plastic Archives - Amazing Health Advances

Fungus Breaks Down Ocean Plastic

The AHA! Team — Wed, 25 Sep 2024 08:39:26 +0000

Royal Netherlands Institute for Sea Research via EurekAlert! – A fungus living in the sea can break down the plastic polyethylene, provided it has first been exposed to UV radiation from sunlight. Researchers from, among others, NIOZ published their results in the scientific journal Science of the Total Environment. They expect that many more plastic degrading fungi are living in deeper parts of the ocean. The fungus Parengyodontium album lives together with other marine microbes in thin layers on plastic litter in the ocean. Marine microbiologists from the Royal Netherlands Institute for Sea Research (NIOZ) discovered that the fungus is capable of breaking down particles of the plastic polyethylene (PE), the most abundant of all plastics that have ended up in the ocean. The NIOZ researchers cooperated with colleagues from Utrecht University, the Ocean Cleanup Foundation and research institutes in Paris, Copenhagen and St Gallen, Switzerland. The finding allows the fungus to join a very short list of plastic-degrading marine fungi: only four species have been found to date. A larger number of bacteria was already known to be able to degrade plastic. Follow the degradation process accurately The researchers went to find the plastic degrading microbes in the hotspots of plastic pollution in the North Pacific Ocean. From the plastic litter collected, they isolated the marine fungus by growing it in the laboratory, on special plastics that contain labelled carbon. Vaksmaa: “These so-called 13C isotopes remain traceable in the food chain. It is like a tag that enables us to follow where the carbon goes. We can then trace it in the degradation products.” Vaksmaa is thrilled about the new finding: “What makes this research scientifically outstanding, is that we can quantify the degradation process.” In the laboratory, Vaksmaa and her team observed that the breakdown of PE by P. album occurs at a rate of about 0.05 per cent per day. “Our measurements also showed that the fungus doesn’t use much of the carbon coming from the PE when breaking it down. Most of the PE that P. album uses is converted into carbon dioxide, which the fungus excretes again.” AltThough CO2 is a greenhouse gas, this process is not something that might pose a new problem: the amount released by fungi is the same as the low amount humans release while breathing. Only under the influence of UV The presence of sunlight is essential for the fungus to use PE as an energy source, the researchers found. Vaksmaa: “In the lab, P. album only breaks down PE that has been exposed to UV-light at least for a short period of time. That means that in the ocean, the fungus can only degrade plastic that has been floating near the surface initially,” explains Vaksmaa. “It was already known that UV-light breaks down plastic by itself mechanically, but our results show that it also facilitates the biological plastic breakdown by marine fungi.” Other fungi out there As a large amount of different plastics sink into deeper layers before it is exposed to sunlight, P.album will not be able to break them all down. Vaksmaa expects that there are other, yet unknown, fungi out there that are degrading plastic as well, in deeper parts of the ocean. “Marine fungi can break down complex materials made of carbon. There are numerous amounts of marine fungi, so it is likely that in addition to the four species identified so far, other species also contribute to plastic degradation. There are still many questions about the dynamics of how plastic degradation takes place in deeper layers,” says Vaksmaa. Plastic soup Finding plastic-degrading organisms is urgent. Every year, humans produce more than 400 billion kilograms of plastic, and this is expected to have at least triple by the year 2060. Much of the plastic waste ends up in the sea: from the poles to the tropics, it floats around in surface waters, reaches greater depths at sea and eventually falls down on the seafloor. Lead author Annika Vaksmaa of NIOZ: “Large amounts of plastics end up in subtropical gyres, ring-shaped currents in oceans in which seawater is almost stationary. That means once the plastic has been carried there, it gets trapped there. Some 80 million kilograms of floating plastic have already accumulated in the North Pacific Subtropical Gyre in the Pacific Ocean alone, which is only one of the six large gyres worldwide.” Journal Science of The Total Environment DOI 10.1016/j.scitotenv.2024.172819 To read the original article click here.

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Capsule Solution Set to Replace Disposable Toiletry Bottles

The AHA! Team — Mon, 03 Jun 2024 05:13:38 +0000

Abigail Klein Leichman via Israel21c – Adding water to soap or shampoo concentrate to a reusable bottle at the point of usage would cut costs and pollution drastically. Eighty-five percent of the contents of all those plastic bottles of liquid soap, shampoo and detergent we use every day is water. Just 15% is the active ingredient that does the job we bought it to do. If the water could be added where the product is used rather than where the product is made, the package would be much smaller, lighter and cheaper. And that would lead to a cascade of environmental improvements in the manufacture, packaging, transport, storage and disposal of toiletries, cleansers and other water-based household products. The founders of Capsule Minimal have devised a revolutionary 3D-printed smart capsule containing the active ingredients. Insert the capsule into the company’s reusable metal bottle, add tap water, and the toiletry or cleaning product is ready. The two-year-old startup, which was chosen as one of 30 companies representing Israel at the COP28 climate summit in Dubai before the delegation was canceled, is seeking big-brand collaborations to bring its ingenious green solution to market. That’s insane “If you look around your home, most daily-use products are water-based: cosmetics, toiletries, paint, cleaning materials. You need a mediator to deliver active ingredients, and that’s usually water because most active ingredients are water-soluble,” says Ami Krupik, cofounder and chairman of Capsule Minimal. “We all have multiple water taps in our homes and yet we’re bringing water from thousands of miles away where the products were produced,” he says. “That’s insane. Why should you use water brought from one country to wash your hair in another country?” However, it’s not as simple to make a just-add-water shampoo as it is to make lemonade from a can of concentrate. “Most household products cannot be sold as concentrates, because they contain complex materials that must be mixed, heated and mediated in industrial plants to bring them into the water in a way that makes them usable,” Krupik explains. “There are many phases and energy investments involved in the manufacturing process. If you want to bring active ingredients directly to customers, they’d need machinery and a lot of effort. Most people aren’t able or willing to do that. We needed to enable this to happen easily without machinery.” Industrial plant in a bottle Capsule Minimal cofounder and CEO Yael Goethe, a biotechnology engineer and former R&D manager and COO of a leading clean-tech company, hit on the right formula. The technology she invented brings the industrial plant into the bottle in a physical, mechanical and chemical way. You put the active-ingredients capsule in the bottle with water, and the product makes itself, automatically activating phases including heating and mixing. The capsules will be produced in an efficient and green way and sold in a paper wrapper. “The market is very interested in our technology to solve the plastic waste problem — not just because they want to but because they have to,” Goethe tells ISRAEL21c. “There is regulation in Europe and in some parts of the United States that forces them to find a solution. Many potential strategic partners have approached us and we expect to sign collaborations because we want to be massive.” The company is building a proof-of-concept plant in northern Israel and is in talks with potential American and Israeli partners. “We don’t aim for niche products for the environmentally aware consumer,” Krupik emphasizes. “We want everyone — you and me, and our neighbors — to use it instead of the ordinary products we all use today. So we need a collaboration with a big player.” Capsule Minimal has patents and is in the process of obtaining regulatory approval for five categories of toiletries, including a variety of soaps and shampoos. “We chose to focus on the toiletries industry first, and next will be the cleaning industry,” Krupik tells ISRAEL21c. “These huge markets transport water every day in the millions of gallons.” The plastic problem Plastic pollution is at a pandemic level, and it’s not only the oil-based material itself that harms our environment. Millions of disposable plastic bottles are transported every day twice by truck, once empty and once filled with product. The heavier they are, the more fuel the trucks burns to transport them. The filled bottles are shipped by sea and stored in warehouses and finally retail stores, where they take up a lot of space that contributes to the air conditioning load. All of these steps cause greenhouse gas emissions from burning fossil fuels. Finally, when plastic bottles are disposed, they either sit in landfills forever, shed microplastics into the oceans, or get recycled in energy-intensive processes. A recent illustrative case is LEGO’s decision not to make bricks from recycled plastic bottles after projections suggested this material would ultimately leave a larger carbon footprint. In fact, Krupik and Goethe were motivated by their insider knowledge of plastic recycling. They were involved in developing new technologies for the recycling industry that decreased the amount of energy needed by more than 70%. “But the remaining 30% bothered us. We understood that recycling is not the real solution,” says Krupik. “There is always waste from everything we do, but we believe the main solution is reducing waste production.” Their innovation could significantly reduce the billions of toiletry and cleansing product bottles sold and discarded every year. A thousand of their capsules take up just one cubic meter. Holistic solution “It’s a holistic solution based in science,” says Goethe, who recalls being horrified at the sight of trucks dumping tons of landfill waste. “The reusable bottle is also an important part of this story,” she says. “The bottle is very aesthetic and practical. It opens from the bottom, so it’s very easy to clean and refill.” Capsule Minimal got its start at I4Valley Karmiel Incubator for Small Industry, which is supported by corporations such as Keter along with the Israel Innovation Authority. The company also has some private investors and recently opened a seed funding round. The current war, says Goethe, is presenting some challenges, but “we are able to work as normally as possible. We believe in the power of entrepreneurship and sustainability to make a positive impact, even — especially! — in difficult times.” For more information, click here. To read the original article click here.

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Chemicals in Plastic May Contribute to Weight Gain

AHA Publisher — Fri, 28 Jan 2022 08:00:07 +0000

Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU) via Newswise – It may sound strange, but chemicals in plastic may make the bathroom scale a less pleasant place to visit. Every day, we come into contact with plastic products. A lot of plastic is found in food packaging. Plastic packaging is common for practical reasons, because it is cheap and because it can increase a food’s shelf life. But plastic contains thousands of different chemicals. Some of these can affect your metabolism, and thus perhaps also your weight. Found 55 000 Different Chemicals “Our experiments show that ordinary plastic products contain a mix of substances that can be a relevant and underestimated factor behind overweight and obesity,” says Martin Wagner, an associate professor at NTNU’s Department of Biology. A research group looked at 34 different plastic products in the laboratory to see which chemicals they contained. These were everyday products that many people use, like yoghurt containers, drink bottles and kitchen sponges. The researchers found over 55 000 different chemical components in these products and identified 629 of the substances. Eleven of them are known to interfere with our metabolism, called metabolism-disrupting chemicals. For a long time, experts believed that most plastic chemicals would stay in the material. However, Wagner’s team has recently shown that plastic products leach a large number of chemicals under real world conditions, thus enabling them to enter the body. Previous research also suggests that some plastics contain endocrine-disrupting chemicals that may affect our development and fertility. Now it appears that they may contribute to weight gain as well. Contribute to Fat Cell Development Chemicals from one third of the plastic products investigated in the new study were found to contribute to fat cell development in laboratory experiments. The substances in these products reprogramed precursor cells to become fat cells that proliferated more and accumulated more fat. While some plastic products contained known metabolism-disrupting substances, others did not but nevertheless induced the development of fat cells. This means that plastics contain currently unidentified chemicals that interfere with how our body stores fat. “It’s very likely that it is not the usual suspects, such as Bisphenol A, causing these metabolic disturbances. This means that other plastic chemicals than the ones we already know could be contributing to overweight and obesity,” says Johannes Völker, the first author of the study who is affiliated with NTNU’s Department of Biology. Major Societal Problem Overweight and obesity contribute to some of the most common causes of death in the world, such as cardiovascular disease and cancer. They can also increase our susceptibility to various infections, such as the effects of COVID-19. Around two billion people in the world are overweight, and the problem is growing. Approximately 650 million of these fall into the obese category. The reasons for this are of course complex, but plastic chemicals may well be a factor that we have not previously considered. These chemicals include phthalates and bisphenols, but the new study shows that there are many more substances that trigger these problematic effects. The results of the latest study have been published in Environmental Science & Technology. The researchers came mainly from NTNU, with contributing partners from Goethe University in Frankfurt am Main, Germany. To read the original article click here.

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Are the BPA-Free Plastics Like Tritan Safe?

AHA Publisher — Fri, 10 Jul 2020 07:00:28 +0000

Michael Greger M.D. FACLM via Nutrition Facts – Do BPA-free plastics such as Tritan, have human hormone-disrupting effects? And what about BPS and BPF? Recent human studies indicate that exposure to the plastics chemical BPA may be associated with infertility, miscarriage, premature delivery, reduced male sexual function, polycystic ovaries, altered thyroid and immune function, diabetes, heart disease, and more. Yet, “[a]s recently as March 2012, FDA stated that low levels of BPA in food are considered safe.” However, just months later, to its credit, the agency banned the use of BPA plastics in baby bottles and sippy cups. Regulators standing up to industry? Maybe I shouldn’t be so cynical! But, wait. The ban was at the behest of the plastics industry. It had already stopped using BPA in baby bottles so it was their idea to ban it. The industry had switched from BPA to similar compounds like BPF and BPS. So, our diets now contain everything from BPA to BPZ, and the majority of us have these new chemicals in our bodies as well. Are they any safer? As I discuss in my video Are the BPA-Free Alternatives Safe?, based on the similarities of their chemical structures, they are all predicted to affect testosterone production and estrogen receptor activity, as you can see at 1:40 in my video. However, they were only recently put to the test. As you can see at 1:50 in my video, we’ve known BPA significantly suppresses testosterone production, and, from “the first report describing BPS and BPF adverse effects on physiologic function in humans,” we know those compounds do, too. Well, kind of. The experiments were performed on the testicles of aborted human fetuses. But, the bottom line is that BPS and BPF seem to have “antiandrogenic anti-male hormone effects that are similar to those of BPA.” So when you’re assured you shouldn’t worry because your sales slip is BPA-free, the thermal paper may just contain BPS instead. What’s more, BPS receipts may contain up to 40 percent more BPS than they would have contained BPA. So BPA-free could be even worse. In fact, all BPA-replacement products tested to date released “chemicals having reliably detectable EA,” estrogenic activity. This includes Tritan, which is specifically marketed as being estrogen-activity-free. As you can see at 3:06 in my video, however, researchers dripped an extract of Tritan on human breast cancer cells in a petri dish, and it accelerated their growth. This estrogenic effect was successfully abolished by an estrogen blocker, reinforcing it was an estrogen effect. Now, the accelerated growth of the cancer cells from the Tritan extract occurred after the plastic was exposed to the stressed state of simulated sunlight. Only one out of three Tritan products showed estrogen activity in an unstressed state, for instance when they weren’t exposed to microwaving, heat, or UV rays. “Because there would be no value in trading one health hazard for another, we should urgently focus on the human health risk assessment of BPA substitutes.” In the meanwhile, there are steps we can take to limit our exposure. We can reduce our use of polycarbonate plastics, which are usually labeled with recycle codes three or seven, and we can opt for fresh and frozen foods over canned goods, especially when it comes to tuna and condensed soups. Canned fruit consumption doesn’t seem to matter, but weekly canned vegetable consumption has been associated with increased BPA exposure. If you do use plastics, don’t microwave them, put them in the dishwasher, leave them in the sun or a hot car, or use once they’re scratched. But using glass, ceramic, or stainless steel containers is probably best. To read the original article click here. For more articles by Dr. Greger click here.

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