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How to fight microplastic pollution with magnets
- Jun8 5y agoThe solution proposed uses the fact that oil attracts plastics in water: vegetable oil is mixed with iron oxide to create a ferroliquid, which then attracts plastics and is easy to remove using magnets. Why does oil attract plastics, though? Because both are non polar. Here's a good r/askscience answer: https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/meqh0/why_is_oilgrease_more_difficult_to_wash_from/ https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/meqh0/why_is_oi...
- chana_masala 5y agoI wonder then what the other effects of adding oil to the ocean would be. Is there a way to do it that still retains the overall positive effect of removing the plastics?
- lend000 5y agoIt's an innovative approach, albeit only a partial solution. Unfortunately, not all plastics are polar [0]. And the micro-plastic pollution I see most and feel like I ingest the most of is dust from my own clothing (primarily polyester based, which is somewhat polar). Everyone always says dust is just your skin, but I can see the color of clothes I wear frequently on dust and lint that accumulates in the house. I also wonder about how many cell membranes would get stuck in the nonpolar layer and if that would have a meaningful impact on local microbiota/algae compared to the amount of plastic absorbed in the process. [0] http://www.appstate.edu/~clementsjs/journalarticles/zeus_dielectric.pdf http://www.appstate.edu/~clementsjs/journalarticles/zeus_die...
- aqme28 5y agoI heard once from a museum worker that the dust that settles on exhibits is somewhat blue, due to the prevalence of denim jeans.
- saagarjha 5y agoI’ve seen plenty of blue dust in the cracks of my AirPods case when I put them in my jeans, so I’m not surprised.
- vages 5y agoWhen I bought my jeans from H&M, I would sometimes find blue dust on things I kept in my pocket. After switching to a brand that uses higher quality cotton (Nudie Jeans), I have never experienced this. Durable cotton has longer fibres so that they won’t break off as easily as the short fibred varieties. I guess that is the reason why.
- hoseja 5y agoI wish there were (or I knew) a good objective quality metrics for clothing/clothing brands.
- varjag 5y agoPrice correlates greatly with basic material quality, although platoes quite soon after certain threshold.
- TchoBeer 5y agoThis from personal experience, or is there a study on it?
- Swenrekcah 5y agoI wanted to respond but couldn’t find the words. Then I read in the article [0] linked in a sibling comment: “ Now, what's important to note is that the quality and the price of an item are not always related. Some types of items are easier to manufacture and get right than others, which is why it is totally possible to find certain well-made items at affordable shops. At the same time, just because an item is very pricey, that sadly does not always mean that the manufacturer used all of that extra money to up the quality of the garment.” Edit - citing the source [0]: https://anuschkarees.com/blog/2014/05/01/how-to-assess-the-quality-of-garments-a-beginners-guide-part-i/ https://anuschkarees.com/blog/2014/05/01/how-to-assess-the-q...
- skybrian 5y agoIt seems like for dust in the home you'd want to look at the things people might do for allergies, like maybe an air purifier and robot vacuum? (Not to mention dusting.)
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- pibechorro 5y agoYou are correct. The majority of micro plastic pollution to soil and water comes from synthetic clothing. Cotton, wool, linen, hemp.. we have options people!
- rini17 5y agoRight but...how did you extrapolate from indoor lint to all soil and water? What about all the other non-clothing plastic and rubber noone wants to pay for proper recycling or incineration?
- wizzwizz4 5y agoWashing clothes, I would assume.
- hinkley 5y agoWashing clothes sends microplastics to the water treatment plant. Notwithstanding leaky sewer systems (and especially combined stormwater systems), that's a centralized problem that can be solved in one spot. Drying your clothes is a point source problem. Every dryer vent is spewing microplastics into every yard and street. The lint trap only catches the largest fibers.
- hinkley 5y agoPlastics also attract nasty chemicals like aromatic hydrocarbons. To me that's the bigger danger of plastic ingestion. The chemicals intrinsically in the plasting are bad enough, plastic dipped in PCBs or dioxin is horrible. Getting it into the food chain is a disaster.
- nazgul17 5y agoI am astonished every time I read the average plastic intake of an average person. I never noticed even the tiniest amount of plastic in my water or food. Can someone explain how plastics enter my body undetected by me?
- foerbert 5y agoThe answer here is even in the article title. Microplastics. Nobody is talking about chunks of plastic you can see, or feel, directly.
- jiveturkey 5y agoMicroplastics go up to 5mm, by definition. You can definitely see and feel that. And down to 1um! "They" mostly talk about marine life ingestion of microplastics, and both for humans and marine animals I find it very difficult to comprehend what sizes they really mean, given the very large range for the single term "microplastics".
- tiagod 5y agoI would say most of it will be dust in the the air (coming from clothing and other textiles) and car tires.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- ayemiller 5y agoMicroplastics include any fragment of plastic less than 5mm in length, and nanoplastics (less than 100nm) are much smaller than would be visibly noticeable.
- Tildey 5y agoYou don't ever have that moment when you're drinking from a bottle and you realise you've bitten off the neck of the bottle? Microplastics are very small. Most likely to be in another thing you're eating (in an organ of an animal for example) than being visible in a sauce or something.
- beervirus 5y agoIs there any credible evidence about harm caused by microplastics? I’ve seen a lot of stuff about how ubiquitous it is, but very little about its actual effects.
- chana_masala 5y agoYes, as one example: disrupts hormones in many animals - including fish and humans.
- jazzyjackson 5y agojust to back you up with one citation: "Microplastics Cause Endocrine Disruption and Respiratory Damage in Fish" https://www.technologynetworks.com/immunology/news/microplastics-cause-endocrine-disruption-and-respiratory-damage-in-fish-332123 https://www.technologynetworks.com/immunology/news/microplas... Chronic Microfiber Exposure in Adult Japanese Medaka (Oryzias latipes). Lingling Hu, Melissa Chernick, Anna M. Lewis, P. Lee Ferguson and David E. Hinton. PLoS ONE, March 9, 2020. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0229962 https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0229962.
- eurasiantiger 5y agoThere is an entire society devoted to researching this area. https://www.endocrine.org/topics/edc/what-edcs-are https://www.endocrine.org/topics/edc/what-edcs-are
- irjustin 5y agoVery fair question - It's a mixed bag. Too easy to point to studies that point one way or another. One study[0] shows that microplastics can cause irritation which could lead to problems. Any underlying condition, this could make it worse. But it's hard to identify conclusive evidence. You'll find pretty equal amount of studies claiming harm vs no-harm, which makes a lot of the whole thing suspect. Clearly plastics are extremely stable so our bodies breaking them down into the chemical components is basically zero. A lot of the question of microplastics stems around whether or not your body holds onto them long term after ingestion and more importantly if that leads to any significant issues. Personally, I'm still not concerned. It's not nearly as clear as asbestos in terms of health issues. The risk-reward model of plastics makes me believe it's here to stay for a long time. [0] https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-020-64464-9 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-020-64464-9
- eurasiantiger 5y agoHow about we fight it by forcing Big Beverage to fight it.
- Ice_cream_suit 5y agoNext: Adverse effects of the ferroliquid contamination of water ( used to remove microplastics ).
- moring 5y agoAlso: what other, natural particles get filtered out by this method?
- MauranKilom 5y agoBiodegradability of both oil and iron oxide is very different from plastic though.
- hinkley 5y agoAre you starting a pool? Can you put me down for $5 on hypoxia?
- regularfry 5y agoThe article makes a throw-away reference to plastics attracting heavy metals. Does anyone have a feel for whether the same technique would work directly for cleaning up heavy metal contamination, or does it require plastics as a carrier?
- api 5y agoIn 100 years we will probably look like we are “terraforming” Earth with atmospheric processors removing CO2 and ocean water filtration plants removing both dissolved CO2 and plastics. An extraterrestrial visiting might initially wonder if we came from another star. “They seem to be in the final stages of terraforming the third planet and are starting with the fourth.”
- giarc 5y agoNot sure why you are getting downvoted, I think you comment is correct. I think our only way out of this mess is by coming up with technology to reverse our effect on Earth. I've always envisioned a planet where energy is so abundant that we can do things that normally wouldn't make sense, like filter giant volumes of water to remove micro plastics.
- azeirah 5y agoBiotechnology already has some answers! There are plastic eating fungi out there, plastic eating bacteria and plastic eating worms (who have plastic-eating bacteria living in their intestines)
- giarc 5y agoThese have existed forever but I've never seen any commercial scale application of x eating bacteria.
- louisanicola 5y agoThis is scary
- hmm320 5y agoI've been wondering about the plastic retainer I wear in my mouth every night. Could it be releasing microplastics?
- irjustin 5y agoLate reply but hopefully you'll see this. No, not in any normal sense. Plastics are extremely stable. Unless you're grinding your retainer down to <5microns, your retainer isn't a source of microplastics. The pieces we're talking about either need to start small or need to be exposed to some sort of wear system - sun light, waves grinding plastic bottles together that can break down the polymer chain (actually rather hard to do). The sunlight one[0] acts on timescales of years/decades, which is a problem for ocean and dumps because all those plastic bottles, we're starting to pay the price environmentally. But personally, no your retainer is not a source you should be concerned with. [0] https://www.materialstoday.com/polymers-soft-materials/news/sunlight-breaks-down-missing-oceanic-plastic-waste/ https://www.materialstoday.com/polymers-soft-materials/news/...
- PKop 5y agoHere's a video[0] compilation from a worker in an animal feed processing plant where they grind up waste from restaurants and grocery stores, but don't completely remove all the plastic wrapping from the food. So large amounts of plastic gets fed to pigs. Shocking that this is allowed to happen [0] https://youtu.be/Xp0NSIrbu3Y https://youtu.be/Xp0NSIrbu3Y
- hinkley 5y agoIf you live in a town that does city composting, you're going to find a lot of vegetable stickers in your 'finished' compost, and it's small enough that it gets through their sifters, so it will probably go through yours too. Some of those stickers are really hard to get off as well, and more of my compostables end up in the garbage bin than I would like. I really want someone to petition the USDA or FDA or whoever is in charge of this to require that produce be labelled only with biodegradable stickers. I think that would go a long way to answering your concerns as well.