Dear Subscriber,
I’ve been bringing you information on plastics for years. Now, we have a report that the situation is dire. The link below will take you to a report on a recycling plant where the operators cooperated on condition of anonymity. (Thank you operators!)
I do encourage you to read it. Not too long. The study looked at microplastic waste coming out of the facility.
“Their microplastics tally was astronomical. Even with filtering, they calculate that the total discharge from the different washes could produce up to 75 billion particles per cubic meter of wastewater.” This is a guarantee to affect all life in the ocean to all life on land. (At least animal life).
One single recycling facility could emit as much as 3-6.5 million pounds of MICRO plastics annually. Folks, we are talking about MICRO plastics. The kinds of particles that may be as toxic as asbestos, and can get small enough to enter cells. The recycling process itself (washing, shredding, etc.) created more and more microplastics. More washing, more microplastics.
The havoc this will wreak on our world cannot be imagined. And the problem gets worse every day, while brain dead politicians borrow and spend away our children’s future and carry us into foreign wars, and divide us over moot issues like transgenders competing in women’s sports. (“Nero fiddled while Rome burned.”)
This is a crisis and, as the article says, is not sustainable. We need to begin curbing plastics NOW, just as we need to curb galactic deficit spending, if we are to survive into the near-term future. Asbestos can cause cancer after a single inhalation exposure, and 20 or more years later. We are inhaling and ingesting non-biodegradable particles (plastics) 24/7, even wearing them. I am 73. I shudder for my grandchildren.
Do you think we will see action timely? Not on your life. It won’t happen until those who buy politicians, and the politicians themselves and/or their families wind up with cancer or debilitating disease. But by then the canary’s song will have ended, and it will be too late for all.
To Survival of Life on this Planet,
Robert Jay Rowen, MD
https://arstechnica.com/science/2023/05/yet-another-problem-with-recycling-it-spews-microplastics/?comments=1&comments-page=1
Thank you for sharing this, it’s horrifying
The take away is that not recycling plastics is better than recycling and adding to the volume of micro plastics. So what I will do is no longer recycle plastics.