Plastics continue to be a persistent issue for communities throughout the country, including those found along the shores of Lake Michigan, where the material can even be found in the beach sand.
“I have eight grandchildren, and I’m concerned about their exposure to these (plastic) materials now. I was never anywhere nearly exposed to what they are now, and we don’t know what that means long-term for health,” said Dr. Julie Peller, a professor of chemistry at Valparaiso University in Indiana. “All the studies are showing that there’s negative health impacts from these exposures, and when we find the higher presence of micro-nano plastics in tissues, that relates usually to some sort of negative health consequence.”
Peller has been working with students for the last year to collect small pieces of plastic from a very polluted sand path in Indiana that leads right to the lakeshore at the southern tip of Lake Michigan. She said they have collected well-over 50,000 pieces of plastic from the single sand path since the beach cleanup last year, finding mostly pre-production plastic pellets called nurdles. The pre-production microplastic, something the industry makes and ships, contributes greatly to marine pollution, among other environments.
“All of these pieces of plastic we found, we’ve analyzed thousands of them, they’re the lightweight plastic and are the type of plastic that floats on water,” Peller said. “This is all coming from Lake Michigan, and it’s winding up on the beach and sand path. This is one sand path, so it blows me away whenever I think about what does this tell us about the amount of plastic that’s in our Great Lakes, which we depend on for our drinking water.”
In addition to studying and teaching about plastics and its impacts in the environment through her ongoing research, Peller also serves as the executive director of the nonprofit, Plastic Reduction Alliance.
Peller’s nonprofit focuses on reducing plastic waste and sharing the latest research on the issue. The organization builds partnerships, programs, and events to support cleaner, healthier communities by cutting plastic use and promoting safer materials.
“Through my experiences in doing public presentations and through my experiences teaching students, I find when they learn enough about it, they realize we have to act on it, we have to reduce these materials in our lives,” Peller said.
Plastic is not decomposable, a fact many people may be unaware of, and is not nature compatible. Therefore, the amount of plastic waste on earth will continue to increase and possibly triple by 2060, the Plastic Reduction Alliance states.
Legislation and major changes on plastic regulation and production would need to take place in the near to immediate future for significant change to be made, but in the meantime, the public can take steps to become educated about their options and about the impacts of single-use plastic and its long-lasting effects. Reaching out to legislators about the importance of addressing plastic pollution is another effective way to make a difference, Peller said, because that helps to move actions faster and more widely forward.
“Ultimately we know that we need to reduce single-use plastics world-wide. It’s become such an absolute waste problem if we don’t, I can’t imagine what this world is going to be dealing with if we don’t start talking about and finding those solutions, many of which are pretty obvious, but are harder to implement because of human behavior. We get used to doing things, and making changes is not always easy to do… Of all the plastic materials made, there’s only about a 20% portion of those that could even be considered for recycling. Most of it goes to the landfill,” she said. *** Bob Newell, a Northport resident who has been helping the village with its recycling endeavors for the last several years, has been making a conscious effort to watch his daily plastic use within his household since the 1990s.
Like Peller emphasized, Newell said education and outreach about plastic pollution is very important to build awareness. Newell stays conscious about his usage of the material in numerous ways, including by not purchasing items that contain or are in single-use plastic packaging. He also researches information about plastic-use and recycling when he has a question about items and how to dispose of them.
“We’re all taking a ride on this planet and we really need to become educated consumers in not only what we put in our bodies, but what you put back in the land,” Newell said. “You don’t have to wait for someone to educate you, you can ask the questions. Google it, educate yourself, and then begin to live what you learn.”
Plastic pollution impacts
According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, plastic pollution has become “ubiquitous in natural and built environments, raising concerns about potential harm to humans and nature alike.” Research shows that once plastic is in the environment, plastic pollution is persistent and may take between 100 to 1,000 years or more to decompose, depending on environmental conditions.
However, once in the environment plastic pollution can fragment into smaller pieces of plastic, creating micro and nano plastics — microplastics are plastic particles ranging in size from millimeters to one nanometer, whereas nanoplastic are plastic particles smaller than one micrometer. Both of these types of plastic are found in every ecosystem on the planet from the Antarctic tundra to tropical coral reefs.
In 2019, plastic productions were responsible for 3.4% of global greenhouse gas emissions throughout their life cycles, with 90% of these emissions coming from the production and conversion of fossil fuels into new plastic products, according to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD).
Unless human behavior regarding plastic use changes, the OECD reports that greenhouse gas emissions associated with the life cycle of plastic products are expected to double by 2060. The World Economic Forum projects that without intervention, the global plastics industry will account for 20% of total oil consumption and up to 15% of global carbon emissions by 2050.
The environmental impacts are also far-reaching — research shows that more than 1,500 species in marine and terrestrial environments are known to ingest plastic. In addition, human health will take a toll, as microplastics have been found in human livers, kidneys, placentas.
“It (nano plastics) can pass our biological barriers when they’re that small and become part of living systems in all sorts of ways,” Peller said. “The research on that is showing that we’re finding these in all of our organ systems now including the brain, heart, so these are so much part of our world.”
