Keynote Speech at ELAP Conference - May 31, 2002
Captain Charles Moore - Moore Institute for Plastic Pollution Research
A big warm welcome to the Environmental Laboratory Analyst Community as we kickoff four days of surging tides…. of ……..what? Well of course the answer is surging tides of data and analysis curated by the best data professionals on the planet!
As a maritime professional, I understand in intimate detail how a rising tide lifts boats, but they don’t all lift sufficiently to sail away on the rise. Some deep draft vessels stay stuck and need extra work to free themselves. So too will our labs need extra work from time to time to produce reliable data……but all boats float by definition and eventually they get underway and complete their mission.
In the ocean, I embrace complexity. The ocean does not repeat. Even her tidal ranges have become less predictable with ocean warming. Her chaotic behavior is tempered by her density, her depth and her enormous size, but surprise is her stock in trade.
Change in the ocean is rapid, perpetual and unknowably complex. As a sailor, I know some of the worst decisions are made in chaotic situations that lead to a cascade of worsening scenarios. Chaotic, unpredictable behavior in systems governed by universal natural laws is a motivator for scientists like us. We overcome lack of power over natural systems with a special kind of understanding. A step by step understanding of the mechanisms underlying natural phenomena. We divine causation, and reap the benefits of predictability.
In our laboratories, Chaos, we hope, will never be the term used to describe what goes on. Mechanistic understanding thrives on stability, routine and repeatability. According to Merriam-Webster, chaos is “the confused unorganized state existing before the creation of distinct forms.” Although the forms referenced here are concrete universals elaborated in the Socratic tradition, I think we can profitably dwell for a moment on the actual forms we use in our work.
Digital or written forms are data gathering tools that exist in an idealized state of potentiality until they are filled out. The art of form creation is a craft of the highest order. Everything we do cannot and must not be recorded. Creating useful forms to record important data is our stock in trade. My vessel is an ocean-going catamaran. I like to say that all boats are catamarans: monohulls are half-a-cat and trimarans are a cat and a-half. A catamaran is the most stable of all rigs and stability is a key to accurate observation, sample processing and inspection. Out in the vast Pacific Gyres we sample, the keeper of the forms -- always initially hand written hard copies to avoid errant keystrikes on a wave tossed vessel -- is an often recently “woke” human with access to all instruments and observations.
The Methods Development Study conducted among a couple dozen international laboratories by the Southern California Coastal Waters Research Authority over the Covid years of 2019-2022 focused on drinking water extraction of microplastics by a developing SOP. It was a highly collaborative exercise in a field new to science, the science of microplastic pollution. Discrete particles of plastic are increasingly being thought of as a novel form of sediment. Many of the most common polymers float but many more sink and others are neutrally buoyant or airborne. I believe microplastics are mixed in matricies worldwide and distribute themselves more uniformly than other traditional sediments. Their extraction is difficult, and the difficulty increases as the size class decreases.
Some laboratories and some research vessels are better than others. Some labs are better at certain parts of an SOP than others, and some labs do poorly in general. Where is the balance in accrediting good and not so good laboratories? How stringent do you make your accreditation protocol? How do you relate your accreditation protocols to each laboratory’s particular needs, especially in an evolving field like microplastic research? With many labs joined in exploring and finalizing these questions during the methods development study at SCCWRP, we have gotten close to being able to offer you professionals an opportunity to evaluate and accredit us in the microplastics field, especially as it relates to our precious drinking water.
As we struggled at the Moore Institute for Plastic Pollution Research to extract and quantify plastic particles at the nano scale, we learned that fibers of that size class were virtually everywhere. It took quite a while to learn the difference between cotton and Dacron polyester using visual microscopy, the only instrument at our disposal during the early stage of our research. Thousands of tiny cotton fibers had to be eliminated after painstakingly measuring the width and length of each one, taking a high-resolution color photograph, and mounting on double sided tape, just a few of the many trials and tribulations in development of Standard Operating Procedures for an entirely new field of science that arose after World War II.
The problematic nature of synthetic polymers in our water world could have been inferred from the fact there is no background or natural level of these persistent anthropogenic compounds anywhere. This makes them a priori a pollutant; they do not belong in or to any natural system. Small amounts of synthetic polymers in the environment might have been ignored by science, but the quantities rapidly increased and became impossible to ignore. Sadly, it is because of plastic pollution that we study environmental plastics-not because of their acknowledged technical benefits. Polymeric materials now have an official definition developed during the accreditation process that can be used to avoid confusion with the thousands of polymer blends and innovations.
The first plastics found by ocean scientists were a mix of discarded plastic consumer objects, but also pre-production plastic resin beads that came to be known as nurdles. These grain sized pellets are the form that thermoplastic resin raw material is shipped to “converters,” as the fabricators of plastic objects for the marketplace are known. These pellets showed up early on in the bellies of seabirds and in small mesh nets towed mostly at the ocean surface.
When I first crossed the area that has come to be known as the Great Pacific Garbage Patch in 1997, I was impressed by the abundance of floating plastics in the remotest part of this, the greatest of all oceans. Two years later, I returned and sampled the area. We found the number of zooplankton was five times greater than the number of plastic pieces >0.3mm in diameter, but the weight of the plastic was six times greater than the zooplankton. We published our findings in Marine Pollution Bulletin (42,12, 2001). This finding was shocking and controversial, but to have more plastic than life anywhere in the ocean, no matter how you look at it, was explosive. It gave us a sense of what kind of potential harm plastic litter could cause in the guts of or tangled around living things.
The initial response of the plastic industry to environmental plastic pollution was to consider plastic “litter” merely an aesthetic problem. This is still the general public’s attitude. Their nearly constant contact with the material, its lack of taste, smell, and obvious physical effects, have led most people to consider consumer plastics inert. If it were harmful in any way, why would it be used for our clothing, our home furnishings, and to serve and contain our food? If only people would not litter, the problem of plastics in the ocean would go away. Even scientists studying the problem of ocean plastics believe this theory. After listing potential (though not actual) solutions in their paper: “Global research priorities to mitigate plastic pollution impacts on marine wildlife,” Vegter and 26 co-authors con cluded that, if their potential solutions were implemented “. . .it would be feasible to deal with what is ultimately an entirely avoidable problem.” It seems at just this point; the scientists stop being objective, and revert to fantasy.
There is no avoiding the problem of ocean plastic pollution, nor is there any way for it to reach some sort of equilibrium or begin to diminish in any near-term scenario. Plastic use will surge with the conversion of oil for fuel to oil for plastic. 3-D printing of everything imaginable with plastic feedstocks along with plastic packaging for nearly every manufactured product and many fruits and vegetables will contribute to the projected doubling or tripling of plastic production by mid-century. For scientists in this emerging field, it is very important to have a broad view of the issues resulting from laboratory accreditation and analysis of microplastics in drinking water.
To provide a partial list of potential contaminants to our drinking water, one need only consider our plasticized daily lives. We sleep on polyurethane “memory foam” mattresses and pillows stuffed with polyester fiber or polystyrene foam beads, covered by fleece blankets spun from recycled PET bottles. In the bathroom, the acrylic or PVC tub, toilet seat, shower curtain, comb, brush, toothbrush, product and pill bottles, even the pills inside with their “enteric” polymer coatings. Almost everything baby, there’s sport shoes woven or molded from synthetic polymer fibers. Eyeglass frames that are mostly nylon and zylonite (which is cellulose acetate like cigarette filters and film stock), and the lenses of glasses that are mostly polycarbonate. Wall paint, furniture coverings, non-natural carpet and curtain fibers, seat cushions, vinyl flooring and window frames, house siding and facades and plastic wood are all synthetic polymers. Chewing gum base is styrene butadiene as are car tires, along with polyvinyl acetate and even polyethylene. Chewing gum makers aren’t keen to share particulars. Melmac dinnerware, children’s sippy cups. Microwave, fridge and dishwashers all lined with plastic, typically high density polyethylene. Styrene, the basic ingredient in styrofoam, where a small percentage remains un-polymerized has been named a “likely carcinogen” by the National Toxicology Program. Food and beverage packaging, fast-food packaging, bags, bags, bags. Electronics like phones, computers and remote controls. Then there’s the invisible stuff. Plastics lurk inside our walls as insulation, carry tap water to our faucets, and provide substrates, typically PVC gutter—for hydroponically grown vegetables and aquaculture raised seafood. Municipal water systems extract sediment from drinking water with a polymer flocculent. Epoxy sealants line water storage tanks and pipes.
I view these relentless, endless and countless little exposures with growing concern. For some time now, we have been skirting around an issue of the utmost importance. But we now must objectively consider in detail how the world and its inhabitants, including people, are being poisoned by plastics.
Shanna Swan is a colleague whose latest book Countdown, details many of the threats of plastics. She says, “…phthalates are in plastics, PVC pipes, home furnishings, and personal-care products. Phenols are in antiseptics, disinfectants, and medical products, among others, while perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA) is in carpets fabric protectors, stain repellants, and Teflon pots and pans. This continuous exposure may be why these nonpersistent chemicals can easily be measured in urine and have been found in a majority of people in Western populations. While other species don’t ‘use’ these products, they are exposed to them through by-products formed during chemical manufacturing and combustion, global transport of these chemicals through ocean and air currents, electronics recycling …(landfilling)… and other processes. As the use of some persistent organic pollutants has decreased, the use of nonpersistent compounds has increased. Yet both these classes still pose risks to reproductive organ development and can cause adverse neurological, endocrine, genetic and systemic effects in humans and other species….bottom line: we’re essentially dosing the entire planet….”
I would like to emphasize that the old law of Paracelsus, that “the dose makes the poison,” no longer applies in our perpetual micro-dosing world. Endocrinologists and cell biologists have found that infinitesimal doses in parts per billion and lower can get big results. A key is the timing of the dose, especially when the study subjects are unborn babies. Placental incursions by Endocrine Disrupting Chemicals can alter a genetic blueprint if they occur during specific developmental moments as the baby undergoes cellular construction.
As for microplastics, our methods development study and subsequent publication of finalized Standard Operating Procedures by Scott Coffin, Charles Wong and colleagues do not allow us to reliably get to a particle size below fifty microns----yet. In our lab at the Moore Institute, we are developing an innovative method for placing 20 micron screens directly into tap water faucets, running a measured quantity of tap water and then taking the screens to the compound microscope equipped with a mechanical stage, where we stitch together a high resolution image of the entire screen, that can then be size classed and quantified. The microparticles can be further analyzed by fluorescence microscopy and FTIR to determine the plastic load in the tap water sample.
There will be many innovations to come in the microplastics-in-water field, and it will be up to you all, the Environmental Laboratory Accreditation professionals, to help us turn innovative methods and sampling into reliable data for use by governmental agencies as they move toward regulation of a host of emerging contaminants of concern.
But what about all of us as people with a life to live and interests to pursue, unburdened by checklists and assured controls of quality? In my musings I often wonder how it is that in the modern technical world, “Lovers of Knowledge” –the strict definition of “Philosophers,” are not considered “Scientists.” I think it boils down to the fact that mechanistic science, with its incredible power to dissect and construct natural and technical systems, mechanistic science has sucked all the air out of philosophy. Philosophy has been shoved into a not very vital special discipline. That humans are rational beings that require freedom, and that happiness is their highest good are universal propositions whose impetus derives precisely from their universality. Universals are radically critical. They claim that all, and not this or that particular person, should be rational, free and happy. Our day to day reality gives the lie to such universals, but certain ancient truths keep surfacing. We continue to insist that humans can be more than manipulable subjects in the production of technical progress. The Metaverse of imagination and fantasy is in conflict with Artificial Intelligence and automation. Can we philosophize our way to freedom and happiness? To the victors, belong the spoils. Plastic pollution and its effects will continue to plague our water planet for many future generations of scientists and philosophers, but we have lives to live, games to play and voyages to sail.
I would like to leave you with two images taken on voyages as far as I can take you from the world of your lab and office experience. They were taken as we crossed the Equator in 2018 voyaging to the South Pacific Garbage Patch. It was calm and really hot! The images depict the rite of passage when Pollywogs or sailors never having crossed the Equator, become Shellbacks, with the ordeals of the boisterous sea behind them. The pollywogs were covered in dirty grease and squid guts, and confined on deck below a salvaged ghost net, as King Neptune menaced them with my trident and gaff. We have great crews, we work hard and we have fun. Never forget, when all is said and done, there is one person that is the object and the subject of all the measuring, quantifying and analyzing that takes place in Environmental Laboratories. That person is YOU!
Thank You
