The evolution of PPE- how pandemic waste is damaging oceans and the animals who live there.
The deep waters beneath finn swimmer Henry O’Donnell contain many unknowns. Yet since starting his epic 1200 km swim around Ireland, he has encountered man made objects buoyantly floating on the choppy surface of the seas around Ireland.
“I found surgical masks a good few kilometres from the shore, which I didn’t find before the pandemic,” O’Donnell says. “I collect and dispose of them on land along with other bits of rubbish I see floating around our waters. They could be left on the beach or come from further afield. It’s difficult to know as they stay fully intact.”
Aiming to become the first person to circumnavigate Ireland using finns, O’Donnell, who set off from Donegal in September 2020 has reached Kerry via Waterford, despite setbacks as a result of Covid-19 restrictions. He says, swimming up to 20km per day along our coast and docking in towns and villages along the way, makes him privy to environmental issues on our epic coastline.
“From coastal erosion to pollutants, plastics and other waste, I’m at the frontier. There’s a lot I can see, like litter, but a lot I don’t, like microplastics and nanoparticles inside the sea animals.”
Henry O’Donnell is circumnavigating Ireland, and finding PPE along the way. (Barbara McCarthy).
O’Donnell was not the first to encounter mask waste off Ireland’s coast. In June, 2021, a photo was shared of a puffin on a beach in Ireland, entangled in a facemask. The image of the bird with no description of the beach, elicited a plea from the Irish Wildlife Trust to the public asking to “dispose of masks carefully”. “Someone’s thoughtlessness has led to a sad end for a puffin,” an Instagram post stated.
In March 2021, a swan in Bray was photographed in a tangle with a facemask. The swan had to be rescued by Wildlife Ireland services, who warned that people should dispose of their PPE properly.
I took a trip to Shelley Banks in Ringsend to find PPE. It didn’t take long. En route, I saw masks hanging in the riverbank of the Dodder. If not picked up, they will make their way to the Irish Sea. I found four masks scattered across the footpath to the beach and two on the beach, soon to be usurped by the strong currents. No animals were harmed, but an unusually high quota of rats amongst the rocks may have gotten caught up in the mask before it was swept up.
A 2021 report by Irish Business Against Litter found nearly 30 percent increase in PPE litter on last year. “If it doesn’t end up in the bin, it will end up in the sea”, Conor Horgan, a spokesperson for Irish Businesses Against Litter said.
“We conduct surveys with An Taisce every four months and have seen an increase in PPE waste in our most recent survey, which is highly problematic. The need for PPE has not abated – unfortunately we’re still using disposable masks, we’re still dropping them at an alarming rate and they are still not being picked up”. Horgan has partnered with a telematix company to track waste in 2022 in order to see where it ends up. “Luckily if you put it in your waste bin, it won’t end up wrapped around an animal at sea, as it gets incinerated or disposed off, which also generates emissions and waste, but if you drop it, and it doesn’t get picked up, it be blown to sea and remain there for a long time.” Once at sea, items could form patches with other debris and accumulate towards the Arctic Circle, where it will sink to the seabed, causing a circumpolar plastic accumulation zone.
Shelly Banks strand, Dublin, December 2021 (Barbara McCarthy)
In August 2020, a team of volunteers from the ‘Plaster Spotter’ canal clean up in Leiden in the Netherlands encountered a fish entrapped in a latex glove. “The juvenile perch had swum in the thumb of the glove, couldn’t get out and died became ‘an icon’ of the animal victims of our PPE and was featured by The Guardian, National Geographic and CNN. “The material which protects us – is a threat to the animals around us,” biologists and project leaders Auke Florian Hiemstra and Liselotte Rambonnet say. “We’ve since encountered coot nests with many face masks”.
The team, who organise clean-ups each week, and study their findings found the number of face masks is dependent on how local governments implement their use. “At the start of the pandemic, this was considered special, nowadays it would be difficult to find a coot nest in the canals of Amsterdam without a face mask”, Rambonnet says. In response to PPE litter, the pair created www.covidlitter.com, where citizens can report Covid litter. The Dutch duo believe it absolutely necessary that policymakers and manufacturers start to take into account the risks of these cheap single-use plastic products ending up in the environment and harming wildlife and maybe even ourselves as the face masks will break down into smaller plastic particles.
Rambonnet explained; “Even if we all would stop using face masks today, we are afraid we will find them back for hundreds of years. When we all forgot about COVID, animals will still get entangled in the face masks we litter today. Also, the facemasks break down into micro-and eventually nano plastics which have unforeseeable effects on animals and possibly humans”.
“We recommend that alternatives like reusable face masks be used as these are less likely to end up in the environment. Facemasks used to cost 10 euros; however, soon big boxes were sold with hundreds of face masks for just a few euros. If items are worthless, they will be treated as thus.”
A portrait of Liselotte Rambonnet (R) and Auke-Florian Hiemstra (L) in Leiden, the Netherlands, 20 Februari 2021. CREDIT ALEXANDER SCHIPPERS
PPE waste is not just an Irish-Dutch issue. An EEA briefing in June 2021 reported 170,000 additional tonnes, or around .75 face masks per person per day were imported in the first half year of the pandemic, resulting in additional greenhouse gas emissions and other pollution.
The briefing; ‘Impacts of COVID-19 on single-use plastic in Europe’s environment’ estimated that the pandemic generates up to 7,200 tonnes of medical waste each day, with disposable masks and other waste having ‘considerable effects on the use of single-use plastic products.’ The resulting global warming potential for the manufacturing of single-use face masks alone is about 21.9 tonnes CO2eq per tonne face masks, with the lion’s share of production taking place in China, the briefing found.
The UN Environment Programme (UNEP) warned environmentally harmful single-use plastics need to be managed soundly, otherwise uncontrolled dumping could result. Potential consequences include public health risks from infected used masks, while “the open burning or uncontrolled incineration of masks, can lead to the release of toxins in the environment, and to secondary transmission of diseases to humans”.
Secondary fears on health and environment have seen UNEP urge governments to treat the management of waste, including medical and hazardous waste, as “an essential public service”, with ‘the safe handling and final disposal of waste, being a vital element in an effective emergency response.’
Since the start of the pandemic until November 2021, around 8.4 million tonnes of pandemic waste has been generated globally, with 3 million face masks being disposed of every minute along with other PPE single use materials, according to a recent report by Nanjing University. Around 25,900 tonnes of waste has ended up in the ocean, the report; “Plastic waste release caused by COVID-19 and its fate in the global ocean” found.
“The Covid-19 pandemic has led to an increased demand for single-use plastics that intensifies pressure on an already out-of-control global plastic waste problem,” authors Yiming Peng and Peipei Wu from Nanjing University, say.
The team found that plastic waste from developing countries, which don’t get disposed of by waste management companies, will cause a wider global issue. “The released plastics can be transported over long distances in the ocean, encounter marine wildlife, and potentially lead to injury or even death,” they added. “The study highlights a need for better systems for collecting, treatment and disposing of medical plastic waste in developing countries, to keep it out of rivers, and an overall need to limit the use of single-use plastics and increase the use of sustainable alternatives, where possible”.
The Chinese team developed a model to predict how much of this waste would end up in the ocean and where it would end up over time. Within three years, the majority of the PPE debris will shift from the surface to the ocean floor, while around 70 percent will end up on beaches by year’s end. “These findings highlight the hotspot rivers and watersheds that require special attention in plastic waste management.”
Beyond physical damage, the masks also release potentially dangerous pollutants according to researchers from Swansea University, Wales. Scientists found ‘significant’ levels of copper and antimony being released from sample studies – all of which can lead to serious health problems in people and animals.
A study, supported by the Institute for Innovative Materials, Processing and Numerical Technologies, and the SPECIFIC Innovation & Knowledge Centre found there to be a concerning amount of evidence that suggests DPFs waste can potentially have a substantial environmental impact by ‘releasing pollutants simply by exposing them to water.’ “DPFs release small physical pollutants such as micro and nano size particles; mainly consistent with plastic fibres and silicate grains, which are well documented to have adverse effects on the en- vironment and public health”, project lead Dr Sarper Sarp of Swansea University College of Engineering says. “We urgently need more research and regulation on mask production, so we can reduce any risks to the environment and human health”, he added.
Micro/nano particles and heavy metals were released into the water during all tests. Repeated exposure, they said, could be hazardous as the substances found have been known to lead to cell death, genotoxicity and cancer formation. “When users fail to dispose of masks appropriately, these masks made from micro-sized plastic fibres may release a substantial amount of micro-sized plastics into waterways with potentially catastrophic results for ecosystems. And because it takes an estimated 450 years for face masks to degrade, it’s a problem that could stick around for generations”.
What happens in countries outside of Ireland, we can’t control, but in Ireland, if you dispose of your mask in the household waste, then it will be dealt with, Michael John O’ Mahony, director of environmental education at An Taisce says. “If you dispose of them in the environment, they will stay there. In towns and cities, it is more likely to be picked up, where the PPE is burnt or ends up in landfill. This is not an ideal solution either as it isn’t recyclable as yet.”
“Currently there is no framework around the disposal of masks outside of household and business waste collection. For local authorities to have a specific dump, would mean they would have to be categorised as biological waste, because of potential infection control problems.” For now, the emphasis is on personal responsibility. We see masks daily lying around, but they are only around one percent of what is actually used.”
Liam Brosnan from the environment office in Kerry County Council says if you see a mask along the coast, it fell out of someone’s pocket, rather than made its way here from elsewhere. “People are informed via mywaste.ie to dispose of the masks in the household bin. It gets picked up by private operators and they dispose of it, but they don’t recycle it. You can’t say Kerry’s beaches are awash with it, but people have complained about mask litter locally. We encourage people to use recyclable masks. It’s that simple.”
A sustainable alternative to local and international problems facing PPE waste has yet to be found, so O’Mahony. “Can you make masks that are environmentally friendly on such a large scale? When we first needed them in March 2020, there was no time to create a sustainable alternative, as they were in chronically short supply. The production of sustainable masks could be hampered by cost, potential parasitic waste, life cycle analyses and C02 emissions, lack of resources and so on,” he says.
“We’re going to be living with Covid-19 for a while it seems. At this stage in the pandemic, scientists should be working on a more recyclable mask that is cheap and can be manufactured using the least amount of CO2- if that is possible”.
“It’s a puzzle,” O’Mahony adds. “There are many complexities at stake here. On the one hand, you have a public health emergency and you need to manage that first and foremost, and on the other, you have a huge litter problem. It’s not a case of a good or bad outcome, when it comes to PPE, it’s a case of “The least bad, rather than the worst”.
>>>ENDS>>>>
(article from November 2021)
