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Air in Louisiana’s ‘Cancer Alley’ likely more toxic than previously thought

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Tuesday, June 11, 2024

The air throughout south-east Louisiana’s “Cancer Alley” is probably being poisoned with a highly carcinogenic gas at levels much higher than previously thought, new research reveals.Using cutting-edge equipment that more accurately checks for the gas, ethylene oxide, which is primarily used in plastic production, researchers found levels over 1,000 times above previous measurements, and about 10 times higher on average than regulators’ modeling.The levels pose a “worrisome” risk to residents and workers in the region, especially children, said Pete DeCarlo, a Johns Hopkins University researcher and senior author on the paper. Residents in the region are majority low-income and African American.“I don’t think there’s any census tract in the area that wasn’t at higher risk for cancer than we would deem acceptable,” DeCarlo said. “We expected to see ethylene oxide in this area. But we didn’t expect the levels that we saw, and they certainly were much, much higher than EPA’s estimated levels.”Ethylene oxide is linked at low levels of exposure to multiple cancers, DNA damage, lung injury and other serious health issues. It’s used in production of other chemicals for plastic or in a fumigation process for sterilizing surgical equipment or food canisters. Though ethylene oxide is emitted from industrial plants around the nation, it’s most widely used in Louisiana because of the high number of chemical facilities.The most common exposure route is inhalation. The EPA found a cancer risk in air samples at 11 parts per trillion, an exceptionally low level compared to many other common air pollutants, like ozone.“This is a really, really, really small amount,” DeCarlo said, which is why getting an accurate reading on the levels is essential, he added.The Environmental Protection Agency collects air samples in and around facilities that emit the gas and takes them to labs for measurement. But the gas quickly changes once in a sampling container and its true volume becomes difficult to measure.Researchers spent a month during winter 2023 repeatedly driving a heavily industrialized route along the Mississippi River between New Orleans and Baton Rouge, collecting air and testing it in real time as they drove past large industrial facilities and nearby residential areas.The equipment detected plumes that were up to seven miles long coming from some facilities, showing that the gas is concentrated enough at that distance to still present a health threat. East Ascension high school in Gonzales, Louisiana is about five miles from one of the identified ethylene oxide hotspots.It’s unclear if the chemicals are being released from stacks or as fugitive emissions that escape through piping or equipment throughout the plants.The EPA in 2018 established lower cancer risk levels for the chemical, DeCarlo said, noting that industry disagrees with the agency’s assessment. It is classified as a hazardous air pollutant, so the government aims to allow zero emissions, but polluters are given permits to emit some of the substance each year.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionUsing an EPA tool that weighs a chemical’s total hazard in the region, researchers found ethylene oxide comprised 68% of the the threat for hazardous air pollutants in “Cancer Alley”.Though the tool paints a broad picture, “the fact that so much of the environmental risk in this area seems to come from a single chemical is remarkable”, the authors wrote in the study.DeCarlo said researchers focused on ethylene oxide because it is so carcinogenic and very little data exists, but he noted it’s only one of countless chemicals that people in the area are exposed to.“The reality is people aren’t just breathing ethylene oxide, they are breathing a whole soup of chemicals,” he said. “When you start to add everything up it becomes a much more problematic picture.”

New research reveals levels for ethylene oxide over 1,000 times above previous measurementsThe air throughout south-east Louisiana’s “Cancer Alley” is probably being poisoned with a highly carcinogenic gas at levels much higher than previously thought, new research reveals.Using cutting-edge equipment that more accurately checks for the gas, ethylene oxide, which is primarily used in plastic production, researchers found levels over 1,000 times above previous measurements, and about 10 times higher on average than regulators’ modeling. Continue reading...

The air throughout south-east Louisiana’s “Cancer Alley” is probably being poisoned with a highly carcinogenic gas at levels much higher than previously thought, new research reveals.

Using cutting-edge equipment that more accurately checks for the gas, ethylene oxide, which is primarily used in plastic production, researchers found levels over 1,000 times above previous measurements, and about 10 times higher on average than regulators’ modeling.

The levels pose a “worrisome” risk to residents and workers in the region, especially children, said Pete DeCarlo, a Johns Hopkins University researcher and senior author on the paper. Residents in the region are majority low-income and African American.

“I don’t think there’s any census tract in the area that wasn’t at higher risk for cancer than we would deem acceptable,” DeCarlo said. “We expected to see ethylene oxide in this area. But we didn’t expect the levels that we saw, and they certainly were much, much higher than EPA’s estimated levels.”

Ethylene oxide is linked at low levels of exposure to multiple cancers, DNA damage, lung injury and other serious health issues. It’s used in production of other chemicals for plastic or in a fumigation process for sterilizing surgical equipment or food canisters. Though ethylene oxide is emitted from industrial plants around the nation, it’s most widely used in Louisiana because of the high number of chemical facilities.

The most common exposure route is inhalation. The EPA found a cancer risk in air samples at 11 parts per trillion, an exceptionally low level compared to many other common air pollutants, like ozone.

“This is a really, really, really small amount,” DeCarlo said, which is why getting an accurate reading on the levels is essential, he added.

The Environmental Protection Agency collects air samples in and around facilities that emit the gas and takes them to labs for measurement. But the gas quickly changes once in a sampling container and its true volume becomes difficult to measure.

Researchers spent a month during winter 2023 repeatedly driving a heavily industrialized route along the Mississippi River between New Orleans and Baton Rouge, collecting air and testing it in real time as they drove past large industrial facilities and nearby residential areas.

The equipment detected plumes that were up to seven miles long coming from some facilities, showing that the gas is concentrated enough at that distance to still present a health threat. East Ascension high school in Gonzales, Louisiana is about five miles from one of the identified ethylene oxide hotspots.

It’s unclear if the chemicals are being released from stacks or as fugitive emissions that escape through piping or equipment throughout the plants.

The EPA in 2018 established lower cancer risk levels for the chemical, DeCarlo said, noting that industry disagrees with the agency’s assessment. It is classified as a hazardous air pollutant, so the government aims to allow zero emissions, but polluters are given permits to emit some of the substance each year.

skip past newsletter promotion

after newsletter promotion

Using an EPA tool that weighs a chemical’s total hazard in the region, researchers found ethylene oxide comprised 68% of the the threat for hazardous air pollutants in “Cancer Alley”.

Though the tool paints a broad picture, “the fact that so much of the environmental risk in this area seems to come from a single chemical is remarkable”, the authors wrote in the study.

DeCarlo said researchers focused on ethylene oxide because it is so carcinogenic and very little data exists, but he noted it’s only one of countless chemicals that people in the area are exposed to.

“The reality is people aren’t just breathing ethylene oxide, they are breathing a whole soup of chemicals,” he said. “When you start to add everything up it becomes a much more problematic picture.”

Read the full story here.

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The Surprising Link Between Bats Dying and Human Infant Mortality

A new study finds that when bats in U.S. counties were decimated by the deadly white-nose syndrome, human deaths followed closely behind

Healthy little brown bats in Mt. Aeolus cave in Vermont in 2012 Ann Froschauer / USFWS via Flickr under CC BY 2.0 Bats get a bad rap. Often, the flying mammals are associated with vampiric monsters or the threat of rabies. But ecologists have long known that bats play an important role in maintaining balance in ecosystems by eating insects that would otherwise get out of control. This week, a study published in the journal Science finds that the benefits of bats apply to humans, too. We shouldn’t fear the presence of bats, the research suggests, but their absence. “Bats are a fantastic example of a species that we like to keep a distance from, but are really impactful in terms of the role they play in ecosystems,” Eyal Frank, an environmental economist at the University of Chicago and author of the new study, tells the Washington Post’s Dino Grandoni. Frank found that in U.S. counties where bat populations have been decimated by white-nose syndrome, human infant mortality rates rose by about 8 percent. That equates to 1,334 infant deaths between 2006 and 2017 that Frank says are attributable to a loss of bats. The research began when Frank came across information about white-nose syndrome, a disease caused by the fungus Pseudogymnoascus destructans. Introduced from Europe to the New York area around 2006, perhaps through contaminated hiking or caving gear, the fungus has since spread to at least 40 states. When it infects a colony of bats, their population can plummet or even get wiped out entirely. Frank realized that the well-documented spread of the fungus, and the resulting decline in bat populations, was an opportunity to quantify the impact of bats on their ecosystems and human lives. “Reading how this disease is spreading from county to county, decimating bat populations, made my economist senses go, ‘Oh, this is probably the best natural experiment you can have,’” Frank recalls to the New York Times’ Catrin Einhorn. “It’s the closest we’re going to get to just going out there into the wild and randomly manipulating bat population levels to see what happens at a large, meaningful spatial scale.” A little brown bat in Illinois shows visible symptoms of white-nose syndrome in 2013. University of Illinois / Steve Taylor via Flickr under CC BY 2.0 He compared the spread of white-nose syndrome to county-by-county data of infant mortality. The connection was stunning. Winifred Frick, chief scientist at Bat Conservation International who wasn’t involved in the research, tells Science’s Erik Stokstad that when she saw the study’s findings, her “jaw dropped.” Frank suggests the link is due to the positive impacts of bats’ diets. A single bat consumes up to 40 percent of its body weight in insects every night. In agricultural areas, this means that when bats disappear, farmers might use more insecticides on their fields. In counties with outbreaks of white-nose syndrome, farmers used 31 percent more of these toxic chemicals, on average, per the study. Putting more insecticides into the environment seems to be the cause of the increased infant deaths, Frank writes. To make sure his ideas stood up to scrutiny, Frank tells the Guardian’s Rebekah White that he spent a year “kicking the tires” and ruling out other possible causes of infant mortality, like the opioid epidemic, parental unemployment, genetically modified crops and even the weather. Nothing else fit, showing “compelling evidence … that farmers did respond to the decline in insect-eating bats, and that response had an adverse health impact on human infants,” he adds. Paul Ferraro, a sustainability scientist at Johns Hopkins University who was not involved in the research, tells Science that the study proposes a “pretty dramatic claim that’s going to get a lot of attention.” But, he adds, it’s the “most convincing evidence to date” that losses of a wild species can have huge impacts on the economy and human health. Bats, by eating potentially harmful insects, aren’t the only species with contributions to the environment that benefit humans—a phenomenon some scientists call “ecosystem services.” Frank found earlier this year that the loss of vultures in India led to the death of an extra 500,000 people on the subcontinent between 2000 and 2005. In a more positive example, researchers found that the reintroduction of wolves to Wisconsin reduced car crashes involving deer by 24 percent. The loss of such ecosystem services highlights the potential devastating impact of the extinction of species, which has been accelerating in recent years. But, Frank says, unexpected harms can appear even without a total extinction event, when only local ecosystems are diminished. “We often pay a lot of attention to global extinctions, where species completely disappear,” he tells the New York Times. “But we start experiencing loss and damages well before that.” Get the latest stories in your inbox every weekday.

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Exposure to PFAS 'Forever Chemicals' in Pregnancy Could Boost Long-Term Obesity Risk

By Dennis Thompson HealthDay ReporterFRIDAY, Sept. 6, 2024 (HealthDay News) -- PFAS “forever chemicals” could cause pregnant women to experience...

By Dennis Thompson HealthDay ReporterFRIDAY, Sept. 6, 2024 (HealthDay News) -- PFAS “forever chemicals” could cause pregnant women to experience long-term weight gain, increasing their risk of obesity in middle age, a new study warns.These women also carried more body fat at age 50, potentially making them more susceptible to obesity and heart problems later in life, researchers found.“Our study supports the idea that pregnancy may be a sensitive period of PFAS exposure as it may be associated with long-term weight gain and subsequent adverse cardio-metabolic health outcomes in women,” said lead investigator Jordan Burdeau, a graduate research assistant with the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health in Boston.“Our findings may improve understanding of the effects of PFAS on cardio-metabolic health during pregnancy, which in turn may improve early prevention or detection of adverse cardio-metabolic health outcomes in women,” Burdeau added in a journal news release.Per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) can be found in 99% of Americans, according to the Environmental Working Group.There are thousands of different PFAS chemicals, the Environmental Protection Agency says. They can be found in drinking water as well as a wide range of consumer products including paper fast food wrappers, Teflon cookware, stain-resistant furniture and clothing, and cosmetics and personal care products.They are called “forever chemicals” because PFAS doesn’t break down in the environment or in the human body. Instead, levels of the chemicals build up in the body over time.These chemicals are known to disrupt hormones in humans. Studies have previously linked PFAS to decreased fertility in women, developmental effects in children, reduced immune response and increased risk of some cancers, the EPA says.For this study, researchers studied nearly 550 pregnant women in their early 30s. They compared the women’s’ PFAS blood levels during pregnancy with their weight and heart health at age 50.The study’s results jibe with earlier research linking PFAS to higher cholesterol levels and obesity, according to the EPA.“It’s important to try to limit your PFAS exposure as it could reduce your risk of health issues later in life,” Burdeau said.The Environmental Protection Agency has more on PFAS.SOURCE: The Endocrine Society, news release, Sept. 5, 2024Copyright © 2024 HealthDay. All rights reserved.

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New filtration material could remove long-lasting chemicals from water

Membranes based on natural silk and cellulose can remove many contaminants, including “forever chemicals” and heavy metals.

Water contamination by the chemicals used in today’s technology is a rapidly growing problem globally. A recent study by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control found that 98 percent of people tested had detectable levels of PFAS, a family of particularly long-lasting compounds also known as “forever chemicals,” in their bloodstream.A new filtration material developed by researchers at MIT might provide a nature-based solution to this stubborn contamination issue. The material, based on natural silk and cellulose, can remove a wide variety of these persistent chemicals as well as heavy metals. And, its antimicrobial properties can help keep the filters from fouling.The findings are described in the journal ACS Nano, in a paper by MIT postdoc Yilin Zhang, professor of civil and environmental engineering Benedetto Marelli, and four others from MIT.PFAS chemicals are present in a wide range of products, including cosmetics, food packaging, water-resistant clothing, firefighting foams, and antistick coating for cookware. A recent study identified 57,000 sites contaminated by these chemicals in the U.S. alone. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has estimated that PFAS remediation will cost $1.5 billion per year, in order to meet new regulations that call for limiting the compound to less than 7 parts per trillion in drinking water.Contamination by PFAS and similar compounds “is actually a very big deal, and current solutions may only partially resolve this problem very efficiently or economically,” Zhang says. “That’s why we came up with this protein and cellulose-based, fully natural solution,” he says.“We came to the project by chance,” Marelli notes. The initial technology that made the filtration material possible was developed by his group for a completely unrelated purpose — as a way to make a labelling system to counter the spread of counterfeit seeds, which are often of inferior quality. His team devised a way of processing silk proteins into uniform nanoscale crystals, or “nanofibrils,” through an environmentally benign, water-based drop-casting method at room temperature.Zhang suggested that their new nanofibrillar material might be effective at filtering contaminants, but initial attempts with the silk nanofibrils alone didn’t work. The team decided to try adding another material: cellulose, which is abundantly available and can be obtained from agricultural wood pulp waste. The researchers used a self-assembly method in which the silk fibroin protein is suspended in water and then templated into nanofibrils by inserting “seeds” of cellulose nanocrystals. This causes the previously disordered silk molecules to line up together along the seeds, forming the basis of a hybrid material with distinct new properties.By integrating cellulose into the silk-based fibrils that could be formed into a thin membrane, and then tuning the electrical charge of the cellulose, the researchers produced a material that was highly effective at removing contaminants in lab tests.The electrical charge of the cellulose, they found, also gave it strong antimicrobial properties. This is a significant advantage, since one of the primary causes of failure in filtration membranes is fouling by bacteria and fungi. The antimicrobial properties of this material should greatly reduce that fouling issue, the researchers say.“These materials can really compete with the current standard materials in water filtration when it comes to extracting metal ions and these emerging contaminants, and they can also outperform some of them currently,” Marelli says. In lab tests, the materials were able to extract orders of magnitude more of the contaminants from water than the currently used standard materials, activated carbon or granular activated carbon.While the new work serves as a proof of principle, Marelli says, the team plans to continue working on improving the material, especially in terms of durability and availability of source materials. While the silk proteins used can be available as a byproduct of the silk textile industry, if this material were to be scaled up to address the global needs for water filtration, the supply might be insufficient. Also, alternative protein materials may turn out to perform the same function at lower cost.Initially, the material would likely be used as a point-of-use filter, something that could be attached to a kitchen faucet, Zhang says. Eventually, it could be scaled up to provide filtration for municipal water supplies, but only after testing demonstrates that this would not pose any risk of introducing any contamination into the water supply. But one big advantage of the material, he says, is that both the silk and the cellulose constituents are considered food-grade substances, so any contamination is unlikely.“Most of the normal materials available today are focusing on one class of contaminants or solving single problems,” Zhang says. “I think we are among the first to address all of these simultaneously.”“What I love about this approach is that it is using only naturally grown materials like silk and cellulose to fight pollution,” says Hannes Schniepp, professor of applied science at the College of William and Mary, who was not associated with this work. “In competing approaches, synthetic materials are used — which usually require only more chemistry to fight some of the adverse outcomes that chemistry has produced. [This work] breaks this cycle! ... If this can be mass-produced in an economically viable way, this could really have a major impact.”The research team included MIT postdocs Hui Sun and Meng Li, graduate student Maxwell Kalinowski, and recent graduate Yunteng Cao PhD ’22, now a postdoc at Yale University. The work was supported by the U.S. Office of Naval Research, the U.S. National Science Foundation, and the Singapore-MIT Alliance for Research and Technology.

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What’s in your protein powders?

Ten out of eleven popular protein powders recently tested have levels of toxic lead that would trigger a health warning in California, according to a new report from Mamavation.And that’s just the start of the problems.Partnering with EHN.org, the environmental wellness blog and community had 11 chocolate-flavored protein powders tested by a U.S. Environmental Protection Agency-certified lab. The testing included more than 40 PFAS types, more than 500 pesticides, lead, arsenic, cadmium and mercury. While no products contained detectable mercury or arsenic, the testing found some protein powders contained cadmium, glyphosate, PFAS and phthalates. Only one of the products, Paleovalley 100% Grassfed Bone Broth Protein (chocolate flavor), tested free of all the contaminants tested.The testing found: 10 products had levels of lead that would require a warning in California under Prop. 65, the state’s law alerting consumers to harmful pollutants.Two products had levels of cadmium that would require a Prop. 65 warning.One product contained the pesticide glyphosate, despite being labeled organic.Six products contained PFAS chemicals.Seven products contained phthalates.The levels of lead, for instance, ranged from 0.78 parts per million (ppm) per serving to 1.78 ppm per serving — so all 10 products with lead exceeded the daily health threshold in California (.5 ppm of lead) that triggers a warning to consumers. While this falls below the Food and Drug Administration’s guidelines that heavy metals such as lead should not be in food supplements at more than 10 ppm, scientists agree there is no “safe” level of lead. In addition, the FDA does not evaluate the labeling and safety of dietary supplements such as protein powders, instead leaving it up to manufacturers. Mamavation's testing is not the first to find concerning compounds in protein powder. A 2018 investigation by the Clean Label Project tested 134 protein powders and found 70% contained lead, 74% contained cadmium and 55% contained bisphenol-A (BPA). The results are concerning as the contaminants are linked to myriad health issues. Lead and cadmium are linked to neurological impairment, lower IQ, cardiovascular problems, kidney and liver issues among other effects. Phthalates are linked to hormone disruption, fertility impacts, low birth weights, obesity, diabetes, some cancers, brain and behavioral problems, and other health issues. PFAS, short for per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, contribute to cancer, reproductive and immune systems damages, elevated cholesterol and other health issues. And glyphosate is linked to cancer, reproductive problems, neurological diseases like ALS, endocrine disruption, and birth defects.“I’m very disappointed in the protein powder category. So many people, including pregnant women, rely heavily on protein powder every day,” Linda S. Birnbaum, scientist emeritus and former director of the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences and National Toxicology Program, scholar in residence at Duke University, and adjunct professor at the University of North Carolina and Yale University, told Mamavation.“Knowing what we know now about these premium brands, you can safely assume protein powders are potential sources of many contaminants like PFAS, lead, and phthalates,” she added.The testing included popular brands such as Vega, Truvani and Just Ingredients. For the full list of which protein powders contained toxics, check out the report at Mamavation.And check out the ongoing effort by Mamavation and EHN.org to identify PFAS in common consumer products. Follow our PFAS testing project with Mamavation at the series landing page.

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Has a UC Berkeley chemistry lab discovered the holy grail of plastic recycling?

Has a UC Berkeley chemistry lab discovered the holy grail of plastic recycling? Maybe, but with a lot of caveats.

Despite the planet’s growing plastic pollution crisis, petroleum-based polymers have become an integral part of modern life. They make cars and airplanes lighter and more energy efficient. They constitute a core material of modern medicine by helping to keep equipment sterile, deliver medicines and build prosthetics, among many other things. And they are a critical component of the wiring and hardware that underlies our technology-driven civilization.The trouble is, when they outlive their usefulness, they become waste and end up polluting our oceans, rivers, soils and bodies.But new research from a team of chemists at UC Berkeley suggests a glimmer of hope when it comes to the thorny problem of recycling plastics — one that may allow us to have our cake, and potentially take a very small bite, too. Aggressive and impactful reporting on climate change, the environment, health and science. The group has devised a catalytic recycling process that breaks apart the chains of some of the more commonly used plastics — polyethylene and polypropylene — in such a way that the building blocks of those plastics can be used again. In some cases, with more than 90% efficiency.The catalysts required for the reaction — sodium or tungsten — are readily available and inexpensive, they say, and early tests show the process is likely scalable at industrial levels. It uses no water and has fewer energy requirements than other recycling methods — and is even more efficient than manufacturing new, or so-called virgin, plastics, the researchers say.“So by making one product or two products in very high yield and at much lower temperatures, we are using some energy, but significantly less energy than any other process that’s breaking down polyolefins or taking the petroleum resources and turning them into the monomers for polyolefins in the first place,” said John Hartwig, a UC Berkeley chemist who was a co-author of the study published recently in the journal Science.Polyolefins are a family of thermoplastics that include polyethylene — the material used to make single-use and “reusable” plastic bags — and polypropylene — the ubiquitous plastic that holds our yogurts and forms microwaveable dishes and car bumpers. Polyolefins are produced by combining small chain links, or monomers, of ethylene or propylene, which are typically obtained from oil and natural gas.Polyethylene and polypropylene account for the majority (57%) of all polymer resins produced, the study authors noted. They have proven a plague to the environment, and in microplastic form have been found in drinking water, beer and every organ in the human body, as well as blood, semen and breast milk.Hartwig and R.J. Conk, a graduate student who led the research, said they have not yet heard from the plastics, recycling or waste industries. They said they had been keeping their technology under wraps until publishing their paper and obtaining a patent on the process. A spokeswoman for the Plastics Industry Assn. declined to comment or provide an expert to review the paper.Hartwig said there are some caveats to the work. For instance, the plastic has to be sorted before the process can be applied. If the products are contaminated with other plastics, such as PVC or polystyrene, the outcome isn’t good.“We don’t have a way to bring those [plastics] back to monomer, and they also poison our catalyst,” said Hartwig. “So for us, and basically for everybody else, PVC is bad. It’s not able to be chemically recycled.”He said other contaminates — food waste, dyes, adhesives, etc. — could also potentially cause problems. However, the researchers are still early in the process.But plastic bags, such as the ones used to hold produce in supermarkets, offer promise as they are relatively clean and “nobody knows what to do with them.” He said plastic bags are problematic for material recovery facilities where they are known to gum up machinery. “There are places that do collect those bags. I don’t know what they do with them. Nobody wants them,” he said.But others are less sanguine.Neil Tangri, science and policy director at GAIA — an international environmental organization — said that while he was not a chemist or chemical engineer, and therefore couldn’t comment on the methods, he noted that there are broader “real world” issues that could prevent such a technology from taking off.“Plastic recycling is not something we do well ... we only get about 5% or 6% per year. So there’s a hunt for new technologies that will do better than that,” he said. “My basic warning is that going from small-batch analysis in the lab to functioning at scale with real-world conditions ... it’s a huge, huge leap. So it’s not like we’re going to see this move into commercial production in the next year or two.”He noted that while the reaction temperature cited was lower than that used in pyrolysis — the burning of plastic for fuel — or cracking — when plastics are made from virgin material — it still requires a lot of energy, and therefore potentially creates a fairly sizable carbon footprint. In addition, he said, 608 degrees — the reaction temperature cited — is the temperature “where dioxins like to form. So, that could be a challenge.” Dioxins are highly toxic byproducts of some industrial processes. But, Tangri said, even if you could solve all of those issues — as well as the sorting and contamination issues Hartwig cited — “it is so cheap to make virgin plastic that the collection, the sorting, the cleaning ... they were talking about ... all of those steps, the energy use, you just can’t sell your [recycled material] at a price that makes sense to justify all that .... And that’s not really the fault of the technical approach. It’s the realities of the economics of plastic these days.” It’s a point to which Lee Bell, technical and policy advisor for IPEN — a global environmental advocacy group — agrees.“What appears promising in the lab rarely translates to commercial scale success and high yields from mixed plastic waste,” he said. “Not only do they have to deal with the diabolical issue of unavoidable plastic contamination [because chemical additives are in all plastic] but also competing with cheap virgin plastic in the marketplace.“My view is that this is yet another lab experiment on plastic waste that will ultimately be thwarted by mixed plastic waste contamination and commercial realities,” he said. Newsletter Toward a more sustainable California Get Boiling Point, our newsletter exploring climate change, energy and the environment, and become part of the conversation — and the solution. 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Air in Louisiana’s ‘Cancer Alley’ likely more toxic than previously thought

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Air in Louisiana’s ‘Cancer Alley’ likely more toxic than previously thought

Related News

The Surprising Link Between Bats Dying and Human Infant Mortality

Exposure to PFAS 'Forever Chemicals' in Pregnancy Could Boost Long-Term Obesity Risk

New filtration material could remove long-lasting chemicals from water

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Has a UC Berkeley chemistry lab discovered the holy grail of plastic recycling?

Suggested Viewing

The Story of Plastic

Bag It

928 The Threat Continues...

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Toxic Business

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