Plastic

Program:The Science Show

Robyn Williams: Two more examples now, the first on measuring microplastics in the sea. Khay Fong lectures in chemistry at Newcastle.

Khay Fong: This is a passion project really. I started teaching environmental chemistry here, and I contacted a friend of mine in Switzerland who runs an NGO called Sail & Explore Association, and we decided to look for microplastics in Australian waters.

Robyn Williams: And that took you to the South Pacific?

Khay Fong: It will take me to the South Pacific. But we've done a trip in the Whitsundays, we've quantified the microplastics that are in the surface waters there. And we really found that there was a lot of smaller plastics, so the plastics that you really can't see the ones that plankton and prawns confuse for food.

Robyn Williams: And much? Or just a trace?

Khay Fong: Compared to the rest of the world, it's just a trace. But the fraction of these tiny plastics was much higher than the macro plastics that you can actually pick up and chuck in the bin.

Robyn Williams: And recycle

Khay Fong: And recycle. Yes, recycling is an option that we should really invest more in.

Robyn Williams: Just briefly on the rest of the world, the rest of the world has got a pretty dire reputation for that sort of plastic, macro and micro, haven't they.

Khay Fong: My colleague, Roman Lehner in Sail & Explore, he does a lot of trips around the Mediterranean, and has found up to 300 pieces of plastic per cubic metre of seawater, whereas in Australia it's more like 0.5 pieces of plastic per cubic metre of seawater.

Robyn Williams: Does that matter?

Khay Fong: It just means that down here we look after our oceans a bit more. Up there in the Mediterranean, it's much more tourist heavy, and there's much more boat traffic than what you find in Australia. So it's unsurprising to me to have that much plastic pollution in that kind of environment.

Robyn Williams: Are you able to analyse where it comes from, because most people say that it's the plastic clothes, and it's the household goods, most of the things in the household actually. But also you've got…from cars, tyres and so on.

Khay Fong: When we do find the microplastics, we take them back to the lab and analyse them with a technique called Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy, and each type of plastic has a fingerprint kind of pattern based on their chemical structure. So we can tell what kind of plastics they are. If you have a label, then you can see where they come from, but if it's these micro fragments, you can tell what product they could have come from, but you can't say it was this manufacturer with this kind of bottle. Hopefully, we can do that in the future. I have a student working on machine learning algorithms to try…maybe we can get there. To figure out what's inside them is the first step.

Robyn Williams: Is that the main aim of what you're doing, first of all to find out how much there is, and then to trace it?

Khay Fong: I don't think that we could ever find the original source. Stuff in the ocean could have been floating around since when plastic was invented, the '50s. The aim of our game is to try to quantify, then educate, and then lobby to get changes so we can protect the environment for the future.

Robyn Williams: And what sort of messages will you have? What will you tell them; about washing their clothes better or avoiding certain products or what?

Khay Fong: The mantra from the '90s, you know, the Reduce, Reuse, Recycle, that's a starting point. We do need to use less plastic. It's fast becoming this generation's DDT. There is such scaremongering amongst people using plastics now, but it's necessary. Plastics have revolutionised the way we live. It's a material that can be as flexible as cling wrap, to as strong as Kevlar. Without this material, we wouldn't have been as technologically advanced as we are now. So it's necessary but it's not evil, it's just how people have used and abused it and not dispose of them correctly that we end up with environmental problems such as microplastics or the translocation of different contaminants like PFAS…

Robyn Williams: That's the fireproofing thing.

Khay Fong: Yeah, that's the fireproofing thing, that sticks to the hydrophobic surface of the plastics and can get blown with the wind or transported in oceans to different locations where it can poison the ground there.

Robyn Williams: Is it actually the plastic that's poisoning the wildlife of various sorts, or is it that which is attached to the plastic?

Khay Fong: A bit of both. Plastics are hydrophobic, which means that they can absorb very hydrophobic contaminants, which, like the firefighting stuff, the PFAS, to a lot of pharmaceuticals are hydrophobic for instance, oils, so they can translocate those things around. But secondly, seafood confuses microplastics for actual food, that poisons those fish and prawns, which then get eaten by bigger fish and prawns, but the plastic doesn't degrade within that…

Robyn Williams: It just accumulates, a bit like mercury.

Khay Fong: And then it ends up on our dinner plate, and we end up eating the fish that has these plastics in their bellies.

Robyn Williams: Does that matter? Don't you just evacuate?

Khay Fong: One way of putting it! But the biggest stuff, yes, it's like swallowing a piece of Lego, it comes out the other…not that I've ever done that, I have seen it happen, though in nieces. But there are studies ongoing that are trying to demonstrate the effects on human physiology if we eat microplastics, but it's still not 100% sure.

Robyn Williams: I've got one of those masks over there, you know, standard blue ones. I keep seeing them thrown away in the street. They're made of plastic, what happens to them?

Khay Fong: On the street? It will probably get washed into the stormwater drain, and it might get filtered out in one of the tubes that connects it to the environment. But the plastic is woven so it's likely to flake off and break apart. And then as it flows down the pipes and gets to the ocean, the mechanical action of the waves will destroy it, then the heat and the UV will break those chemical bonds within the plastic structure and fracture it over and over and over until you get to those microplastics.

Robyn Williams: What should we do with them, the masks?

Khay Fong: Well, cut the elastic, for one, so it doesn't loop around a bird's head if it's incorrectly disposed of. But two, put them in the bin. I don't think these things can be recycled. It's one of those necessary plastics that keep hospitals running. It's sterile, it's sanitary, that's how hospitals need to run nowadays, but they can't be recycled.

Robyn Williams: When you talk to your students (my final question) and you ask them about their knowledge of where all this microplastic comes from, given their own habits, are they surprised? What do they say?

Khay Fong: They seem to be conflicted actually. They understand that their lives involves a lot of plastic, but how do you stop using it is the question. And you can't stop using it. So they seem conflicted between their lifestyle and what to do about it.

Robyn Williams: You tell them, do you?

Khay Fong: No, I don't tell them, I encourage them to come up with their own opinions because they're the future, they're the ones that…we're trying to solve this problem together.

Robyn Williams: Thank you.

Khay Fong: Thanks.

Robyn Williams: Khay Fong, whose paper on plastic pollution has just been published in the Marine Pollution Bulletin, and finds its extent worldwide is grossly underestimated. So please note.

So what’s the problem with a plastic bottle floating around in the ocean? Well, over time, the plastic will degrade, a result of ultraviolet light and physical action of waves, the pieces becoming smaller and smaller. If birds haven’t eaten them, they will break down into smaller pieces and may be consumed by prawns or plankton, mistaken as food. Plastics are hydrophobic, meaning they absorb hydrophobic contaminants, and these are then delivered in a concentrated form. It’s bad news for wildlife. Khay Fong, Lecturer in Chemistry at The University of Newcastle is monitoring plastic in Australian waters. She hopes to raise awareness of the threat plastic brings to the environment.

GuestKhay FongLecturer in ChemistryThe University of NewcastleNewcastle NSW

PresenterRobyn Williams

ProducerDavid Fisher

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