trinhqthuan Loc: gaithersburg

Plastic dust is blowing into U.S. national parks—more than 1000 tons each year

https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/06/plastic-dust-blowing-us-national-parks-more-1000-tons-each-year?utm_campaign=news_weekly_2020-06-12&et_rid=289079890&et_cid=3363822

IDguy Loc: Idaho

I suspect plastic degrades over time. This may be part of that process. Since it is otherwise inert I also suspect it is a “ho hum”.

Interesting, though.

Quixdraw Loc: x

Search this - organisms that eat plastic. In any case far preferable to the organic human excretions prevalent in several cities' streets.

wrangler5 Loc: Missouri

Big numbers, but national parks are pretty big too. There are 52 million acres in the US national parks. Spread 1000 tons over that area and you get 0.000019 tons, or 0.038 pounds per acre. That's 0.62 ounces. Spread a bit over a half ounce of powder evenly across an acre, and I'm not going to get too worried.

BTW, anybody know how much "regular" dust gets blown over the country every year? I'd bet it's orders of magnitude greater than the plastic dust.

Delderby Loc: Derby UK

Like so many 20th century developments - plastic is a scourge of the earth.

andesbill

There are many things that plastics are used for that can’t easily or cheaply be replaced by other substances that are environmentally better. That being said, plastics are not safe inert substances. All dust, if small enough will damage the lungs and gills of animals. The chemicals that make up the plastics are interfering with animal hormones.
I have no idea how we can escape this trap. We need the stuff, but we’re drowning in it.

Remember from 1967- 1968; paraphrased from The Graduate- “Benjamin, I just want to say one word to you.- Plastics, there is a great future in plastics”
I saw the movie when I was 21 years old, the same age as Benjamin. I so related.

alberio Loc: Casa Grande AZ

I am more concerned about how much the government grant was she might have received for this study. It only serves to scare people about the demise of our environment by using the comparisons of 300 million plastic bottles. That sounds much more scarier than the actual microbes per acre.

bodiebill

The Graduate

"Plastics"

kenArchi Loc: Seal Beach, CA

I am sure that I saw more dust particals in the flashlight beam than there are stars in the sky when I held up a flashlight beam into the black sky as background.

rehess Loc: South Bend, Indiana, USA

Sometimes ‘dust’ is best. One year my parents found that a pair of birds had built their nest mainly out of pieces of plastic. The nest turned out to be waterproof, and the baby birds died {of exposure}

Reuss Griffiths Loc: Ravenna, Ohio

The article is written with the presumption that plastics are bad (because they are man-made??) and therefore this newly discovered plastic dust is a threat. The presence of plastic dust should not be a surprise as literally everything can end up as dust. The natural order of things are that the smaller particles are in nature, the more of them exist, e.g. visible particles may exist in the thousands per cubic meter but invisible ones are in the million and billions. Once the size is small enough, normal movement of air molecules are enough to suspend them indefinitely (Brownian movement). The article is concerned in the amount that exist as dust in the soil which is relatively unavailbe as a hazard but expresses no concern about the amount in the air itself which is a given in order to spread the dust uniformly over the country and we breath it every day.

Lastly no distinction between toxic and hazardous. Toxic is an inherent property of all chemicals and is a measure of it's ability to do harm. Hazardous is a measure of how likely truly toxic material can do us harm. Dust in soil may be toxic but at the levels they cite is not hazardous relative to many other things we should really worry about. Ever wonder where all the dust under your bed comes from. Over 80% of it is your dead skins cells. Now that's something to worry about.

kenArchi Loc: Seal Beach, CA

Your yard is toxic. I get asthma attacks from certain areas of my yard when I need to dig up to repair sprinkler system, gardening. Dig out roots, stumps etc. Especially near the septic system and leach lines. I have to wear a chemical mask.

GerryER Loc: Virginia USA

When plastics were first produced, their main attraction was that they did not decompose readily and therefore would not pollute, but would act as "landfill." Paper products and the like decompose readily and, therefore, are more pollution prone. I think the "landfill" is a better approach to preserving the environment. Also, if plastic is so bad, why has the expected life span of man increased, if that is in fact a true statistic? Too much money and too much time on peoples hands to study and worry about unnecessary things. It is good to be concerned about environmental impact, but we seem to get carried away with projections. In the early 1700's and 1800's they would have predicted that there would be so much horse dung around by this time that we would all be buried in it. Predictions like this don't take into consideration technological changes, because we don't know the future.

It reminds me of a government paid study that a veterinarian did on the length of dogs toenails. She concluded that if a dog's toenails were too long, the dog would think it was travelling uphill all the time and would alter its posture accordingly,ultimately hurting the dog. I asked her if the dog's toenails were cut too short, would the dog think it was travelling downhill all the time. She never did answer me. Our tax dollars paid for that study; I hope I didn't give her the idea for a second study!

Have a great day.

Delderby Loc: Derby UK

Thank goodness that there are not many people who share your views. We have sufficient knowledge of plastic use and manufacture to be able to see the global damage caused so far, and to easily see how plastic could destroy our world in the not-too-distant future. I would suggest you grow up or shut up.

Silverrails

One day we may Poop Balloons!!