Understanding the microplastics threat

The history of synthetic plastics can be traced back to the middle of the 19th century. As with any invention, the discovery of synthetic plastics started as a quest to find a solution to some problems — in this case, the reduced availability of tortoise shells, and elephant ivory, used predominantly for making combs, billiard balls, piano keys, etc, in the 19th century.

Demand for piano keys, billiard balls, and combs was going up in Europe even while getting hold of elephant tusks and tortoise shells was becoming more difficult as their population dwindled.
 

A chemist named Alexander Parkes is credited with having created the first real synthetic plastic — Parkesine — in 1862, which quickly became a cheap substitute for tortoise shells and ivory in some products.
 

Belgian chemist Leo Baekeland created Bakelite, the first all-purpose fully synthetic plastic in 1907. After that, development was rapid as big corporations in the US and the UK such as BASF, Du Pont, Imperial Chemical Industries, and Dow Chemicals poured money into research, product development, and marketing. World War II would see plastics coming into their own — being used in everything from parachutes to radar cabling to wheels of vehicles and aircraft. Post WW II, the civilian use of plastics would explode. Nylon, Rayon, Polystyrene, PET, and Teflon would find uses in everything from clothing to food packaging.
 

Plastic usage would boom for decades before scientists, policymakers, and citizens would wake up to the unpleasant fact that what made plastics so useful was also the reason they were polluting the earth — plastics were indestructible. They did not decompose, disintegrate, or degrade for decades or centuries. Discarded plastics simply accumulate in landfills and oceans, becoming an environmental disaster.
 

Knowing there is a problem and finding a solution for it are two different things. Though the dangers that discarded plastics pose for Earth are now well established, no satisfactory solution has been found. The quest for solutions has simply not received the kind of support or resources it should have. There are more interesting areas to research, even in biochemistry and microbiology. From time to time, announcements of bacteria that consume and break down plastics have been made but few have led to large-scale plants. Other methods such as photo-oxidation have also not been able to scale up.
 

Policies, meanwhile, have typically focused on reducing the use of plastics — though they have not been very successful in most countries, given that alternatives to synthetic plastics are not easily available or cheap.
 

Over the past two decades, a fresh worry has cropped up — the ubiquity of micro and nano-plastics. While plastics take decades to degrade, they do break into pieces and release tiny plastic pieces, often too small to detect with the naked eye.

Over the past decade, researchers have discovered to their horror that micro and nanoplastics are everywhere — in the soil, in oceans and rivers, in marine and land lifeforms, and, increasingly, in human organs, from the blood vessels to the respiratory system, the liver and even the placenta.
 

How dangerous are microplastics to humans? Research on this is only beginning to take place now. Initial studies point to long-term dangers but their precise nature and the quantification will take time to establish. There is some evidence that plastics can give rise to inflammation in the body — with all the attendant issues that come with it. There is conjecture that chemicals of nanoplastics in various body organs would lead to all sorts of problems, including cancer. Other studies have shown that micro and nanoplastics in the circulatory system could lead to an increase in cardiovascular risk.
 

However, simply not enough research has taken place yet to link micro and nanoplastics to diseases and life expectancy. But then, these take a long time to establish — for example, we did not understand the dangers of air pollution to the human body till fairly recently.
 

A lot more research funding and studies are needed in this area. Particularly the dangers they pose to babies and small children or even pregnant women. Also to those who are suffering from multiple morbidities.

Other studies are needed to figure out how to deal with the diseases and inflammation that microplastics may cause our bodies. More studies are needed on their effect on ocean and riverine life forms as well as plants and animals on land.

Unfortunately, while a few countries are taking note — Canada has allocated a couple of million dollars, for example — it is an area that is neither attracting huge private nor public funding. The reason is simple enough. Other research areas are promising better returns on investment for the private sector. Business opportunities from artificial intelligence or new battery chemistries are easier to discern and therefore get funding of billions of dollars. Studying the dangers of microplastics to humans does not seem to promise great new business opportunities.
 

Indeed, unless some Silicon Valley billionaire decides that microplastics can reduce his life expectancy, it is unlikely that this will attract big private money for research. As far as policymakers are concerned, there are enough problems of global warming and digital technologies to deal with before they get around to this long-term danger. And that is a pity — because until things reach a boiling point, no one wants to search for solutions.

The writer is former editor of Business Today and Businessworld, and founder of Prosaic view, an editorial consultancy