Microplastics may be responsible for ferrying pathogens out to sea, where land-based parasites are infecting unsuspecting marine wildlife, a new study has found.
By “hitchhiking” on these tiny plastics — which are no bigger than a grain of rice — pathogens are able to disperse throughout the ocean, reaching destinations that they’ve never encountered before, according to the study, published in Scientific Reports on Tuesday.
T. gondii, a parasite normally found only in cat feces, has infected many ocean animals with the disease toxoplasmosis and killed critically endangered wildlife like Hector’s dolphins and Hawaiian monk seals, the study noted. In humans, toxoplasmosis can lead to lifelong illness, as well as developmental disorders.
In their study, the University of California Davis scientists observed that parasites adhered to microfibers — remnants of clothing and fishing nets that are common in California’s waters.
“It’s easy for people to dismiss plastic problems as something that doesn’t matter for them, like, ‘I’m not a turtle in the ocean; I won’t choke on this thing,’” co-author Karen Shapiro, an associate professor in the UC Davis School of Veterinary Medicine, said in a statement.
“Microplastics can actually move germs around, and these germs end up in our water and our food,” she added.
Welcome to Equilibrium, a newsletter that tracks the growing global battle over the future of sustainability. We’re Saul Elbein and Sharon Udasin. Send us tips and feedback. A friend forward this newsletter to you? Subscribe here.
Today we’ll turn to California, where the state’s Air Resources Board passed a bill that aims to help improve air quality. Then we’ll look at world government’s failure to quit coal, and what that means for attempts to slow climate change.
California passes bill to improve air quality
The California Air Resources Board will be tightening its supervision over one of the most polluted pockets of the country, following the passage of a key bill aimed at improving the San Joaquin Valley’s air quality.
The panel approved the bill, AB-2550, on Monday evening, following a hearing in which lawmakers highlighted the respiratory health impacts that Central Californian residents have suffered due to long-term exposure to particulate matter pollution.
The legislation will enable the Air Resources Board to intervene in San Joaquin Valley Air Pollution Control District air pollution programs to ensure that the region meets national ambient air quality standards, according to the bill.
A public health crisis: “This crisis is particularly harmful for our most vulnerable and disadvantaged communities,” the bill’s sponsor, Assemblymember Joaquin Arambula (D), said at the hearing.
“And at its worst, we know that bad air contributes to premature deaths,” Arambula added.
A microscopic threat: Fine particulate matter — particles with a diameter of less than 2.5 microns, also known as PM 2.5 — come from sources like wildfires, wood-burning stoves, coal-fired power plants and diesel engines.
These microscopic pollutants can trigger asthma attacks, heart attacks and strokes, and also potentially lead to lung cancer.
A legacy of pollution: Just last week, the American Lung Association’s annual “State of the Air” report card showed that most of the country’s highest-ranking spots for both acute and long-term exposure to particle pollution were in California, as we reported.
Of those cities, the worst offenders were in the San Joaquin Valley.
The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) recognizes the Valley as having “some of the nation’s worst air quality,” due to a combination of topography and pollution sources.
All eight counties in the San Joaquin Valley remain in “nonattainment” — meaning, they have failed to meet the criteria — of national standards for PM 2.5 set in 1997, let alone the stricter ones passed in 2006 and 2012, according to Monday’s legislation.
SHIFTING RESPONSIBILITY TO ENSURE CLEAN AIR
Monday’s bill now says that if a district’s ambient air quality levels are severely below national standards and fail to meet those standards by relevant deadlines, the Air Resources Board must step in.
“Ultimately, it is the state’s responsibility to ensure that everyone, including our people who live in the San Joaquin Valley, can breathe cleaner air and not suffer from the impacts of pollution,” Arambula, who represents Fresno, said at the hearing.
What changes will occur? Some of the panel’s responsibilities will involve partnering with both the district and community-based organizations, as well as identifying gaps in state implementation and district attainment programs.
In addition, the Air Resources Control Board will need to work with the district to provide additional monitoring and enforcement capacity for stationary air pollution sources, according to the bill.
And the district’s response? Representatives of the San Joaquin Valley Air Pollution Control District objected to the legislation in at the hearing, arguing that the bill would provide no additional benefits, as it addresses only stationary rather than mobile air pollution sources.
- In California, local Air Pollution Control Districts are responsible for controlling air pollution from stationary sources, while management of mobile sources — like vehicular emissions — falls under the authority of the state.
- Tom Jordan, a senior policy advisor for the San Joaquin Valley Air Pollution Control District, stressed that the legislation “doesn’t provide any additional resources to address mobile source emissions, which are the single largest contributor to the state’s air quality challenges.”
Strong rules, but are they effective? With regards to stationary source pollution, Jordan pointed out that the EPA has recognized his district’s rules as “more stringent than anywhere else in the country.”
But Catherine Garoupa White, executive director of the Central Valley Air Quality Coalition, said that “it’s one thing to have the strongest rules — it’s another thing to actually go out and enforce them.”
“What’s unique about this bill is enshrining the inclusion of community-based organizations and disadvantaged communities that previously had been marginalized in the process,” she added.
Coal slowdown isn’t happening fast enough: report
Enough new coal plants are in the works to head off any possibility of meeting global climate goals, a new study from think-tank Global Energy Monitor has found.
A big build out: While new global coal power capacity in development fell in 2021, 34 countries are still planning new coal plants, according to the report.
“The coal plant pipeline is shrinking, but there is simply no carbon budget left to be building new coal plants. We need to stop now,” report coauthor Flora Champenois said in a statement.
A grim balance: Any limited retreat from new coal is also more than made up for by the increase in coal being burned in existing plants, as well as how much longer those plants are now intended to remain in service, the study found.
Some hard numbers: Beijing has called for the production of 300 million more tons of coal this year than last, after a hard year of blackouts and energy shortages that led to factory closures and hits to Chinese growth, NPR reported.
That’s a growth rate of 7 percent over 2021, which is itself a 5.7 percent increase over 2020 — signaling that Chinese coal output and combustion is accelerating, according to NPR.
That’s part of a global increase: But more than half of the new plants are in China alone, the U.K.-based magazine New Scientist reported.
A dim bright spot: Spending on new overseas coal plants is down, with China alone yanking funding from 15 overseas plants, according to the Center for Research on Energy and Clean Air, which collaborated on the coal report.
But 18 other overseas plants are still continuing, the Center found.
“No new coal”: While China has an existing “no new coal plants” policy, the 19.2 gigawatts of new capacity China is planning falls into a loophole, according to the Center.
- 58 percent already had secured financing
- 42 percent are “captive” operations intended to provide power and heat to Chinese-funded nickel and steel refining complexes in Indonesia
In both cases, the existing plans means that the Chinese government has chosen to view them as legacy projects, rather than new ones, the Center found.
CHINA REDOUBLES COMMITMENT TO COAL
China’s world-leading spending on both renewables and coal power makes it “both climate hero and climate villain,” current affairs magazine The Diplomat reported.
A peculiarity of finance: One reason why coal gets more Chinese funding is that Beijing tends to give more favorable financing to state-owned enterprises — as opposed to private enterprises, according to The Diplomat.
But while China’s fossil fuel industry is largely state-owned, renewables are overwhelmingly private, giving fossil fuels a commanding advantage in state infrastructure planning, The Diplomat reported.
New development reverses a key climate agreement: All new fossil fuel financing needs to stop to keep warming from crossing the red line of 1.5 Celsius (2.7 Fahrenheit), above which a new level of climate disaster looms, the International Energy Agency determined last year.
Among these, coal is the worst offender, as the dirtiest-burning and most carbon-intensive fossil fuel.
Last year saw new commitments from the world’s governments at the U.N. Climate Change Conference (COP-26), to “phase down” coal use — a defeat for activists who wanted the fuel “phased out,” as The Hill reported.
It’s not just China: Coal was in long-term decline before the coronavirus pandemic, according to The Guardian.
But the combination of attempts to recover from recession — added to soaring prices of methane (or natural gas) following the Russian invasion of Ukraine — has driven world governments back to coal, trade site OilPrice reported.
Toxic Tuesday
Confronting America’s continuing legacy of contamination.
Age-old mining leaves modern scars on a traditional food source
- Decades-old copper mining left a legacy of arsenic and mercury in the sandy soil south of Lake Superior — heavy metals that are leaching into the traditional wild rice fields that native Ojibwe at the Keweenaw Bay Indian Community are attempting to restore, according to The Detroit News.
LA high school blames recycling plant next door for lead contamination
- A Los Angeles high school — located next to a metal recycling plant — is linking toxic contamination on school grounds to the metal waste next door, The Guardian reported. Lab tests commissioned by the school district in 2020 show dangerous levels of lead in classrooms and on the softball field, according to The Guardian.
Phosphate dump leaked millions of gallons of toxic water into Tampa Bay
- The nearly “catastrophic failure” last April of a waste containers at a former phosphate mining facility overlooking Tampa Bay led the company that owned it to dump 215 million gallons of toxic wastewater into the bay — more than a year’s worth of pollution in 10 days, CBS reported.
Please visit The Hill’s Sustainability section online for the web version of this newsletter and more stories. We’ll see you tomorrow.