WEBVTT
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Hi, I'm Wendy Zuckerman and you're listening to Science Versus
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from Gimlet Media. This is the show that pits facts
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against flotsam. On today's show, plastics. This summer, there was
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a war on the plastic straw as cities across the
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US banned this little sucker. Plastic straws are already banned
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in Seattle, Fort Myers, and on the oceanfront in Miami Beach.
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Large fines can now be doled out to businesses handing
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out straws in certain cities around America. Starbucks will soon
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ban plastic straws from all.
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Of its stores.
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And for many of us, this kind of popped out
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of nowhere. It seems like all of a sudden, people
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were freaking out about plastic straws. It's polluting all of
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our oceans. It's affecting the people. And this anti-straw movement
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can pretty much be traced back to a single video.
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Many people have seen this very disturbing image. That the
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news channels just couldn't stop showing. It's a video of
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researchers finding a turtle in the ocean with a straw
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up its nose.
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This YouTube video shows researchers pulling out a straw from
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a sea turtle's nose.
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They pull it out and it's intense and pretty horrifying.
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Now it's a little bit graphic but let's Put it
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up full frame for you so you can take a
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look because really that's at the heart of what we're.
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Doing.
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That turtle video touched a nerve and it added to
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the growing anxiety that people have about all the plastic
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that we're using. So today we're going to talk to
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the scientist who created that video and a bunch of
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other researchers to answer the following questions. One, how big
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of a problem are plastic straws in the ocean? Are
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they big? Just a straw man here. Two, how much
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other plastic is actually out there. Three, what happens to
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the plastic once it's in the ocean? Like, is it
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going to be there forever? And four, is it going
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to make marine life and us sick? When it comes
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to plastics, there are lots of punny news reports. It
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may be the final straw for straws. But then there's science.
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Science vs Plastics is coming up just after the break. Hey,
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it's Wendy from Science vs and I want to tell
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you about a podcast that I love, Science Friday. They
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cover all sorts of amazing things in the weird and
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wonderful world of science, from how concussions affect our brain
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to the inner secrets of a snake with a spider
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on its Welcome back to today's episode on plastics. Our
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first stop is that infamous video, the one that galvanized
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the war on plastics and got us all hot and
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bothered about straws. It all started with this researcher, Christine Figener.
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She studies sea turtles at Texas A & M. So
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what do you love about turtles?
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They're almost like dinosaurs. So the species that exist nowadays
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have seen the dinosaurs, right?
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But for as long as Christine has been studying turtles
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in the wild, she's seen plastics cause problems for them.
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Several years before she filmed that viral straw video, she
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had this other intense experience. She was watching a sea
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turtle trying to lay her eggs, which they do through
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an opening called the cloaca. And she noticed that the
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turtle was struggling.
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When I looked a little bit closer, I saw kind
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of a piece of plastic sticking out of her cloaca.
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Oh!
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And I was like, oh, my God. So it seemed
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she couldn't lay. So I was like really careful, like
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pulling on that plastic. And eventually it came out entirely.
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It was a whole plastic shopping bag. Oh, my God.
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And finally, after that came out, she was able to
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drop her eggs.
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A whole plastic bag inside this turtle's body. And a
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recent review paper that looked at almost 2,000 sea turtles
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estimated that perhaps half of all sea turtles have ingested plastic.
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And so after seeing this kind of thing day after day,
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Christine was angry and frustrated. But for years, she didn't
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want to share it. She recorded and uploaded videos of turtles,
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but they just showed them swimming serenely, no plastic in sight.
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Christine thought that showing people beautiful images would make them
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want to protect her turtles.
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I was still believing that I need to show the
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flawless beauty beauty of nature. So I always avoided filming
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the really gruesome realities that we are facing a lot
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of times because I thought you need to convince people
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with positive images.
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Then one day in 2015, that all changed. She was
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researching on a boat in Costa Rica and she saw
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a turtle with something in its nose. She thought it
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was a barnacle. And Christine and her team worried that
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it was hurting this turtle. So they decided to help
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the animal by getting rid of it. extracting it.
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And I just decided, OK, that's kind of a, you know,
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fun little out-of-the-usual extraction that we're doing here, so I'm
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just going to record it.
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She took out her camera and she filmed it. Christine
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and I watched the video that she made together. You
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can see the researchers getting pliers and then pulling something out.
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Mr Surgeon. You can see already the encrusted part in
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its nose. She's going to be so happy. Big boulder.
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The turtle is making that little sneezing sound.
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Bless you.
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Have you ever heard a turtle sneeze?
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Oh, yeah.
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The video is this real close-up shot of the turtle's
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head with a researcher's hand holding it still.
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I'm sorry, little one. I think you'll like it better afterwards, though.
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Oh, my gosh. And as you pull it out, it
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starts bleeding?
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And that was when I was thinking, okay, before we
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start pulling anymore, I really want to know what that
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thing is made of, the material.
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Oh.
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So we cut up a piece and one of my
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Costa Rican assistants bit on it and said, yeah, that's plastic.
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And when they pulled part of it out, Christine and
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her team finally saw exactly what it was.
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Is it a straw? Don't tell me it's a freaking straw.
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I'm the one filming and cursing in the background. It's
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not a freaking straw. Don't tell me it's a freaking straw.
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So this is the reason why we do not need
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plastic straws.
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As soon as Christine got back to land, she went
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straight to her computer.
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I really said, OK, no, this cannot just rot away
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on some of my hard drives. This really needs to
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be somewhere out in the ether and raise awareness.
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Why? Because you've seen, you know, plastic in lots of turtles,
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in dead turtles, live turtles. Why this time did you
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think this has to go out?
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For me, that was the moment where everything just totally
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flipped over and I just thought, okay, this is it.
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This is literally the last straw. I'm so tired of
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pretending that everything is fine because it's just not. It's
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just not. And I have the evidence right here on
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camera and I'm just going to upload it.
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And so she did. And a lot of people watched
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this video. Millions, in fact. But there was no talk
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of a war on straws right away. It took three
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years for the momentum to build. But eventually, NGOs started
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using Christine's video and actors like that babe from Entourage.
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He took up the cause of the straw. And then
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seemingly all of a sudden, straws were getting banned. And Christine,
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she still can't quite believe it.
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Wow, for the first time. There seems to be at
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least some kind of impact that I'm making on this
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world because usually I'm tucked away in the jungle and
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go about my daily job. And I might influence some
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people that visit our projects, but I never felt I
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had such an impact as in that moment.
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It's estimated that there are 7.5 million straws on U.S. beaches.
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And Christine is excited that we're finally doing something about it.
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But as many straws as there are out there, Christine
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knows the problem is much, much bigger.
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So this is the thing that I'm getting worried that
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straws are taken out of context and presented as the
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holy grail that will solve all of our plastic issues.
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They are not.
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They are definitely not. So the straws are just a
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poster child for a bigger issue, and that is the
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issue of plastics in general.
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According to a paper published in Science a few years ago,
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several million metric tons of plastic waste enter our oceans
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every year. And straws make up a tiny fraction of that.
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Plastic bags, plastic packaging, plastic toys, plastic bottles, they're all
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found out there floating in the ocean, getting in turtles'
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noses and causing problems for other marine life. So our
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next question is this. How is it getting there? Because
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when you're talking about millions of metric tons of plastic,
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we obviously can't chalk this up to a couple of
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drunk idiots losing straws off their pina coladas on a
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booze cruise. But seriously, how does all this plastic get
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from our homes and our offices into the ocean?
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You're welcome.
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Thank you. This is your place.
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This is my place.
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We go up these treacherous stairs.
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To find out, we spoke to Kerry Roble, who researches
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plastics at the Hudson River Estuary Park in New York.
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And Kerry is an expert on how plastics move from
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our homes to our waterways. And in her work, she's
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seen all sorts of plastics in the Hudson River. Plastic bottles, tampons, which, yeah,
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can have some plastic in them, and other creepier things.
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Oh, I mean, we just find the weirdest toys often.
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You know, severed doll heads and one eye, like, gone.
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Kerry tells us that we don't really recycle that much plastic. Yeah,
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according to the EPA, less than 10% of all plastic
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in the U.S. gets recycled. Less than 10%. A lot
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of plastics aren't recyclable. It's frightening, yeah. So what's happening
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to the rest of it? Well, let's start with the U.S.
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Most of our plastic goes into landfill, but some of
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it does get into the ocean. And one of the
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main reasons for this is that we don't always get
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rid of our trash properly.
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So let's say you flush something down your toilet or
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you even, you know, I just finished this bag of
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chips and you're in the middle of Manhattan and you
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throw it onto the street. Well, when it rains, it's
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going to go into our sewers. And then our sewers
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get overwhelmed by these rain events. Our wastewater treatment plants
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max out. And so therefore, that water from our homes
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and from the streets goes into our rivers. It's not
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filtered during these rain events. And that's the big contributor
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of the plastic debris we're finding.
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So littering and overflowing sewers, those are two of the
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biggest ways that plastics from the US can get into
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the ocean. But when you look globally, the US is
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far from the biggest offender here. The real problem actually
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comes from countries that don't have regular and consistent trash collection.
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A recent paper estimated that two-thirds of the plastic trash
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entering the ocean every year comes from rivers in Asia.
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When people don't have a good place to put their trash,
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it's more likely to end up in the streets or
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in makeshift landfills, where it can then flow into rivers
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and streams that then feed into the ocean. The fishing
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industry dumping nets into the ocean is another big source
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of plastics. OK, so once that plastic is in the ocean,
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what then?
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The currents are going to take it and it's going
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to move out into the ocean and likely gets stuck
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in some type of current system where it can escape.
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And that's what creates those giant patches of plastic garbage
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floating in the ocean, when trash gets trapped in these
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current systems. You may have heard of the Great Pacific
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Garbage Patch, which is like this soupy collection of trash
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that stretches out to roughly twice the size of Texas. Yeah,
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it's huge. and it's only getting bigger. A lot of
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the plastic in the ocean is also sinking to the
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bottom of the seabed, where only the most daring scientists tread.
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After the break, we're following those scientists to the ends
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of the Earth to find out what happens to plastic
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once it gets there.
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There is nowhere that has escaped. There is nowhere pristine.
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That's coming up. Welcome back. So we've been talking about
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the very unfortunate magical school bus journey that millions of
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tonnes of plastic take from our homes into the ocean
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each year. Now we're going to look at what happens
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to that plastic once it's floating in the ocean. Because
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all those doll's heads and straws, they don't just float
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there forever. They do eventually break down. And when they do...
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They break into these teeny tiny pieces, some that are
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so small you can't even see them with the naked eye.
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They're called microplastics. And scientists have only recently started to
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study these tiny bits of plastics. And two years ago,
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they made a breakthrough. Thanks to a team headed up
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by this guy.
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You know, we are putting out tons of plastic, right,
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per year.
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John Weinstein is a professor at the Citadel in South Carolina.
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And a few years ago, he and his graduate student
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wanted to know how quickly microplastics were created. So they
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took strips of different types of plastic and let them
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sit in the waters of South Carolina. They tested a
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bunch of plastics, including polyethylene, which makes up plastic bags.
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We looked at polypropylene, which makes up straws in a
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variety of different containers. And we also looked at polystyrene,
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which is more commonly known as styrofoam.
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John was thinking he wouldn't see microplastics for a long,
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long time.
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I thought it takes 50 years for the plastic to disintegrate.
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But just eight weeks after they started this experiment, John's
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student came to him with some big news. Microplastics were
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already coming off the strips.
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To have her come in my office just really several
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weeks after we started that study to say that the
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plastics were producing microplastics really was just, to me, absolutely shocking.
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That's amazing. How is that happening? How is it breaking
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down so quickly?
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That's all driven by the UV radiation coming from the sun.
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We'd known that when the sun beats down on plastics,
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it can weaken them, causing them to crack into chunks.
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But what John was seeing was that the sun also
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breaks down plastic in this other way, by breaking the
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chemical bonds in the plastic layer by layer. John walked
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us through how it works using this great analogy, a cookie.
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It's not like breaking a cookie in two and having
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some crumbs. But it's like taking that cookie and taking
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a razor and shaving microscopic layer by microscopic layer off
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the surface of the cookie.
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Why would anyone do that to a cookie? But anyway,
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other research is now finding the same thing, that microplastics
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can start appearing in just two months. And the fact
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that microplastics are appearing faster than people thought has huge
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implications that we're just starting to understand. It means that
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plastic can spread out faster and infiltrate new places, even
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places that we thought were nearly impossible to reach. And
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perhaps no one knows this better than David Barnes.
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So I must admit, my life has been a whole
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series of remote places.
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David is a researcher at the British Antarctic Survey, and
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one of his most recent trips was to a remote
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part of the Western Antarctic Peninsula. He's one of the
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first people on Earth to go here because the glaciers
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have melted enough, thanks partly to climate change, that he
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can now get to spots that have just emerged.
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The impression that you get when you sail around the
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corner into the mouth of one of these fjords is
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huge mountains towering up above you, vast glaciers that are
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sort of The ice sheet is flowing down the sides
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of these mountains and you really do feel like if
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anywhere is pristine in the world, it's these places. They're
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sort of the newest habitats on Earth.
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And David is here to look for microplastics, to see
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if they can be found this far from civilisation. Now,
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because you often can't see microplastics and they can sink
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to the bottom of the ocean floor, to reach all
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the way down, David and his team use this very
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cool scooper tool.
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Oh, it's like a giant octopus, a giant metal octopus
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that sits on the side of the ship and it
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travels through the water column and lands on the seabed
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and thrusts down 12 see-through tubes. And then we lift
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it all the way to the boat. I should say
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ship there, the captain would likely say boat.
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So they have all these tubes filled with mud and water,
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which they analyse for microplastics.
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We've probably all gone for a cup of tea while
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it comes up. And then as soon as it arrives
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on the surface, it's like a swarm of ants, the
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scientists pouring over it.
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Yeah.
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So what did you find?
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So that's ongoing work.
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Don't you dare say that's ongoing, David. Ongoing work is
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the science equivalent of you'll just have to wait a
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year to find out if John Snow really died. Suffice
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to say, it's very frustrating.
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So I can't say too much. Only that we know
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that we've got some plastics in the water column.
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So in the water samples, you can see microplastics.
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How scary and sad is that? There is nowhere that
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has escaped. Plastic everywhere. can go from anywhere to anywhere
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and is. And there is nowhere pristine. We're going into
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environments that have only just been created. And even in
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those environments, there could already be plastic.
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And once microplastics find their way into all these nooks
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and crannies all over the world, I mean, it's hard
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to believe we could do anything about it. And so
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do you think realistically we'll ever get rid of all
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the plastic in the ocean?
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No, I don't. I really don't. I think that would
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be near impossible because all the stuff that's reached the
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seabed is there for good. I think much of the
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microplastic is there for good.
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So this takes us to our final questions. If microplastics
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are truly everywhere and they're here to stay, then what?
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What does all this mean for us and for the fish? Well,
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here's where things get tough, because we don't know what
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this means. The research here is so new that we
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really don't have concrete answers. Here's what we do know, though.
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We do know that microplastics are getting into fish and
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then we are eating some of those fish. We also
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know that microplastics can attract chemicals, things like pesticides, which
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have found their way into waterways. This has been shown
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in lab studies. But the big questions are, what do
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those chemicals and microplastics do once they're in fish bodies
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or in our bodies?
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Many of the questions you're asking, we just, we really
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don't know the answers. It's really hard to know quite
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how serious a problem it is.
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Some studies suggest that microplastics are harmful for animals in
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the ocean. But then other studies are showing that for
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some fish, they seem to be benign. And this is
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true for studies on humans ingesting microplastics as well. The
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research is just really inconclusive, which is very frustrating. But still,
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none of the scientists I spoke to said, it's fine,
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we don't have to worry about this. They were either
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very worried or they said, it's not looking good. David
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sat on the very worried end of the spectrum.
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I think it's scary and we should be scared. It's
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really that the problem is growing faster than our knowledge.
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So it's sort of playing catch up, but we're sort
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of chasing this snowball that's getting bigger and it's kind
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of getting further away from us.
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So when it comes to plastics, how do they stack up? One,
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how big of a problem are plastic straws in the ocean?
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While there are millions of straws on our coastline, when
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we look at all the plastics in the ocean, straws
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are a tiny piece of the puzzle. Two, how much
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other plastic is actually out there? Millions of metric tonnes
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of plastic enter our oceans every year. Three, what happens
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to them once they're in the ocean? Well, they break
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down into tiny, tiny pieces called microplastics that are forming
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much faster than we thought in weeks, not years. And four,
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is it going to make marine life and us sick? Well,
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there are lots of fears out there, particularly that the
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chemicals attached to microplastics can harm us. But really, it's
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too early to say. And it could take years, decades,
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before we know if microplastics are a big problem. And
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by then, there will probably be so, so many more
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of these teeny tiny bits of plastic out there. And
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this is why some scientists, like Christine Figener, who made
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the turtle video, reckon that if we can reduce at
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least some of that plastic, then that's a good idea.
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Which brings us back to the little old... sorry, just
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needed something to drink. It brings us back to all
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this talk of a ban on straws.
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I mean, even if straws are just a small percentage
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of the plastics, I think it's still part of the plastics, right?
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It's definitely one object less that is going to cause
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harm in one way or another. And I think if
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you start with plastic straws and Once the awareness is there,
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I think you will also maybe think about other objects
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that you can eliminate. So I think it would be huge.
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And I honestly hope that, I don't know, if we're
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ever going to talk again after five years, that we
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might say, hey, look, we don't, plastic straws are not
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a thing anymore.
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The power is yours.
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She said five years, right? That's science versus plastics. For
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this episode, we spoke to about 15 researchers and our
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script has 73 citations. They're all linked in the script,
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which you can get to from the show notes if
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you want to read more. This episode was produced by me,
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00:26:01.990 --> 00:26:05.730
Wendy Zuckerman, along with Rose Rimler, Meryl Horne and Odelia Rubin.
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Our senior producer is Caitlin Sorey. We're edited by Caitlin
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Kenney and Blythe Shirell. Fact-checking by Michelle Harris, Meryl Horne
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00:26:13.420 --> 00:26:16.799
and Rose Rimler. Mix and sound design by Emma Munger.
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Music written by Emma Munger and Bobby Lord. A huge
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thanks to all the researchers I got in touch with
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for this episode, including Dr Chris Wilcox, Dr Denise Hardesty,
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Professor Anthony Andrade, Dr Carolyn Foley, Dr Tracy Mincer and
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Dr Laurent Lebertin. Thank you also to the Zuckerman family
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and Joseph Lavelle-Wilson. Next week, we're tackling essential oils to
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find out if they could be eaten. powerful medicine, or
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if they're a bunch of Insta crap. There's a lot
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of science. I'm Wendy Zuckerman. Back to you next time.
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Hi, I'm Wendy Zuckerman and you're listening to Science Versus
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00:00:03.750 --> 00:00:08.869
from Gimlet Media. This is the show that pits facts
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00:00:09.089 --> 00:00:19.800
against flotsam. On today's show, plastics. This summer, there was
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00:00:19.820 --> 00:00:23.320
a war on the plastic straw as cities across the
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00:00:23.440 --> 00:00:28.100
US banned this little sucker. Plastic straws are already banned
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00:00:28.140 --> 00:00:31.679
in Seattle, Fort Myers, and on the oceanfront in Miami Beach.
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00:00:32.000 --> 00:00:35.070
Large fines can now be doled out to businesses handing
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00:00:35.109 --> 00:00:38.929
out straws in certain cities around America. Starbucks will soon
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00:00:38.990 --> 00:00:40.829
ban plastic straws from all.
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Of its stores.
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00:00:41.890 --> 00:00:44.210
And for many of us, this kind of popped out
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of nowhere. It seems like all of a sudden, people
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00:00:47.259 --> 00:00:50.920
were freaking out about plastic straws. It's polluting all of
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our oceans. It's affecting the people. And this anti-straw movement
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can pretty much be traced back to a single video.
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Many people have seen this very disturbing image. That the
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news channels just couldn't stop showing. It's a video of
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researchers finding a turtle in the ocean with a straw
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up its nose.
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This YouTube video shows researchers pulling out a straw from
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a sea turtle's nose.
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They pull it out and it's intense and pretty horrifying.
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Now it's a little bit graphic but let's Put it
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up full frame for you so you can take a
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look because really that's at the heart of what we're.
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Doing.
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That turtle video touched a nerve and it added to
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the growing anxiety that people have about all the plastic
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that we're using. So today we're going to talk to
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the scientist who created that video and a bunch of
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other researchers to answer the following questions. One, how big
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of a problem are plastic straws in the ocean? Are
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they big? Just a straw man here. Two, how much
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other plastic is actually out there. Three, what happens to
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the plastic once it's in the ocean? Like, is it
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going to be there forever? And four, is it going
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to make marine life and us sick? When it comes
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to plastics, there are lots of punny news reports. It
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00:02:16.550 --> 00:02:20.780
may be the final straw for straws. But then there's science.
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Science vs Plastics is coming up just after the break. Hey,
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it's Wendy from Science vs and I want to tell
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you about a podcast that I love, Science Friday. They
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cover all sorts of amazing things in the weird and
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wonderful world of science, from how concussions affect our brain
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to the inner secrets of a snake with a spider
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on its Welcome back to today's episode on plastics. Our
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first stop is that infamous video, the one that galvanized
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the war on plastics and got us all hot and
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bothered about straws. It all started with this researcher, Christine Figener.
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She studies sea turtles at Texas A & M. So
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what do you love about turtles?
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They're almost like dinosaurs. So the species that exist nowadays
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have seen the dinosaurs, right?
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But for as long as Christine has been studying turtles
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in the wild, she's seen plastics cause problems for them.
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Several years before she filmed that viral straw video, she
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had this other intense experience. She was watching a sea
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turtle trying to lay her eggs, which they do through
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an opening called the cloaca. And she noticed that the
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turtle was struggling.
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When I looked a little bit closer, I saw kind
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of a piece of plastic sticking out of her cloaca.
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Oh!
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And I was like, oh, my God. So it seemed
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she couldn't lay. So I was like really careful, like
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pulling on that plastic. And eventually it came out entirely.
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It was a whole plastic shopping bag. Oh, my God.
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And finally, after that came out, she was able to
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drop her eggs.
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A whole plastic bag inside this turtle's body. And a
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recent review paper that looked at almost 2,000 sea turtles
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estimated that perhaps half of all sea turtles have ingested plastic.
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And so after seeing this kind of thing day after day,
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Christine was angry and frustrated. But for years, she didn't
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want to share it. She recorded and uploaded videos of turtles,
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but they just showed them swimming serenely, no plastic in sight.
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Christine thought that showing people beautiful images would make them
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want to protect her turtles.
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I was still believing that I need to show the
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flawless beauty beauty of nature. So I always avoided filming
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the really gruesome realities that we are facing a lot
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of times because I thought you need to convince people
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with positive images.
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Then one day in 2015, that all changed. She was
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researching on a boat in Costa Rica and she saw
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a turtle with something in its nose. She thought it
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was a barnacle. And Christine and her team worried that
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it was hurting this turtle. So they decided to help
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the animal by getting rid of it. extracting it.
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And I just decided, OK, that's kind of a, you know,
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fun little out-of-the-usual extraction that we're doing here, so I'm
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just going to record it.
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She took out her camera and she filmed it. Christine
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and I watched the video that she made together. You
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can see the researchers getting pliers and then pulling something out.
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Mr Surgeon. You can see already the encrusted part in
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its nose. She's going to be so happy. Big boulder.
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The turtle is making that little sneezing sound.
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Bless you.
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Have you ever heard a turtle sneeze?
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Oh, yeah.
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The video is this real close-up shot of the turtle's
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head with a researcher's hand holding it still.
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I'm sorry, little one. I think you'll like it better afterwards, though.
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Oh, my gosh. And as you pull it out, it
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starts bleeding?
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And that was when I was thinking, okay, before we
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start pulling anymore, I really want to know what that
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thing is made of, the material.
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Oh.
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So we cut up a piece and one of my
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Costa Rican assistants bit on it and said, yeah, that's plastic.
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And when they pulled part of it out, Christine and
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her team finally saw exactly what it was.
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Is it a straw? Don't tell me it's a freaking straw.
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I'm the one filming and cursing in the background. It's
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not a freaking straw. Don't tell me it's a freaking straw.
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So this is the reason why we do not need
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plastic straws.
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As soon as Christine got back to land, she went
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straight to her computer.
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I really said, OK, no, this cannot just rot away
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on some of my hard drives. This really needs to
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be somewhere out in the ether and raise awareness.
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Why? Because you've seen, you know, plastic in lots of turtles,
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in dead turtles, live turtles. Why this time did you
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think this has to go out?
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For me, that was the moment where everything just totally
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flipped over and I just thought, okay, this is it.
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This is literally the last straw. I'm so tired of
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pretending that everything is fine because it's just not. It's
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just not. And I have the evidence right here on
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camera and I'm just going to upload it.
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And so she did. And a lot of people watched
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this video. Millions, in fact. But there was no talk
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of a war on straws right away. It took three
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years for the momentum to build. But eventually, NGOs started
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using Christine's video and actors like that babe from Entourage.
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He took up the cause of the straw. And then
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seemingly all of a sudden, straws were getting banned. And Christine,
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she still can't quite believe it.
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Wow, for the first time. There seems to be at
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least some kind of impact that I'm making on this
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world because usually I'm tucked away in the jungle and
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go about my daily job. And I might influence some
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people that visit our projects, but I never felt I
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had such an impact as in that moment.
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It's estimated that there are 7.5 million straws on U.S. beaches.
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And Christine is excited that we're finally doing something about it.
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But as many straws as there are out there, Christine
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knows the problem is much, much bigger.
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So this is the thing that I'm getting worried that
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straws are taken out of context and presented as the
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holy grail that will solve all of our plastic issues.
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They are not.
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They are definitely not. So the straws are just a
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poster child for a bigger issue, and that is the
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issue of plastics in general.
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According to a paper published in Science a few years ago,
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several million metric tons of plastic waste enter our oceans
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every year. And straws make up a tiny fraction of that.
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Plastic bags, plastic packaging, plastic toys, plastic bottles, they're all
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found out there floating in the ocean, getting in turtles'
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noses and causing problems for other marine life. So our
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next question is this. How is it getting there? Because
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when you're talking about millions of metric tons of plastic,
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we obviously can't chalk this up to a couple of
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drunk idiots losing straws off their pina coladas on a
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booze cruise. But seriously, how does all this plastic get
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from our homes and our offices into the ocean?
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You're welcome.
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Thank you. This is your place.
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This is my place.
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We go up these treacherous stairs.
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To find out, we spoke to Kerry Roble, who researches
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plastics at the Hudson River Estuary Park in New York.
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And Kerry is an expert on how plastics move from
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our homes to our waterways. And in her work, she's
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seen all sorts of plastics in the Hudson River. Plastic bottles, tampons, which, yeah,
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can have some plastic in them, and other creepier things.
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Oh, I mean, we just find the weirdest toys often.
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You know, severed doll heads and one eye, like, gone.
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Kerry tells us that we don't really recycle that much plastic. Yeah,
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according to the EPA, less than 10% of all plastic
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in the U.S. gets recycled. Less than 10%. A lot
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of plastics aren't recyclable. It's frightening, yeah. So what's happening
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to the rest of it? Well, let's start with the U.S.
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Most of our plastic goes into landfill, but some of
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it does get into the ocean. And one of the
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main reasons for this is that we don't always get
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rid of our trash properly.
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So let's say you flush something down your toilet or
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you even, you know, I just finished this bag of
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chips and you're in the middle of Manhattan and you
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throw it onto the street. Well, when it rains, it's
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going to go into our sewers. And then our sewers
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get overwhelmed by these rain events. Our wastewater treatment plants
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max out. And so therefore, that water from our homes
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and from the streets goes into our rivers. It's not
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filtered during these rain events. And that's the big contributor
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of the plastic debris we're finding.
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So littering and overflowing sewers, those are two of the
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biggest ways that plastics from the US can get into
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the ocean. But when you look globally, the US is
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far from the biggest offender here. The real problem actually
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comes from countries that don't have regular and consistent trash collection.
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A recent paper estimated that two-thirds of the plastic trash
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entering the ocean every year comes from rivers in Asia.
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When people don't have a good place to put their trash,
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it's more likely to end up in the streets or
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in makeshift landfills, where it can then flow into rivers
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and streams that then feed into the ocean. The fishing
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industry dumping nets into the ocean is another big source
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of plastics. OK, so once that plastic is in the ocean,
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what then?
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The currents are going to take it and it's going
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to move out into the ocean and likely gets stuck
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in some type of current system where it can escape.
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And that's what creates those giant patches of plastic garbage
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floating in the ocean, when trash gets trapped in these
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current systems. You may have heard of the Great Pacific
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Garbage Patch, which is like this soupy collection of trash
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that stretches out to roughly twice the size of Texas. Yeah,
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it's huge. and it's only getting bigger. A lot of
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the plastic in the ocean is also sinking to the
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bottom of the seabed, where only the most daring scientists tread.
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After the break, we're following those scientists to the ends
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of the Earth to find out what happens to plastic
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once it gets there.
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There is nowhere that has escaped. There is nowhere pristine.
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That's coming up. Welcome back. So we've been talking about
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the very unfortunate magical school bus journey that millions of
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tonnes of plastic take from our homes into the ocean
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each year. Now we're going to look at what happens
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to that plastic once it's floating in the ocean. Because
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all those doll's heads and straws, they don't just float
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there forever. They do eventually break down. And when they do...
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They break into these teeny tiny pieces, some that are
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so small you can't even see them with the naked eye.
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They're called microplastics. And scientists have only recently started to
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study these tiny bits of plastics. And two years ago,
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they made a breakthrough. Thanks to a team headed up
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by this guy.
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You know, we are putting out tons of plastic, right,
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per year.
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John Weinstein is a professor at the Citadel in South Carolina.
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And a few years ago, he and his graduate student
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wanted to know how quickly microplastics were created. So they
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took strips of different types of plastic and let them
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sit in the waters of South Carolina. They tested a
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bunch of plastics, including polyethylene, which makes up plastic bags.
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We looked at polypropylene, which makes up straws in a
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variety of different containers. And we also looked at polystyrene,
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which is more commonly known as styrofoam.
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John was thinking he wouldn't see microplastics for a long,
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long time.
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I thought it takes 50 years for the plastic to disintegrate.
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But just eight weeks after they started this experiment, John's
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student came to him with some big news. Microplastics were
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already coming off the strips.
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To have her come in my office just really several
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weeks after we started that study to say that the
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plastics were producing microplastics really was just, to me, absolutely shocking.
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That's amazing. How is that happening? How is it breaking
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down so quickly?
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That's all driven by the UV radiation coming from the sun.
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We'd known that when the sun beats down on plastics,
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it can weaken them, causing them to crack into chunks.
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But what John was seeing was that the sun also
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breaks down plastic in this other way, by breaking the
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chemical bonds in the plastic layer by layer. John walked
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us through how it works using this great analogy, a cookie.
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It's not like breaking a cookie in two and having
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some crumbs. But it's like taking that cookie and taking
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a razor and shaving microscopic layer by microscopic layer off
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the surface of the cookie.
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Why would anyone do that to a cookie? But anyway,
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other research is now finding the same thing, that microplastics
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can start appearing in just two months. And the fact
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that microplastics are appearing faster than people thought has huge
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implications that we're just starting to understand. It means that
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plastic can spread out faster and infiltrate new places, even
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places that we thought were nearly impossible to reach. And
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perhaps no one knows this better than David Barnes.
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So I must admit, my life has been a whole
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series of remote places.
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David is a researcher at the British Antarctic Survey, and
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one of his most recent trips was to a remote
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part of the Western Antarctic Peninsula. He's one of the
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first people on Earth to go here because the glaciers
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have melted enough, thanks partly to climate change, that he
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can now get to spots that have just emerged.
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The impression that you get when you sail around the
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corner into the mouth of one of these fjords is
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huge mountains towering up above you, vast glaciers that are
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sort of The ice sheet is flowing down the sides
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of these mountains and you really do feel like if
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anywhere is pristine in the world, it's these places. They're
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sort of the newest habitats on Earth.
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And David is here to look for microplastics, to see
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if they can be found this far from civilisation. Now,
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because you often can't see microplastics and they can sink
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to the bottom of the ocean floor, to reach all
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the way down, David and his team use this very
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cool scooper tool.
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Oh, it's like a giant octopus, a giant metal octopus
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that sits on the side of the ship and it
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travels through the water column and lands on the seabed
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and thrusts down 12 see-through tubes. And then we lift
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it all the way to the boat. I should say
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ship there, the captain would likely say boat.
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So they have all these tubes filled with mud and water,
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which they analyse for microplastics.
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We've probably all gone for a cup of tea while
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it comes up. And then as soon as it arrives
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on the surface, it's like a swarm of ants, the
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scientists pouring over it.
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Yeah.
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So what did you find?
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So that's ongoing work.
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Don't you dare say that's ongoing, David. Ongoing work is
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the science equivalent of you'll just have to wait a
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year to find out if John Snow really died. Suffice
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to say, it's very frustrating.
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So I can't say too much. Only that we know
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that we've got some plastics in the water column.
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So in the water samples, you can see microplastics.
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How scary and sad is that? There is nowhere that
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has escaped. Plastic everywhere. can go from anywhere to anywhere
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and is. And there is nowhere pristine. We're going into
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environments that have only just been created. And even in
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those environments, there could already be plastic.
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And once microplastics find their way into all these nooks
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and crannies all over the world, I mean, it's hard
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to believe we could do anything about it. And so
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do you think realistically we'll ever get rid of all
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the plastic in the ocean?
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No, I don't. I really don't. I think that would
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be near impossible because all the stuff that's reached the
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seabed is there for good. I think much of the
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microplastic is there for good.
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So this takes us to our final questions. If microplastics
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are truly everywhere and they're here to stay, then what?
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What does all this mean for us and for the fish? Well,
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here's where things get tough, because we don't know what
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this means. The research here is so new that we
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really don't have concrete answers. Here's what we do know, though.
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We do know that microplastics are getting into fish and
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then we are eating some of those fish. We also
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know that microplastics can attract chemicals, things like pesticides, which
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have found their way into waterways. This has been shown
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in lab studies. But the big questions are, what do
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those chemicals and microplastics do once they're in fish bodies
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or in our bodies?
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Many of the questions you're asking, we just, we really
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don't know the answers. It's really hard to know quite
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how serious a problem it is.
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Some studies suggest that microplastics are harmful for animals in
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the ocean. But then other studies are showing that for
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some fish, they seem to be benign. And this is
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true for studies on humans ingesting microplastics as well. The
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research is just really inconclusive, which is very frustrating. But still,
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none of the scientists I spoke to said, it's fine,
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we don't have to worry about this. They were either
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very worried or they said, it's not looking good. David
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sat on the very worried end of the spectrum.
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I think it's scary and we should be scared. It's
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really that the problem is growing faster than our knowledge.
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So it's sort of playing catch up, but we're sort
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of chasing this snowball that's getting bigger and it's kind
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of getting further away from us.
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So when it comes to plastics, how do they stack up? One,
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how big of a problem are plastic straws in the ocean?
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While there are millions of straws on our coastline, when
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we look at all the plastics in the ocean, straws
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are a tiny piece of the puzzle. Two, how much
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other plastic is actually out there? Millions of metric tonnes
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of plastic enter our oceans every year. Three, what happens
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to them once they're in the ocean? Well, they break
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down into tiny, tiny pieces called microplastics that are forming
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much faster than we thought in weeks, not years. And four,
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is it going to make marine life and us sick? Well,
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there are lots of fears out there, particularly that the
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chemicals attached to microplastics can harm us. But really, it's
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too early to say. And it could take years, decades,
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before we know if microplastics are a big problem. And
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by then, there will probably be so, so many more
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of these teeny tiny bits of plastic out there. And
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this is why some scientists, like Christine Figener, who made
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the turtle video, reckon that if we can reduce at
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least some of that plastic, then that's a good idea.
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Which brings us back to the little old... sorry, just
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needed something to drink. It brings us back to all
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this talk of a ban on straws.
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I mean, even if straws are just a small percentage
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of the plastics, I think it's still part of the plastics, right?
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It's definitely one object less that is going to cause
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harm in one way or another. And I think if
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you start with plastic straws and Once the awareness is there,
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I think you will also maybe think about other objects
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that you can eliminate. So I think it would be huge.
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And I honestly hope that, I don't know, if we're
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ever going to talk again after five years, that we
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might say, hey, look, we don't, plastic straws are not
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a thing anymore.
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The power is yours.
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She said five years, right? That's science versus plastics. For
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this episode, we spoke to about 15 researchers and our
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script has 73 citations. They're all linked in the script,
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which you can get to from the show notes if
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you want to read more. This episode was produced by me,
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Wendy Zuckerman, along with Rose Rimler, Meryl Horne and Odelia Rubin.
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Our senior producer is Caitlin Sorey. We're edited by Caitlin
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Kenney and Blythe Shirell. Fact-checking by Michelle Harris, Meryl Horne
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and Rose Rimler. Mix and sound design by Emma Munger.
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Music written by Emma Munger and Bobby Lord. A huge
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thanks to all the researchers I got in touch with
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for this episode, including Dr Chris Wilcox, Dr Denise Hardesty,
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Professor Anthony Andrade, Dr Carolyn Foley, Dr Tracy Mincer and
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Dr Laurent Lebertin. Thank you also to the Zuckerman family
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and Joseph Lavelle-Wilson. Next week, we're tackling essential oils to
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find out if they could be eaten. powerful medicine, or
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if they're a bunch of Insta crap. There's a lot
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of science. I'm Wendy Zuckerman. Back to you next time.
