolved to find the perfect feeding niche, albeit a mile below the surface of the ocean.


It is a staggering fact that sperm whales eat more squid and fish each year — 100 million tons, than the 70 million tons we humans catch and consume per annum. The sperm whale has to eat so much to fuel its huge brain, which is highly expensive, in calorific terms, to run.


Given the size of their brains, sperm whale society is remarkably complex. Like the African elephant, it is matriarchal. So much so that females which are unrelated genetically will ‘baby-sit’ each other’s calves when they dive to feed.


The whales also travel almost inconceivable distances. Every year, male sperm whales migrate towards the poles, returning toward the equator to breed. One male may travel more than 1,000km a month.

It is a staggering fact that sperm whales eat more squid and fish each year - 100 million tons, than the 70 million tons we humans catch and consume per annum

They communicate in a complex system of Morse-code-like clicks, and each ‘clan’ has a different dialect, in the way a Yorkshire accent differs from a Devon one. Individual animals may be miles apart but they are always in intimate contact, through their extraordinary sense of hearing.

Such supreme adaptability means that sperm whales live to great ages, at least 100 years old. Bowhead whales, their cousins, live to even greater ages — up to 300 years and perhaps even older, making them the planet’s longest living mammal.


We know this from ancient harpoons that have been found embedded in the blubber of bowheads, and which have been Carbon-14 dated to 235 years and older.

It means whales may be swimming in the sea now which were alive before Victoria ascended the throne or Captain Cook discovered Australia.


By living so long, whales are of course susceptible to diseases of old age, like humans. But they are also subject to the effect our modern habits are having on their world.


On a recent trip to the U.S. University of Southern Maine in Portland, Dr John Wise showed me new research he has been conducting into the way contaminants from the chemical industry are entering the sperm whales’ bodies.


He explained how chromium, a deadly carcinogen which induces lung cancer in humans, is released from chemical processing plants into the air.


The whales, which pass by such plants on the coast of Queensland, northern Australia on their migratory routes, absorb the chromium because they breathe so deeply at the surface. 


The result is causing changes to immune systems, and fertility, creating birth defects analogous to Down’s syndrome in humans.


In another recent and tragic case, a group of seven sperm whales stranded themselves on a Mediterranean beach. They had been driven into shallow waters, possibly by military sonar exercises. There they were unable to feed on squid. And since whales get their liquid from their food, they began to dehydrate.


Then, their starving bodies began to break down fat — to deadly effect. The pollutants they’d absorbed from the ocean and had been deposited in their fat were released. 


They included heavy metals such as mercury, lead and cadmium, and organochlorines like PCBs and DDTs, even fire-retardants used on modern furnishings.


In effect, the whales were poisoning themselves. Fatally weakened, they stranded themselves together on the shore, demonstrating the unswerving loyalty to each other for which their species is renowned.


And when their carcases were dissected, it came as no surprise to discover an unusual amount of plastic, including the dreaded plastic bags, in their stomachs.


What a tragic end for such magnificent animals. And what a salutary lesson for us humans.

5 Simple Steps to Remember Your Reusable Bags!

by Jennifer Lance on January 24, 2012 in ecochildsplay.com

I am finally in the habit of taking my reusable bags in every store, not just the grocery store! It was one of my “eco-sins” for awhile, as I could never remember them, but I finally have a system.

They key to remembering to use reusable bags is to have plenty of them! We were just sent a great bag by ReUseThisBag.com . The bag is very sturdy and washable.

Here’s my system for remembering my bags:

1. Keep plenty of bags in the car at all times.
2. If you forget to bring a bag in a store, you either have to go back to the car or simply carry your goods out in the cart or by hand.
3. When you bring your bags inside the house, put them in the laundry to be washed.
4. Have a large basket by the door where you keep the clean bags.
5. When headed to the car, restock your supply.

It really is simple to remember your bags once you get into a routine, and you will look with scorn at all of the single use paper and plastic bags being used by others.  Here are some interesting facts about why you should use reusable bags:

FACT: The largest opposition to the ban of plastic bags comes from the petroleum and plastics industries and of course, consumers that don’t want to change their habits.

FACT: Effective July 1, 2010. Los Angeles County Shoppers can either bring their own bags or pay 25 cents for a paper or biodegradable bag

FACT: Ireland imposed a tax on plastic grocery bags in 2002, San Francisco became the first U.S. city to ban conventional plastic grocery bags, in 2007, and Los Angeles followed suit in 2010

FACT: plastic is the largest source of ocean litter. The second most abundant ocean pollution, is cigarettes.

FACT: Ocean debris worldwide kills at least 1 million sea birds and 100,000 mammals each year, the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association has estimated. The litter is most severe in the East Asian seas region, which includes countries such as China with a population 1.3 billion people and where, according to UN figures, almost 60 percent of men smoke.

FACT:  4 trillion to 5 trillion: Number of non-degradable plastic bags used worldwide annually.

FACT:  About 500 billion to 1 trillion plastic bags are used worldwide every year

FACT: Australians were using nearly 7 billion bags a year, and nearly 1.2 billion bags a year were being passed out free in Ireland before government restrictions, according to government estimates.

FACT: Plastic industry trade associations were unable to provide estimates of plastic bag use in the United States. However, based on studies of plastic bag use in other nations, the environmental group Californians Against Waste estimates Americans use 84 billion plastic bags annually.

FACT: The first plastic sandwich bags were introduced in 1957. Department stores started using plastic bags in the late 1970s and supermarket chains introduced the bags in the early 1980s.

FACT: About 100,000 whales, seals, turtles and other marine animals are killed by plastic bags each year worldwide, according to Planet Ark, an international environmental group.

FACT: Last September, more than 354,000 bags — most of them plastic — were collected during an international cleanup of costal areas in the United States and 100 other countries, according to the Ocean Conservancy

Please make an effort to end the single use plastic or paper bag habit!

Disclosure: The products described above were sent to us as free samples. Prior assurances as to the nature of the reviews, whether positive or negative, were not given. No financial payments were accepted in exchange for the reviews. The reviews reflect our honest, authentic opinions.

Amazing Documentary by Chris Jordan

Midway: A Message from the Gyre trailer by Chris Jordan

Check out Chris Jordan's website - here's the link to his "Running the Numbers" gallery, where he uses computer tricks to create huge large scale works depicting things like: number of pieces of junk mail mailed every 3 seconds in the US, or number of plastic bottles consumed each minute.

Filmmaker sounds alarm over plastic

published 2012-02-06 in kalahari.com

Hong Kong - On Midway atoll in the North Pacific, dozens of young albatross lie dead in the sand, their stomachs filled with cigarette lighters, toy soldiers and other plastic scraps their parents mistook for food.

That sad and surreal sight is one of the many symptoms of a plague afflicting the world's oceans, food chains and human communities: The onslaught of discarded plastic, said Hong Kong-based film director Craig Leeson.

"Every piece of plastic ever made since the 1950s exists in some shape or form on the planet," Leeson said. "We throw plastic into a bin, it's taken away from us and we never see it again - but it still comes back at us."

Over the past year, the Australian director has been following the menace of plastic from Sardinia to Canada to the Indian Ocean for a film that aims to combine the art of nature documentary with a campaigning quest.

Provisionally called Away, the movie - backed by David Attenborough and the UK-based Plastic Oceans Foundation - brings together new research on the spread of plastic with missions by "explorers" such as Britain's Ben Fogle to show the diverse effects of plastic trash.

Research

Its message is that while you may throw out your plastic goods, they are never really thrown "away".

Crews under Leeson's direction have so far swum with blue whales, taken a deep-sea submarine to the depths of the Mediterranean and found swirling clumps of plastic trash in the Indian Ocean.

They have used a harpoon-like instrument to take biopsies from whales and dissected a dead Corsican turtle in a laboratory - "dead turtles are the smelliest things you can imagine", he said. Sea lions are yet to come.

The foundation cites research showing that at least 250 species are known to have ingested or become entangled in plastic in the seas.

They put forward plastic ingestion as one of the main causes of "skinny whale syndrome", in which whales are discovered mysteriously starved.

The 250 million tons of plastic we discard each year make their way for thousands of miles around the oceans, and Leeson's team - many of whom have backgrounds in the BBC's Natural History Unit - are determined to document this in spectacular fashion.

But beyond this, their goal is to show that the environmental damage is systemic, going far beyond a series of water-borne trash heaps.

Health problems

In fact, Leeson said, the mass of plastic the size of Texas often said to exist in the North Pacific is a myth. Instead, particles of plastic lurk there invisibly, in seemingly clear water.

"If you trawl for it with these special nets that they've developed, you come back with this glutinous mass - it's microplastics that are in the water along with the plankton," he said.

"The problem is that it's being mistaken for food and being eaten by plankton eaters, who are then eaten by bigger fish, and so it goes on, and it ends up on our dinner tables."

Studies have linked this with health problems in humans including cancer, diabetes and immune disruption.

And it is not just the plastic itself that enters the food chain, but other man-made substances from sources such as industrial waste that attach themselves to plastics in the water.

The team will be shooting until mid-2012 and will also visit communities living beside rivers that are heavily polluted with plastic to see its more direct effects on human life.

This is not the first high-profile campaign on the subject: Greenpeace, currently researching plastic in the Arctic Ocean, has warned that urgent action is needed to address the sources of plastic waste, and campaign group WWF calls the problem "staggering".

Message

But Leeson hopes the images in his film will jolt viewers out of their complacency about rubbish that apparently disappears into the waste collection system.

"When you see a toy soldier or a lighter that's manufactured in China that ends up in the stomach of an albatross at Midway Point in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, that just shows you how much effect you're having on the environment," he said.

Leeson will not divulge all the findings from new research carried out for the film, but it is clear the message will be an alarming one.

Does he think his team can compete in the busy market for alarming messages, currently dominated by the threat of climate change?

"Clearly climate change is one of the most pressing issues, if not the most pressing issue that we face, because it affects everything we do," Leeson said.

But plastic and carbon emissions are directly linked: Plastic is estimated to account for around eight percent of the world's fossil fuel use, half of it in energy consumed during its manufacturing.

The film will question the "disposable lifestyle" behind discarded plastic, but not advocate banning the substance altogether.

It will also look at solutions to the waste mountain, including plastic recycling and biogenesis, in which plastic is reduced back to its core elements while producing energy.

An initial aim is to persuade consumers and manufacturers to reconsider their use of disposable plastics such as mineral water bottles.

Leeson said responsibility for waste cuts across different environmental issues, including climate.

"Plastic is part of that, but also if we are raising awareness about issues such as plastic then we’re raising awareness about what does actually affect the planet we live on, and I think that’s a good thing," he said.

- AFP

Our Oceans: A Plastic Soup

by Renee Cho | 1.26.2011 posted in Earth's Institute at Columbia University

Photo credit: cesarharada.com

“Humanity’s plastic footprint is probably more dangerous than its carbon footprint,” said Captain Charles Moore, who, in 1997, discovered the Great Pacific Garbage Patch.  Its name is misleading because the huge expanse of floating marine debris is actually more like a soup of confetti-sized plastic bits, produced by the runoff of our throwaway lifestyle that has made its way into our oceans.

The Great Pacific Garbage Patch, the most notorious stretch of plastic debris, is located northeast of Hawaii, about 1000 miles from Hawaii and California. It’s an enormous and immeasurable area of marine debris, trapped by one of the five major subtropical gyres (systems of ocean currents) that corrals and carries marine garbage into its vortex. 5 Gyres, an organization that partners with Moore’s Algalita Marine Research Foundation to study plastic pollution in the ocean, has sent expeditions across the North Pacific Gyre, the North and South Atlantic Gyres, and the Indian Ocean Gyre, and found plastic in every one of them, though concentrations vary.  Some reports have estimated the Great Pacific Garbage Patch to be twice the size of the continental United States, but no one can accurately measure the boundaries of the trash gyres because they are vast, remote and always shifting with ocean conditions. In any case, plastic marine debris is now found on the surface of every ocean on Earth.

Ocean gyres. Photo credit: NOAA

Some plastic and marine debris comes from fishing gear, offshore oil and gas platforms, and ships.  But 80 percent of it comes from the land—litter that gets stuck in storm drains and is washed into rivers and out to sea, the legal and illegal dumping of garbage and appliances, and plastic resin pellets inadvertently spilled and unloaded by plastic manufacturers. Trash Travels, Ocean Conservancy’s 2010 report, states that 60 percent of all marine debris in 2009 consisted of “disposable” items, with the most common being cigarettes, plastic bags, food containers, bottle caps and plastic bottles. And no matter where the litter originates, once it reaches the ocean, it becomes a planetary problem as garbage travels thousands of miles carried by the gyres.

The lightness and durability that make plastic such a useful and versatile material for manufacturers also make it a long-term problem for the environment. Trash Travels estimates that plastic bags can take 20 years to decompose, plastic bottles up to 450 years, and fishing line, 600 years; but in fact, no one really knows how long plastics will remain in the ocean. With exposure to UV rays and the ocean environment, plastic breaks down into smaller and smaller fragments. The majority of the plastic found in the ocean are tiny pieces less than 1 cm. in size, with the mass of 1/10 of a paper clip.

Photo credit: Chris Jordan

The Sea Education Association’s (SEA) expedition to the western North Atlantic Ocean found bits of HDPE (high density polyethylene), LDPE (low density polyethylene), and PP (polypropylene) from items such as milk containers, plastic bags, and straws, which float on the surface because they are less dense than seawater. It did not find PET (polyethylene terephthalate), PVC (polyvinyl chloride), and PS (polystyrene solid), which sink because they are denser than seawater. Algalita, which sampled down to depths of 100 hundred meters throughout the eastern side of the North Pacific Gyre, found LDPE, styrene, PP and PET.

Last year, SEA released the results of its 22-year study of plastic pollution in the western North Atlantic and Caribbean Sea. The greatest amount of plastic was found in the North Atlantic Gyre, which contains the Sargasso Sea. The most plastic collected during a 30-minute tow was 1069 pieces, which, if scaled up, would be equal to about 580,000 pieces per square kilometer. The average concentration of samples would roughly equal 20,300 pieces per square kilometer. While discarded plastic in the U.S. quadrupled between 1980 and 2008, however, the concentration of debris in the Atlantic did not appear to increase. Where has it all gone? Lead scientist Kara Lavender Law speculated that some is being eaten by marine animals, some has broken down into bits too small to be captured by tow nets, some gets washed up onto beaches, and some is sinking to the ocean floor. According to Project Kaisei, a non-profit also studying marine debris, 70 percent of the man-made waste that enters the ocean sinks to the bottom. That means that the plastic soup is only the 30 percent of the debris that floats. No one knows what lies deep down because so far, there have been no studies of the plastic on the ocean floor.

But we know the plastic debris on the surface of the ocean is taking its toll on marine life. Animals get strangled in fishing lines, nets, and plastic litter. Fish and seabirds ingest bits of plastic they mistake for food that can block their intestinal tracts and kill them, or make them feel full so that they do not eat real food.One of Moore’s expeditions collected hundreds of samples of fish, and conducted necropsies on them: over 1/3 had ingested polluted plastic fragments, including one 2.5 inch fish that had 84 pieces of plastic in its tiny gut. In 1999, Moore’s research in the Central Pacific found six times more plastic than zooplankton in the water. In 2002, off the coast of Southern California, he discovered the ratio of plastic to plankton was 2.5. Preliminary results on samples Algalita took in 2008 already show that there is a significant increase in the ratio of plastic to plankton in the water. Plastic bits also create habitats for microorganisms and other species, allowing would-be invasive species to hitch rides to new areas of the ocean.

A recent study found that plastics take up and accumulate persistent organic pollutants (POPs) such as carcinogenic and endocrine-disrupting polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), and organochlorine pesticides such as DDD, a derivative of DDT. Over 50 percent of the plastic samples studied contained PCBs, and over 75 percent contained PAHs. According to Moore, plastic debris can attract and concentrate POPs up to a million times their levels in the surrounding seawater, and when consumed by marine animals, the POPs endanger both the creatures that ingest them and humans higher up on the food chain, especially infants. Moore has said, “No fish monger on Earth can sell you a certified organic wild-caught fish.”

Despite all these environmental and potential human health impacts, most scientists agree that it is not feasible to clean up the plastic soup in our oceans. The areas are huge, and the debris is unevenly distributed and always shifting. A cleanup would entail filtering enormous amounts of water, and the by-catch of plankton and other marine organisms would be harmful to ocean ecosystems. Moreover, the fact that the trash gyres are in the open ocean, in international waters, makes it difficult to get governments to invest in research or cleanup efforts.

Undaunted, Project Kaisei, on its two expeditions to the North Pacific Gyre, has been working to develop and test new methods for removal of some of the plastic waste. Its goal is to learn more about how to efficiently remove the floating plastic, and to use new techniques to recycle the material into fuel or other products. Project Kaisei plans to test new, and scaled-up catch methods on future expeditions, as well as passive netting and catch methods that require little fuel and have low impacts on marine life.

Moore and Algalita believe that the best way to deal with the plastic debris is to stop the waste from entering the ocean in the first place: to replace, reduce, reuse and recycle our plastics. Marcus Eriksen, one of the founders of 5 Gyres, also promotes beach cleanup because “What we now know is that if we stop adding more plastic to the ocean, in time the gyres will kick out the plastic pollution they currently hold.  If you want to clean the gyre, clean your beach.”  In 2010, approximately 500,000 volunteers did just that, taking part in the 25th Annual International Coastal Cleanup and removing millions of pounds of marine debris from 6,000 sites around the world, including all 50 U.S. states.

Photo credit: Ocean Conservancy

The Algalita Marine Research Foundation has launched a three-year scientific study expedition to the Antarctic Ocean, and is planning a voyage to the North Pacific gyre in July. This spring, 5 Gyres is preparing to sail across the South Pacific Gyre from Chile to Easter Island. Findings from these expeditions and others will be shared at the 5th International Marine Debris Conference in March, 2011.
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From the Washer to the Sea: Plastic Pollution

posted Oct. 19, 2011 By LESLIE KAUFMAN in the New York Times

 

Environmental Science and TechnologySome areas where researchers found significant concentrations of microplastic.

When most people think of plastic pollution in the sea, they tend to picture bottles washing up on beaches, say, or the vast garbage patch in the Pacific.

What few may realize is that waste water from washing machines is an important source of plastic pollution in oceans, according to a recent article in Environmental Science and Technology.

Over the last decade, scientists have become increasingly alarmed about a type of pollution that cannot be seen. Micrometer-size fragments of plastics like acrylic, polyethylene, polypropylene, polyamide and polyester have contaminated the surface waters of the northeast Atlantic as well as shoreline habitats in Britain, Singapore and India, the researchers write.

 

Environmental Science and Technology

The scientists said there was evidence that the microplastics are being eaten by animals, who store them in their tissues and cells for months with probably negative consequences for their health and that of the humans who eat marine creatures.

To discover the sources of the microplastics, a team of scientists led by Mark Anthony Browne, a biologist with University College in Dublin, took samples from shore environments on six continents.

Researchers found that the proportions of synthetic fibers in marine sediments were akin to those found in artificial textiles. Examining washing-machine waste water, they found that 1,900 fibers can rinse off a single garment during a wash cycle and that those fibers look just like the microplastic debris on shorelines.
As the human population increases, they say, the problem is likely grow.

The authors suggest that clothing and washing machine designers need to be aware of the problem and to seek ways to reduce the release of fibers into waste water.