'Plastic waste in ocean can harm environment'

Last Updated: Thursday, April 26, 2012, 21:35

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Tags: Plastic waste in ocean, plastic debris, environment, Pacific Ocean

`Plastic waste in ocean can harm environment`

Washington: Tonnes of plastic waste that are shoved into the ocean could impact the environment, says a case study.

Working on a research sailboat gliding over the Pacific Ocean, oceanographer Giora Proskurowski noticed the water littered with confetti-size pieces of plastic debris, until the moment the wind picked up and most of the particles disappeared.

After taking samples of water at a depth of 16 feet, Proskurowski, researcher at the University of Washington, discovered that wind was pushing the lightweight plastic particles below the surface.

That meant that decades of research into how much plastic litters the ocean, conducted by skimming only the surface, may in some cases vastly underestimate the true quantity of plastic debris in the oceans, Proskurowski was quoted as saying in the journal Geophysical Research Letters.

Plastic waste in the oceans is a concern because of the impact it might have on the environment. For instance, when fish ingest the plastics, it may degrade their liver functions, said a university statement.

Besides, the plastic particles make nice homes for bacteria and algae, which are then transported along with the particles into different regions of the ocean where they may be invasive and cause problems.

Proskurowski and study co-author Tobias Kukulka, University of Delaware, said that data collected from just the surface of the water commonly underestimates the total amount of plastic in the water by an average factor of 2.5. In high winds, the volume of plastic could be underestimated by a factor of 27.

Proskurowski gathered data on a 2010 North Atlantic expedition, where he and his team collected samples at the surface, plus an additional three or four depths down as far as 100 feet. "Almost every tow we did contained plastic, regardless of the depth," he said.

By combining the data with wind measurements, Proskurowski and his co-authors developed a simplified math model that could potentially be used to match historical weather data, collected by satellite, with previous surface sampling to more accurately estimate the amount of plastic in the oceans.

Descriptions of the so-called great Pacific garbage patch in news reports may have led many people to imagine a giant, dense island of garbage while in fact the patch is made up of widely dispersed, millimeter-size pieces of debris, Proskurowski said.

IANS

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First Published: Thursday, April 26, 2012, 16:48

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Shikha - India
We will never succeed in collecting all the plastic waste and some may remain to disfigure the landscape. Where this goes uncollected it can accumulate in the environment, polluting the land and the oceans for many decades, and perhaps for hundreds of years. We should replace our old fashioned plastic by Oxo-biodegradable plastic as Oxo-biodegradable plastic degrades in open in the same way as a leaf..UAE has already banned plastic products except oxo-biodegradable plastics( February, 2012). Oxo-biodegradable plastics are those which biodegrades in the presence of oxygen in a timescale which can be approximately determined by the chemical formulations which is added to normal plastic at the extrusion stage. The chemical formulation which can be added to normal plastic is symphony`s d2w technology. Symphony is a British public company, listed on the London Stock Exchange. Also, because Oxo-biodegradable plastics can be manufactured by local factories therefore there will be no loss of jobs. The technology is not expensive at all. It is unfair to burden our children and grandchildren with this problem as there is something we can and should now be doing about it.

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Becca Ando - Portland
Wouldn`t it be nice is a prosperous company cleaned the plastic out ot that area?

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Mike - Philadelphia
I like how it says ``could be impacting the environment``. This person was probably paid a decent amount of money, when I had the same conclusion that it ``could be`` impacting the ocean. Common sense told me that!! Hopefully they figure out a way to keep that plastic from reaching the ocean(s) though.