Jul 8, 2008 5:27 pm US/Eastern
Alarming Beach Trash Sweeps Contaminates To Sea
FALMOUTH (WBZ) ―
The hazy, hot and humid weather has many folks heading to the beach for some cooling relief, but more people near the water means more beach trash.
A local researcher is studying what beach goers leave behind to get us all to clean up our summer act.
A sparkling beach day in Falmouth with sun, surf and sand can get ugly with unwanted beach trash.
"Plastics like this could last many generations. They were made that way on purpose. They were made to be tough," said marine chemist Chris Reddy.
Reddy works at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Falmouth. He has made beach trash his scientific business. His focus -- the plastics people leave behind.
"Sixty to 80 percent of all the marine litter that you find in the ocean is plastic," he explained.
As it breaks into smaller pieces over time, the plastics are ingested by wildlife and often have deadly results.
"There are about a million seabirds a year that die from plastic," Reddy said. "About a 100,000 marine mammals."
The chemistry of plastics may pose an even greater concern to water quality. So Reddy and his research assistant Catherine Carmichael hit the beach once a week in search of plastic trash.
"We grab a garbage bag and we start walking, and we pick up the first 25 pieces and we pick it up in no time," Carmichael said.
Sadly, there is plenty of data for study.
"Fishing line is a big problem for seabirds," Reddy said. "We can bring that back to the lab, and we'll take this blue one and do some work on it."
In under 10 minutes, a large amount of trash is collected.
"It's a lot of garbage. It's a lot of different pieces of plastic that we think eventually gets taken out in the middle of the ocean," Reddy explained.
The trash is usually washed into the sea during a rainstorm.
Reddy tests the contaminants in the trash by breaking it down in a solution.
"Remember (the cup) used to be blue. Now it's white," he explained. "We are washing all the chemicals off it."
Once in liquid form, the chemical composition of the cup can be analyzed and the news is not good.
Nasty contaminants like Bisphenol A and Thalates that soften the plastic and have been linked to health issues are released into the ocean as the plastic breaks down over time.
The plastics also act like sponges on land, taking up toxins like PCBS, DDTS, and flame retardants.
So they actually act like a vehicle for bringing contaminates from land where they are more abundant to the middle of the ocean, making plastic beach trash a serious water quality issue.
"I hope we can educate the lay public and policy makers, and even the media about this problem so we can diminish it," Reddy said.
Although the beach trash is part of Reddy's scientific study, he says he'd prefer to see none at all and encourages everyone to recycle so that we can keep these beaches free from the burden of plastics.
Reddy hopes to publish the results of his study next year. In the meantime, you can do something about beach trash by acting responsibly and by joining thousands of volunteers this September for Coastsweep. Last year over 18,000 pounds of trash were collected on Massachusetts beaches.
Visit
www.coastsweep.umb.edu if you would like to take part in this year's Coastsweep.
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